Assessment of the structural behavior of corrosion-affected RC beams: Experimental study and modeling

Structural performance of deteriorated reinforced concrete (RC) members depends on the magnitude and location of steel corrosion. Finite element (FE) method has been applied to the structural performance assessment of corroded RC members; however, the difficulty in quantifying cross-sectional area of rebar embedded into the concrete has been reported as a main challenge for conducting the FE analysis precisely. The two main objectives of this paper are to: (1) experimentally investigate the effects of spatial variability associated with steel corrosion on the structural behavior of a corroded RC beam and (2) establish a FE numerical modeling to assess the structural performance of corroded RC beams. In the experimental study, the spatial variability associated with the steel weight loss over the RC beam is quantified using X-ray and digital image processing techniques. This experimental result is used as input data for the FE analysis. The proposed model provides good agreement with the test results.