Abstract:
Steel bridges play a major role in road and railway infrastructures hence it directly influence on economy
of any country. Traffic capacity reduction or even a temporary closure generates major inconveniences for the users
and result in significant losses to the economy. Corrosion is one of the most significant causes of age related
deterioration of steel girder bridges which affects their strength, long term mechanical performance, usability and
durability. Numerous steel bridge structure collapses are associated with dynamic loadings like earthquakes and
wind loading. Damaging vulnerability of steel structures due to dynamic excitations can be triggered with corrosion.
Non availability of information and convenient methodology to determine the behavior of corroded steel members
can lead to problematic situations for the civil engineers when evaluating the strength of deteriorated member.
Therefore a comprehensive study in front of serviceability and ultimate limit states is necessary to develop efficient
techniques to evaluate the structural integrity and safety. This is necessary to evaluate the feasibility of those steel
structures for the current usage and to figure out the retrofitting requirement of corroded members. This research
proposes a simple and reliable methodology to estimate remaining yield and ultimate cyclic strength capacities by
measuring only the minimum thickness of a corroded surface based on the results of many experimental coupon
tests and results of nonlinear FEM analysis of many actual corroded plates with different corrosion conditions,
which can be used to make rational decisions about the maintenance management plan of steel infrastructures.
