Abstract:
Over the past decades there have been many damage examples of older steel bridge structures due to corrosion around
the world. Even though there are some published methods to assess the strength reduction due to corrosion of bridges, it
is hard to find any with lesser number of measuring variables which eventually accounts for the accuracy and the
convenience of the investigation for adequate bridge management. So, in this study, a simple method of calculating the
remaining yield and tensile strength by using a concept of representative effective thickness (teff) with correlation of
initial thickness (t0) and standard deviation of thickness (σst) is proposed, based on the results of many tensile coupon
tests of corroded plates obtained from a steel plate girder used for about 100 years with severe corrosion.
