Effects of corrosion on degradation of tensile strength of steel bridge members

Abstract

Evaluation of existing steel bridges becomes vital due to natural aging, increasing load spectra, deterioration caused by corrosion, increasing seismic demand, and other problems. In the result, bridge structures exposed to aggressive environmental conditions are subjected to time-variant changes of resistance. Corrosion becomes one of the major causes of deterioration of steel bridges and there have been many damage examples of older steel bridge structures due to corrosion around the world during past few decades. Controlling corrosion on bridge structures can prevent premature failure and lengthen their useful service life, both of which save money and natural resources, and promote public safety. Therefore, understanding of the influence of damage due to corrosion on the remaining load-carrying capacities is a vital task for the maintenance management of steel highway infrastructures. But at the moment, number of steel railway and highway bridge infrastructures in the world is steadily increasing as a result of building new steel structures and extending the life of older structures. Therefore, it would be an exigent task to measure several thousands of points, to accurately reproduce the corroded surface by numerical methods and to predict the behaviour of that corroded member more precisely. So, there is a need of more brisk and accurate assessment method which can be used to make reliable decisions affecting the cost and safety. Therefore, this paper presents the analytical results of many actual corroded steel members and comparison of them with their respective experimental results. Further, a simple and reliable analytical method by measuring only the maximum corroded depth (tc,max) is proposed, in order to predict the residual strength capacities of corroded steel plates more accurately.