Reduction of Ultimate Strength due to Corrosion - A Finite Element Computational Method

Bridge safety is of paramount importance in transportation engineering and maintenancemanagement. Corrosion causes strength deterioration and weakening of aged steel structures.Therefore, it is a vital task to estimate the remaining strength of corroded steel structures in orderto assure the public safety. Due to the economic constraints and increase of number of steelhighway and railway bridge structures, it will be an exigent task to conduct tests for each andevery aged bridge structure within their bridge budgets. Therefore, this paper proposes a methodof evaluating the residual strength capacities by numerical approach and compares the non-linearFEM analyses results with their respective tensile coupon tests. Further, since it is not easy tomeasure several thousands of points, to accurately reproduce the corroded surface by numericalmethods and to predict their yield and ultimate behaviors, a simple and reliable analytical modelis proposed by measuring the maximum corroded depth (tc,max), in order to estimate the remainingstrength capacities of actual corroded members more precisely.