Influence of local corrosion on the loadbearing behaviour of bridge cantilevers

Author: Siro Gianinazzi
Language: English

Abstract

Many existing bridges suffer from corrosion-induced reinforcement damages and assessing their life cycle is nowadays an important task. This thesis focuses on how corrosion pits in individual bars affect the load-bearing behaviour of the entire bridge deck.

In a first step, corrosion pits have been generated using a probabilistic strategy, which determines the pit length, depth and its location on an exemplary bridge cantilever. Non-linear finite element analyses were carried on cantilevers with different corrosion states and the results were compared to the uncorroded state.

The load-bearing capacity of affected structures is reduced, which is evident by comparing the load-deformation curves of corroded and uncorroded cantilevers. The influence differs depending on the location of the corrosion pits and the cross-section loss. The pit length has a minor influence. For a structural assessment, it is not sufficient to know only the average mass loss.