Bond is an essential property that guarantees the composite action in prestressed concrete (PC) members. This bond may be degraded due to different reasons, corrosion‐induced damage being one of the most frequent ones. The transfer length is the key indicator that describes the bond properties between prestressing steel and concrete. The analysis and design of PC members with prestressing wires require a realistic assessment of the bond transfer length. This paper presents an analytical study of the influence of the governing geometrical and mechanical variables on bond behavior in PC members undergoing steel corrosion. A model describing the deterioration of the transfer length due to corrosion, calibrated and verified through experimental tests, is proposed along with simplified expressions for the assessment of transfer lengths in PC members with corroded wires.

En elementos pretensados de hormigón, la adherencia entre el acero y el hormigón puede verse deteriorada por diferentes motivos, siendo uno de los más recurrentes el daño inducido por procesos de corrosión. El parámetro fundamental para caracterizar las propiedades adherentes existentes entre el acero pretensado y el hormigón es la longitud de transferencia. Este artículo compara los resultados experimentales obtenidos en ensayos sobre elementos pretensados tipo viga con las predicciones arrojadas por un modelo analítico, basado en la teoría de cilindros de pared gruesa y en la fisuración cohesiva del hormigón, desarrollado para analizar los procesos de degradación de la adherencia motivados por la corrosión en alambres lisos e indentados y su influencia en el comportamiento de elementos pretensados de hormigón.

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<p> The partial demolition of a reinforced concrete (RC) industrial building that had been exposed to a severe marine environment since its erection in the nineteen forties provided an opportunity to conduct theoretical and experimental structural assessments on large-scale, naturally deteriorated members. Eight beams were specifically selected for this purpose. Theoretical assessments were performed to determine the internal stress in critical regions. The EN-1992-1-1 [1] and<i>fib</i>Model Code 2010 [2] (hereafter “MC2010”) resistance models used were suitably adapted to factor in the effects of corrosion. This paper describes the experimental procedure and provides an example of a four-stage assessment conducted on one of the beams tested, designed to ascertain the effect of entering new input on its geometry and the properties of its constituent materials. The procedure described may be used in the safety assessment of existing deteriorated RC structures.</p>