Corrosion Behaviour of Prestressed Steel-Reinforced Structures

Abstract

A relationship between the corrosion damage and the loss of prestressing load on concrete prestressed metallic structures is proposed after experimental data. Mathematically, the first natural frequency change is related to the reduction on the prestressing load, and as a result, to the corrosion effect. In general, it has been found that the reduction on the prestressing load due to corrosion has a cracking type behaviour with a small variation rate at the beginning and a larger one at the end of the corrosive process.It can be found a similar tendency assuming that the load change is inversely proportional to the crack depth as per fracture mechanics model (stress corrosion cracking).

Mechanical performance of corroded steel bars in concrete

“…In investigating the configuration of corroded reinforcing steel bars, many researchers considered that the stress level has no effect on pit development (Carrion-Viramontes et al, 1999;Darmawan and Stewart, 2007;Evans, 1957) and suggested that a low degree of plastic deformation does not influence the corrosion rate (Apostolopoulos and Papadakis, 2007). However, Trejo et al (2009) recently found that the in-service stress level had a statistically significant influence on the corrosion activity and tension capacity of post-tensioning strands.…”