Corrosion Rate-Based Adjustment of Plastic Hinge Parameters of Corroded RC Elements

Abstract

In line with the trend towards predictive seismic codes adopting the performance-based design method, this paper presents an integrated protocol to determine the degraded hysteresis parameters of corroded RC hinges based on relationships developed for this purpose together with a calibration procedure using the random-mutation hill-climbing algorithm. The adjustment procedure is integrated into the material library of the OpenSees software and used to perform nonlinear dynamic analyses to investigate the seismic performance of a typical bridge with affected piers at different corrosion levels. In practice the proposed procedure permits to assess the seismic performance of existing or new structures for a given corrosion rate distribution.