Finite-Element Analysis of Chemical Transport and Reinforcement Corrosion-Induced Cracking in Variably Saturated Heterogeneous Concrete
Publication: Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 137, Issue 5
Abstract
Reinforcement corrosion owing to chemical attack could lead to premature steel-mortar debonding, concrete cracking, and catastrophic failure of structures if not well attended. In conventional design and maintenance practices, heterogeneous concrete matrix is commonly treated as a homogeneous medium when the evolution of chemical ingress and concrete cracking need to be determined. Such oversimplification has caused significantly inaccurate prediction and evaluation of structural service life. This paper presents a finite-element (FE) model developed to evaluate the service life of reinforced concrete (RC) structures in three key steps: chemical ingress, steel corrosion, and concrete cracking. The mass conservation principle is employed in the first step to model the ingress of multiple chemical species into variably saturated heterogeneous concrete matrix. By using Faraday’s law, steel corrosion and the incurred diametric expansion are then formulated as a transient displacement boundary condition for subsequent analysis of concrete cracking. The cracking pattern of concrete under the expansion force of corrosion products is finally characterized by using a cohesive-fracture approach. The FE model is validated with laboratory experiments.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Ababneh, A., and Xi, Y. (2003). “Chloride penetration in non-saturated concrete.” J. Mater. Civ. Eng., 15(2), 183–191.
Bazant, Z. P., and Cedolin, L. (1979). “Blunt crack band propagation in finite element analysis.” J. Eng. Mech. Div., Am. Soc. Civ. Eng., 105(2), 297–315.
Broomfield, J. (1997). Corrosion of steel in concrete: Understanding, investigating and repair, E. and F.N. Spon, London.
Camacho, G. T., and Ortiz, M. (1996). “Computational modeling of impact damage in brittle materials.” Int. J. Solids Struct., 33(20), 2899–2938.
Carpinteri, A., Cornetti, P., Barpi, F., and Valente, S. (2003). “Cohesive crack model description of ductile to brittle size-scale transition: Dimensional analysis vs. renormalization group theory.” Eng. Fract. Mech., 70(14), 1809–1839.
Carpinteri, A., Valente, S., Ferrara, G., and Melchiorri, G. (1993). “Is Mode II fracture energy a real material property?” Comput. Struct., 48(3), 397–413.
Chen, D., and Mahadevan, S. (2008). “Chloride-induced reinforcement corrosion and concrete cracking simulation.” Cem. Concr. Compos., 30(3), 227–238.
Dagher, H. J., and Kulendran, S. (1992). “Finite element modeling of corrosion damage in concrete structures.” Struct. Concrete, 89(6), 699–708.
Deudé, V., Dormieux, L., Kondo, D., and Maghous, S. (2002). “Micromechanical approach to nonlinear poroelasticity: Application to cracked rocks.” J. Eng. Mech., 128(8), 848–855.
Dodds, R. H., Jr., and Vargas, P. M. (1988). “Numerical evaluation of domain and contour integrals for nonlinear fracture mechanics: Formulation and implementation aspects.” Civil Engineering Studies SRS-542, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL.
Dormieux, L., Kondo, D., and Ulm, F.-J. (2006). “A micromechanical analysis of damage propagation in fluid-saturated cracked media.” C.R. Mécanique, 334(7), 440–446.
Du, Y. G., Chan, A. H. C., and Clark, L. A. (2006). “Finite element analysis of the effects of radial expansion of corroded reinforcement.” Comput. Struct., 84(13-14), 917–929.
Florida Dept. of Transportation (2000). “Florida method of test for determining low-levels of chloride in concrete and raw materials.” FM-5-516, Tallahassee, FL.
Fourier, J. B. J. (1822). Theorie analytique de la chaleur [Analytic theory of heat], F. Didot, Paris (in French).
Gálvez, J. C., Cervenka, J., Cendón, D. A., and Saouma, V. A. (2002). “Discrete crack approach to normal/shear cracking of concrete.” Cem. Concr. Res., 32(10), 1567–1585.
Glasser, F. G., and Sagoe-Crentsil, K. K. (1989). “Steel in concrete: Part II—electron microscopy analysis.” Mag. Concr. Res., 41(149), 213–220.
Hausmann, D. A. (1998). “A probability model of steel corrosion in concrete.” Mater. Perform., 37(10), 64–68.
Hillerborg, A., Modeer, M., and Petersson, P.-E. (1976). “Analysis of crack formation and crack growth in concrete by means of fracture mechanics and finite elements.” Cem. Concr. Res., 6, 773–782.
Jenq, Y. S., and Shah, S. P. (1985). “Two parameter model for concrete.” J. Eng. Mech., 111(10), 1227–1241.
Jenq, Y. S., and Shah, S. P. (1988). “Mixed-mode fracture of concrete.” Int. J. Fract., 38(2), 123–142.
Kanninen, M. F., and Popelar, C. H. (1985). Advanced fracture mechanics, Oxford Univ., New York.
Li, C. Q. (2001). “Initiation of chloride-induced reinforcement corrosion in concrete structural members–experimentation.” ACI Struct. J., 98(4), 502–510.
Li, S., Wang, M., and Li, S. (2008). “Model for cover cracking due to corrosion expansion and uniform stresses at infinity.” Appl. Math. Model., 32(7), 1436–1444.
Liu, Y. (1996). “Modeling the time-to-corrosion cracking of the cover concrete in chloride contaminated reinforced concrete structures.” Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, VA.
Marchand, J., Samson, E., and Beaudoin, J. J. (2002). “Modeling ion transport mechanisms in unsaturated porous media.” NRCC-44698, National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada.3466–3471.
Nielsen, A. (1985). “Concrete durability.” The concrete book (Beton bogen), A. D. Herholdt, C. F. P. Justesan, P. Nepper-Christensen, and A. Nielsen, Eds., Aalborg Portland, Aalborg, Denmark, 200–243.
Oliver, J. A. (1989). “Consistent characteristic length for smeared cracking models.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng., 28(2), 461–474.
Owen, D. R. J., and Fawkes, A. J. (1983). Fracture Mechanics, Pineridge Press Ltd., Swansea, U. K.
Pan, T., and Liu, Y. (2009). “Computational molecular analysis of chloride transport in hydrated cement paste.” Transportation Research Record 2113, Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.
Pan, T., Nguyen, T., and Shi, X. (2008). “Assessment of electrical injection of corrosion inhibitor for corrosion protection of reinforced concrete.” Transportation Research Record 2044, Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.
Pan, T., and Wang, L. (2009). “Stochastic finite element analysis of reinforced concrete cracking due to mixed-mode steel corrosion.” Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting (CD ROM), TRB, Washington, DC.
Pan, T., Xia, K., and Wang, L. (2010). “Chloride binding to calcium silicate hydrates (C-S-H) in cement paste: A molecular dynamics analysis.” Int. J. Pavement Eng., 11(5), 367–379.
Pantazopoulou, S. J., and Papoulia, K. D. (2001). “Modeling cover-cracking due to reinforcement corrosion in RC structures.” J. Eng. Mech., 127(4), 342–351.
Pereira, C., and Hegedus, L. (1984). “Diffusion and reaction of chloride ions in porous concrete.” Proc., 8th Int. Symp. on Chemical Reaction Engineering, Institution of Chemical Engineers, Univ. of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, 87, 427–438.
Petersson, P.-E. (1981). “Crack growth and development of fracture zones in plain concrete and similar materials.” Rep. TVBM-1006/10174, Div. of Building Materials, Lund Institute of Technology, Lund, Sweden.
Pichler, B., Hellmich, C., and Mang, H. A. (2007). “A combined fracture-micromechanics model for tensile strain-softening in brittle materials based on propagation of interacting microcracks.” Int. J. Numer. Anal. Meth. Geomech., 31(2), 111–132.
Potyondy, D. O., Wawrzynek, P. A., and Ingraffea, A. R. (1995). “An algorithm to generate quadrilateral or triangular element surface meshes in arbitrary domains with applications to crack propagation.” Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng., 38(16), 2677–2701.
Rashid, Y. R. (1968). “Ultimate strength analysis of prestressed concrete pressure vessels.” Nucl. Eng. Des., 7(4), 334–344.
Rots, J. G. (1988). “Computational modeling of concrete fracture.” Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft Univ. of Technology, Delft, Netherlands.
Swartz, S. E., Lu, L., Tang, L., and Refai, T. (1988). “Mode II fracture parameter estimates for concrete from beam specimens.” Exp. Mech., 28(2), 146–153.
Thoft-Christensen, P. (2000). “Stochastic modeling of the crack initiation time for reinforced concrete structures.” Proc., 2000 ASCE Structures Congress, Philadelphia.
Val, D. V., and Chernin, L. (2009). “Serviceability reliability of reinforced concrete beams with corroded reinforcement.” J. Struct. Eng., 135(8), 896–905.
van Genuchten, M. Th. (1980). “A closed form equation for predicting the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soils.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 44(5), 892–898.
Wawrzynek, P. A., and Ingraffea, A. R. (1987). “Interactive finite element analysis of fracture processes: An integrated approach.” Theor. Appl. Fract. Mech., 8(2), 137.
Xi, Y., and Bazant, Z. P. (1999). “Modeling chloride penetration in saturated concrete.” J. Mater. Civ. Eng., 11(1), 58–65.
Xi, Y., William, K., and Frangopol, D. (2000). “Multiscale modeling of interactive diffusion processes of concrete.” J. Eng. Mech., 126(3), 258–265.
Xu, X. P., and Needleman, A. (1994). “Numerical simulations of fast crack growth in brittle solids.” J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 42(9), 1397–1424.
Zhu, Q. Z., Kondo, D., and Shao, J. F. (2009). “Homogenization-based analysis of anisotropic damage in brittle materials with unilateral effect and interactions between microcracks.” Int. J. Numer. Anal. Meth. Geomech., 33(6), 749–772.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 137 • Issue 5 • May 2011
Pages: 334 - 345
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 9, 2009
Accepted: Oct 15, 2010
Published online: Jan 26, 2011
Published in print: May 1, 2011
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.