Nonuniform Corrosion-Induced Stresses in Steel-Reinforced Concrete
Publication: Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 138, Issue 4
Abstract
Understanding of cracking behavior of cover concrete is important for assessment of the remaining service life of corrosion-affected concrete structures. Predicting initiation of concrete cracking is commonly based on the evolution of stresses caused by the volume expansion of corrosion products on reinforcing bars. This paper presents an analytical method that is capable of providing the solution to two-dimensional (2D) elastic stress field caused by nonuniform volume expansion around the corroding reinforcing bars. The developed method features the formulation of a displacement model, which is applied as a boundary condition to simulate the effect of nonuniform corrosion on the deformation of the surrounding concrete. A closed-form solution to the stress field is obtained using the complex variable method of Muskhelishvili. Validation of the solution is supported by a comparison with finite-element-based simulation results. The solution reveals the evolution of stresses surrounding two typical locations of steel bars in reinforced-concrete components: the middle bar and the corner bar. Further, a comparison of stresses induced by nonuniform corrosion and uniform corrosion indicates that nonuniform corrosion pattern could lead to earlier initiation of crack given the same amount of corrosion weight loss.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This work is associated with the Corrosion and Reliability Engineering program at The University of Akron. Part of this work is in participation with the DoD University Corrosion Collaboration supported by the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Corrosion Policy and Oversight, and we greatly appreciate that support. Such part of research activity is administered by the U.S. Air Force Academy under agreement number USAFOSRFA7000-10-2-0013. The first author expresses her thanks to the support from State Key Development Program for Basic Research of China (Grant No. UNSPECIFIED2007CB714104) and the support from Project UNSPECIFIED51008114 by the National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaNNSFC.
References
Andrade, C., and Alonso, C. (2001). “On-site measurements of corrosion rate of reinforcements.” Constr. Build. Mater., 15(2–3), 141–145.
Andrade, C., Alonso, C., and Molina, F. J. (1993). “Cover cracking as a function of rebar corrosion: Part I—experimental test.” Mater. Struct., 26(8), 453–464.
Bazant, Z. P. (1979a). “Physical model for steel corrosion in concrete sea structures—application.” J. Struct. Div., 105(ST6), 1155–1166.
Bazant, Z. P. (1979b). “Physical model for steel corrosion in concrete sea structures—theory.” J. Struct. Div., 105(ST6), 1137–1153.
Bhargava, K., Ghosh, A. K., Mori, Y., and Ramanujam, S. (2006). “Analytical model for time to cover cracking in RC structures due to rebar corrosion.” Nucl. Eng. Des., 236(11), 1123–1139.
Brown, J. W., and Churchill, R. V. (1996). Complex variables and applications, 6th Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 148–153.
Cabera, J. G. (1996). “Deterioration of concrete due to reinforcement steel corrosion.” Cem. Concr. Compos., 18(1), 47–59.
Du, Y. G., Chan, A. H. C., and Clark, L. A. (2006). “Finite element analysis of the effect of radial expansion of corroded reinforcement.” Comput. Struct., 84(13–14), 917–929.
Jaffer, S. J., and Hansson, C. M. (2009). “Chloride-induced corrosion products of steel in cracked-concrete subjected to different loading conditions.” Cem. Concr. Res., 39(2), 116–125.
Kim, C. Y., and Kim, J. K. (2008). “Numerical analysis of localized steel corrosion in concrete.” Constr. Build. Mater,, 22(6), 1129–1136.
Liu, Y. (1996). “Modeling the time to corrosion cracking of the cover concrete in chloride contaminated reinforced concrete structures.” Doctoral dissertation, VA Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, VA.
Maaddawy, T. E., and Soudki, K. (2007). “A model for prediction of time from corrosion initiation to corrosion cracking.” Cem. Concr. Compos., 29(3), 168–175.
Oh, B. H., and Jang, B. S. (2003). “Chloride diffusion analysis of concrete structures considering effects of reinforcements.” ACI Mater. J., 100(2), 143–149.
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.
Piltner, R., and Monteiro, P. (2000). “Stress analysis of expansive reaction in concrete.” Cem. Concr. Res., 30(6), 843–848.
Rasheeduzzafar, A. S. S., and Al-Gahtani, A. S. (1992). “Corrosion cracking in relation to bar diameter, cover and concrete quality.” J. Mater. Civ. Eng., 4(4), 327–342.
Timoshenko, S. P., and Goodier, J. N. (1970). Theory of elasticity, 3rd Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 176–181.
Verruijt, A. (1997). “A complex variable solution for a deforming circular tunnel in an elastic half-plane.” Int. J. Numer. Anal. Methods Geomech., 21(2), 77–89.
Vidal, T., Castel, A., and Francois, R. (2007). “Corrosion process and structural performance of a 17 year old reinforced concrete beam stored in chloride environment.” Cem. Concr. Res., 37(11), 1551–1560.
Yuan, Y. S., and Ji, Y. S. (2009). “Modeling corroded section configuration of steel bar in concrete structure.” Constr. Build. Mater., 23(6), 2461–2466.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 138 • Issue 4 • April 2012
Pages: 338 - 346
Copyright
© 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 22, 2010
Accepted: Sep 16, 2011
Published online: Sep 19, 2011
Published in print: Apr 1, 2012
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.