Flexural Behavior of Corroded Reinforced Concrete Beams

This paper presents the results of a study on the flexural behavior of corroded reinforced concrete beams. The corrosion of twelve beams was caused by the accelerated corrosion process whereas that of the other three was caused by natural corrosion process. It was found that high impressed current density can accelerate the deterioration process of the reinforced concrete beams before cover cracking. The degradation of mechanical properties of the beams increased with the increase of the corrosion degree. It was also found that the beams corroded via the natural process were more affected by the corrosion degree and the stiffness of the beams after accelerated corrosion process decreased more given the same rebar mass loss ratio. The cross-sectional area loss and the degradation of the mechanical properties of the corroded rebars were found to be the major reasons for the decrease of the load carrying capacity of the beams while stiffness decline was mostly attributed to the bond loss. At last, a practical model for the calculation of the residual load carrying capacity was proposed and verified based on the test results. Good agreement has been achieved.