Corrosion and Fatigue Coupling: Assessment of a Prestressed Concrete Cable Stay
Publication: Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 38, Issue 1
Abstract
Recent collapses of reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges have been attributed to corrosion and construction flaws, which are often belied by an outward appearance of robustness. The true nature of degradation being obscured, routine monitoring may fail to capture serious defects. Two simple analytical methods are presented herein for the prediction of corrosion damage evolution as a means of supplementing routine inspections. The first approach captures load redistribution between concrete and corroded reinforcement, based on the principles of compatibility and equilibrium. Corrosion is modeled by decreasing the effective reinforcement area and reducing the reinforcement strength and ductility according to models from the literature. The second method couples corrosion and fatigue damage by treating corrosion pits as fatigue initiation sites. It is shown that corrosion pits reach a critical point when their depth approaches one-half of the reinforcement diameter. Both schemes are implemented in a case study of the Morandi Bridge, inspections of which revealed the presence of internal corrosion damage and construction flaws upon its partial collapse in 2018.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 38 • Issue 1 • February 2024
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 9, 2022
Accepted: Aug 14, 2023
Published online: Nov 6, 2023
Published in print: Feb 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Apr 6, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Bridge engineering
- Bridges
- Bridges (by material)
- Bridges (by type)
- Cable stayed bridges
- Concrete
- Concrete bridges
- Construction engineering
- Construction industry
- Construction management
- Corrosion
- Deterioration
- Engineering materials (by type)
- Fatigue (material)
- Infrastructure construction
- Material mechanics
- Material properties
- Materials characterization
- Materials engineering
- Materials processing
- Prestressed concrete
- Prestressing
- Reinforced concrete
- Structural engineering
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