Experimental Research on Fatigue Performance of Reinforced Concrete T-Shaped Beams under Corrosion–Fatigue Coupling Action

Abstract

Highway bridges in coastal areas are seriously affected by the marine environment, while most of the existing test methods for bridge-reinforced concrete beams considering both corrosion and fatigue factors are carried out in an alternating manner, which cannot reflect the actual service conditions of the bridge structure. This paper focuses on an experimental study of the coupled influence of reinforcement corrosion and fatigue loading in reinforced concrete T-shaped beams. A novel loading test device that can realize the corrosion–fatigue coupling effect is designed, and then six reinforced concrete T-shaped beams are fabricated and tested. For the corrosion–fatigue coupling test beams, the variation law of beam cracks, failure modes, steel strain development law, load-deflection relationship, and fatigue life are analyzed and compared with that of the simple fatigue test beams. The test results show that the cracks of the test beam develop continuously with the fatigue loading times under the corrosion–fatigue coupling environment. The fatigue failure modes are all brittle fractures of the main steel bars, which present the shape of uneven oblique section tearing. The new testing device and approach can provide direct insights into the interaction of reinforcement corrosion and cyclic loading on the fatigue behavior of T-shaped RC beams, which can be further used to understand the long-term performance of bridge structures under complex marine environments.