Experimental study and statistical analysis on corroded steel bars

Abstract

Bearing capacity and durability of corroded steel bars is strongly deteriorated, and the degradation of mechanical properties versus corrosion ratio is topical. Given the random nature of corrosion process, stochastic method can be used to describe mechanical performance of corroded steel bars. In this paper, to simulate marine tidal zone environment, steel bars corroded by chloride solution under dry-wet cycling are studied experimentally, while mechanical performance deterioration of corroded steel bars is analyzed statistically. The corrosion ratios of specimens are found to increase over time for several phases, while their strength dropped with corrosion ratio. The residual nominal strength to corrosion ratio of steel bars is found to be well fitted with the Gumbel distribution, which parameters are calculated and discussed in detail.