Reliability of Deteriorating Steel Box-Girder Bridges Under Pitting Corrosion

Abstract

Deteriorated bridges are subjected to time-variant changes of resistance. Corrosion is one of the most important types of deterioration in steel bridges. The consequence is a reduction in safety of a bridge. Therefore, it is needed to evaluate procedures for an accurate prediction of the load-carrying capacity and reliability of corroded bridges, in order to make rational decisions about repair, renewal or rehabilitation. This paper presents a highway bridge reliability-based design formulation which accounts for pitting corrosion effects on steel box girder bridges. The study involves the idealization of pitting corrosion, development of resistance models for corroded steel box girders, development of load models, formulation of limit state function, development of reliability analysis method, and development of the time-dependent reliability for corroded steel girders. Numerical example illustrates the application of the proposed approach. The results of this study can be used for the better prediction of the service life of deteriorating steel box girder bridges and the development of optimal reliability-based maintenance strategies.

Ultimate compressive strength of deteriorated steel web plate with pitting and uniform corrosion wastage

“…The operational parameters include maintenance, repair, percentage of time in ballast, frequency of tank cleaning, temperature pro les, use of heating coils, humidity conditions, water and sludge accumulation, microbial contamination, and inert gas composition. To date, basic work to understand the e ects of these many factors and their interactions is lacking for marine structures, although mathematical models for predicting the time-dependent corrosion wastage of ship structures have been developed [6][7][8][9][10].…”

“…Marine environment is a sea water environment, and this means that corrosion in marine structures, which are generally fabricated by various grades of steel, is often very severe, not only under sustained immersed condition as in ballast tanks, but also from general exposure to atmospheric conditions [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…The evaluation of the residual strength of members with pitting corrosion is considered to be more di cult than the same evaluation of members with uniform corrosion [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Over the past few decades, there have been signi cant developments in computer hardware and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software.…”

Safety Analysis of Steel Box Girder Bridges With Pitting Corrosion

“…The efficient maintenance, repair and rehabilitation of existing bridges require the development of a methodology that allows for the accurate evaluation of load-carrying capacity and the prediction of remaining life. Corrosion is one of the most important causes of deterioration in steel bridges (Cheung and Li [1]; Czarnecki and Nowak [2]; Melchers [3]; Melchers and Jeffrey [4]; Sharifi [5]; Sharifi and Paik [6][7][8]; Sharifi and Tohidi [9,10]; Tohidi and Sharifi [11][12][13][14]). …”

Uniform Corrosion Wastage Effects on the Load-Carrying Capacity of Damaged Steel Beams

“…The effects of both uniform and pitting corrosion on load-carrying capacity and reliability of corrosion damaged steel box-girder bridges has been investigated by Sharifi and Paik [10,11] and Sharifi [12], respectively.…”