Residual strength of corrosion-damaged reinforced concrete beams

In this work, an effort has been made to first observe the effect of reinforcement corrosion on flexural behavior of reinforced concrete beams and then to develop a model based on the test data to predict their residual flexural strength. Test data were gathered from the testing of 56 reinforced concrete beam specimens that were subjected to a varying degree of accelerated corrosion. It has been observed that the product of corrosion current density and corrosion period I_corrT is the most significant factor affecting the flexural strength of a corroded beam. Based on the experimental data, a two-step approach is proposed to predict the residual flexural strength of a corroded beam. First, the flexural strength is calculated using the reduced area of corroded bars, and then this value is multiplied by a correction factor that is formulated through a regression analysis of test data to take into account bond, slip, and other applicable factors.