Open Access

ARTICLE

Fracture Mechanics Based Model for Fatigue Remaining Life Prediction of RC beams Considering Corrosion Effects

A Rama Chandra Murthy¹, Smitha Gopinath^1,2, Ashish Shrivastav¹, G. S. Palani¹, Nagesh R. Iyer¹

1 CSIR-Structural Engineering Research Centre, CSIR Campus, Taramani, Chennai, India, 600 113
2 Corresponding to smithag@serc.res.in, smithagopinath13@yahoo.com, Fax: 91-44-22541508

Computers, Materials & Continua 2011, 25(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmc.2011.025.001

Abstract

This paper presents methodologies for crack growth study and fatigue remaining life prediction of reinforced concrete structural components accounting for the corrosion effects. Stress intensity factor (SIF) has been computed by using the principle of superposition. At each incremental crack length, net SIF has been computed as the difference of SIF of plain concrete and reinforcement. The behaviour of reinforcement has been considered as elasto-plastic. Uniform corrosion rate has been assumed in the modeling. Corrosion effect has been accounted in the form of reduction in the diameter and modulus of elasticity of steel. Numerical studies have been carried out to validate the methodologies. It is observed that the predicted remaining life for RC beam without corrosion effects is significantly larger compared to plain beams. The predicted remaining life decreases with increase in percentage of corrosion.

---

Keywords

---