Effect of steel reinforcement corrosion on the dynamic behavior of RC beams

Abstract : Corrosion is one of the most common pathologies that affects reinforced concrete structures (RC). The fact that this phenomenon leads to a progressive loss of structural performance does not need further discussions. This loss of performance is a crucial issue for safety, especially when considering the coupling with an external loading such as an earthquake. The present study aims to quantify the time evolution of some quantities of interest, such as the eigenfrequencies, the modeshapes or the damping ratios, as functions of the corrosion degree. To reach this objective an extensive experimental campaign has been set up on simple but large-scale RC specimens. The consequences of the corrosion phenomenon on both the static and dynamic behaviors of beams are quantified, considering several steel configurations. In this paper, the experimental campaign is described. Especially, the accelerated corrosion method used is presented as well as the planned loading. The paper ends with a brief description of a simplified model which is under development. Due to its low computational demand, it will be able to be used within the framework of probability safety assessment (PSA) studies.