In marine environment, the physical and mechanical performances of reinforced concrete members will vary distinctly with time, which reduces the safety of the structures. The main factors influencing the durability of reinforced concrete members include the deterioration of concrete, the reduction of reinforcing bar strength, the decrease of reinforcing bar area, the weakening of the bond stren...

The causes and mechanisms of corrosion of reinforcing bars in concrete are described in terms of the practical issues as well as the electrochemistry. The parameters affecting corrosion are (i) the ingress of aggressive species, such as chlorides, which break down the protective film on the reinforcing bar and (ii) the amount of those species necessary to do so. The former is largely controlled...

A headed reinforcing bar is a new type of reinforcement with a T-shaped anchor connected to the end of a reinforcing bar. Conceptually, the bar is usually a tension member or compression one depending on structural engineering applications. The T-shaped anchor, referred to as head in the rest of this report is a relatively stiff steel "plate" in terms of its structural behavior. When embedded i...

Synopsis: During concrete construction, form oil, bond breaker, concrete splatter and other types of contaminants often contaminate reinforcement. Current specifications and quality control measures require the removal and clean up of these contaminants before the placement of concrete due to a concern of a reduction in bonding capacity. This is costly, labor intensive, and may not be necessary...

Based on fractal theory and damage mechanics, the aim of this paper is to describe the monofractal and multifractal characteristics of corrosion morphology and develop a new approach to characterize the nonuniform corrosion degree of reinforcing bars. The relationship between fractal parameters and tensile strength of reinforcing bars are discussed. The results showed that corrosion mass loss r...

The utilization of unbounded external reinforcing bars is one of the strengthening methods used after loading stage and before failure. The method has been used in different forms to strengthen members of reinforced concrete structures. To investigate the effect of utilization of post-tensioned reinforcing bars in this method of strengthening, a number of reinforced concrete beams was tested. S...

Recent advances in nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete structures have been based primarily on fiber-based discretization of the member cross section at locations of expected inelastic action. However, the accuracy of a fiber-section model is almost entirely dependent on the ability of constitutive material models to represent the overall inelastic behavior of the member. The postyield re...

A stochastic analysis is developed to assess the temporal and spatial variability of pitting corrosion on the reliability of corroding reinforced concrete (RC) structures. The structure considered herein is a singly reinforced RC beam with Y16 or Y27 reinforcing bars. Experimental data obtained from corrosion tests are used to characterise the probability distribution of pit depth. The RC beam ...