Numerical Investigation on the Behaviour of Beam-Column Joints Under Controlled Corrosion Levels

Abstract

Corrosion in a cyclic environment is a major threat to civil infrastructures and has been widely investigated by researchers for decades. Reinforcement bars i.e., steel being a corrosive material when subjected to an environment involving wet and dry cycles will corrode and show their impact over the concrete structures within which they are embedded. In this work, we would study the behaviour of beam-column joints of framed structures subjected to controlled corrosion levels. Five specimens with increasing level of corrosion were numerically investigated by imposing a known displacement on them for which the plastic strains and stresses induced on them were measured and compared with that of conventional non-corroded specimen. For this investigation, finite element method was adopted by using Abaqus 6.14 software. It is observed that with the increasing level of corrosion ratio, the loss of cross sectional area of the reinforcement bars affected the equivalent plastic strain of the concrete, indicating the degradation of ductility of the bars. The percentage elongation limit for steel reinforcement bars exceeded the critical value with the increase in the corrosion ratio.