Residual Capacity of Corroded Reinforced Concrete Bridge Components: State-of-the-Art Review

The current paper provides a comprehensive review of experimental studies on corrosion-damaged reinforced concrete (RC) components and the ability of current state-of-the-art numerical models to predict the residual capacity of these corroded RC components. The experimental studies on corroded RC components are classified into five different categories: (1) beams in flexure, (2) beams in shear, (3) columns under pure axial compression, (4) circular columns in flexure, and (5) rectangular columns in flexure. For each group, a summary of all previous research is provided. Through regression analyses, the experimental results of each aforementioned group were used to examine the adverse effect of corrosion on ductility and flexural, shear, and axial capacity loss of the corroded RC components. Finally, the observed results of the previous experimental studies were compared with the predicted values using the state-of-the-art numerical models currently available in the literature. The summarized experimental results showed that corrosion has much more adverse impact on ductility of the RC columns than strength. However, the effect of corrosion on ductility and strength reduction of RC beams was the same. Moreover, results of cross-sectional moment-curvature analyses using the state-of-the-art corrosion damage models showed a good correlation between the predicted residual flexural capacity and observed experimental results. Finally, the existing shortcomings in the literature and open issues to be addressed in future research are discussed, and some recommendations are provided.