Corrosion depth of steel bars in recycled aggregate concrete beams under static load

Abstract

To study the distribution of corrosion depth along the longitudinal direction of tensile steel bars embedded in recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) beams under static loads, a total of 12 RAC beams were designed for accelerated corrosion testing by considering three types of recycled coarse aggregate (RCA) replacement ratios (i.e. 0%, 50% and 100%) and four kinds of static load levels (i.e. 0, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6). The results demonstrated that the corrosion depth of tensile reinforcement showed an increasing trend with the increase of static load level. The maximum corrosion depth had a good quadratic polynomial relationship with the average corrosion depth of tensile reinforcement and increased with the average corrosion depth. For beams with the same RCA replacement ratio, there was a good linear relationship between the overall uneven corrosion coefficient and average mass loss of tensile reinforcement. The probability distribution type of corrosion depth along the longitudinal direction of tensile reinforcement was mainly a lognormal distribution. An increase in both RCA replacement ratio and static load level could make the probability distribution curve of corrosion depth move to the right, as well as increase the dispersion of corrosion depth around its mean value.