Assessment of the residual life of corroded bridge beam

Rebar corrosion is one of the most common causes of deterioration of r.c. structures. The chemical attack, in fact, besides reducing the cross-section of the rebars, causes cracking in the concrete and delamination of the cover. It is therefore necessary to set up methods for the evaluation of the structural damage induced by corrosion, in order to estimate the residual load bearing capacity and then to plan the maintenance interventions. Aim of the paper is the development of general relationships between the corrosion level and the residual strength and ductility of r.c. bridge beams. On the basis of a great amount of results obtained by the authors and adopting conventional deterioration models, a procedure is proposed, suitable to estimate the life cycle of corroded structures. The proposed methodology is validated against ex-perimental results from literature and then applied to realistic cases for demonstration purposes.