Mechanical behaviour of corroded rebars in reinforced concrete elements

Corrosion of the reinforcement is a common form of degradation of reinforced concrete structures. As a matter of fact the chemical attack varies the mechanical properties of both the steel rebars and concrete, and the bond char- acteristics. The study presented in the paper is mainly devoted to the analysis of the corrosion e_ects on the steel rebars and at the steel-concrete interface, and their inuence on the local and global behavior of simple R/C elements. At this aim, experimental analyses are developed, for the calibration of the constitutive relationships of both the steel rebars and the bond-slip response, in presence of corrosion. Finally the obtained laws are implemented in an analytical model, de- veloped by the authors, in order to evaluate the inuence of the corrosion on the global behaviour of simple R/C beam elements.