Fatigue life prediction for aging RC beams considering corrosive environments

• A new crack growth-based corrosion fatigue life prediction method for aging RC beams is proposed.
• The relationship between corrosion damage morphology and corrosion loss is investigated by the experimental results.
• A phenomenological model is proposed to obtain the stress concentration factor model.
• The fatigue life is predicted by the integration of the fatigue crack growth rate curve from the EIFS to the critical length.
• Fatigue life prediction results are validated with experimental observations for various corroded steel bars and beams.

A new crack growth-based corrosion fatigue life prediction method for aging reinforced concrete beam is proposed in this paper. The proposed method couples the corrosion growth kinetics and fatigue crack growth kinetics together. The relationship between corrosion damage morphology and corrosion loss is investigated by the experimental results. A phenomenological model is proposed to obtain the stress concentration factor model under different corrosion loss conditions. Following this, the developed model is integrated with an asymptotic method to calculate the stress intensity factor for the crack at corrosion pit roots. The fatigue life is predicted by the integration of the fatigue crack growth rate curve from the equivalent initial flaw size to the critical length. Probabilistic analysis methodology is proposed to consider various sources of uncertainties for the fatigue life prediction. Fatigue life prediction results are validated with experimental observations for various corroded steel bars and beams available in the literatures.