Shear buckling experiments of web panel with pitting and through-thickness corrosion damage

•Shear buckling loading test of plate girder specimen with corrosion damage•A web panel with artificial pitting corrosion damage with a diameter of 60 mm and depth of 3 mm•A web panel with artificially removed rectangular piece of the web of 180 mm width × 100 mm height•Examine and compare the shear buckling behaviors and strength depending artificial pitting corrosion damage

This study considered the shear buckling behavior of a web panel with pitting and through-thickness corrosion damage in the diagonal tension field. Shear loading tests were conducted on three large-scale specimens under different corrosion damage conditions to compare their shear buckling behaviors. To consider corrosion damage, artificial pitting holes and artificial rectangular sectional damage were induced in the lower web panel of each specimen. Finite element (FE) analysis was also performed to evaluate the shear buckling strength and post-shear buckling behavior. From shear buckling test results, the specimen with artificial pitting corrosion damage exhibited similar shear buckling behavior to the specimen without corrosion damage. However, for the shear buckling specimen with artificial rectangular sectional damage, its shear buckling behavior and shear failure mode changed with a slightly distorted diagonal tension band, and its shear buckling strength and critical buckling load significantly decreased relative to the shear buckling specimen with pitting corrosion. Therefore, the region of corrosion damage should be examined with the corrosion level of the web panel because corrosion pitting or section loss of the web panel can affect the shear buckling behavior when it extends to the critical corrosion damage level in the diagonal tension field.