Rehabilitation of corroded H-piles using friction-type bolted plate-based repair system

This paper presents the details of an experimental and numerical study that was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a friction-type bolted steel plate-based system for underwater rehabilitation of steel H-piles with severe but localized corrosion. The repair system allows the applied axial load to be transferred from the original pile to the steel repair plates through friction at the interface between the pile flanges and the steel repair plates. To evaluate the performance of the repair system, seven 4.57 m-long HP12 × 53 (U.S. designation) piles were deteriorated to simulate corrosion of the flange and web. The piles were repaired using friction-type bolted steel plates and tested under axial compression to investigate the behavior of repaired piles. The test results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed repair system in terms of restoring the axial stiffness and capacity of the deteriorated piles. A rational approach for the design of the friction-type steel plate-based repair system is also summarized. A FE model was developed to simulate the repaired piles. Validated by the full-scale experimental results of seven retrofitted piles, the numerical model was used for a parametric study to investigate different factors that might affect the axial capacity of the strengthened piles. The research findings demonstrate that the proposed friction-type steel plate-based repair system can be easily used to restore the capacity of steel H-piles with severe but localized corrosion.