Seismic performance of corroded RC bridge piers

This research project is an extension of the dissertation submitted in February 2014 by Dr. Mehdi Kashani at the University of Bristol. It contains the following topics: the study of the corrosion effect, the analysis of previous investigations of corroded reinforced bars under non-linear stress-strain behavior and basic for bridges engineering, the implementation and the study of the patterns reproduced into single piers with combined action of earthquakes, the application of corroded piers into bridges and its examination, and finally a new adopted material model for reinforced bars for corroded RC bridge piers. By means of the SEISMOSTRUCT software, columns from the UW-PEER columns database will be analyzed, then the results will be recreated by means of this software. Afterwards, the implementation of the corrosion model to these columns will be attained (several degrees of corrosion will be studied), the simplified column models for both corroded and not corroded columns will then be included into two bridge models also previously analyzed (Mairead and Pinho/Casarotti) to finally be associated under several ground motions. For the new model by Kashani et al. The non-linear effects and the cyclic loads were explored through experiments; the accelerated corrosion behavior was performed in a laboratory environment. 132 tests were made, for which 23 were further analyzed by 3D optical scan to obtain the patterns. After obtaining the distribution models, these bars were subjected to cyclic loading and monotonic buckling. Finite element analysis was then used to compare the experimental results of the corroded bars. The new model including the effect of corrosion, and the low-cycle fatigue degradation was created and employed in the software OPENSEES as a new uniaxial material called “CorrodedReinforcedsteel”.