Abstract:
Bridge safety is of paramount importance in transportation engineering and maintenance
management. Corrosion becomes one of the most important causes of deterioration of
steel girder bridges which reduce their load carrying capacities and eventually leads to
catastrophic collapses. Therefore, regular and detailed inspections are necessary to assess
the present condition of the infrastructure and to determine maintenance requirements
to assure their safety. Since actual corroded surfaces are different from each other,
only experimental approach is not enough to estimate remaining strength of corroded
members and to understand their present conditions, critical locations as well as yield/
ultimate behaviors. However in modern practices, FEM analysis method has become the
most common, powerful and flexible tool in rational structural analysis, which can be used
to replace the time-consuming and expensive experimental work and to comprehend on
the lack of knowledge on mechanical behavior, stress distribution, ultimate behavior and
so on. Therefore, the numerical analysis method will give important knowledge not only
for strength estimation but also for subsequent repair and retrofitting plan.
This study proposes a simple and accurate FEM method developed by considering
both stress concentration effect and material loss due to corrosion with CCM parameters
which requires only the measurement of maximum corroded depth. The developed model
is validated with the results of many tensile coupon tests conducted on corroded specimens
obtained from a steel plate girder used for about 100 years with severe corrosion.
Furthermore, an efficient maintenance management plan for existing steel bridge structures
is developed by combining both experimental and finite element analysis results
concerning the cost, time and convenience with reliable accuracy.
