PSI - Issue 62

Nico Di Stefano et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 62 (2024) 809–814 Nico Di Stefano, Anna Bontempi, Paolo Pizzini, Fausto Minelli/ Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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Finally, most experimentations has been made using accelerated corrosion of the reinforcement, which is a faster way to have a significant number of specimens to be tested, but the high values of corrosion rate applied provides some differences between the artificially induced and the natural corrosion, which make tests not fully representative of the real behaviour of the element, as explained by Andrade (2020). Furthermore, numerical analyses are required to predict the behavior of structural elements subjected to corrosion and for this reason predicting models, also in some cases simplified ones, are important to be implemented. For all these reasons, the present paper describes the tests on two full scale 90 years old RC girders in severe conditions of degradation, particularly corrosion of the rebars and it presents the numerical analysis results, considering the undamaged condition and some simplified corroded models. 2. Experimental Tests and Results The experimentation involved two 90 years old RC bridge girders, which came from the dismantling process of the Fiume Garza overpass in Brescia. The specimens were granted to the University from the Municipality of Brescia. In Figure 1a the in-situ condition of the girders is shown: it is important to underline that the beams chosen for the experimental tests were not the most damaged of the bridge. Figure 1b shows the longitudinal section of two beams with the specified loss of the concrete cover.

(a)

(b)

Figure 1: in situ conditions of the bridge (a); specimens loss of the concrete cover (b).

Figure 2 shows the specimens sections: despite the side-by-side position of the two beams, they have different depth and reinforcement, probably because of the original project different intended use of the space.

(b)

(a)

Figure 2: specimens section: beam N1 (a) and beam N2 (b).