PSI - Issue 84

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ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 84 (2026) 1294–1301

III Fabre Conference: Existing Bridges, Viaducts, and Tunnels: Research, Innovation, and Applications Numerical Investigation of FRCM-Strengthened Half-Joints Subject to Reinforcement Corrosion Emeka John Ude a , Marilisa Di Benedetto b , Fabio Di Trapani c , Mariano Angelo Zanini a, *

a Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy. b Dipartimento di Ingegneria Strutturale, Edile e Geotecnica, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy. c Dept. of Engineering, Univ. of Palermo, Palermo, Italy.

© 2026 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Conference Keywords: FEM; Corrosion; FRCM; STKO-Opensees; Retrofit. Abstract Half-joints are prone to deterioration due to their joint configuration, which commonly facilitates water accumulation and subsequent reinforcement corrosion. Existing studies on numerical modelling of half joint retrofits focused on traditional retrofit strategies. This study developed a 3D nonlinear finite element model for half joint retrofitted with fiber reinforced cementitious matrix (FRCM). The model which was validated against experimental result was used to propose improved strengthening options and was further used to investigate the effect of the strengthening approach considering reinforcement corrosion (by implementing an improved corrosion model approach). The study demonstrated that the corrosion caused the failure mode to shift from mostly ductile to brittle across all simulated corrosion levels (10–50%), with observed structural capacity reductions. Furthermore, the study found that the FRCM strengthening improved the ultimate capacity (up to 50.61% improvement and restored the ductile failure mode due to load redistribution between the corroded internal reinforcement and the external FRCM. 1. Introduction Existing half joint (Gerber) bridges introduced between 1930s and 1970s offers advantages in construction fabrication and simplified static scheme. They have, however, been shown to exhibit deterioration that are usually

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: marianoangelo.zanini@unipd.it

2452-3216 © 2026 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Conference 10.1016/j.prostr.2026.06.165