A New Model for Corrosion-induced Concrete Cracking

Corrosion of reinforced concrete is one of the major deterioration mechanisms which result in premature failure of the reinforced concrete structures. Due to the actual diffusion of chloride ingress, the corrosion products distribution is seldom uniform along the reinforcing bar. Recently, some non-uniform corrosion models have been proposed to investigate the corrosion-induced cracking mechanism of concrete. In this paper, a new corrosion model based on von Mises distribution is formulated and validated against experimental data. The developed model is then compared with the existing non-uniform models and the advantages are discussed. To demonstrate the application of the developed corrosion model, a concrete cover structure, containing aggregates, cement paste/mortar and ITZ, is simulated to predict the cracking phenomena of the concrete cover under different non-uniform coefficients in the developed corrosion model. It has been found that the non-uniform corrosion model can be used to simulate the realistic corrosion rust progression around the reinforcing bar, with the best accuracy. Moreover, parametric studies are conducted to investigate the effects of the basic factors formulated in the corrosion model on the surface cracking of the reinforced concrete structures