Remaining compressive ultimate strength of diagonal members in steel truss bridge with imitated corrosions

Abstract

This paper is concerned with an evaluation method of the remaining capacity of corroded steel column members. We introduced 4 different levels of artificial corrosion to bracing members in actual 50-years-old steel truss bridge. In this paper, we described compression load test, mechanical test, measurement of residual stress, measurement of initial deformation and simplified remaining capacity prediction equation based on minimum section area of the member.
With respect to compression test, in the specimen which has small amount of artificial corrosion showed overall buckling mode at the ultimate state. On the other hand, local buckling mode was dominant in the case of large amount of corrosion. In addition, it is found that we are able to simulate the load capacities and buckling modes by non-linear FE-analysis.