Testing and modelling the flexural response of reinforced concrete beams affected by pitting corrosion

Rebar corrosion is among the most common and impactful deterioration mechanisms affecting reinforced concrete (RC) structures, and it can manifest as uniform or pitting corrosion depending on environmental conditions. The comprehension and the foresight of the effects of pitting corrosion on the structural performance of RC structures remain significant and unresolved challenges in today's engineering practice. In this paper, flexural response of a series of RC beams is studied both by analyzing and integrating an existing experimental program and by proposing a practice-oriented numerical modelling approach to simulate pitting corrosion effects. Within this approach, attention is given to the dependence of the results on the information at disposal to describe the corrosion scenario, in terms of both type of adopted parameters and corrosion spatial distribution. Different models to evaluate the residual rebars cross-sectional area and to compute the reduction of rebars deformation capacity due to corrosion are also adopted, allowing for a comparative analysis.