Corrosion-induced cracking is a deterioration problem. It endangers the durability of con- creteinfrastructure. It is a multi-physics process whichincludesthetransportofchemicallyaggressive ions from the surface of a reinforced concrete structure, through the mesostructure of concrete, to the steel rebars. Corrosion results in…
Corrosion-induced cracking is a deterioration problem. It endangers the durability of con- creteinfrastructure. It is a multi-physics process whichincludesthetransportofchemicallyaggressive ions from the surface of a reinforced concrete structure, through the mesostructure of concrete, to the steel rebars. Corrosion results in a volume expansion of steel. The corresponding development of ten- sile stresses of the concrete leads to cracking. This is particularly the case in the cover region between the rebars and the surface of the structure. Many experiments have provided insight into the gov- erning physicochemical mechanisms. Together with recent progress in the area of material modeling techniques and advanced computation technologies, several promising approaches for the numerical simulation of corrosion-induced cracking have been developed. In order to further extend this de- velopment, it is indispensable to model concrete as a heterogeneous material containing aggregates with realistic shapes and distributions. It is necessary to treat the rust-formation as non-uniformly distributed around the perimeter of the steel rebars. These items provided the motivation for the development of a multi-physics model for corrosion-induced cracking of concrete, which resolves the mesostructure of reinforced concrete in a two-dimensional fashion, by explicitly accounting for steel, aggregates, interfacial transitions zones (ITZs), and the mortar matrix. Results obtained from numerical modeling are compared with experimental data taken from the open literature. In order to demonstrate the potential and the limitations of the approach, the study also contains a sensitivity analysis with the size of finite elements as the parameter. It is recommended to use an element size of 4.0mm. This is a reasonable compromise between accuracy and numerical efficiency.