Chloride-induced rebar corrosion significantly affects the durability of reinforced concrete engineering structures. The service life in such environment is defined by the time at which a criti- cal chloride content is reached at the reinforcement. For design and maintenance stage…
Chloride-induced rebar corrosion significantly affects the durability of reinforced concrete engineering structures. The service life in such environment is defined by the time at which a criti- cal chloride content is reached at the reinforcement. For design and maintenance stage prediction of the service life is very crucial. Mechanical loading can significantly impact chloride transport and consequently service life predictions. Therefore, a accurate service life prediction model accounting for multiphysical coupling between chloride ingress and mechanical loading is needed. This study develops a numerical service life prediction model for chloride ingress under sustained mechanical loading. This is accomplished by coupling an elastic scalar damage based mechanical model with chloride diffusion transport model. The coupling accounts for the influence of the local stress-strain field and the damage on the effective diffusion coefficient. The numerical model resolves coarse ag- gregates (meso-scale) to capture the heterogeneous nature of concrete. Consistent distribution func- tion of input parameters are used to enable probabilistic service life analysis by Monte Carlo method. The developed model is applied to a hypothetical case study which demonstrates a first service life prediction considering different loading scenarios of concrete structures.