Experimental study and reliability assessment of fatigue loaded reinforced concrete beams combined with chloride exposure

Fatigue life of reference RC beams (N-u) and residual fatigue life of RC beams after pre-fatigue loading (0.01-1.2 million cycles, similar to 0.2% similar to 30%N-u) and chloride exposure (3, 6 months) in sequence, were tested. Fatigue behaviors significantly degrade at the pre-fatigue cycles of 1% to 30%N-u, where obvious degradations are shown as the pre-fatigue cycles increase to 10%N-u. Fatigue life of corroded and un-corroded beams can be modeled by the two-parameter Weibull distribution at a given load level, and hence a reliability assessment method is proposed to give the minimum safety fatigue life of RC structures with chloride exposure.

Automated summary

This study investigates the fatigue life of reference reinforced concrete (RC) beams and the residual fatigue life of RC beams after pre-fatigue loading and chloride exposure. It is found that fatigue behaviors significantly degrade when the pre-fatigue cycles range from 1% to 30% of the reference fatigue life, with more obvious degradations observed when the cycles reach 10% of the reference fatigue life. The fatigue life of corroded and uncorroded beams can be modeled using the two-parameter Weibull distribution, and a reliability assessment method is proposed to determine the minimum safety fatigue life of RC structures with chloride exposure.