Buckling of corroded steel columns

Abstract

Understanding the effects of corrosion on steel members is essential for evaluating structural reliability and reuse potential. This paper investigates the axial compression behaviour of five rolled S355 steel members, including four specimens subjected to symmetric or asymmetric electrochemical corrosion and one non‐corroded reference specimen. 3D scanning was employed to capture the detailed surface morphology of the corroded specimens. Based on the scanned point‐cloud data, two novel grid‐based processing methods were developed to systematically quantify geometrical properties such as mass loss ratio, thickness distribution, cross‐sectional area and second moment of area. Based on the measured geometry and an effective thickness derived from the determined mass loss, axial resistance predictions were obtained using Eurocode‐based sectional calculations and compared with the experimental results. It was shown that the Eurocode‐based predictions were generally conservative when compared with the experimental axial resistance.