Seismic resilience assessment of reinforced concrete structures under salt erosion

Abstract

In recent years, researchers have been concerned with the seismic resilience of structures under salt-erosion environments. As an important part of the resilience assessment, loss estimation, particularly considering the structural loss caused by salt erosion, become a research hotspot. This study presents a methodology to develop loss estimation for deteriorating reinforced concrete (RC) structures by combining it with a quantitative analysis method. The replacement cost of a deteriorated structure was defined to establish a deteriorating reinforcement model based on the loss of a corroded section. The deteriorating reinforcement model was further utilized to establish a post-earthquake loss estimation function of the structure owing to chloride-induced corrosion by considering the cumulative effect of chloride erosion and earthquakes on deteriorating RC structures. Sigmoidal functions were used to simulate post-earthquake recovery paths depending on the extent of damage after an earthquake. Then, the structural resilience was estimated by combining it with a time-varying function. Finally, the resilience assessment calculation of a three-story RC structure example model was considered, and the applicability of the research method established in this study was verified. The calculation results show that the structural loss increased with an increase in the chloride erosion time at any specific PGA and led to a gradual decrease in the structural resilience. Reinforcement corrosion has a significant effect on structural resilience under earthquakes, and ignoring the effect of chloride salts on a structure can lead to an overestimation of resilience.

Keywords:

• Reinforced concrete structures
• chlorine salt erosion
• resilience
• deterioration
• numerical modeling
• loss estimation
• post-earthquake recovery

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (2021JM-426) and The Opening Fund of State Key Laboratory of Green Building in Western China (Project Number: LSKF202118).