ABSTRACT
The aim of the present paper is to examine the effect of corrosion wastage on progressive crushing response of thin-walled structures. Localized corrosion is considered in the present paper, since general corrosion which reduces the plate thickness uniformly may be easily dealt with as an uncorroded structure but by excluding the plate thickness loss due to corrosion. A series of axial crushing tests are carried out on a box type of thin-walled steel structure in the quasi-static loading condition, with varying the degree of localized corrosion intensity. DYNA3D numerical simulations are also performed for corroded steel plate panels as well as the test structures. It is seen that a severe level of localized corrosion can reduce the mean crushing strength by more than 50% of the original intact structure. By a regression analysis of both tested and computed results, a knock-down factor formula for mean crushing strength of a pitted plate to the un-corroded plate is derived as a function of the degree of pit corrosion intensity. It is concluded that the insights and the mean crushing strength formula developed will be very useful for evaluating the energy absorption capacity of aging steel plated structures.
