Residual Ultimate Strength of Steel Plates with Longitudinal Crack and Pitting Corrosion under Axial compression: Nonlinear Finite Element Method Investigations

The main aim of present study was to determine the ultimate strength of cracked and corroded plates under uniform in-plane compression. Corrosion is considered as pitting-type corrosion at one side of the plate with a central longitudinal crack. Nonlinear finite element analysis using commercial computer code, ANSYS, is used to determine the ultimate strength of deteriorated plates. Different geometrical parameters, including the aspect ratio (AR) and thickness of the plate, number of pits, pit depth-to-thickness ratio, and crack length, are considered. It is found that the AR of plates have great influence on the ultimate strength of cracked-pitted plates. Because of the position and orientation of the crack, the length of central longitudinal crack has no influence on ultimate strength reduction of cracked and cracked-pitted plates. The results show that regardless of the number of pits and crack length, in thin plates where buckling controls failure modes at ultimate strength, the number of pits has less influence on reduction of the ultimate strength than thick plates where yielding controls failure mode. Also it is concluded that in rectangular plates, arrangements of pits has more effect on reduction of the ultimate strength of cracked-pitted plates than the number of pits.