Experimental Investigation of Nonlinear Cyclic Behavior of Circular Concrete Bridge Piers with Pitting Corrosion

In this study three RC columns with and without corrosion and different reinforcement details are tested under lateral cyclic loading.One of these columns is well-confined to represent the modern RC bridge piers designed according to the current seismic design codes, and the second column is of the same detail with corrosion damage.The third column is a lightly-confined corroded column to represent ageing RC bridge piers that are not designed to the current seismic design codes.The experimental results showed that corrosion has a more significant impact on the ductility loss than the strength loss of the tested corroded columns.Furthermore, although the uncorroded column was designed in accordance with the current seismic design code, severe inelastic buckling of the vertical bars was still observed during the cyclic tests.