The assessment of stability at compression of steel pipes considering effects of uniform corrosion

In aggressive environments structural steel components of engineering structures may become affected by corrosion. Even with corrosion protection, their critical load capacity and stability are seriously affected by the consequences of corrosion in aggressive environments due to impurities and possible failures. In this paper a critical state analysis of corroded struts is presented. The input data for the analysis was taken from laboratory corrosion tests in which steel pipes of a few different diameters were subjected to the attack of sulphuric and hydrochloric acids and placed in salt spray tester. The loss of material due to corrosion was determined and graphs, presenting the loss of material as a function of pipe diameter and the corrosion rate over time, were determined. The relative decrease of the maximum elastic strain energy which can be stored in the strut and the relative decrease of the critical load of elastic buckling were calculated for a series of corroded pipes. The curves of the relative change of the maximum elastic strain energy and the relative change of critical load over the time of corrosion progression were found to follow a similar path. For determining the critical load for a given strut, boundary conditions are taken into consideration. However, it is not necessary in the case of maximum elastic strain energy, which makes it a more convenient stability measure of the critical load capacity of strut.