Fatigue Behavior of High-Performance Steel Beams Subjected to Different Corrosion Conditions

The existing research mainly considers the fatigue properties of steel structures under the influence of the environment, corrosion rate, and load conditions without considering the effect of corrosion locations and areas. However, corrosion can happen to a steel structure in a practical engineering setting at any position. This paper investigates the fatigue behavior of high-performance steel beams (Q550E) subjected to different corrosion conditions through various tests. Results show that the fatigue life of the wholly corroded steel beams decreases as the frequency increases and increases as the stress ratio increases. Additionally, local corrosion has a greater impact on flexural stiffness than whole corrosion, and the lower half area has a greater impact than the right half area. Other corroded steel beams, with the exception of SCU-10, have fracture positions that are within the corrosion area. Because, despite the corrosion in the bending shear section, the fatigue strength of the corrosion area is higher than that of the fracture location. In addition, the degradation curves of the mid-span flexural stiffness of other steel beams under cyclic loading have not observed S-shaped curve characteristics, with the exception of GC-10B and SCU-20.