The performance of corroded lap splices in reinforced concrete beams

This article presents the results of an extensive experimental program containing 22 beams with tension lap splices in the central region. The beams were preconditioned under simulated corrosion up to specific levels of bar section steel loss and cover cracking in the lap region. They were subsequently tested under four-point loading so as to place the corroded lap splice zones in tension. To prevent corrosion outside the study region, the beams were wrapped with fiber-reinforced polymers outside the laps – this also served to protect them from premature shear failure as the objective was to study failure in the lap zone. The objective of the experiment was to assess the residual anchorage capacity of such zones. The parameters of the experimental study were the extent of corrosion and the available length of lap splicing of longitudinal tension reinforcement. Corroded bond strength was determined from the short-length lap splices, where it may be assumed that stresses are uniformly distributed over the lapped zone; longer specimens were considered in order to examine how the redundancy provided by the longer contact length may improve the resilience and deformation capacity of the corrosion-damaged component prior to bond failure.