Lateral torsional buckling capacity of corroded steel beams: A parametric study

Thickness reduction due to uniform corrosion increases the tendency of lateral torsional buckling (LTB) of open cross-sections and it reduces the moment capacity of the beam. The effect of the various corrosion cases on the LTB moment capacity (M_b,rd) of the I-beams are investigated in this paper. An analytical framework for patch corroded I-beams is introduced to provide a guideline for simulating the nonlinear lateral torsional buckling behaviour of patch corroded simple beams. Hence the effect of different corrosion scenarios to reduce the buckling reduction factor (η_LT) is investigated by conducting a parametric study. Twelve different beam lengths were considered to obtain different non-dimensional slenderness ratios (λ_LT) in this parametric study. The degraded buckling curves were obtained for each corrosion scenarios.