Structural analysis and robustness assessment of cable-stayed bridges under cable corrosion

Cable-supported bridges may exhibit highly nonlinear behavior with mechanical and geometrical nonlinear effects that are magnified by corrosion of supporting cables. In this paper, a cable corrosion model is proposed based on corrosion propagation fronts that originate in one or more wires and spread over the cable section through subsequent wire layers. The corrosion model is incorporated in a finite element framework for nonlinear analysis of concrete framed structures under large displacements. The framework is validated through benchmarks and applied to collapse analysis of cable-stayed bridges with different arrangement of the stays. Several cable corrosion scenarios and damage measures are considered to identify the most critical components of the suspension systems and assess the lifetime structural robustness of the deteriorating cable-stayed bridges.