Low Cycle Fatigue Properties of Corroded Q355B Steel

Abstract

The low cycle fatigue properties of Q355B structural steel subjected to different levels of corrosion were investigated in the present study. The corroded Q355B steel coupons were obtained by means of cyclic wet–dry immersion corrosion, and the low cycle fatigue tests of coupons with different corrosion degrees, featuring both constant and variable strain amplitudes, were carried out. The cyclic stress response, cyclic skeleton curve, and hysteretic curve of the corroded steel were analyzed. The low cycle fatigue life of the corroded steel was predicted, and a constitutive model of the corroded steel was proposed. The results show that corrosion reduced the low cycle fatigue life of Q355B structural steel. Finite-element (FE) models were developed, and the FE results were in good agreement with the experimental curves, indicating the accuracy of the constitutive model proposed in this paper. The findings from the present research provide a valuable reference for the accurate assessment of the low cycle fatigue properties of steel structures with varying degrees of corrosion.