Environment-assisted failure of structural tendons for construction and building applications

Abstract The work focuses on the environment-assisted crack growth conditions and addresses the threshold stress intensity factors of three commercial high-strength steel bars widely used in construction and building tensile applications. To quantify the sensibility to stress corrosion cracking, chevron-notched short bar specimens were simultaneously subjected to tension tests and hydrogen embrittlement in both artificial seawater and ammonium thiocyanate solution. The latter was used to enhance the stress corrosion damage and to reveal the fracture morphologies that characterize the rupture of the bars. Thus, new insights regarding the lifetime of the bars in seawater environment are brought into attention.