Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:5625–5653

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-023-01748-1

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Seismic performance evaluation of steel circular hollow

section bridge piers with corroded ends

Qiang Zhang1 · Jianian Wen1 · Qiang Han1 · Zhanfei Wang2 · Jubo Sun3

Received: 27 October 2022 / Accepted: 22 July 2023 / Published online: 7 August 2023
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2023

Abstract
Steel circular hollow section (CHS) bridge piers have been widely used in the engineer-
ing practices. However, end corrosion is one of the most common damages to steel bridge
piers, leading to degradation of seismic performance and changing of failure modes. This
paper investigates the seismic performance of the chloride corroded steel CHS bridge piers
and proposes a method to predict its lateral ultimate strength under the transverse cyclic
loads. Firstly, the multi-scale finite element (FE) models of the CHS steel bridge pier are
developed considering both the local buckling and the end corrosion, which are calibrated
against the previous test results. Subsequently, the effects of the characteristic parameters
(i.e., the corrosion conditions and the column parameters) on the failure modes and the
horizontal ultimate strengths of the corroded steel CHS bridge piers are investigated,
and then the sensitivity of the parameters is quantified using the Sobol method. Finally,
a method is presented for estimating the ultimate strength of the end corroded steel CHS
bridge piers under the horizontal cyclic loads. Results show that the end corroded bridge
piers exhibit more significant stress concentration when comparing with the uncorroded
bridge piers. The buckling half-wavelength is influenced by corrosion parameters, and the
buckling position changes. The ultimate strengths of end corroded bridge piers are reduced,
which is more sensitive to the corrosion rate. The proposed theoretical method to predict
the ultimate strengths of corroded steel CHS bridge piers is accurate enough with errors
less than 10%.

Keywords Corrosion · Bridge pier · Circular hollow section · Seismic performance ·

Buckling · Cyclic loading

* Jianian Wen
wenjianian1990@163.com
1
State Key Laboratory of Bridge Engineering Safety and Resilience, Beijing University
of Technology, Beijing 100124, China
2
School of Transportation and Geomatics Engineering, Shenyang Jianzhu University,
Shenyang 110168, China
3
School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430073,
China

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5626 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:5625–5653

1 Introduction

Steel bridges are widely used in the regions with high seismic demands due to their excel-
lent seismic performance (Li et al. 2020; Liu et al. 2021; Sui et al. 2020b; Zhuge and Xie
2020; Zhuge et al. 2022b), and steel circular hollow section (CHS) is one of the primary
bridge pier shapes of steel bridges. In recent years, the analytical models (Goto et al. 1998;
Zhuge et al. 2022a), seismic performance (Gao et al. 1998a; Ge et al. 1997; Sui et al.
2020a), and ultimate strength (Chen et al. 2019; Wang et al. 2011; Yuan et al. 2014) of
steel bridge piers have been widely studied. However, it should be admitted that steel col-
umns often suffer from chloride corrosion during the service stage induced by atmospheric
environments (Hou et al. 2016; Li et al. 2015; Zhang et al. 2020b). Corrosion can affect
the strength of steel components, which may lead to performance degradation of corroded
structures (Hua et al. 2019; Kim et al. 2013; Song et al. 2022). Some corroded bridges have
collapsed. For example, the Mianus River Bridge bridge collapsed after 25 years of service
due to local corrosion failure of steel components (CT 1983). The Kinzua bridge collapsed
due to the corrosion of steel columns (PA 2018). It can be seen from past accidents that the
service life of these steel bridges is affected by corrosion damage.
In recent years, some studies have emphasized the importance of corrosion damage in
the bridge piers. It can be found that most of the studies are focused on the corrosion dam-
age in concrete-filled steel tubes (Chang et al. 2013; Guo et al. 2020; Han et al. 2014; Yuan
et al. 2018), H-section columns (Xu et al. 2019b), or concrete bridge piers (Afsar Dizaj
and Kashani 2020, 2022). However, there are few studies on seismic performance of the
corroded steel CHS bridge piers (Gao et al. 2022; Wang et al. 2020a, 2020b, 2020c; Wei
et al. 2021). Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the failure mechanism and ultimate
strength of the corroded steel CHS bridge piers under the lateral cyclic loads. In addition,
Kim et al. (2021), Toledo et al. (2020), and Dao et al. (2018) have also indicated that due to
the accumulation of dust and moisture at the junction of steel bridge piers and foundations,
the end of bridge piers is more susceptible to corrosion damage than other parts, as shown
in Fig. 1. This localized corrosion at the end of the bridge pier is hard to detect and avoid
through regular inspection and maintenance, and it is even more difficult to remove the rust
and repaint (Kainuma et al. 2021; Kim et al. 2018a, 2018b). Therefore, particular attention
should be given to the end corrosion of steel CHS bridge piers.
To date, the mechanical behavior of the steel CHS bridge piers with end corrosion is
unclear, and there is no effective calculation method to evaluate its lateral ultimate strength.

Fig. 1  Local corrosion at the end of steel CHS bridge piers

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Against this background, the aim of this study is to investigate the mechanical behavior of
the steel CHS bridge piers with local chloride corroded ends under cyclic loading and pro-
pose the theoretical method for estimating the ultimate strengths of the corroded bridge
piers. To achieve the aim, the multi-scale finite element (FE) models of steel CHS bridge
piers considering local corroded ends are established and validated against the previous
test results. Subsequently, the ultimate strength, damage mechanism, and failure modes of
the steel CHS bridge piers considering the corrosion are analyzed. Based on the analytical
results, the calculation method of the buckling half-wavelength is developed. In addition,
the sensitivity of the critical parameters to the ultimate strength degradation factor is quali-
fied by Sobol method. Finally, based on the failure mechanism, a theoretical method to
estimate the ultimate strength of the steel CHS bridge piers considering the end corrosion
is proposed and verified against the test and simulation results.

2 Corrosion research basis

2.1 Simulation method of corrosion

There are generally three methods to simulate corroded steel members in the numerical
analyses:

(1) The corrosion could cause the degradation of the material properties, which can be
reflected by the constitutive model of the corroded steel (Hu et al. 2019; Zhao et al.
2020). However, the complex constitutive models need to be established for different
steel types or corrosive environments (Han et al. 2019).
(2) The surface topography of the corroded steel members in the numerical models can
be reconstructed by composite 3D non-contact measurement technologies (Xu et al.
2019b; Zhang et al. 2020b). It is able to describe the stress concentrations on the cor-
roded surfaces at the expense of heavy computational burden (Qin et al. 2016; Zhang
et al. 2022). Obviously, this method is difficult to apply to the shell or beam elements.
(3) The method of equivalent thickness is a common approach with acceptable accuracy
(Bao et al. 2021; Gao et al. 2021; Karagah et al. 2015; Shi et al. 2014; Wang et al.
2022), in which the corrosion damage is equivalent to the thickness loss (Ahn et al.
2016, 2018; Saad-Eldeen et al. 2013; Wu et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2020a, 2020c). It has
been adopted in the current codes and standards (ISO 2017; Kainuma 2019; MOHURD
2018; NILIM 2006; Veritas 2010) to evaluate and design corroded steel members. This
method is used in this study to simulate the effects of end corrosion on steel CHS bridge
piers.

2.2 Calculation of equivalent thickness

The corrosion damage in the steel CHS bridge piers often occurs only at the outer surfaces
of the steel tubes. The anticipated corrosion height of the bridge pier is hc, and the cross-
section at height hj (0 < hj < hc) is shown in Fig. 2. In the figure, D is the diameter of the
tube, and t is the original wall thickness, and te is the equivalent wall thickness. The corro-
sion height is usually expressed in multiples of column height and cross-section diameter,
and the upper limit of hc in this study is set at 0.4D, according to the previous studies (Gao

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Equivalent thickness method

Corrosion section

tc tr Equivalent process
Bridge pier

D t t si
tz Area
te
The lowest point
ts
hj hc Equivalent section
Inner surface of a pier ts Residual area
Original outer surface of a pier te tz Missing area
Outer surface of a pier after corrosion

Fig. 2  Diagram of the equivalent thickness

et al. 2021; Kim et al. 2018a; Lin et al. 2023). The actual wall thickness tc of the steel tube
at the coordinates (si, hj) can be derived as Eq. (1):
tc (si , hj ) = tr (si , hj ) + tz (1)
where tz represents the minimum wall thickness of the section; tr is the difference between
tc and tz; si refers to the coordinate along the circumference of the tube; hj is the coordinate
along the height direction of the tube.
Thus, there is always an arithmetic average wall thickness ts in the tr range such that the
residual area and the missing area are equal when bisected by ts, as shown in the equivalent
process in Fig. 2.
Therefore, the equivalent wall thickness te can be written as Eq. (2):
te = ts + t z (2)
where ts can be calculated by Eq. (3) (Xu et al. 2019a; Zhang et al. 2020c, 2020d):

1 ∑∑|
𝜋D hc
|
As ∬ | r
1 | |
ts = t (s, h)|dsdh ≈ |t (s , h )| (3)
𝜋Dhc i=1 j=1 | r i j |
As

where As is the sampling area, which is the cross-sectional area of the tube in the corrosion
area; hc is the corrosion height.
The equivalent wall thickness te can be calculated by combining Eqs. (2) and (3). How-
ever, the formula needs to obtain a large number of coordinates of the corrosion cross-
section and perform a summation operation, which requires much calculation. And it is dif-
ficult to correlate to the corrosion degree described in the codes and standards (ISO 2017;
MOHURD 2018; Veritas 2010) (corrosion rate is used in the code to classify the corrosion
degree) without introducing a corrosion parameter. For an approximately homogeneous
material such as steel, the value of the corrosion rate ρ can be determined by the loss of
mass of the steel member after corrosion (Kainuma 2019). Thus, Eq. (4) can be used to
calculate ρ for the steel members (Wang et al. 2022):
mc V ts + t z
𝜌=1− =1− c =1− (4)
munc Vunc t

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where mc and munc are the masses of the corroded and original steel members, respectively;
Vc and Vunc are the volumes of the corroded and original steel members, respectively; t is
the original thickness of the steel members.
In practice and research, several methods have been used to determine the key param-
eters in Eq. (4), e.g. the 3D non-contact laser scanner can be used to measure the corrosion
depth of the corroded surface to obtain thickness parameters, and the time-varying function
of mass loss can be used to calculate mass parameters (Jia et al. 2018; Xia et al. 2022).
When ρ is known, te can finally be written as Eq. (5).
te = (1 − 𝜌)t (5)

3 Numerical analyses of steel CHS bridge piers

3.1 FE model

In this study, the multi-scale FE models of steel CHS bridge piers considering both end
corrosion and local buckling are established in the ABAQUS software (ABAQUS 2010),
as shown in Fig. 3. In the figure, h is the height of the bridge pier; P is the constant vertical
load applied at the top of the bridge pier and H is the reaction force obtained when a cyclic
lateral displacement is applied at the top of the bridge pier.
The shell elements (S4R, a 4-node, quadrilateral, stress/displacement shell element with
reduced integration and a large-strain formulation) are adopted within the 2D range of the
base of the bridge pier (Al-Kaseasbeh and Mamaghani 2019a, b; Gao et al. 2021, 1998a;
Goto et al. 1998; Lyu et al. 2020; Sui et al. 2020c). It is assumed that the upper part of the
bridge pier remains in the elastic state under the lateral cyclic loads, and thus the rest of the
bridge pier is modeled as the beam elements (B31, 2-node linear beam) (Goto et al. 1998)
to improve its calculation efficiency. The locally refined grids are used within the height
of 0 to 0.5D from the bottom of the bridge pier to consider the local buckling (Gao et al.
1998a). The wall thickness within the corrosion height (hc) ranges from t to the equivalent
wall thickness te calculated by Eq. (5).

Beam elements P
(B31) t
H
Upper part

Uncorrosion Shell elements D

Bridge pier

Wall thickness t (S4R)

Corrosion
Wall thickness te
Kinematic coupling
Lower part

1.5D
hc

Foundation 0.5D
hc
Fixed constraint

Fig. 3  Multi-scale FE models for steel CHS bridge piers with corroded ends

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In order to accurately predict the onset of buckling, the effect of initial geometric imper-
fections is considered in FE models. In this study, the initial geometric imperfections of
members are considered as the superposition of the global imperfection mode and the local
imperfection mode base on the suggestion of Gardner and Nethercot (Gardner and Nether-
cot 2004). Local geometrical imperfection is set to be the lowest buckling mode while the
bending mode of the cantilever column has been used to represent the global imperfection
mode, as shown in Fig. 4. For both modes, the magnitude of geometric imperfections is
adjusted to h/2000 and D/500 (Chen et al. 2019; Gardner and Nethercot 2004; Guo et al.
2020; Wheeler et al. 2000).

3.2 Material properties and loading protocol

The elastic–plastic model of steel considering kinematic hardening (JRA 2012b) is

adopted for describing the behavior of steel under cyclic loads, which could consider
the Bauschinger effect, as shown in Fig. 5. For hysteretic analysis of thin-walled steel
CHS piers, the kinematic hardening model has acceptable analytical accuracy within
the four times yield displacement of the pier top displacement or before pier failure
(Gao et al. 1998a; Ge et al. 1997, 2000; Jenothan et al. 2023; Mamaghani et al. 2008).
Because the kinematic hardening model is more convenient to be realized in FE soft-
ware and needs fewer control parameters (ABAQUS 2010; JRA 2012b), the model has
been adopted in recent research and relatively accurate results have been obtained (Al-
Kaseasbeh and Mamaghani 2019a, 2019b; Sui et al. 2020a). It is worth noting that when
more significant plastic deformation or pier failure occurs, it is recommended to use

Fig. 4  Initial geometric imperfections: (a) global imperfections mode; (b) local imperfections mode

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Fig. 5  Elastic–plastic model

of steel considering kinematic
hardening

the combined isotropic/kinematic hardening model to further consider the strain hard-
ening effect to improve the analysis accuracy. Referring to the Japanese specification
(JRA 2012b), the post-yielding stiffness Est is 1/100 of the elastic modulus E. Q345qc,
standard steel in bridges of China, is selected in the subsequent analysis and discussion
(Chen et al. 2019). Its yield strength, elastic modulus, and Poisson’s ratio are 345 MPa,
206 GPa, and 0.30, respectively.
A lateral reciprocating displacement loading protocol is applied to the top of the
bridge pier, which is one of the main methods used to simulate seismic loads (Li et al.
2019). Referring to the research (Gao et al. 1998a; Ge et al. 1997; Goto et al. 1998), the
increment of lateral displacement at each cycle is determined by the yield displacement
δy of the bridge pier, and the cycle is repeated one time. The loading protocol is shown
in Fig. 6. δy is calculated by Eq. (6) (Gao et al. 1998a):

Hy h3
𝛿y = (6)
3EI
where Hy is the lateral yield load; I is the moment of inertia.
The lateral yield load of the bridge pier can be determined by the smaller value of
Eqs. (7) and (8) (Usami and Ge 1998):

Fig. 6  Cyclic loading protocol

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Table 1  Comparison between the test data and numerical results

No H D (mm) T Rt λ μ σy (MPa) σu Htest HFE Htest./HFE
(mm) (mm) (MPa)

P1 3403 891 9.00 0.110 0.26 0.12 289.6 510.0 1.39 1.37 1.015
P2 4391 891 7.32 0.115 0.30 0.15 235.4 426.1 1.40 1.44 0.972
P5 4391 891 8.41 0.110 0.30 0.15 235.4 426.1 1.44 1.47 0.980
P11 4391 891 9.61 0.088 0.30 0.15 235.4 426.1 1.48 1.49 0.993

Fig. 7  Comparison of failure modes between the test and simulation for P1

( )
My P
Hy = 1− (7)
h Py

( )( )
My P P
Hy = 1− 1− (8)
0.85h PE Pu

where Py and My are the yield axial load and moment for the bridge pier, respectively; PE
represents the Euler’s buckling load of the bridge pier; and Pu denotes the ultimate axial
compression strength (JRA 2012a).

3.3 Validation of the numerical method

The steel CHS bridge piers with different material and geometric parameters (as listed in
Table 1) tested by Nishikawa et al. (1996) and Ge et al. (1997) are used to verify the accu-
racy of the multi-scale model. In the table, σy and σu are the yield and the ultimate stress
of the steel. Rt, λ, and μ are the radius-thickness ratio, dimensionless nominal slenderness
ratio, and axial compression ratio of the bridge pier, respectively.
The failure modes of P1 obtained by numerical simulation and the test result (Ge
et al. 1997) are shown in Fig. 7, where “PEEQ” denotes the equivalent plastic strain. It
can be seen that the failure modes of the numerical results are consistent with the test
observations, and the typical elephant-foot buckling can be observed at the bottom of
the bridge piers. The simulated hysteresis curves are compared with the test results (Ge

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et al. 1997), as shown in Fig. 8. The average ratio of the measured normalized lateral
ultimate strength to the simulated value (Htest/ HFE) is 0.990, as shown in Table 1. Obvi-
ously, the FE model could well predict the global and local mechanical behavior of the
steel CHS bridge piers under the lateral cyclic loads.
The strain ε of P1 obtained by the test (Ge et al. 1997) and the finite element analysis
results are shown in Fig. 9. The FE model has acceptable accuracy for reflecting strain
trajectories. As the deformation of the specimen increases, the accuracy of the simula-
tion results slightly decreases.
The method of the equivalent thickness is further verified by the tests of steel cor-
roded CHS bridge piers (Kim et al. 2018a). The parameters of the specimens are shown
in Table 2, where ρ and hc are the corrosion rate and corrosion height, respectively.
The Fig. 10 shows the failure modes of D3H20-C360A from the simulation and the
tests under the cyclic loads. It can be observed that the regions of stress concentration
are at the end of bridge pier and at the height of 35 mm away from the footing, corre-
sponding to the local buckling location of the bridge pier. Figure 11 shows the compari-
son between the critical and ultimate strengths (Pc and Pu) obtained from the numerical
simulation and the test results. As shown in the figure, the errors are no greater than 5%.

Fig. 8  Comparison of the lateral load–displacement hysteresis curves: (a) P1 (b) P2 (c) P5 (d) P11

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Fig. 9  Comparison of strain of

the integration point with the test

Table 2  Measured geometry and results of the specimens

No. h (mm) D (mm) t (mm) Rt λ ρ (%) hc Ptest PFE Ptest/PFE
(mm) (kN) (kN)

D1H60-C360A 600 165.2 7.1 0.027 0.26 21.1 60 1044 1025 1.02
D3H20-C360A 600 165.2 7.1 0.027 0.26 42.3 20 1111 1093 1.02
D3H60-C360A 600 165.2 7.1 0.027 0.26 42.3 60 666 665 1.00

Fig. 10  Comparison of failure modes between the test and simulation for D3H20-C360A

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Fig. 11  Comparison of the

critical and ultimate strengths
obtained from the simulation and
the test

Therefore, the numerical method could accurately predict the global and local responses
of the CHS steel bridge piers with end corrosion.

4 Numerical results and discussions

4.1 Characteristic parameters of the steel CHS bridge pier

In this study, the effects of the corrosion parameters and geometric parameters of the steel
CHS bridge piers on the global and local responses are analyzed. The variables related to
the corrosion parameters are the corrosion rate ρ and corrosion height hc (Gao et al. 2021).
The parameters of the steel CHS bridge piers include the radius-thickness ratio Rt, the slen-
derness ratio λ, and the axial compression ratio μ (Gao et al. 1998a; Ge et al. 1997). The
above-mentioned parameters and the range of values are listed in Table 3.

4.2 Mechanical behavior

Considering the possible combinations of the characteristic parameters, a total of 570 cases
of the corroded steel bridge piers are analyzed. According to the corrosion degree, special
attention is given to five typical cases: (1) Case 0, uncorroded case; (2) Case 1, Small cor-
rosion rate (ρ = 5%) and small corrosion height (hc = 0.1D); (3) Case 2: Small corrosion rate
(ρ = 5%) and large corrosion height (hc = 0.4D); (4) Case 3: Large corrosion rate (ρ = 25%)

Table 3  Ranges of the parameters for steel CHS bridge piers in this study
Category Parameters Values

Corrosion parameters
Column parameters
Corrosion rate ρ 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%
Corrosion height hc 0D, 0.1D, 0.2D, 0.3D, 0.4D
Radius-thickness ratio Rt 0.044, 0.052, 0.062, 0.078, 0.104
Slenderness ratio λ 0.30, 0.32, 0.37
Axial compression ratio μ 0.10, 0.15, 0.20, 0.25, 0.30

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Fig. 12  Force–displacement curves of the steel CHS bridge piers for the typical cases

and small corrosion height (hc = 0.1D); (5) Case 4: Large corrosion rate (ρ = 25%) and
large corrosion height (hc = 0.4D). The hysteresis curves and envelope curves of these five
cases are shown in Fig. 12, where the column parameters remain the same in the cases. The
normalized horizontal ultimate strength Hmax/Hy is the peak point of the envelope curve,
and Hy is the lateral yield force determined by Eqs. (7) and (8).
The Fig. 12 shows that the ultimate strengths vary with different corrosion parameters.
Compared with Case 0, the area of hysteretic loop for Case 4 is significantly reduced, and
the force decreases rapidly after reaching the peak point, indicating that the seismic perfor-
mance of the steel CHS bridge pier is dramatically degraded due to the corrosion damage.
As the degrees of corrosion increase, Hmax/Hy decreases significantly, and the correspond-
ing value of Case 4 is decreased by 30% compared with that of Case 0.
To better understand the degradation of the mechanical properties of the corroded steel
CHS bridge piers, the PEEQ for different cases reaching the ultimate strength are plotted,
as shown in Fig. 13. It can be seen that the stress concentration is more significant when
the bridge pier has a larger ρ and a smaller hc, and almost all the corrosion areas reach the
yield stress (i.e., Case 3). By comparing the PEEQ of the Case 0, 1, and 2, it is found that

Fig. 13  Stress and strain contours at the ultimate strength

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Fig. 14  Lateral ultimate strength of bridge piers under different corrosion conditions

Fig. 15  Failure modes of the steel CHS bridge piers

when the steel CHS bridge pier has a smaller ρ, the distribution of the plastic damage area
is similar to that of the uncorroded one. As the increase of ρ, the area of the plastic damage
is dramatically reduced, and the high values of the stress are concentrated at the local cor-
rosion area. It is indicated that the regardless of hc, when the steel CHS bridge pier has a
larger ρ, the seismic performance will be adversely affected.
The Fig. 14 shows the coupling effects of the corrosion rate and corrosion height on the
ultimate strength of the corroded bridge piers. With the increase of ρ, the Hmax/Hy approxi-
mately linearly decreases. For the hc ranging between 0 and 0.3D, Hmax/Hy of the bridge
piers gradually decreases with the increasing of hc, but the Hmax/Hy remains almost the
same when hc exceeds 0.3D. Therefore, there exists a most unfavorable corrosion height,
which makes the ultimate strength of steel bridge piers the smallest. The value of this unfa-
vorable height will be analyzed in the following section.

4.3 Failure modes

The Fig. 15 shows the failure modes of the steel CHS bridge piers with the local corroded
ends under different corrosion conditions. The failure modes are the typical elephant-
foot bulge, but the locations where the buckling occurs are different. The height from the

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bottom of the bridge pier to the section with the maximum lateral displacement of buckling
is defined as the buckling half-wavelength hb, as shown in Fig. 15. The changes of corro-
sion parameters affect the buckling location, and it is obvious that hb in Case 3 is signifi-
cantly smaller than that of Case 0. The reason is that the wall thickness at the end of cor-
roded bridge pier is reduced, resulting in an increase of the stress.
To better understand the influence of corrosion parameters on hb, the normalized
buckling half-wavelength hb/he is introduced. he is the elastic critical wavelength of the
uncorroded CHS steel bridge pier, which can be calculated by Eq. (9) (Gao et al. 1998b;
Timoshenko and Gere 1961):
√ √ √
2
4 D K D2 t2 D
he = 𝜋 =𝜋 4
= 1.72 t (9)
4Et 48(1 − v2 ) 2

The Fig. 16 shows hb/he of the steel CHS bridge piers under different corrosion condi-
tions. It can be seen from Fig. 16a that when ρ remains the same, the bridge pier with a
smaller hc results in a smaller hb; however, when hc remains the same, the bridge pier with
a smaller ρ has a larger hb. The average value of hb/he of the corroded bridge pier with
ρ = 25% and hc = 0.1D is approximately 0.6, which is 40% lower than that of the uncor-
roded bridge pier.
Because the corrosion conditions have significant effect on the hb, the regressed normal-
ized prediction equation of hb/he is given in Eq. (10), which is assumed to yield the poly-
nomial distributions. The errors in the predicted results are shown in Fig. 17. The equation
has better accuracy, and the errors of the prediction results are basically within 15%.
hb
= Z𝜌 + Zhc + Z𝜌hc + 1.0 (10)
he

where Zρ, Zhc, and Zρhc are the terms related to the corrosion rate, corrosion height, and
their coupling effect, respectively, which are given by:

Fig. 16  Buckling half-wavelength of the piers: (a) Histogram of hb/he (b) Predicted results

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Fig. 17  Predicted error of the 1.2

normalized buckling half-
wavelength Data points +15%
1.0

hb / he
-15%
0.8

0.6

0.4
0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2
Prediction results

Z𝜌 = p00 + p10 𝜌 + p20 𝜌2 + p30 𝜌3 + p40 𝜌4 (11)

( ( )2 ( )3 )
hc hc hc h
Zhc = p01 + p02 + p03 + p04 c (12)
D D D D

( ( )2 )
hc hc hc hc
(13)
2
Z𝜌hc = 𝜌 p21 𝜌 + p31 𝜌 + p22 𝜌 + p12 + p13 + p11
D D D D

where pij is a constant (i = 0 ~ 4, j = 0 ~ 3), which is obtained by the surface-fitting procedure

for 570 models’ numerical results, and the constants are shown in Table 4.
The classification of buckling modes for the corroded bridge piers is presented in
Fig. 18. By comparing hb and hc, the buckling modes of the bridge piers can be divided
into three cases: (1) when hb is larger than hc, such as Case 0 and Case 1, no or only a tiny
part of buckling occurs in the corrosion area; (2) when hb is equal to hc, such as Case 3,
half of the buckling occurs in the corrosion area; (3) when hb is less than hc, such as Case
2 and Case 4, the buckling part occurs entirely or mainly in the corrosion area. When hc
exceeds 0.3D, hb is smaller than hc, and the buckling mode of the bridge pier are nearly
unchanged even if hc increases. In summary, when hc ≥ hb, hc no matter how to increase,
the most significant buckling section of the bridge pier (the cross-section at hb) will always
be in the corrosion damage area. Therefore, the most unfavorable hc can be considered
when the hc is equal to hb, which is determined by the buckling mode.

Table 4  Constants of the equations

Formula Constants

Zρ p00 = 0.021 p10 =  − 0.961 p20 = 18.13 p30 =  − 112.9 p40 = 222.5 –
Zhc p01 =  − 1.807 p02 = 22.67 p03 =  − 88.55 p04 = 108 – –
Zρhc p21 = 81.82 P31 =  − 61.86 p22 =  − 161.8 p11 =  − 44.63 p12 = 180.1 p13 =  − 182

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Fig. 18  Classification of buckling modes for the bridge piers with corroded ends

5 Parametric analysis and discussion

5.1 Ultimate strength degradation factor

The degradation factor is commonly used to analyze the performance degradation of the
members after damage (Bao et al. 2021; Kim et al. 2021; Wang et al. 2022). Therefore, the
ultimate strength degradation factor γ is adopted in this study to describe the degradation
of seismic performance of the steel CHS bridge piers, which is defined in Eq. (14):
Hmax,c − Hmax,unc
𝛾= × 100% (14)
Hmax,unc

where Hmax,c and Hmax,unc are the ultimate strengths of the corroded and uncorroded bridge
piers. Since the ultimate strength of CHS steel bridge piers decreases after corrosion, γ is
a negative value, and thus the smaller γ indicates the more severe deterioration of ultimate
strength.

5.2 Effect of corrosion parameters

The Fig. 19 shows the variation of the ultimate strength degradation factor γ of the steel
CHS bridge piers with different corrosion rates ρ. In the figure, the green square represents
the lower and upper quartiles of the dataset, namely 25th and 75th percentiles; the whisk-
ers indicate the 5th and 95th percentiles. As can be seen from the figure, γ decreases with
the increase of ρ, and the variation of the average values of γ along with ρ exhibit a linear
trend.
The Fig. 20 presents the effect of the corrosion height hc on the ultimate strength deg-
radation factor γ. When hc increases from 0 to 0.3D, γ shows a decreasing trend. When
hc is between 0.3D and 0.4D, γ remains nearly unchanged, and the corresponding value
is − 17.64%. It is worth mentioning that γ is not only determined by hc or ρ. As discussed

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Degradation factor γ (%)

-10
25%~75%
5%~95%
-20 Medians
Averages
-30 Outliers

-40
0 5 10 15 20 25
Corrosion rate ρ (%)

Fig. 19  Effect of the corrosion rate on the degradation factor

0
Degradation factor γ (%)

-10
25%~75%
5%~95%
-20 Medians
Averages
Outliers
-30

-40
0D 0.1D 0.2D 0.3D 0.4D
Corrosion height hc

Fig. 20  Effect of corrosion height on the degradation factor

in the previous section, Hmax is also affected by the buckling mode, that is, the relation-
ship between hc and hb. Thus, it is necessary to further analyze the influence of the column
parameters on γ.

5.3 Effect of parameters of the bridge piers

The effects of the radius thickness ratio Rt on the ultimate strength degradation factor γ
under different corrosion conditions are analyzed in this section. It can be seen from Fig. 21
that when the corrosion height hc is equal to 0.1D or 0.2D, the values of γ vary with Rt. The
decrease in the ultimate strength of the bridge piers with larger Rt is more significant as ρ
increases. When ρ = 25% and hc = 0.1D, the difference of γ for the bridge piers with Rt of
0.104 and 0.044 is 10.77%, however, as hc is increased to 0.2D, the difference is reduced to
5.57%. When hc continues to increase to 0.3D, the bridge piers with different values of Rt
show almost the same γ.
By analyzing γ of the bridge piers with different dimensionless slenderness ratios λ
under different corrosion conditions, it is found that although λ is different, γ is almost the
same, as shown in Fig. 22. It means that the ultimate strengths of the bridge piers with dif-
ferent λ under the same corrosion condition are constantly proportional to the correspond-
ing values of the uncorroded ones.

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Fig. 21  Effect of the radius-thickness ratio on the degradation factor (λ = 0.30, μ = 0.15)

Fig. 22  Effect of the dimensionless slenderness ratio on the degradation factor (Rt = 0.062, μ = 0.15)

Fig. 23  Effect of the axial compression ratio on the degradation factor (Rt = 0.062, λ = 0.30)

The values of γ of the bridge piers with different axial compressive ratios μ are ana-
lyzed, as shown in Fig. 23. The values of γ decrease with the increase of μ under the same
corrosion condition. When ρ = 25% and hc = 0.1D, the difference of γ for the bridge piers

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Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:5625–5653 5643

with μ of 0.10 and 0.30 is 4.24%, however, as hc is increased to 0.2D and 0.3D, the differ-
ences are increased to 6.64% and 7.02%.

5.4 Sensitivity analysis

Sensitivity analysis is usually used to evaluate the influence of different parameters on a

definite result (Sobol 1993). The influence of the characteristic parameters on the ultimate
strength degradation factor γ is analyzed based on the Sobol method (Sobol 1993).
Sobol sensitivity analysis could quantify the first-order sensitivity index Si and total-
order sensitivity index STi for each parameter. Si is the sensitivity contributed by each
parameter itself; STi reflects the summation of the sensitivities provided by itself and cou-
pling with other parameters (Zhang et al. 2015). The larger value of the sensitivity index
indicates more sensitive to changes in this parameter. The specific calculation details could
refer to (Zhang et al. 2015), and the formulations are expressed in Eqs. (15) and (16):
Di
Si = (15)
Dsum

where Di represents the variance produced by the parameter xi; Dsum is the variance of the
evaluated result, including the effects of all parameters.
STi = Si + Sij + ... + S1...i...s (16)
where Sij represents the sensitivity index considering the coupling effect between param-
eter xi and parameter xj; S1…i…s is the sensitivity index which takes the coupling effect of
parameter x1 to parameter xs into consideration.
The characteristic parameters of the corroded steel CHS bridge piers are combined
together using the Monte Carlo method, and the total number of the sampling points N is
calculated by Eq. (17) (Nossent et al. 2011):
N = 2n(p + 1) (17)
where n is the number of initial models and p means the model consists of p parameters. In
this study, the n and p are 570 and 5, respectively.
Si and STi of different parameters calculated by Eqs. (15) and (16) are shown in Fig. 24. It
can be seen that the corrosion rate ρ has the most significant effect on the degradation fac-
tor γ, and the values of STi and Si are 74.3% and 74.1%. The corrosion height hc is another
important parameter for γ, and the values of STi and Si are 21.9% and 21.7%. In addition,
the sensitivity indices of the axial pressure ratio μ are close to 3%. However, within the
ranges of the selected parameters of the bridge piers, the influence of the slenderness ratio
parameter λ to γ can be ignored, which is consistent with the previous conclusions. The γ is
more sensitive to the corrosion parameters. The effect of corrosion parameters of the cor-
roded steel CHS bridge piers cannot be ignored in the calculation of the ultimate strength.

5.5 Prediction of degradation factor for ultimate strength

The degradation factor of the ultimate strength γ is fitted based on the analytical results,
considering the influence of multi-parameter coupling, which is expressed in Eq. (18):

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Fig. 24  Parameter sensitivity of the degradation factor: (a) Sensitivity indices of parameters (b) Distribu-
tions of parameter sensitivity

−0.512 + 0.639Zx − 0.015Zx2 ; 𝜌 ≠ 0, hc ≠ 0

0; 𝜌 = 0, hc = 0
𝛾= (18)

where Zx is the multi-parameter coupling influence term, its value can be calculated by
Eq. (19):
Zx = 11.63 − 19.08𝜇 − 39.66Rt − 95.39𝜌 − 0.03hc (19)
According to Eq. (14), when no corrosion damage occurs on the bridge pier, the
value of γ should be 0. On the other hand, when the parameters of the end corroded steel
CHS bridge piers are within the range of this study, γ is affected by Zx. The proposed
formula could well predict the degradation factor of ultimate strength, and its R2 is 0.92,
as shown in Fig. 25.

Fig. 25  Comparison of the

result between the formula and
simulation

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6 Strength evaluation of the corroded steel bridge pier

6.1 Previous prediction method

Most of the previous methods to predict the horizontal ultimate strength of the steel
CHS bridge piers are empirical formulas based on the test data or simulation results.
The calculation methods of normalized ultimate strength proposed by Ge et al. (1997)
and Chen et al. (2019) are given in Eqs. (20) and (21):
Hmax 0.02
Hy
=
(Rt 𝜆)0.8
+ 1.10 (20)

( )0.536
Hmax P
= 0.765 1 + R−0.188
t
𝜆−0.100 (21)
Hy Py

Among them, Eq. (20) has been proven to be effective and widely used in strength
evaluation of the bridge piers (Gao et al. 1998a; Ge et al. 1997). Equation (21) takes the
influence of the axial compression ratio into consideration, which has been applied in
many studies (Chen et al. 2019; Zhuge et al. 2022a, b). Therefore, Eqs. (20) and (21) are
selected as comparative samples in this study. The simulation results of the bridge piers
under different corrosion conditions and the prediction results of the above equation are
shown in Fig. 26. It can be seen from the figure that the previous prediction methods
can accurately predict the ultimate strength of the uncorroded bridge piers. However,
when the end corrosion damage of the bridge pier is considered, the prediction results
have relatively larger errors and overestimate the bearing capacity of the bridge piers.
The maximum error for Eq. (20) amounts to 27.89%, and the corresponding value is
29.12% for Eq. (21). It is necessary to establish a method for calculating the horizontal
ultimate strength of bridge piers that can consider the effect of end corrosion.

Fig. 26  Comparison between the previous method and simulation results: (a) Results of Eq. (20) (b)
Results of Eq. (21)

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6.2 Proposed prediction method of strength

Through the previous discussion in this study, the end-corrosion steel CHS bridge piers
have the significant local buckling at hb. Therefore, the ultimate strength of the bridge pier
can be determined by the stress state of the cross-section at hb. In this study, the critical
buckling stress σcr is used as the critical value of the axial stress for buckling on the cross-
section at hb, and its value can be calculated according to Eq. (22) (AIJ 2017):

⎧ 𝜋 2 EI , 𝜆 > 1.3
1.3 ≥ 𝜆 > 0.3
⎪ 1.3lk2
𝜎cr = ⎨ 1 − 0.545(𝜆 − 0.3)𝜎 , (22)
0.3 ≥ 𝜆 ≥ 0
y
⎪𝜎 ,
⎩ y

where σcr is the critical buckling stress and lk is the equivalent length of the bridge pier.
The Fig. 27 shows the axial stress values and its contours of two special points (point 1
and point 2) in the cross-section at hb during the first four cycles. The line connecting point
1 and the cross-section centroid is parallel to the loading direction, and the line connect-
ing point 2 and the cross-section centroid is perpendicular to the loading direction. When
the horizontal strength reaches + Hmax, the axial stresses of point 1 and 2 both reach σcr,
and the axial stresses of point 2 is almost equal to σcr. Also, when the horizontal strength
reaches − Hmax, the axial stress at point 1 and 2 exceed σcr and continue to increase. The
axial stress of the cross-section at hb is greater than that of other cross-sections of the
bridge pier, and when the horizontal strength reaches + Hmax and − Hmax, the axial stress of
this section is almost all reaches σcr, which is consistent with the previous discussion.
According to Eq. (22), before local buckling occurs, the maximum axial stress of
the critical cross-section does not exceed σy. Therefore, it can be approximately con-
sidered that the ultimate strength analysis of steel CHS bridge piers with end corrosion
could follow an in-plane analysis of the ideal cantilever member (Yamada et al. 2018),
as shown in Fig. 28. It is assumed that the first local buckling of the bridge pier occurs
at the cross-section i at hb. As discussed previously, the section at hb has the largest
stress value, and thus this section is considered to have the largest internal force when
the bridge pier reaches the ultimate strength. The bridge pier from the cross-sections i to

Fig. 27  Axial stress state of the bridge pier

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Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:5625–5653 5647

Fig. 28  Analytical model of the bridge pier with end corrosion

the top of the bridge pier can be divided into an infinite number of tiny elements, so the
internal forces can be obtained by numerically integrating each tiny element along the
bridge pier height using Eqs. (23) and (24).
Mi = Mi+1 + P(Δxi+1 − Δxi ) + Hmax Δy (23)

1
Δxi = Δxi+1 − 𝜃Δy − 𝜑i Δy2 (24)
2
where Δxi and Δxi+1 are displacement of the element at cross-section i and i + 1, respec-
tively; θ is the rotation angle of the element; φi is the curvature of the element; Δy is the
length of the element.
At the same time, the bridge piers are typical compression-bending members under
horizontal cyclic loading. The relationships given in AIJ recommendation (AIJ 2017)
can be adopted, as expressed in Eq. (25):

≤ 1.0
P M
+
Pcr MP (25)

where Pcr is the buckling strength of the column under axial compression and Mp is the
capacity of plastic moment.
Therefore, when the bridge pier reaches the ultimate strength, the cross-section i is
considered with the maximum stress, and the corresponding value σi can be calculated
by Eq. (26):
Mi P
𝜎i = +
Wzp A (26)

where Wzp denotes the plastic section modulus, which is calculated by Eq. (27):

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5648 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:5625–5653

Wzp = 𝛾p D2 t (27)

where γp is the coefficient of sectional plasticity development. According to the Chinese

code (MOHURD 2017), the value of γp is 1.15 for the circular tube section.
The axial compression ratio and slenderness ratio of bridge piers are usually smaller than
those of the columns in buildings. The rotation angle θ of the steel CHS bridge piers is very
small until the bridge piers reach their ultimate strength. In addition, according to the ASCE
standard (Standard 2017), when the stability coefficient Cs is less than 0.1, it is not necessary
to consider the influence of P-Delta, and Cs can be calculated by Eq. (28):
Ie P𝛿
Cs = (28)
HhCd

where Ie is the importance factor, δ is the displacement at the top of the bridge pier, and Cd
is the deflection amplification factor. According to the range of parameters of the corroded
steel bridge piers in this study, Cs is less than 0.1. Therefore, the influence of P-Delta is
ignored before the bridge pier reaches the ultimate strength.
By combining Eqs. (23), (24) and (26), a theoretical method to calculate the ultimate
strength of the end corroded bridge piers is proposed:
( )
𝜎cr − AP 𝛾p D2 t
Hmax =
b (29)
(h − hb )

where Ab is the cross-sectional area at hb, which is calculated by Eq. (30), and hb is calcu-
lated by Eqs. (9) and (10).
Ab = 𝜋(1 − 𝜌)tD (30)
It is worth mentioning that referring to the damage modes of the corroded steel bridge
piers, there are three possible values for Ab based on the relationship between hb and hc, as
shown in Fig. 29.
Therefore, Eq. (29) can be further written as Eq. (31):

⎧ 𝛾p D(𝜎cr 𝜋tD−P)
⎪ , hb > hc
h b ≤ hc
𝜋(h−hb )
Hmax =⎨ 𝛾p D[𝜎cr 𝜋(1−𝜌)tD−P] (31)
⎪ ,
⎩ 𝜋(h−hb )

Fig. 29  Possible values for Ab

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To verify the accuracy of the method, the theoretical results are compared with previous
test and simulation results in (Gao et al. 1998a) and (Chen et al. 2019), as shown in Fig. 30.
The errors of the proposed method for ultimate strength are essentially less than ± 10%.
Therefore, the proposed theoretical method can be used to estimate the horizontal ultimate
strength of steel CHS bridge piers with end corrosion damage under the cyclic lateral loads
and a better accuracy is achieved.

7 Conclusions

In this study, the seismic performance of the corroded steel CHS bridge pier is investigated
under lateral cyclic loadings and the method to predict the seismic lateral ultimate strength
of the end corroded steel CHS bridge piers is proposed. The multi-scale FE models of the
CHS bridge pier which can consider both the local buckling and end corrosion are built.
The coupling effects of the corrosion and column parameters on the failure modes and the
ultimate strength are evaluated. The parametric sensitivity of the ultimate strength degra-
dation factor is qualified by the Sobol method. Finally, a theoretical method of ultimate
strength for the corroded steel CHS bridge pier is presented. The specific conclusions of
this study are summarized as follows:

1. The multi-scale FE models developed in this study are feasible for evaluating the
mechanical behavior of the end corroded steel CHS bridge piers. The simulated failure
modes of the corroded bridge piers are same as the experimental observations, and the
errors of the ultimate strengths are within 10%.
2. The numerical results demonstrate that the high values of stresses of the corroded
steel CHS bridge piers are concentrated at the end corroded area. As the corrosion rate
increases, the area of plastic damage decreases, but the stress concentration is more
significant. The bearing capacity is decreased as the increase of corrosion rate, and the
ultimate strength of the corroded bridge piers can even be reduced by 30% compared to
the uncorroded bridge piers. The corroded bridge pier has the smallest ultimate strength
when the corrosion height is equal to the buckling half-wavelength.

Fig. 30  Theoretical results

verification

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3. The typical failure mode of the end corroded steel CHS bridge piers is elephant-foot
buckling, but the buckling half-wavelength is affected by the corrosion conditions. The
buckling half-wavelength can be even reduced by 40% compared to the uncorroded
bridge piers. The proposed empirical formula could well predict the buckling half-
wavelength of the end corroded steel CHS bridge piers.
4. According to the parametric analyses, the effect of corrosion rate on the ultimate
strength degradation factor is most pronounced with a total-order sensitivity index of
0.7434. The empirical formula to estimate the ultimate strength degradation factor has
a good accuracy.
5. The proposed theoretical method to predict the ultimate strength could consider the
effect of end corrosion of the steel CHS bridge pier. The theoretical method is verified
and found to be within almost ± 10% error, and the accuracy is improved by nearly 20%
compared with the previous methods.

Funding The authors would like to acknowledge the support from National Key Research and Develop-
ment Program of China (No.2022YFB2602500), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)
(No. 52108430), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Nos. 2021M693545, 2022T150732), Young Elite
Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST (No. 2021QNRC001) and Beijing Municipal Education Commis-
sion (No. IDHT20190504) for carrying out this research.

Declarations
Competing interests The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

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