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To investigate the durability of reinforced concrete (RC) beams under the combined actions of transverse cracks and corrosion, corrosion tests were conducted on a total of eight RC beams with different water–cement ratios and cracking states. The effects of the transverse crack width, water–cement ratio, and the length of the wetting–drying cycle on the distribution of the free chloride concentration, the cross-sectional loss of the tensile steel bars, and the chloride diffusion coefficient are analyzed. The results show that the widths of the transverse crack and the water–cement ratio of concrete greatly affected the chloride profile and content of the RC beam specimens. Specifically, the chloride contents in all the cracked RC beams at the depth of the steel bar exceeded the threshold value of 0.15%. As the width of the cracks increased, the chloride concentration and penetration of the cracked concrete beam increased. However, the chloride concentration at the reinforcement position did not seem to be obviously affected by increasing the wetting–drying cycles from 182 days to 364 days. Moreover, the decrease of the water–cement ratio effectively inhibited the penetration of chloride ions in the RC beam specimens. In terms of the cross-sectional loss of the steel bars, the average loss of the steel bar increases with increasing crack width for the beams with 182-day cycles, while the effect of crack width on the average loss is not as noticeable for the beams with 364-day cycles. Finally, a model is proposed to predict the relationship between the crack width influence coefficient, μ, and the crack width, w, and this model shows good agreement with the experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The axial compressive behaviour of an innovative type of square concrete filled steel tube (CFST) column to reinforced concrete (RC) beam joint was experimentally investigated in this paper. The innovative joint was designed such that (i) the steel tubes of the CFST columns were completely interrupted in the joint region, (ii) the longitudinal reinforcements from the RC beams could easily pass through the joint area and (iii) a reinforcement cage, including a series of reinforcement meshes and radial stirrups, was arranged in the joint area to strengthen the mechanical performance of the joint. A two-stage experimental study was conducted to investigate the behaviour of the innovative joint under axial compression loads, where the first stage of the tests included three full-scale innovative joint specimens subjected to axial compression to assess the feasibility of the joint detailing and propose measures to further improve its axial compressive behaviour, and the second stage of the tests involved 14 innovative joint specimens with the improved detailing to study the effect of the geometric size of the joint, concrete strength and volume ratio of the steel meshes on the bearing strengths of the joints. It was generally found from the experiments that (i) the innovative joint is capable of achieving the design criterion of the 'strong joint-weak member' with appropriate designs, and (ii) by decreasing the height factor and increasing the volume ratio of the steel meshes, the axial compressive strengths of the joints significantly increased, while the increase of the length factor is advantageous but limited to the resistances of the joint specimens. Because of the lack of existing design methods for the innovative joints, new design expressions were proposed to calculate the axial compression resistances of the innovative joints subjected to bearing loads, with the local compression effect, the confinement effect provided by the multi-layers of steel meshes and the height effect of concrete considered. It was found that the proposed design methods were capable of providing accurate and safe resistance predictions for the innovative joints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]