Most of the structures operating at sea will suffer corrosion in areas that have been left unprotected or where the anticorrosion measures are inadequate. The current common repair method consists primarily of replacing damaged steel. An alternative repair method is using patches made of composite materials. This method counters the majority of the problems faced by conventional renewal repairs. The work presented in this paper consists of an experimental study of artificially corroded steel plates repaired with composite patches. In total eight specimens were tested in tension. The effect of aging was taken into consideration by three different aging scenarios. Part of the experimental results was sub-sequently validated with the use of numerical simulations that encompassed cohesive elements so as to simulate the debonding procedure. Results showed that composite patch repairing was able to rehabilitate the defected steel plates and improve their load bearing capacity. The numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental ones.
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