Corrosion is mostly considered as homogeneous thickness reduction in construction guidelines of the maritime industry. Several studies concluded that besides a homogeneous thickness reduction the corroded non-uniform surface morphology is affecting the residual strength and strains of steel. However, the effects of non-uniform corrosion on the behavior of steel is still not clearly assessed. The effects of non-uniform pitting corrosion on the strength and total strains of naturally corroded steel specimens were investigated by means of tensile tests, both experimentally and using non-linear finite element simulations. For this purpose geometrical parameters of corroded specimens were correlated with the results of the tensile tests, by combining a Particle Swarm Optimization with a Kendall rank correlation analysis. Geometrical parameters were obtained by processing high-resolution surface morphology scans. In addition, the differences between a non-uniform and uniform idealization of corrosion were elaborated. It resultad that non-uniform corrosion leads to a more brittle stress-strain behavior of steel compared to a homogeneous corrosion approach, including higher stresses and decreased total breaking strain. The study firther showed that pittings and surface roughness are leading to a decrease of the total breaking strain. In contrast to previous studies it was highlited that instead of the pitting corrosion in general, the volume or thickness loss are the primary driver for the ultimate tensile strenght reduction. Moreover, the evaluation of the results showed that tensile tests to investigate such surface defects are not directly applicable. This was probably one of the methodological difficulties that led to controversies in this research area. It is strongly recommended to further investigate the non-uniform corrosion using the real corroded surface morphology to ensure that the effects are correctly interpreted and that behavoir of the specimen is correct. The application of a non-uniform or uniform corrosion idealzation results in different behavior of stell specimens under tensile loading.weiterlesen