Assessment And Evaluation Of Existing Structures By Means Of In Situ Load Testing And Structural Monitoring

Assessment and Evaluation of Existing Structures by Means of In-situ Load Testing and Structural Monitoring

Proceedings of the 9th fib International PhD Symposium in Civil Engineering : Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 22 - 25 July 2012, Karlsruhe, Germany

The fib International PhD Symposium in Civil Engineering is an established event in the academic calendar of doctoral students. It is held under the patronage of the International Federation for Structural Concrete (fib), one of the main international associations that disseminates knowledge about concrete and concrete structures. The 9th fib International PhD Symposium was held at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, from July 22 to 25, 2012.

ASSESSMENT EVALUATION OF STRUCTURE USING ADVANCED UNDISTRUCTIVE METHODS

Reinforced and pre-stressed concrete are widely used for the construction of infrastructures such as bridges, industrial structures, buildings, etc. Most of the time, the quality of the concrete mix is assumed to be guaranteed but due to the congestion of reinforcement and the quality control exercised during placing and vibrating, honeycombs and voids are likely to be present in the hardened concrete. The presence of voids leads to the early deterioration of concrete and corrosion also sets in. The corrosion of reinforcement causes damage to the cover concrete and also section loss in the area of steel. In the case of pre-stressed concrete members, the corrosion leads to a catastrophic failure without any warning. Hence, it becomes necessary to evaluate the condition of concrete using Non Destructive Techniques (NDT) and Partially Destructive Techniques (PDT). The Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV) method which is widely adopted till now gives the relative quality and integrity of concrete and is based on the transit time. The rebound hammer gives the quality of concrete in the cover zone based on the rebound number.