Title: Characterizing Reinforced Concrete Beams Exposed During 40 Years in a Natural Marine Environment - Presentation of the French Project "Benchmark des Poutres de la Rance"

Author(s): O. Poupard, V. L’Hostis, S. Catinaud, S. Laurens, I. Petre-Lazar, and A. Raharinaivo

Publication: Symposium Paper

Volume: 234

Issue:

Appears on pages(s): 17-38

Keywords: benchmark; corrosion; modeling; NDT methods; reinforced concrete

DOI: 10.14359/15926

Date: 3/22/2006

Abstract:
Several ageing models are available for the prediction of the mechanical consequences of rebar corrosion. They are used for service life prediction of reinforced concrete structures. Concerning corrosion diagnosis of reinforced concrete, some Non Destructive Testing (NDT) tools have been developed, and have been in use for some years. However, these developments require validation on existing concrete structures. The French project "Benchmark des Poutres de la Rance" contributes to these aspects. It has two main objectives: (i) validating of mechanical models to estimate the influence of rebar corrosion on the load bearing capacity loss of a structure, (ii) qualifying the use of the NDT results to collect information on steel corrosion within reinforced-concrete structures. This project started in 2004 for 2 years. Ten French and European institutions from both academic research laboratories and industrial companies are contributing. This paper presents the project that was divided into several work packages: (i) the reinforced concrete beams are characterized from non-destructive testing tools, (ii) the mechanical behavior of the beams are experimentally tested, (iii) complementary laboratory analysis are performed and (iv) numerical simulations will be finally compared to the experimental results obtained with the mechanical tests.