Title: Estimation of the Rebar Strength in Existing Concrete Bridges

Author(s): Alessandro Fantilli and Bernardino Chiaia

Publication: Web Session

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Date: 3/24/2019

Abstract:
To design retrofit and/or conservation of existing reinforced concrete bridges, the assessment of rebar steel strength is generally required. The current methodology consists of uniaxial tensile tests performed on bars extracted from a structural element. Nevertheless, in several situations (like, e.g., the assessment of bridges in service), this traditional method cannot be used. Hence, a new simplified approach, in which the average strength of steel (and the relative percentiles) is a function of the year of construction, has been introduced. Such relationship is summarized by the so-called “strength curves”, statistically computed from a huge database stored in the Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering of Politecnico di Torino (Italy). As a result, the strength experimentally measured on the rebar of two bridges in the Northern Italy, built in 1931 and 1970, respectively, can be correctly predicted by the proposed model.