Practices for Evaluation of Concrete in Existing Massive Structures for Service Conditions

Description

Deteriorating infrastructure continues to be a growing concern. Accurate information on the condition of concrete in a massive structure is critical to evaluating its safety and service ability. This information is required by decisionmakers to determine if repair or replacement is necessary and to select optimum repair techniques where conditions require.

The guidelines for evaluating the serviceability of concrete described herein apply to massive concrete structures such as dams or other hydraulic structures, bridge foundations and piers, building and reactor foundations, and other applications that qualify to be considered mass concrete. Mass concrete is defined in ACI 116R as “any volume of concrete with dimensions large enough to require that measures be taken to cope with the generation of heat and attendant volume change to minimize cracking.”

The practices described pertain to concrete placed either by conventional means orby roller compaction. In addition to this report, other documents such as ACI201.1R, ACI 201.2R, ACI 224.1R, ACI 228.1R, ACI 437R,and ASTM C 823 provide good tools for those evaluating concrete in existing massive structures.

This report focuses on practices used to evaluate concrete in existing massive structures. Design considerations, evaluation of existing operating records and past inspection reports, condition surveys, maintenance reports, determination ofin-situ conditions, instrumentation, identification of damage, and final evaluation of concrete are principal subjects that are covered.