STRENGTHENING AND TESTING OF EXISTING REINFORCED CONCRETE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS FROM A MULTI-STOREY CAR PARK IN SINGAPORE USING ADVANCED COMPOSITE MATERIALS

摘要

An upgrading exercise at a public housing estate initiated by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) of Singapore required that a three level car park structure be strengthened due to the conversion of the roof deck into a multi-purpose recreational area. The resulting increase of dead and live loads on the roof deck precipitated the need for strengthening the reinforced concrete beams, slabs and columns of the twenty year-old structure. A design proposal was put forward to the HDB for structural strengthening using advanced composite materials (ACMs). Prior to the acceptance of the proposal and the application phase of the project, the following study required by HDB to investigate the effects of strengthening existing reinforced concrete elements with ACMs was initiated in collaboration with the Centre for Construction Materials and Technology at the National University of Singapore. Beam, slab and column elements from the existing car park were extracted from portions of the structure and wrapped with the composite under various configurations. The strengthened and control specimens were then tested to failure and comparisons of predicted failure loads to actual failure loads were made. The test results on the extracted specimens showed substantial load carrying enhancements for the beam, slab and column elements strengthened with the ACMs.