Evaluation of Present Condition of Concrete to be Repaired

Dear reader we have discussed many posts about repair of concrete; here we will learn about evaluation methods to have idea about present condition of concrete that have some sort of deficiencies. Repair or restoration process only under taken when effective repair method and also economical solution is available to make concrete structure or member serviceable or elongate the service life of concrete.

The first step of repair of concrete structure work is to determine present condition of it. Here we will include some review and tests to be conducted for evaluation purposes. We can use more than one and in most case several tasks as followings to have proper evaluation:

• Review of design document available for concrete structure, which is not often available in case of old construction.


• Review of construction document of the same



• Review on structural-instrumentation data


• Review of documentation or any type of record that provide information about repair work conducted before this session


• Review of any type of maintenance work; if there have any records


• Visual examination


• Destruction testing like core drilling


• Nondestructive testing like rebound hammer test, as discussed in previous posts.


• Laboratory test of concrete samples

Dear reader the steps stated above should be conducted each if possible, but when sufficient records and documentation are not available, as much as steps should be conducted to have proper evaluation.

After completion of all steps, an engineer has through understanding about present condition of concrete and also has insight about causes of distress and deterioration of concrete.