Reusing of concrete building elements – Assessment and quality assurance for service-life

Abstract

Strategic reuse of demounted concrete elements in new buildings may be one of the solutions that will support the transition to circular construction. To ensure wider application of concrete reuse, RISE developed a methodology for the assessment of the structural condition of existing buildings, and the selection of elements suitable for reuse, including guidelines for their disassembly, storage, and installation. However, one of the main obstacles for wide application of concrete reuse is the uncertainty concerning the remaining service-life of concrete elements and evaluation of quality over the future service-life in a new building. This paper describes a methodology for material and structural assessments which combine non-destructive, on-site testing with traditional laboratory tests of samples extracted from the structures. The results are intended to support the decision-making process on reuse and give a technical basis for the design of new buildings. Great consideration is put on various deterioration mechanisms for concrete and steel corrosion affecting structural condition of housing and office buildings. To assess the impact of degradation processes, theoretical models are considered, while the remaining service life is estimated by means of a simplified approach that provides the basis for evaluation of likelihood and severity of consequences entailed by material degradation on the structural performance. The proposed approach was validated on the results from three pilot projects, where real buildings in Stockholm and Uppsala, Sweden, were reused or prepared for reuse to different extent. The analysed buildings had different functions (housing, office, parking) and structures (prefabricated elements and in-situ casted concrete), being representative for Swedish building stock. One of the buildings has been already dissembled and the prefabricated, where prestressed hollow-core slabs have been successfully reused for a new office building construction. Based on these experiences, a simple classification system for quality of concrete elements for reuse was proposed with three main parameters, namely calculation of remaining service-life, extent of cracking and the target exposure class. The proposed system is not complete and must be further validated for various types of elements and structures by wider group of market actors.