Structural Evaluation for Iraqi Ministry of Trade Building Exposed to Fire During 2003 War

Abstract

Existing concrete structures may, for a variety of reasons, be found to be unsatisfactory. This could manifest itself by poor performance under service loading in the form of excessive deflections, cracking or inadequate ultimate strength and changing the main function. In such circumstances, there are two possible solutions i.e. demolish and rebuild or carryout a program of repair and strengthening. In this investigation, the structural evaluation and suggested repairing works were studied for Iraqi Ministry of Trade building, the building was exposed to fire, vandalism and looting during the war on Iraq at 2003. The building consists of twelve stories, ten stories have area about 1428m2 and about 1150 m2 area of middle and basement stories. Each story has height of 3.5m. The structure of building consists of one way ribbed slab with 900mm slab thickness and 0.15×0.7m rib sectional dimensions. The columns have dimensions 0.6×1.2m and height 3.5m. The girders, ribs, floors and columns were peeled and decayed, there are a several cracks wider than 0.4mm distributed on the beams and floors and several columns, the concrete floors were destroyed and that caused appearance of steel reinforcement, parts of concrete of column at the second floor were destroyed and the longitudinal reinforcement steel buckled outside dragging the transverse reinforcement, a high possibility of reduction in concrete strength caused by the fire effects happened during 2003 war but the steel dose not affected by the fire because of the concrete cover which protected reinforcement. From this investigation, there is no serious damage in the sense that it is imperative to demolish the building and re-create. The damage in the building, as indicated in this study require some repairs, known in the field of rehabilitation through chemical additives and steel structures are additional materials available in local markets. It necessary to minimize the additional dead loads and the use of Limestone partitions in their implementation Gypsum Board partitions or imported light partitions.