TECHNIQUES

by S. Parivallal, K. Ravisankar, K. Nagamani, and K. Kesavan

CORE-DRILLING TECHNIQUE FOR IN-SITU STRESS EVALUATION IN CONCRETE STRUCTURES

oncrete is one of the most commonly used construction materials. Critical civil engineering structures such as tall buildings, bridges, containment structures, pressure vessels, etc. are constructed using reinforced/prestressed concrete. Many of these structures were built to last not longer than 50 years. In a well-publicized report,1 the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) stated that 27 percent of the almost 600,000 bridges in the USA are structurally decient or functionally obsolete. This may be due to dynamic action of vehicles, overloading, uneven settlement, use of inferior quality construction materials and workmanship, etc. To assess the safety and serviceability of the distressed structure and to take a decision on the possible repair and rehabilitation measures, it is necessary to reliably estimate the existing level of stress.

The existing stresses in concrete structures can be evaluated by two approaches. The rst approach is to instrument the structure at the time of construction and monitor periodically. This method is called structural health monitoring and is useful for new structures. For old and distressed structures, the second approach uses stress relieving methods for existing stress evaluation. This paper describes the development of an experimental method known as the concrete core-drilling technique for the determination of in-situ stresses in reinforced/prestressed concrete structures. This method can be applied to compression zones of reinforced concrete structures as well as on prestressed concrete structures. The data obtained from in-situ stress measurement are useful for enabling timely retrotting, which, in turn, helps in reducing further damage and improve the service life.

experimental and theoretical analysis combined with insitu testing. Vibrating wire strain gages were employed in this study for the strain measurements. MehrkarAsl5 developed a stress-relief coring technique for in-situ stress measurement in concrete structures. Trial tests were performed on structures in service and calibrations carried out in the laboratory on uniaxially and biaxially loaded slabs. These tests resulted in two nominal stress-relief core sizes of 75 and 150 mm diameter. Ryall6 used an instrumented hard inclusion technique for measurement of in-situ stresses in concrete bridge decks, which involves drilling a small pilot hole of about 40 mm diameter in concrete and bonding to it an instrumented mild steel inclusion. The inclusion is over cored and the resulting strain changes in the inclusion are used as a basis for determining the local stresses. Abdunur7 proposes an approach, which can be summed up as forming a slot in the structure rather than a cylindrical hole. A jack is then inserted into the slot to pressurize the sides of the slot until the surrounding structure has readopted its original position. The concrete core trepanning technique8,9 is a nondestructive method, which can be used for evaluating existing stresses in prestressed concrete structures. In this technique, an electrical resistance strain gage is xed at the center of the intended core and aligned in the direction of maximum stress (for uniaxial stress condition). An annular hole of 50 mm diameter is formed by diamond core drilling. On drilling the annular hole around the core, the strain gage measures the complete elastic strain relief due to core drilling and is recorded till the cutting depth reaches to the required depth. The released strain is of the opposite sign to the in-situ strain. After a sign change, the strain is multiplied by the elastic modulus of concrete to determine the in-situ stress. This technique has the advantage of measuring nearly the full strain release and the data reduction is also simpler. This method can be applied to reinforced concrete structures as well as to prestressed concrete structures.

TECHNIQUES FOR EXISTING STRESS DETERMINATION

There are various methods available for determining the existing stresses in prestressed concrete members. Owens2 described a method called the steel stress relief hole method for determining prestress in a prestressed concrete member by drilling a relatively small hole either in the prestressed steel (or reinforcement steel) existing in the beam. Some researchers have reported on development of methods for determining the in-situ state of stress in reinforced concrete/ prestressed concrete structures based upon the measured released strain obtained during the removal of cores. Owens3,4 discussed a center hole stress relief method for measuring in-situ stress in concrete bridges. The accuracy of the technique has been assessed with a programme of
S. Parivallal (paris@sercm.org) and K. Kesavan are assistant directors, K. Ravisankar is a scientist-G in SERC, Council of Scientic & Industrial Research (CSIR), Chennai. K. Nagamani is a professor in the College of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University, Chennai.
doi: 10.1111/j.1747-1567.2010.00622.x 2010, Society for Experimental Mechanics

THROUGH-HOLE ANALYSIS
The introduction of a hole into a stressed body relaxes the stresses at that location. This occurs because every perpendicular to a free surface (hole surface in this case) is necessarily a principal axis on which the shear and normal stresses are zero. The elimination of these stresses on the hole surface changes the stress in the immediately surrounding region, causing the local strains on the surface of the test specimen to change correspondingly. Based on this principle, the concrete core-drilling technique is developed. In practical applications of the method, the drilled hole depth is small compared to the thickness of the test specimen/structure. This problem is complex because no closed-form solution is available from the theory of elasticity for direct calculation of the existing stresses from the measured strains. However, the simpler case of a hole
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Fig. 1: Stress states in stressed body at A(r, )

drilled completely through a plate10,11 in which the stress is uniformly distributed through the plate thickness can be used with acceptable approximation. Consider a thin plate, Fig. 1a, which is subject to a uniform stress, x in one direction. The stress state at any point A(r, ), in polar coordinate a system is dened by, ra , a , r . These stresses are given 10,11 by, x ra = (1 + cos 2) (1a) 2 x a = (1 cos 2) (1b) 2 x a r = (sin 2) (1c) 2 The same plate after a small hole has been drilled through it at the center (Fig. 1b): The stresses in the vicinity of the hole are now quite different, because r , and r must be zero everywhere on the hole surface, and the stress state at b any point A (r,) in polar coordinates is rb , b , r and given 10,11 by, 3a 4 4a 2 x x a2 1 2 + 1 + 4 2 cos 2 (2a) 2 r 2 r r x a2 3a 4 x b = 1+ 2 1 + 4 cos 2 (2b) 2 r 2 r x 3a 4 2a 2 b r = 1 4 + 2 sin 2 (2c) 2 r r rb = Subtracting the initial stresses (Eq. 1) from the nal (after drilling) stresses (Eq. 2) gives the change in stress, or relieved

stress at point A (r,) due to drilling the hole. The relieved R stresses rR , R , r at point A (r,) can be evaluated from the following equations. rR = R
R r

x 2 x = 2 x = 2

3a 4 4a 2 a2 + 2 r2 r4 r 3a 4 a2 4 cos 2 r2 r 3a 4 2a 2 2 sin 2 r4 r

cos 2

(3a) (3b) (3c)

where a = hole radius and r = arbitrary radius from hole center. Based on Eq. 3, the variations of relieved stresses along the principal axes for a unit tensile stress (x = 1) were evaluated and plotted in Fig. 2.

CONCRETE CORE-DRILLING TECHNIQUE

A concrete core-drilling technique has been developed (This innovative development forms the subject matter of Patent application ref. No. 1172/DEL/2001, The Gazette of India, February 23, 2002.) by considering the practical aspects of the strain gage instrumentation using a special arrangement of electrical resistance strain gages suitably placed around the core for assessment of in-situ stress. The conguration and the gage length used in the core-drilling technique are shown in Fig. 3. This consists of two radial gages (SG1 & SG2) and two tangential gages (SG3 & SG4) of 30-mm gage length aligned around the indented core. All the four gages are connected through a Wheatstone bridge circuit12 in full bridge conguration (Fig. 4). This will enhance the

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IN-SITU STRESS EVALUATION

Fig. 2: Variation of relieved radial ( = 0 ) and tangential ( = 90 ) stresses with distance from the center of the drilled hole

Fig. 3: Strain gage arrangement for core-drilling technique

response of measured strain. The temperature effect during measurement is also minimized. On drilling a circular hole of 50-mm diameter, the strain gages measure the change in strain due to core drilling. A standard concrete core cutting machine, with diamond tipped cutting tool, is used in this method. Portable strain measuring equipment with a resolution of 1 is used to measure the strain. The reliability of this technique for in-situ stress assessment was established in the laboratory by conducting experimental investigations on concrete specimens with known

Fig. 4: Wheatstone bridge circuit used for core-drilling technique

stresses/strains and by comparing the results obtained with theoretical analysis.

THEORETICAL ANALYSIS
Theoretical analysis was carried out to evaluate the calibration coefcient (Cf ), for the chosen conguration and
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Fig. 5: Relieved strain along radial and tangential gage orientation

gage length. The calibration coefcient is the ratio of the total relieved strain from the four gages to the existing strain in the structure due to the applied load. For the analysis, an existing compressive stress of x = 1 N/mm2 is considered. A modulus of elasticity (E) of 31,623 N/mm2 and Poissons ratio () of 0.17 are used in the analysis. The relieved stresses were calculated from Eq. 3 for the radial and tangential gage location. For radial gages, the relieved stresses rR , R are the same as R R x , y , respectively. The relieved strain is calculated along the radial gage (X direction) by the following equation:
R R = 1/E x y

nding the ratio of total relieved strain to applied strain. For the stress of 1 N/mm2 , the applied strain (A ) is 31.62 R microstrain. The relieved strain for the radial gage (R ) is R 18.04 microstrain and for the tangential gage (T ) is 21.40 R microstrain. The total relieved strain (T ) from the four gages using a full bridge conguration is 78.88 microstrain. Thus, the theoretical calibration coefcient is 2.49.

EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES
Experiments were conducted on 100 200 500 mm size concrete specimens. Six specimens were studied for this purpose. On each specimen, at the center, 30-mm length strain gages were bonded as per the conguration described earlier (Fig. 6).

(4)

Unlike radial gages, the points along the tangential gages R are not lying on the same angle. Hence rR , R , r at each R , R , R , respectively, to get points are transformed to x y xy R the relieved stresses for tangential gages, where x is the R is the relieved stress in relieved stress in the X direction, y R the Y direction xy is the relieved shear stress in the XY direction. Using Eq. 4, the relieved strain along the tangential gage (X direction) is also calculated. Figure 5 shows the relieved strain distributions for the radial and tangential gage orientations for different gage distance along the symmetry axis. From the relieved strains, the strain for the 30 mm length gage was obtained by averaging the strain variation for the length of 30 mm at the exact gage location. The total relieved strain value is calculated by adding algebraically the strains from the four gages as the output of the Wheatstone bridge that is a combination of different strains. Cf is computed by

Fig. 6: Strain gage instrumented specimen for testing

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loading, the load and strain responses were measured to have the real applied strain to the column/prestressed concrete girders. After the application of load, all strain gages were combined and connected in the full bridge conguration as given in Fig. 4 and the bridge circuit was initialized. Now in the stressed specimen, a circular core of 50 mm diameter with 30 mm depth was formed by diamond core drilling and the relieved strain was measured. The relieved strains and the average applied strains for the six specimens are given in Table 1. It is seen that there is an enhancement of relieved strain. The calibration coefcient is calculated from the relieved strain and applied strain. Calibration coefcients are varying from 2.01 to 2.31 with an average of 2.14. The coefcient of variation is around 5.25%. The theoretical calibration coefcient (Cf ), calculated for the actual geometry and gage length is found to be 2.49, whereas the average calibration coefcient obtained from laboratory experiments is 2.14. This variation is due to the following: (1) the experiment is carried out with a circular core with partial cut compared to the theory for through hole, (2) a small eccentricity may be present while cutting the circular hole with symmetrically placed strain gages, though this error can be theoretically calculated. Using the concrete core-drilling technique, the in-situ stress or residual stress (R ) can be evaluated from the equation given below: R = Ec m Cf (5)

Fig. 7: Schematic diagram of experimental setup for existing strain measurement

where m is the total measured strain through the Wheatstone bridge, Cf is the calibration coefcient for the used gage size and conguration and Ec is the modulus of elasticity of concrete.

SUMMARY
For assessing the existing stresses in distressed reinforced concrete/prestressed concrete structures, the concrete coredrilling technique can be used. This core-drilling technique is a stress measurement technique in which a small core is drilled on the structure and the strain perturbations around the core are measured by instrumenting strain gages aligned in the same direction. Laboratory studies were conducted to evaluate the reliability of this concrete coredrilling technique. Calibration coefcients were evaluated experimentally for the used gage length, location, and conguration. Comparison was also made with coefcients evaluated theoretically. This technique is suitable for prestressed concrete girders where girders are prestressed in one direction (longitudinally). Also in reinforced concrete members like columns, compression zones of beams on the major bending axis (along the span) can be evaluated for their in-situ stresses. This concrete core-drilling technique can be used to determine the in-situ stress with enhanced sensitivity in in-service prestressed concrete structures.
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Fig. 8: Experimental setup for concrete core-drilling technique

A special test setup was designed and fabricated to apply axial compression to the specimen, by means of a hydraulic jack (Figs. 7 and 8). A strain gage data logger was used to measure the strain response. An axial compression was applied to the instrumented specimen by means of the hydraulic jack (Fig. 8). The load applied was measured through a 200 kN load cell. All four strain gages were connected to the strain gage data logger individually in a quarter bridge conguration. During

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Table 1Relieved strain and calibration coefcient for the tested specimen
APPLIED STRAIN (BEFORE CORE DRILLING) TOTAL RELIEVED STRAIN (m ) (AFTER CORE DRILLING) CALIBRATION COEFFICIENT Cf

APPLIED LOAD IN kN

STRESS IN N/mm2

Specimen 1 Specimen 2 Specimen 3 Specimen 4 Specimen 5 Specimen 6

30 60 70 80 80 90

1.47 2.94 3.43 3.92 3.92 4.41

47 89 98 97 93 112 Average Standard deviation Coefcient of variation

104 181 226 207 198 225

2.21 2.03 2.31 2.13 2.13 2.01 2.14 0.112 5.25%

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The encouragement and support provided by Dr N. Lakshmanan, Former Director, SERC is gratefully acknowledged. This paper is published with the permission of the Director, Structural Engineering Research Centre (SERC), CSIR, Chennai.

References
1. http://www.asce.org/les/pdf/reportcard/2005_Report_CardFull_Report.pdf. 2. Owens, A., Application of Residual Stress Techniques in the Determination of In-situ Load in Reinforced Bars, Experimental Techniques 12:2327 (1988). 3. Owens, A., In-situ Stress Determination Used in Structural Assessment of Concrete Structures, Strain 29:115124 (1993). 4. Owens, A., Begg, D.W., Gratton, D.N., and Devene, M.A., A New In-situ Stress Determination Technique for Concrete Bridges, Proceedings of the Centenary Year Conference on Bridge Assessment, Management and Design, Cardiff, Amsterdam, pp. 423428 (September 1994). 5. Mehrkar-Asl, S., Concrete Stress-Relief Coring: Theory and Application, Proceeding of FIP Symposium on Post-tensioned Concrete Structures London, UK, pp. 569576 (September 1996).

6. Ryall, M.J. The Measurement of In-situ Stresses in Concrete Bridge Decks Using an Instrumented Hard Inclusion Technique, Proceedings of the Centenary Year Conference on Bridge Assessment, Management and Design, Cardiff, Amsterdam, pp. 417422 (September 1994). 7. Abdunur, C. Direct Access to Stresses in Concrete and Masonry Bridges, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Bridge Management, University of Surrey, April 1993. 8. Parivallal, S., Kesavan, K., Ravisankar, K., Narayanan, T., and Narayanan, R., Assessment of Existing Prestress in Prestressed Concrete Structures. Proceedings of National Conference on Trends in Prestressed Concrete, Madras, pp. 101108 (June 2001). 9. Kesavan, K., Ravisankar, K., Parivallal, S., and Sreeshyalam, P. Technique to Assess the Residual Prestress in Prestressed Concrete Members, Experimental Techniques 29:3338 (2005). 10. Timoshenko, S.P., and Goodier, J.N., Theory of Elasticity, Tata McGraw Hill Book Company Limited, USA (1970). 11. Boresi, A.P., and Chong, K. P., Elasticity in Engineering Mechanics, Elsevier Science Publishing Co. Inc., New York (1987). 12. Dally, J.W., and Riley, W.F., Experimental Stress Analysis, McGraw Hill Book Company Limited, Kogakusha Co. Ltd, Japan (1991).

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