Repair of Reinforced Concrete Bridge Columns Containing Buckled and Fractured Reinforcement by Plastic Hinge Relocation

This paper describes a new repair technique that involves the use of plastic hinge relocation to restore strength and deformation capacity of RC bridge columns. Summarized is the overall repair concept and experimental results that include the reversed cyclic testing of three large-scale bridge columns that were previously damaged, repaired using the proposed methodology, and then subsequently retested. To date, two different repair alternatives were executed using unidirectional carbon fiber sheets in the hoop and longitudinal directions, the latter anchored into the RC footing with 30-mm-diameter carbon fiber anchors. A method for predicting the force-displacement responses of columns repaired in this manner was also developed and found to give reasonable results. Also included in this paper are design considerations, which are carried out in the steps needed to design a repair system to relocate the plastic hinge in a column containing buckled longitudinal reinforcement. The responses show that the proposed hinge relocation technique is able to restore the lost strength and displacement capacity of damaged RC columns. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.