Civil engineers develop a computational modeling strategy to help plan effective repairs to damaged reinforced concrete columns.

These repairs usually involve replacing loose concrete and fractured steel bars and adding extra materials around the damaged area to further strengthen it against future loads.

Engineers at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Texas A&M University have developed an innovative computational modeling strategy to make planning these repairs more effective.

The study by Rice postdoctoral research associate Mohammad Salehi and civil and environmental engineers Reginald DesRoches of Rice and Petros Sideris of Texas A&M appears in the journal Engineering Structures. DesRoches is also the current provost and the incoming president of Rice.

«When we design bridges and other structures for earthquakes, the goal is collapse prevention,» DesRoches said. «But particularly in larger earthquakes, we fully expect them to be damaged. In this study, we show analytically that those damages can be repaired in a way that the original, or close to the original, performance can be achieved.»

Their models simulate how columns are likely to respond globally (in terms of base shear and lateral displacement) and locally (with stress and strain) in future earthquakes when using various repair methods.

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Materials provided by Rice University. Original written by Mike Williams. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.