Maintaining and repairing building stock has been a recurring need owing to the natural degradation of materials and

structure under the combined effects of loads and environmental factors. In the past, the practice was to replace old buildings that had deteriorated or that were no longer suited to their original purpose. More recently, the widespread deterioration of our infrastructure and the high cost of replacement give us no option but to repair and rehabilitate.

Rehabilitation of structures is a multi-disciplinary activity. The concerned engineer should know the design aspects, environmental factors, construction procedure, and about building materials. The rehabilitation of existing structures is a more complicated and sophisticated assignment than new construction.

Causes of Deterioration of Structures A structure becomes deteriorated for the following reasons:

Defective Construction:

If proper supervision and inspection are not carried out during the construction, the work will be defective. Such structures may show signs of deterioration in due course of time. The ageing and atmospheric effects will increase the degree of deterioration.

Defective materials:

If poor quality materials are used in the construction, deterioration can occur at a fast rate. Proper inspection and quality control of the materials is a must. Where required, materials that can withstand the effects of fire should be used.

Environmental factors:

The main environmental factors are atmospheric pollution, floods, and earthquakes. Industries in the surrounding areas may inject poisonous gases such as sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, which in turn may cause deterioration of the structures.

Design drawbacks:

If the design is not per the prescribed norms in tune with the site conditions, it may cause defects. For example in seismic zones, the additional force on account of the vibrations has to be taken into account. The Repair and Rehabilitation of structures include the following * Inspection methods, assessment, monitoring, maintenance of structures. * Concrete durability, fatigue issues in bridges, laboratory studies, dynamic testing & analysis * Seismic strengthening * General repairs The repair and rehabilitation methods involve the attachment of new materials to existing structures or applying protective coatings to the structures. Research in rehabilitation includes the prevention of corrosion of steel which is the most important structural member used in the construction. Research in design, behavior, and analysis of reinforced building and bridge construction includes studies in materials, components, and complete structural systems. Materials studies have included normal- and high-strength concretes; effects of material sagging and materials deterioration on component properties; bond between concrete and steel reinforcement, and use of headed reinforcement.

REPAIR AND REHABILITATION OF R.C.C. STRUCTURES Structure repair and rehabilitating is a process whereby an existing structure is enhanced to increase the probability that the structure will survive for a long period of time and also against earthquake forces. This can be accomplished through the addition of new structural elements, the strengthening of existing structural elements, and/or the addition of base isolators. Deterioration of concrete and corrosion of embedded reinforcement structure might make the R.C.C structure structurally deficient. Corrosion can be controlled to some extent by fixing of chloride or protective coating

(Powder coatings based on thermosetting epoxy, polyester or acrylic technology, are electro statically sprayed.) or cathodic protection. Once this has happened, two alternatives of fixing the problem are to replace the structure or to strengthen it. Economically, repair and strengthening are often the only viable solution. Different types of reinforcement require various demolition and surface preparation techniques. Typically, structural deterioration of reinforced concrete members can occur as surface scaling, spalling, cracking, corrosion of reinforcing steel, weathering, post-tension losses, deflection beam shortening, volume shrinkage and strength reduction. Moisture, chlorides, carbonation, and chemical attack induce these freeze thaw disintegration, and sulfate attack, erosion and alkali aggregate reaction. The rehabilitation measures includes epoxy mortar, epoxy bonding coat, epoxy grout, polymer based bonding slurry and mortar, jacketing of columns, shotcreting, epoxy grouting, cement grouting accordingly to the type of distress. The members load bearing capacity, structural shape and location greatly influence material placement techniques and material selection.

The techniques to achieve earthquake resistant design includes; adding base isolators, wrapping columns, strengthening footings, adding hinge restrainers, and increasing the width of supports at abutments so that the superstructure will not fall off the support. In repair and rehabilitation process good/sound concrete sharing the load should not be removed for any reason, as is being done today. The second principle of restoration of structurally distressed RCC members is to restore the building portion by portion.

SURFACE PREPARATION AND INTERFACIAL BOND FOR APPLICATION OF PATCH REPAIRS, SEALERS AND COATINGS INCONCRETE REPAIR The main purpose of surface preparation is to provide maximum coating adhesion and to increase the surface area by increasing the roughness of the surface. Achieving an adequate lasting bond between repair materials and existing concrete is a critical requirement for durable concrete

repair. Good surface preparation using proper concrete removal methods and workmanship is the key element in a long-lasting concrete repair technique.

1. GROUTING PROCESS: Grouting is the process of placing a material into cavities in concrete or masonry structures for the purpose increasing the load bearing capacity of a structure, restoring the monolithic nature of a structural member, filling voids around pre cast connections and steel base plates, providing fire stops, stopping leakages, placing adhesive sand soil stabilization.

2. GUNITING PROCESS: Guniting is an effective technique, which has been extensively used in the rehabilitation of structurally distressed RCC members. There have been cases of heavy rusting of the mesh in the form of powder or in the form of a sheet coming out. De-stressing before restoration is possible only in the case of overhead tanks which can be restored when the tanks are empty.

3. APPLICATION OF EPOXY RESINS TO STRENGTHEN THE STRUCTURAL MEMBER WITH EXTERNAL REINFORCEMENT In these methods of strengthening, an epoxy adhesive normally consisting of two components - a resin and a hardener is used to bond steel plates to overstressed regions of RCC members.

CONVENTIONAL STRENGTHENING METHODS: -

1) Section Enlargement/jacketing: In this method the entire height of the column section is increased and a cage of additional main reinforcement bars with shear stirrups is provided right from the foundation as per the requirement of additional load, etc.

2) Post tensioning: External pre stressing techniques have been employed with great success to correct excessive and undesirable deflections in existing structures. They have also been used to strengthen existing concrete structures to carry additional loads.

3) Bonded Steel Plates:The principle of the method is quite simple steel plates or other steel elements are glued to the concrete surface by a two-component epoxy adhesive creating a three-phase concrete glue steel composite system. The wide acceptance and at attractiveness is due to negligible changes to overall dimensions of the structure and minimum disruption to its use. Steel plates bonded to the tension face of concrete beams can lead to increase in flexural capacity, along with increase in flexural stiffness and associated decreases in deflection and cracking.

4) CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics) for repair and strengthening:

CFRP has high strength, lightweight, excellent strength to weight ratio, resistant to chemicals (acids and bases), good fatigue strength, and nonmagnetic, non-corrosive and nonconductive properties.

MATERIALS USED IN REPAIRS: -

1. Polymer modified concrete/cement mortar Polymer cement concrete, which is prepared by adding polymer or monomer to ordinary fresh cement concrete during mixing. This is based on first hand experiences of repair and restoration works of high rise buildings, bridges, marine installations and bomb-blast affected structures.

2. Fiber-Reinforced Plastics These materials that are used for cracks are applied over it like a patch, using high strength epoxy adhesive increasing their service life and fortify steel or concrete structures against earthquakes or other natural hazards.

3. Epoxy resins The epoxy resins are widely used in the repairing of cracks, patching and grouting of concrete, industrial flooring, structural adhesives, anticorrosive linings, etc. Various types of resins, hardeners and modified epoxy systems are commonly used in structures.

4. Polymer-based materials Polymer-based materials are being widely used in the building industry in various forms such as coatings, membranes, adhesives, sealants, etc because of their high durability.

5. High performance cement High performance cement is the cement along with new complex admixture. High performance cement based mortars possess low permeability, high resistance to chemical attack, thermal resistance, and excellent freezing and thawing resistance.

6. Fiber reinforced polymer tubes for pile/column Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) can be used for bridges to prevent corrosion. The FRP tube filled with concrete seems to be a good alternate to address this problem. The FRP tube can be engineered to provide sufficient confinement to filled concrete and to increase the capacity of the section in shear and compressive strength and also provide increased resistance to earthquake forces. 7. Epoxide resin latex and polymer-based latex The structural integrity of chemically deteriorated reinforced concrete beams is restored by repairing one set of beams by epoxide resin latex and another by polymer-based latex system. It is interesting to observe an increase in the load-carrying capacity and rigidity of the beams after repair and rehabilitation work of the structure. 8. Fiber-reinforced polymer

Fiber-reinforced polymers or FRP's are robust materials that are highly resistant to corrosive action, have a high strength to weight ratio and are well suited for assembly line

production into modular components that can be rapidly

erected.