Fatigue of reinforcing bars during hydro-demolition

Abstract

Reinforcing steel fractured during hydro-demolition of a reinforced concrete pier head due to low cycle flexural fatigue from vibration caused by impact of the high pressure water jet on the exposed length of the bars. Research into the fatigue performance of steel reinforcing steel tends to focus on the high cycle axial performance in reinforced concrete members and re-bending behaviour. However with the increasing use of hydro-demolition of concrete structures as part of remediation works care is required to ensure the steel reinforcement exposed to the high pressure jet of water is not going to suffer relatively low cycle flexural damage that may compromise the designed performance of the completed reinforced concrete structure. This paper describes the failure assessment, fatigue analysis, and metallographic examination that was undertaken. It was found that the rib to flank transition radius on the reinforcement steel was small enough to cause a significant stress concentration effect and was the location of fatigue crack growth. A relatively simple analysis using the maximum unrestrained cantilevered bar length and force exerted by the water jet was used to calculate the maximum expected bending moment. This was compared to the bending capacity at initiation of yielding at the rib flank transition accounting for stress concentration effects. This showed that the observed cyclic reversing ductile crack growth and fracture of the H25 bars was consistent with the loading applied. A method is proposed based on these observations to assess suitable limits for unrestrained bar lengths or maximum working offset of the water jet from the point of bar restraint when undertaking hydro-demolition work. The fatigue critical performance requirements of AS/NZS4671 500E bars are also therefore compared with those of BS4449:2005 and PN EN/ISO 15630-1:2011 for comparable 500C bars.