I-SonReb: an improved NDT method to evaluate the in situ strength of carbonated concrete.

Concrete strength evaluatedin situby means of the conventional SonReb method can be highly overestimated in presence of carbonation. This latter, in fact, is responsible for the physical and chemical alteration of the outer layer of concrete. As most of the existing concrete structures are subjected to carbonation, it is of high importance to overcome this problem. In this paper, an Improved SonReb method (I-SonReb) for carbonated concretes is proposed. It relies on the definition of a correction coefficient of the measured Rebound index as a function of the carbonated concrete cover thickness, an additional parameter to be measured duringin situtesting campaigns. The usefulness of the method has been validated showing the improvement in the accuracy of concrete strength estimation from two sets of NDT experimental data collected from investigations on real structures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]