A team of researchers from the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering and Qatar University has won a $779,000 grant based on shape memory alloy reinforcements for deteriorating reinforced-concrete structures such as bridges. The project is based on commercially available long pre-stretched SMA wires or rods that contract back to their original length when heated. The team will wrap these around concrete beams and columns and then heat them, causing them to contract. This contraction will confine the deteriorated concrete members, improving their strength and limiting future damage.
The investigators will study many variations of this approach, including using different amounts of SMAs and different ways to wrap the structural members. The team will also consider the different types of loading configurations that typically affect reinforced concrete beams and columns. They will also conduct a thorough lifecycle cost analysis of this approach to quantify the savings that can be achieved with this repair technique.
The three-year grant, from the Qatar National Research Fund, goes to a team led on the UH end by civil and environmental engineering assistant professor Mina Dawood. His UH collaborators are professor Abdeldjelil Belarbi and assistant professor Bora Gencturk, also from civil and environmental engineering. “To our knowledge, nobody has used this approach with these materials to extend the service life of corrosion-damaged concrete structures. We’ll see what kind of enhancement we get in performance and how that translates to lifecycle,” Prof. Dawood said.
