From Cracks to Resilience: An Integrated Rehabilitation Method and Performance-Based Retrofitting of Reinforced Concrete Structures
Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: The majority of conventional rehabilitation practices are still prescriptive, reactive, and often unrelated to quantitative on-site performance indicators. This chapter presents a coherent, performance-based rehabilitation approach to further the interconnected imperatives of sustainability, resilience, and lifecycle cost-effectiveness. This paradigm, called From Cracks to Resilience, combines advanced multiphysics computer modeling, data-driven decision-making, and experimental insights from material science into a cohesive approach. Its foundation is a thorough, condition-informed sectional analysis supported by extensive field observations and a variety of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and structural health monitoring (SHM) methods, such as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, fiber-optic strain sensing, penetrating radar, and ultrasonic pulse velocity. These methods make it possible to quantitatively characterize deterioration mechanisms such as fatigue, alkali–silica reaction, carbonation, chloride intrusion, corrosion-induced cracking, and freeze–thaw damage. Beyond diagnostic evaluation, the framework rationally guides the choice, development, and improvement of sophisticated repair and retrofitting methods. These include near-surface mounted (NSM) reinforcement, steel jacketing, engineered cementitious composite (ECC) overlays, externally bonded carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates, and electrochemical rehabilitation techniques. These changes are assessed using a multicriteria lens that takes into account not only increasing structural reliability and extending service life, but also lowering embodied carbon, improving constructability, and optimizing lifecycle costs holistically. As a result, the suggested method enables true performance-based retrofitting, allowing interventions to be carefully customized to a structure’s particular material state, distinct risk profile, and functional requirements. This goes beyond the constraints of prescriptive, code-minimum compliance and promotes a new paradigm of resilient and sustainable infrastructure stewardship.
Source: IntechOpen eBooks
Authors: Ali Biglarifadafan, Su-Gwang Jeong
Language: English
Subfield: Building and Construction
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7172451237