Forensic engineering of fire damaged concrete structures – a review–

Abstract

Malaysia has put numerous efforts in producing standards and guidelines for firefighting systems in building. However, with rising statistics of fire incidents in Malaysia, developing the standards and guidelines on forensic engineering for fire damaged concrete structures is a pure challenge. Since the durability of fire damaged concrete depends on many factors including the types of concrete materials used and the thermal actions, a performance-based method should be considerably adopted besides prescriptive method that are currently being used. To overcome this, an attempt has been made to study and review papers on the durability of concrete structures damaged by fire according to the performance-based method, the assessment and its’ rehabilitation. Few methods of assessment and investigation have been discussed briefly in this paper such as non-destructive test like Hammer Test, UPV and Core Test.Various of fire-damaged building rehabilitation method had been implemented in the industry however FRP plates stands out among them. Reviews on the behavior of fire damaged concrete structure repair with FRP composite plate and new improvement in fire resistance of FRP composite materials will be conducted. Other than that, a new composite material, TRM composite for fire damaged concrete strengthening and a chemical treatment method, realkalisation method for restoring fire damaged concrete strength are also discussed. Therefore, the understanding in this field is useful in evaluating and improving the building structural integrity of fire damaged concrete structures to ensure the rectified structure could fulfill the initial function and restore the original mechanical properties.