Rebar Replacement in Severely Damaged RC Bridge Column Plastic Hinges: Design Criteria and Experimental Investigation

This paper presents a procedure for rehabilitating plastic hinges with damaged/fractured weldable longitudinal rebars in severely damaged reinforced concrete (RC) bridge columns and possible improvements regarding connection protection and plastic hinge development. Damaged/fractured longitudinal rebars are replaced with new rebar segments, and the basis of this approach involves connecting intermediate machined parts to the original longitudinal rebars by welding with an off-the-shelf steel equal angle. The proposed rehabilitation design procedure is based on capacity design principles, with equations that define the new geometries and required ductility, and it is validated experimentally on three 1:6-scale RC circular column specimens. Compared with the original columns, the ductility capacity of the rehabilitated columns increased from 39% to 58%, and the energy dissipation (equivalent viscous damping ratio) increased from approximately 50% to 250%. The base shears of the rehabilitated columns were smaller than those of the original columns owing to the reduction in the rebar area; thus, shear failure was avoided, and the demand on the foundation was reduced. The rehabilitation procedure, by adopting a welding connection that is easily performed on site and concentrates the damage in the new rebar segments, promises to be a quick, simple, reliable, and effective means to improve the ductility and shear capacity of RC bridge columns without using mechanical couplers or changing the column dimensions.