From Visuals to Data: Modern Inspection & Assessment | Parking Structure Durability Series | Part 1

Your concrete parking structure is showing signs of deterioration, you know you need to address the damage, but where do you start?

Effective durability planning requires moving beyond surface-level observations to quantitative evaluation of corrosion risk. Modern assessment integrates visual inspection with a suite of destructive and non-destructive testing methods to characterize the severity, extent, and mechanisms of reinforcement corrosion. While no individual technique can capture the full picture, combining complementary methods provides a robust framework for understanding concrete health.

This session examines the range of available tools, from traditional field observations to advanced data-driven testing and demonstrates how their integration supports informed decision-making and long-term service life management of parking facilities.





Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
3:24 Presentation Start
4:09 Corrosion Energetics
11:50 Evaluation Techniques
12:13 Visual Inspection
13:14 Hammer Sounding and Chain Drag
14:28 Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)
19:22 Concrete Resistivity
20:35 Impact Echo Pulse Velocity (IE/PV)
25:53 Corrosion Potential Survey/ Half-Cell Potential (HCP)
30:54 Chloride Concentration
34:54 Carbonation Depth
36:50 Section Loss
37:34 Concrete Deterioration
39:34 Petrographic Examination
40:36 Ultrasonic Thickness
42:38 Question Period Starts
42:56 How do corrosion inhibitors in the concrete mix impact the corrosion cell?
44:24 Which concrete additives help create a strong passivation layer?
45:34 How is concrete's resistivity related to the resistance to corrosion?
47:00 Is ground penetrating radar able to test for corrosion activity on rebar?
48:12 If you have a high alkaline concrete will you still get the formation of a passivation layer even if the steel begins to rust before concrete placement?
49:27 How can you use IE/PV to collect data about a concrete structure with many unknowns?
50:48 How much calibration needs to be done prior to ensure accurate data from the Impact Echo Pulse Velocity tests?
51:52 When doing visual inspection, what signals indicate to you where a concrete structure is at in its lifecycle?
54:02 Do these non-destructive testing methods help to determine the diameter change in rebar?
54:52 What methods are there for doing testing on un-bonded PT strands?
56:31 what do you do with chlorides that have already penetrated your concrete?
58:46 How would you conduct a corrosion potential survey over a large area?
59:59 How do you fine-tune your HCP maps when there may be several sources of inputs?
1:01:42 How many openings do you need to read a large rebar mat when doing corrosion potential survey tests?
1:03:15 How much time would a corrosion potential survey take on a large parking garage?
1:06:36 Outro