ABSTRACT
The corbel installation is a recurrent necessity in bridges repair and extension projects, for example, to enable a pot bearing or elastomeric bearing change or creation of new bearings. Usual solution is the use of chemical adhesives for fastening the corbel reinforcement into the existing structure.
However, the post-installed corbels do not allow the usual reinforcement detail and specific analysis must be performed in order to maintain the safety requirements. The use of straight end bars fastened with adhesive anchors require an accurate analysis of the discontinuity region since is not possible apply the usual hooked bars. The fact of anchoring the corbel main tension reinforcement by adhesion makes necessity of a careful study of the anchorage zone. Besides that, the horizontal secondary reinforcement – which is extremely important to the corbel work – is anchored by adhesion as the main tension reinforcement and is not possible to apply the usual horizontal closed stirrups. Then, the efficiency of this reinforcement is reduced and special cares like increase of the reinforcement ratio may be needed.
The performance evaluation of the post-installed corbel can only be done by experimental basis, therefore, a real scale test was conducted at Universidade de São Carlos (Brazil). Furthermore, a control specimen, that is a cast-in corbel with the same reinforcement amount, was tested allowing the results comparison (crack pattern, load-deflection curves and resistance). https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315207681/cd556cd4-4dcf-4efe-8e29-56fc67b8bfbd/content/pg608_1.tif"/>
The post-installed corbels presented a satisfactory mechanical behavior with some differences from the cast-in corbel and can be considered as a viable alternative.
