Parking Garage Inspection

Corrosion Mapping of Embedded Steel in the floor slab

This project involved assessing the condition of reinforcement steel in the floor slab of a parking garage in Toronto, Ontario, using the iCAMM inspection tool. The most interesting aspect of the project was that the slab was covered by both a thin asphaltic traffic coating and a waterproofing membrane. The presence of coatings and other material layers poses a significant challenge for conventional NDT methods (e.g., the half-cell test), however, because the operation of the iCAMM inspection tool is not impacted by surface coverings (e.g., paint, coatings, membranes, insulation, etc.), the condition of the embedded rebar could be assessed directly from the top of the floor slab.

The data collected by the iCAMM tool were used to determine the rebar cross-section loss in the inspected area. The results were well correlated with visual observations of cracking and swelling evident on the surface of the floor slab. However, slight discrepancies were also observed as expected, because the presence or the absence of exterior signs on the concrete or asphalt surface cannot always be considered as a certain representation of the actual condition of the embedded steel reinforcement.