Assessment and rehabilitation of existing steel structures

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The project is to develop rehabilitation, as well as assessment, technologies for aging, damaged, or strength deficient steel structures. Three distinct steel structures, concentrically braced steel frames, fatigue damaged steel structures, and buried steel pipelines, will be studied in the project. The following results are expected to be accomplished from the project. 1. Innovative gusset plate connection system will be developed as the energy dissipaters for seismically-deficient concentrically-braced steel structures. Both mechanical deformation enhancement details and high performance steel will be used in the gusset plate design to achieve the desired deformability. 2. A design method will be developed for using fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) patching to repair fatigue damaged steel structures. A modified S-N curve will be developed in the project to predict the fatigue life of FRP repaired steel elements. In addition, optimization of the FRP design will also be carried out to address the various design concerns. Finally, a feasibility study will also be carried out to study the effectiveness of the FRP repair on steel pipes with stress corrosion cracks. 3. A real-time structural monitoring system for buried pipelines in the Canadian North will be developed. The state-of-the-art knowledge on buried pipelines and the new technologies in structural health monitoring will be used in the system. The system will have capability in monitoring and detecting the pipe buckling and the low cycle fatigue failure of a buried pipe.