A detailed forensic examination is required to understand the failure mechanism in order to: detail methods of repair, understand the consequences of the failure, or ultimately, to be able to define culpability and Matter Laboratory is well equipped to perform. Forensic investigations of structures and a typical forensic investigation includes performing the following tests and activities.
- Initial desk study
- Visual site inspection to assess the failure mode
- Structural load tests
- Concrete coring & testing for compressive strength
- Concrete covermeter survey
- Rebound (Schmidt) Hammer Survey
- Half Cell Potential Survey
- Electrical Resistivity Survey
- Powder sampling and determination of Chloride ingression profile
- Depth of Carbonation test
- Delamination Survey
- Foundation exposure & inspection
- Small concrete break-outs as a window exposure for inspection of rebars
- Sulphate content analysis of concrete
- Pull-off testing
- Pull-out testing
- Crack mapping & determination of crack dimensions
- Crack width development monitoring
- GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar) survey
- Recommendations