Monitoring of an innovative concrete parking garage reinforced with GFRP composite bars

The Laurier-Taché parking garage, located in the Hull section of the city of Gatineau, Quebec, is one of the largest Public Works and Government Services Canada's (PWGSC) parking garages in Canada. The structural slabs of this parking structure suffered from severe steel reinforcement corrosion and concrete deterioration that required full replacement of these slabs. As part of PWGSC's efforts to identify and assess technologies that have the potential to improve the durability of structures in harsh environments, an agreement between PWGSC and the NSERC Research Chair at the University of Sherbrooke was reached to use GFRP reinforcement in twelve slabs (area ≈ 1000 m²) of the Laurier-Taché parking garage. To monitor the behavior of these slabs, they were instrumented at critical locations for internal temperature and strain data collection using fiber optic sensors (FOS). In addition, a 16-channel data acquisition system (DMI data logger unit) for remote and long-term monitoring was installed on site. The strain readings were collected from the DMI unit using a remote monitoring technique. This paper summarizes field instrumentation and monitoring results during the first two years following the completion of construction. It also includes the analysis of the collected data from the FOS to date and a comparison of the measured strains to those theoretically predicted. Based on the work described in this paper, some concluding remarks are introduced.