DAMAGE IN CONCRETE DUE TO FAULTY WORKMANSHIP

Bhanu Chandu Makineni

170040100

There will be many situations where the faulty workmanship may come into the picture. The defects
caused by it will be both structural and non-structural. Some of the defects caused by the faulty
workmanship are:

1. The Vibration and uniform compaction of the concrete mix after pouring into the formwork is much
needed, and this vibration spread should be all over the structure and also should be uniform.
Improper vibration may lead to future micro-cracks in beams, columns, and sometimes in concrete
walls as well.
This will also result in a poor distribution of concrete and results in air voids, crevices, and micro
cracks. Due to these defects’ chloride threshold value will decrease.
These voids may also weaken the layer of the cement hydration products formed at the concrete-
reinforcement interface, and so the bond strength between them will be reduced

2. Accurate code provisions (like usage of the mineral & chemical admixtures, proper mix design, etc.)
should be followed to arrive at the best quality of the concrete.
One example can be stated that the chloride diffusion coefficient will be reduced by three times by
using pozzolana in OPC.
The addition of the PFA and GGBS will also increase the resistivity of the concrete significantly
So, the structures which are designed by keeping these kinds of enhancements in mind will require
the same kind of skilled workmanship. Here, faulty workmanship will result in the performance of
the concrete quite undesirable or unexpected.

3. Improper position of the formwork during construction will results in uneven distribution of forces
in the concrete after hardening, which will eventually result in cracks. These cracks will expose the
reinforcement, in which case the corrosion will be enhanced.
Also, early formwork removal before the required time to the concrete structure to gain its
strength will result in permanent deflection and also sometimes results in severe cracks

Fig1: Improper placement of formwork

 4. When the usage of epoxy coated steel reinforcement: proper care should be taken while handling
them because a single fault at a junction will start the corrosion at that point and will spread all
over the bar from the point, which is even worse.

Fig2: corroded epoxy coated rebar

5. Now a day’s usage of stainless steel along with the black bars is becoming an economic practice,
which requires skilled workmanship. But the improper placement of the combined rebars may
result in macrocells formation (one type of rebars becoming cathode and other type becoming
anode) and causes corrosion.

In both points 5 and 6 directly, the effect of the faulty workmanship will be on the reinforcement by
this will eventually result in cracking of the concrete.

6. Sufficient curing procedures should be followed like frequent water splashing, hessian bags,
polythene covers, etc., which will help in the reduction of water loss. If we didn’t do proper curing,
it would result in weak concrete and quick development of the cracks. Also, curing should never be
done with saltwater even though it is abundant at some places

Some of the recommendations made to overcome these problems are:

• To bring in all the stakeholders to work as a team to achieve better results

• Contractors must follow the specifications provided by the designers to avoid faults in the concrete
• Quality management provisions should be implemented by the contractor such that we can have
assurance for some level of the concrete quality