Experimental assessment of concrete compressive strength in old existing RC buildings: a possible way to reduce the dispersion of DT results

Reliable appraisal of the in situ compressive strength is a key challenge in the seismic assessment of existing RC structures, due to its high variability throughout them and because it often represents the most important strength parameter adopted in the structural analyses. For this reason, in this paper a procedure to obtain a more accurate concrete strength characterization is proposed and applied to several case studies. The method provides a reduction of test results’ variability by taking into account the influence of casting operations on it and may support existing codes for a correct in-place concrete strength evaluation.