Concrete Repair to EN 1504: Diagnosis, Design, Principles and Practice
Protection and repair of concrete structures has become an important market. As an example the costs for the maintenance of bridges are higher than 1 billion per year. The total costs for maintenance of all types of buildings can be assumed to be higher than about 20 billion per year. A significant part of this costs are spent on repair and protection of concrete structures. On the contrary to the amount of work spent on building new structures, the market of repair and protection has grown considerably as the age of the existing infrastructure is increasing. The extensive development of new methods and materials for the repair and protection of concrete structures has led to the need of standards for such works and products. Table 1 shows the structure of the new EN 1504, consisting of 10 main standards and 61 standards for test methods. As shown in table 1 the series of standards is focused on parts 2 to 7, which are the basis for CE marking of the different products and systems to be used for protection and repair of concrete structures. However, part 9 of EN 1504 is not less important, describing the principles for the use of the products, which are explained in the following sections. Part 1 gives definitions, part 8 regulates the quality control of the products and part 10 gives a general guideline for site application and quality control of the works. To allow CE marking of the products 61 standards describing test methods for the different properties of the products have been published. These standards ensure that testing of the products are according to the same standards for all products for protection and repair of concrete structures used in Europe.