The Christchurch Art Gallery, with the City Gallery Apartments in the background.
The demolition site of the Gallery Apartments building, situated behind the Christchurch Art Gallery.
The demolition site of the Gallery Apartments building, situated behind the Christchurch Art Gallery.
A view down Gloucester Street, with the Art Gallery Apartments in the background.
The demolition site of the Gallery Apartments building. A sign that reads, 'Road closed' has been placed in front of the security fencing.
A digger at the demolition site of the Gallery Apartments on Gloucester Street. A 'No entry' sign has been placed on the security fencing.
A digger at the demolition site of the Gallery Apartments on Gloucester Street. A 'No entry' sign has been placed on the security fencing.
A crane and a digger demolish the Gallery Apartments building on Gloucester Street. A sign that reads, 'Road closed' has been placed in front of the security fencing.
A major lesson from the 2011 Christchurch earthquake was the apparent lack of ductility of some lightly reinforced concrete (RC) wall structures. In particular, the structural behaviour of the critical wall in the Gallery Apartments building demonstrated that the inelastic deformation capacity of a structure, as well as potentially brittle failure of the reinforcement, is dependent on the level of bond deterioration between reinforcement and surrounding concrete that occurs under seismic loading. This paper presents the findings of an experimental study on bond behaviour between deformed reinforcing bars and the surrounding concrete. Bond strength and relative bond slip was evaluated using 75 pull-out tests under monotonic and cyclic loading. Variations of the experiments include the loading rate, loading history, concrete strength (25 to 70 MPa), concrete age, cover thickness, bar diameter (16 and 20 mm), embedded length, and the position of the embedded bond region within the specimen (deep within or close to free surface). Select test results are presented with inferred implications for RC structures.