Assessment of the concrete strength in existing buildings using a finite population approach

•A new method to assess concrete strength in existing building is presented.•The method disaggregates the concrete variability into finite populations.•The CoV of the concrete strength is evaluated using the CoV of rebound hammer tests.•The method controls the uncertainty in the estimate of concrete strength variability.•The method controls the uncertainty in the estimate of the mean concrete strength.

A framework is defined to evaluate the concrete compressive strength in existing buildings and control the uncertainty associated to the survey planning and to the concrete strength randomness. The framework proposes the discretization and disaggregation of the concrete strength in a building into finite populations of elements. Finite population statistics are used to correlate the number of tests performed in each population with the uncertainty about the mean and the coefficient of variation (CoV) of the concrete strength. A method to estimate the CoV of the concrete strength using the CoV of rebound hammer test results is also proposed to overcome the need for a high number of destructive tests. Results show that the proposed approach effectively controls the uncertainty in the estimate of the variability of the concrete strength in a population as well as the uncertainty in the estimate of the mean value of the concrete strength.