Types Of Concrete Cracks During Visual Inspections

Throughout visual inspection, sketches or maps or patterns play an important role to find out the type and reason of cracks usually formed in concrete structures.

It can also minimize the time and effort required to detect the causes for crack initiation. Given below, the details of several type of cracks found in visual inspections.

1. Cracks Caused By Earthquake
Cracks occur in both beams and columns because of seismic forces.

2. Cracks Owning To Bending and Shear Forces
Cracks occur in a beam because of bending moment (vertical cracks at the middle of the beam) and inclined or diagonal cracks adjacent to beam supports resulting from shear forces.

3. Cracks Caused By Column Settlement
Cracks occur owning to several settlement of columns at the top of the column that has been settled and at the top side of the slab adjacent to the column that does not encounter settlement.

4. Cracks Owing To Ground Condition Changes
Cracks occur because of low temperature as well as dryness.

5. Cracks Caused By Concrete Settling
The horizontal cracks are found in visual inspection of concrete structures due to concrete settling.

6. Cracks Caused By Sinking of Timbering
Crack pattern occurs due to the sinking of timbering. Therefore, inappropriate formwork results in developing such type of cracks in reinforced concrete element.

Also Read: Basic variations among expansion joints, construction joint and construction

7. Cracks Caused By Bowing of Formwork
The cracks occurs owing to the span of formwork that have bowed or deflected extremely.

8. Map of Cracks Caused by Abnormal Set of Cement
The pattern of cracks occurs because of uncommon set of cement.

9. Cracks Caused By Insufficient Reinforcements
The sketches of cracks which are formed because of insufficient reinforcement ratio. The cracks are formed along the span of the beam.

10. Cracks Caused By Atmospheric Conditions
The pattern of cracks found in structural wall because of atmospheric condition variations like high temperature or moisture.

11. Crack Pattern of Fire Effect
The cracks in reinforced concrete beams and columns happen because of fire exposure.

12. Cracks Owing to Freezing and Thawing Cycles
The Sketches of cracks occur because of freezing and thawing cycles.