Structural Investigations for the Refurbishment Project of the Municipal Building of Gjakova

. This paper presents the structural investigations performed on the existing municipal building of Gjakova, intended to be refurbished as part of the Refurbishment project by the European Commission. The municipal building of Gjakova built in the end of 1960s is a reinforced concrete structure with bearing masonry walls which are scattered without any logical pattern. This structural system presents a difficult approach for the seismic assessment of this building. To obtain the confidence factors and the mechanical parameters for the appropriate numerical modeling, a series of structural investigations is carried out in detail. Initially a visual inspection is conducted, and a photographic survey is carried out with a detailed marking of each picture to visualize the building and plan the detailed inspection. The detailed plan is organized according to the gathered information and the existing documentation, so that maximal information about the structure is acquired with the minimal possible intrusiveness. The detailed inspection is accomplished in a series of frequent site visits and through the help of the measurement techniques a precise geometry is formed which supports the following phases. To obtain the correct mechanical parameters with very few damages to the structural elements a combination of destructive and non- destructive methods is utilized. Reinforced concrete core samples and reinforcement samples are drilled from the structural elements and combined with the rebound hammer measurements, a correlation is formed between these two. The reinforcement is located with the help of the profoscope and a discrepancy between the old drawings and the actual structure is noted. Afterwards, a spreadout testing utilizing the rebound hammer and the profoscope is carried out to achieve the required number of measurements. A compilation of all this information is utilized to assess the structural integrity of the structure and obtain the mechanical parameters. A qualitative measurement is performed for the structural arrangement of the elements and the regularity parameters are assessed as per the Eurocode 8 demands. With the data obtained from the measurements and the testing, reliable mechanical parameters and confidence factors are achieved to form a numerical model which represents appropriately the real building.