Failure analysis of prestressed anchor bars

► Fracture analysis of prestressed anchor bars used for sewing a crack in a damaged dam. ► Damage tolerance assessment of prestressing bars. ► Recommendations to the designers to avoid similar incidents. Three broken steel bars from a sewed crack in a dam are reported. The inspection of the fracture surfaces of the prestressed bars suggests that fractures were triggered by small cracks and by the inherent brittleness of the bars, as fracture toughness was about 40MPam1/2. The analysis of the failures shows that the usual design requirements for prestressing bars fail to warn against brittle failures if some damage exists. Some recommendations, based on the concept of damage tolerance, are suggested to avoid similar unfortunate incidents.