Approach for the life-cycle management of structures including durability analysis, SHM and maintenance planning

Abstract

A tailor-made model was developed, which utilizes state-of-the-art information from literature as well as VCE's experience gained in the course of performing bridge monitoring and bridge inspection worldwide. Probabilistic methods are used for the service life calculations of the whole structure as well as for individual structural members. The reason is to cover occurring uncertainties which have to be also implemented into the established maintenance plan in terms of lower & upper bounds of life expectancy. The starting point of the bridge's service life - in terms of the safety level - is according to the initial over design and depends on the applied design code and certain safety considerations in the course of the static calculations. This paper presents a custom model developed for service life prediction of bridge structures based on the state-of-the-art information from the literature and VCE's worldwide experience in bridge monitoring and inspection. The developed model was implemented in an urban highway extension project with more than 100 existing and new bridges. © RILEM 2013.