Bridge rehabilitation under advanced management and non-traditional structural approaches

Abstract EN

The high capital investment in bridge construction, the use of high-technology construction methods, combined with the increasing need for expanding the service life of bridges and a better considerate of the deterioration / corrosion mechanisms in concrete, has led to efforts to develop rational tactics for bridge maintenance against severe environmental and loading conditions.

In this paper, the subject of rehabilitation of concrete bridges has been treated at the aim to attain some consistent interpretations that may be constructive in our appraisal of reliability and to endeavor an assessment of the level of reliability of bridges in Egypt as well.

A simple formulation of a tolerable risk level will be attempted, approximate frequency and potential reasons for bridge collapse shall be provided.

The purpose is rather to give an understanding of how the concept of safety is phrased and to discuss the level of reliability required for our bridges.

The research introduces sophisticated structural analysis implementing finite element method and an advanced constitutive model of concrete as combination of smeared cracking model and biaxial fit modifying uni-axial Drucker-Prager plastic model.

The paper illustrates the testing program of a deteriorated concrete bridge that suffered serious deterioration due to bad concrete material, lack of appropriate maintenance and service loads that exceeded the designed values.

It involves the application of the suggested numerical analysis to assess the structural behavior of the bridge under both the designed loading and the current service loading as well.

Moreover, the paper underlines the various rehabilitation processes and the large-scale repair as a practical model for applying the recommended study under the umbrella of reliability requirements.