Guideline for Maintenance of Railway Concrete Structures

Abstract

Since Japanese railway was firstly laid in 1872, railway network has been highly developed and many railway structures have been constructed. Especially, a large amount of railway structures in such as Shinkansen lines, metropolitan railway lines has been put in place in 1970s corresponded to high economic growth period in Japan. To keep the train service functions in the good state, structural performance and durability are required to maintain in a certain level for long years. To realize this, much R&D concerning nondestructive test, diagnosis, repair and strengthening has been conducted, nevertheless the guideline for maintenance of railway structures such as viaducts, bridges, tunnels, embankment and cutting ground has not been published. Based on the above circumstances, Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) has proposed the maintenance guideline for railway structures. In this maintenance guideline, the performance-verification system has been adopted. As structural performance, safety performance in addition to serviceability and restorability is verified. In this paper, the gist of the maintenance guideline for concrete structures is described.