International perspective: Extending the service lives of bridges

Abstract

Future demands for service-life performance of concrete bridges pose multidisciplinary challenges on the designer and the contractor to master structural, materials, construction, and maintenance properties. The growing demand for environmental awareness is an additional element of such designs. The demands for long service lives also reflect on the owner through new challenges regarding service-life-design basis and corresponding acceptance criteria. For segmental bridge construction, the drive toward reduced materials comsumption and self-weight has led to the adoption of more complex, high-performance materials and more sophisticated member geometries. This raises the demand for high-quality workmanship and execution competence, which is not always fully recognized and respected by owners and designers or the supervision teams. Hence, such high-performance materials can easily lead to low-performance structures. The challenge of providing factual service-life designs of 100 to 150 years or more can be achieved, and at times this is surprisingly easy. This new integrated approach identifies a new focus in our design procedures; an important change in design paradigm is needed. Such a changed design focus may lead to dramatically improved service-life performance and will greatly increase the competitiveness of structural concrete. This new perspective will also reflect on revised engineering university curricula.