Abstract
The corrosion of reinforcement caused by chloride ingress significantly reduces the length of the service life of reinforced concrete bridges. Therefore, the condition of bridges is periodically inspected by specially trained engineers regarding the possible occurrence of reinforcement corrosion. Their main goal is to ensure that the structure can resist mechanical and environmental loads and offer a satisfactory level of safety and serviceability. In the course of assessment, measuring the chloride content, through which corrosion could be anticipated and prevented, presents a possible alternative to visual inspections and corrosion tests that can only indicate already existing corrosion. It is hard to determine the cost-effectiveness and actual value of chloride content measurements in a simple and straightforward way. Thus, the main aim of the paper was to study the value of newly gained information, which is obtained when a chloride content in reinforced concrete bridges is measured. This value was here analyzed through the pre-posterior analysis of the cost of measurement and repair, taking into account different types of exposure and material properties for a general case. The research focus was set on the initiation phase in which there are no visible damages. A relative comparison of costs is presented, where the cost of possible reactive/proactive repair was compared with the maximum cost of measurement, while the measurement is still cost effective. The analysis showed a high influence of the initial probability of depassivation on the maximum cost of the cost-effective measurement, as well as a nonreciprocal relation of the minimum cost of cost-effective reactive repair with the measurement accuracy.
Highlights
A predominant amount of roadway and railway bridges today consist of bridges erected using reinforced concrete
Driven by the described developments and enhancements in the knowledge pool, this paper aimed to present the use of pre-posterior analysis for determining the value of information (VoI)
Only the objective of enabling the structure to meet its intended service life was observed. This is because it is assumed that when a measurement is performed, only the information on the current chloride content is available, and an extrapolation of the process and forecasting future content was not taken into account
Summary
A predominant amount of roadway and railway bridges today consist of bridges erected using reinforced concrete. The main reasons for that can be traced to the boom in the building and reconstruction of infrastructure after the Second World War, as well as in the enhancement of concrete technology in the 20th century. When compared with other building materials, concrete is deemed as a durable material, evidence of its ageing can be found in infrastructure all over the world [1,2]. Chloride-induced corrosion is identified as one of main causes of reinforced concrete deterioration, especially in transportation infrastructure [3]. In 2002, the National Association of Corrosion Engineers.
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