Life-Cycle Residual Performance Assessment of Concrete Bridges Considering Spatial Variability of Corrosion

Abstract

A recent SEI/ASCE survey highlights that advanced life-cycle models for deteriorating structures are well established for some of the most detrimental damage processes (e.g. corrosion). However, reliability assessment procedures and deterioration models under uncertainties are generally sensitive to change of the probabilistic parameters of the input random variables, and their validation is a difficult task because of the limited availability of data. Moreover, several environmental phenomena are characterized by the occurrence of damage events at different spatial locations. The paper presents a computational approach to life-cycle residual performance assessment of bridges exposed to aggressive environment. Random fields are adopted to account the effects of spatial variability of steel corrosion. The proposed framework is applied to existing concrete bridges under corrosion. The material mechanical characteristics and the properties of the exposure scenario are calibrated through extensive experimental campaign.