Probabilistic Assessment of Deteriorating Prestressed Concrete Box-Girder Bridges under Increased Vehicle Loads and Aggressive Environment
Publication: Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 25, Issue 6
Abstract
A probabilistic procedure for the assessment of the time-dependent reliability of existing prestressed concrete (PSC) box-girder bridges is presented. These bridges are subject to increased traffic loads and an aggressive environment, which result in structural deterioration such as cracking and corrosion. In this paper, a multiple-peak vehicle load model is proposed based on acquired traffic load data, which cannot be properly described by previous single-peak probability distributions. With the proposed vehicle load model, the maximal vehicle loads during the remaining life of bridges are obtained for evaluating the influence of the increase in traffic loads on bridge reliability. Time-dependent corrosion models are adopted to account for pitting corrosion because of chloride attack as well as uniform corrosion because of concrete carbonation. A degenerated shell element is used for accurate and efficient modeling of the PSC box-girder. Postcracking behaviors of reinforced concrete box-girders, simulated by using different crack models and elements, are compared with laboratory test results. To increase the efficiency of probabilistic analyses, an adaptive importance sampling method in conjunction with the truncated Latin hypercube sampling is used. Application of the proposed methodologies is demonstrated by a case study, in which the time-dependent reliabilities of a deteriorating PSC box-girder bridge are obtained.
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Acknowledgments
The writers would like to express their appreciation for the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants NNSFC50608017 and NNSFC50725828. The financial support from the Sustentation Fund for Young Teachers of Southeast University is gratefully acknowledged.
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Published In
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 25 • Issue 6 • December 2011
Pages: 564 - 576
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 17, 2010
Accepted: Aug 23, 2010
Published online: Sep 23, 2010
Published in print: Dec 1, 2011
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