Sustainable and Durable Design of Concrete Bridges in Cold Regions

Sustainable and durable infrastructure facilities, including bridges, require optimum use of all resources during all phases of the project with savings in energy and water consumption. These involve planning, design, construction, maintenance, operations, repair, rehabilitation, and finally decommissioning and disposal at the end of its service life. Design of a sustainable and durable bridge structure requires consideration of a few feasible alternatives to develop an optimum option to fulfill all of the relevant limit states, with the most optimum life-cycle performance and the lowest life-cycle costs. The current national standards emphasize quality control in the choice of materials, design and construction. However, they do not provide clear guidance to design and maintain a bridge structure for durability over its service life, and include only prescriptive tools for minimizing some deterioration modes. This research program integrates sustainability and durability requirements in the design of a conventional bridge structure in a cold climate country, subjected to the various mechanical, natural and man-made loads and an aggressive environment, considering the performance of the various materials and structural components over the design service life. The latest available models of the relevant deterioration modes have been incorporated in the life-cycle performance and design considerations. The basic procedure adopts a multiple protection strategy for all deterioration modes, resulting from the related aggressive actions, and integrates durability considerations with structural calculations for the final design, and defines maintenance strategies and supplementary protection techniques.