Calibration of Concrete Bridge Condition Deterioration for Climate Change Impact Evaluation

Carbonation and chlorination are two major deterioration mechanisms that threaten the structural integrity and serviceability of reinforced concrete bridges. How the changing climate will affect the bridge deterioration and conditions in the long run is yet to be understood. Although Markov-based models are widely adopted in bridge condition deterioration modeling and asset management, these data-driven models are developed solely based on historically observed data (e.g., the NBI data) under the stationarity assumption and cannot robustly accommodate future climate changes. In this regard, this research aims at integrating mechanics-based deterioration modeling, which is physics-based and can better capture the environmental stressor variations, for bridge condition deterioration prediction under the changing climate. Specifically, material-level corrosion damage risks are first estimated by coupling mechanics-based deterioration models with climate data. The influence of existing concrete crack width on corrosion initiation and propagation is for the first time investigated in this context. Risk quantification is carried out via Monte-Carlo simulations by considering various sources of uncertainties. Finally, we established and calibrated the mapping from material-level corrosion damage risks to bridge component-level NBI ratings.