Impact assessment of climate change and bridge importance on the inspection/maintenance schedule of corroded bridges through probabilistic tools
摘要
Climate change imposes big challenges to protect infrastructure; some of them are the recent increments on wind load and the acceleration of the corrosion process on the bridge structure. These effects increase the bridge vulnerability and the time required to maintain the bridges may be reduced; in addition, important bridges require a further reduction. Aleatory uncertainty is considered for the concrete strength, live load, wind velocity and the mean corrosion rate. As the corrosion rate not always is fully characterized in all places, a model variability is included in its mean value. This variability, the epistemic uncertainty, is measured by assigning a coefficient of variation to the mean value of the corrosion rate. As a consequence of the corrosion progress, the resisting moment is reduced and the bridge failure probability grows. For every year after construction, the bridge failure probability is calculated by applying Monte Carlo techniques and then, this probability is compared to the target probability. The maintenance time is the time when the bridge probability matches the target probability. Results show that, for a less known corrosion rate, or for harsher scenarios of climate change or for higher importance levels on the bridge, the inspection/maintenance times become shorter.