RELIABILITY OF DETERIORATING RC SLAB BRIDGES

Reinforced concrete (RC) bridges deteriorate with time. This results i n reduction of their resistance, and, consequently, of their reliabili ty. Corrosion of embedded reinforcing steel is one of the main causes of deterioration. The paper presents a method for reliability assessme nt of RC slab bridges with corroded reinforcement. The method includes a traffic load model, a corrosion model, and a nonlinear finite eleme nt structural model. Two types of corrosion-general corrosion, includi ng spalling and debond between concrete and the corroded reinforcement , and localized corrosion - are considered. Reliability is estimated i n terms of the reliability index using the first-order reliability met hod, Uncertainties associated with material properties, geometry, load s, and corrosion parameters are taken into account. A sensitivity anal ysis of a simple span bridge is carried out to examine the influence o f these uncertainties on the bridge reliability. Reliability assessmen t of a deteriorated three-span continuous bridge illustrates the appli cation of the method.