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Service life of concrete structures
The growing interest in ensuring greater durability in new designs, or upgrading existing reinforced concrete structures to fulfil new demands of society together with the growth and ageing of the stock of existing structures has led to an increasing demand for an accurate assessment of service life.
Structures must comply with serviceability and structural safety requirements to a suitable level of reliability, not only during the design stage but also during their intended service life. Since physical, chemical and biological agents able to induce structural deterioration act simultaneously with mechanical forces, all actions and effects, including durability-related effects, need to be considered in a consistent way.
Design approaches aim generally for avoidance of deterioration. For that purpose, realistic models describing the processes of deterioration with enough accuracy are needed. The uncertainties of those models need to be validated against realistic conditions together with appropriated limit states in order to provide an accurate service life assessment.
You will find a competent partner with RISE as we have unique facilities for research and we are also active members, among others, of the International federation for structural concrete (fib) in Commission 3 “Existing concrete structures” and CEN/TC 250/WG 2 "Assessment and Retrofitting of Existing Structures”
We can provide guidance for the assessment of service life of new types of concretes and concrete structures. Feel free to contact us if you are interested in the assessment of service life.
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References:
Fib bulletin nº 80: Partial Factor Methods for Existing Concrete Structures. ISBN 978-2-88394-120-5, December 2016
Fib bulletin nº 34: Model Code for service life design. ISBN 978-2-88394-074-1, February 2006
Prieto M., Tanner P., Andrade C., “Multiple linear regression model for the assessment of bond strength in corroded and non-corroded steel bars in structural concrete”
Andrade C., Prieto M., Tanner P., Tavares F., D’Andrea R., “Testing and modelling chloride penetration into concrete”. Construction and Building Materials, pp. 9-18, Vol. 39, Feb. 2013
Sykora M, Krejsa J, Mlcoch J, Prieto M, Tanner P. “Uncertainty in shear resistance models of reinforced concrete beams according to fib MC2010”; In: Structural Concrete 2018: 1-12
