Project Number: ABT6203
Road infrastructure such as roads, bridges, tunnels and culverts are built to last several decades. However, during their service lives, progressive deterioration and sudden damage can occur due to changes in load patterns, environmental effects and random events such as impacts. For example, increases and changes in traffic loads can accelerate the deterioration of ageing bridges resulting in structural failure and causing economic loss and interruption to traffic.
Recent accidents have raised concerns about the lack of effective condition assessment of structures. For instance, the FIU pedestrian bridge in Miami, USA collapsed a few days after it was installed in March 2018, which killed six people and injured 10 others. More recently, in August 2018, the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy killed at least 42 people and injured 14 others.
Existing infrastructure in Australia will be mostly used in the next 15 years (and indeed the next 50 years), but this infrastructure will require substantial additional funding for maintenance, renewal and upgrade as population and usage grows. Despite this reality, it has been reported that the sections of our infrastructure asset base are already in poor or declining condition.
The retrofit and reconstruction of failed infrastructure involve large costs for infrastructure owners. It is reported that Australian bridges built decades ago are subject to an additional load of about 5.6% annually. The annual maintenance expense for 33,500 bridges in Australia is around $100 million and the replacement cost of faulty bridges could run to billions of dollars.
Proposed outputs: Guide or update to Guide
Consultants: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (MELBOURNE)
Program: Transport Infrastructure [Bridge ]
Status: Complete