Oral Presentation Ninth International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering 2025

Life-cycle reliability assessment of RC bridges under corrosion considering uncertainties related to climate projections (111943)

SICONG XIE 1 , Fabio Biondini 1
  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

This paper presents an approach to numerical simulation of future weather variables considering uncertainties in climate projections for the assessment of climate change effects on life-cycle structural performance of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges under chloride-induced corrosion. The role of the different types of uncertainty related to climate projections is investigated. Cellular automata are employed to simulate the multi-mechanism transport processes of chloride, moisture, and heat to evaluate corrosion initiation and damage propagation. The proposed approach is applied to probabilistic life-cycle reliability analysis of a RC bridge pier cross-section under corrosion. The results show that climate change can accelerates the corrosion process and confirm the importance of incorporating the effects of a changing climate in diffusion and damage models for life-cycle design, assessment, maintenance and management of corroding RC bridges.