Practical Application of Life-Cycle-Cost Effective Design and Rehabilitation of Bridges

Abstract

Recently, the demand on the practical application of life-cycle cost effective design and rehabilitation of bridges is rapidly growing in civil engineering practice. However, in spite of impressive progress in the researches on the Life-Cycle Cost (LCC), the most researches have only focused on the theoretical point but did not fully incorporate the critical issues for the practical implementation. Thus, this paper is intended to suggest a systemic integrated approach to the practical application of various LCC methodologies for the design and rehabilitation of bridges. For that purpose, hierarchical definitions of LCC models are presented to categorize the approach of LCC assessment applicable for the practical implementation. And then, an integrated LCC system model is introduced with an emphasis on data uncertainty assessment and user-friendly knowledge-based database for its successful implementation. Finally, in order to demonstrate the LCC effectiveness for design and rehabilitation of real bridge structures, illustrative examples are discussed