engleski

The most common causes for faster deterioration of bridges

During past ten years a condition survey of reinforcement concrete bridges in Croatia has been frequently undertaken due to the fact that durability, bearing capacity and stability of structures was impaired what led to a reduced traffic safety. During these condition surveys, which are performed to establish current state of a structure, structural elements and built-in materials, it is often established that deteriorations that have taken place are much more extensive than it would be expected. According to the authors experience reasons for this are the following: wrong design solutions and construction details, use of wrong or poor quality materials and faults during construction period. These mistakes can be and often are a cause why structures and their constituent elements have exponential growth curve of degradation and deterioration processes during exploitation period according to conditions they are exposed to. This paper will present some of the most commonly found reasons why structures deteriorate much faster and why degradations are more extensive and severe on a number of examples and case studies that have been inspected in the last decade. Bridges and overpasses presented on a number of case studies, divided in groups according to type of structure most commonly found in continental part of Croatia: monolithic, two types of overpasses with prefabricated girders containing circular shaped voids, bridges with a deck slab placed on a grid like structure made of longitudinal and lateral girders and bridges with deck slabs alleviated by containing circular shaped voids. Also some commonly found mistakes regardless of structural system and problems due to lack of maintenance will be analyzed.

bridge; overpass; deterioration; reinforced concrete

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