Bridge Strengthening with Advanced Composites: A Holistic Design Model for Sustainable Service Life

The civil engineering area is faced with two major challenges: i) an infrastructure crisis, related to many factors ranging from environmental disasters to rapid material/structural deterioration and destruction by the forces of nature; and ii) a sustainability problem risen from the massive, indiscriminate and wasteful consumption of the world’s material and energy resources. Because both issues have tremendous implications to the construction industry, whose applications involve rehabilitation and regeneration of the infrastructure activities as well as consumption of materials, energy and planet’s resources, further unredeemable environmental degradation can only be prevented by sustainable development of the construction industry. Therefore, there is need for a cost-effective, durable and eco-friendly construction strategy that will meet the global need of infrastructure efficiency. The focus of this paper is to show that a global holistic/design strategy that integrates material properties with those factors that produce durable in-situ structural performance and preserve structural integrity can lead to the development of innovative strengthening techniques for a range of applications in infrastructure rehabilitation and regeneration, as for the concrete bridge systems. The paper presents a new philosophy of design for plate bonded reinforced concrete (RC) beams and slabs, based on a holistic approach, in which appropriate strategies for a long life performance of strengthening existing structures are described.