Effect of cumulative seismic damage on life-cycle cost of reinforced concrete bridges

This paper presents a probabilistic approach to compute the life-cycle cost of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges in earthquake prone regions. The approach is based on low-cycle fatigue theory of damage accumulation. The proposed methodology accounts for the uncertainties in the ground motion parameters, the distance from source and the seismic demand on the bridge. The statistics of the accumulated damage and the cost of repairs throughout the bridge life-cycle are obtained by Monte-Carlo simulation. As an illustration, the effect of design parameters on the life-cycle cost of an example RC bridge is studied. The results show to be valuable in better estimating the condition of existing bridges and, therefore, can help schedule inspection and maintenance programs. In addition, by taking into consideration the deterioration process over a bridge life-cycle, it is possible to make an estimate of the optimum design parameters by minimizing, for example, the expected cost throughout the life of the structure.