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Road Bridges - New Rehabilitation Materials and Technologies - Technical Report

Every country around the world need to manage and to rehabilitate his bridge stock. The latter may be old (for example about 60 years or more in Europe) or very young (about 15 years for example in new high-income countries but not only). Therefore, the needs for rehabilitation of an aging bridge stock may be different from one country to the other.
The aging of bridges is one of the main cause of rehabilitation, but not only. Extreme events related or not to climate change are also an important trigger for rehabilitation. And finally, bridge owner may also need to adapt existing bridges to increase it service level (number of lanes, load capacity,…).
Often bridges are unique items and therefore their rehabilitation/degradation are specific. Nevertheless, it is necessary and essential to exchange between bridge experts on good repair practices and especially on innovative techniques.
The aim of this report is to collect and present 41 cases studies including bridge problems and the rehabilitation/retrofitting methods that were selected to solve them. The description of those case studies is included in this report. A synthesis table of those case studies is provided. In order to help the reader to find quickly the information which is being looked for, a sorting of thoses case studies is also established regarding either the problem or rehabilitation categories.
Three trends are identified based on the investigation:

  • 25 % of the case studies are related to Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP)/Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP)
  • 25 % of the case studies are related to Ultra High Performance Fiber-reinforced Concrete (UHPFC)
  • 50 % of the cases are other methods

Fiber reinforced polymer and ultra high performance fiber-reinforced concrete are interesting techniques which can be used for a broad range of application but which are still not used widely by contractors.
The authors hope that this report will be a source of inspiration for all future bridge rehabilitation projects of the reader.

Information sheet

  • Date: 2022
  • Author(s): Comité technique / Technical Committee / Comité Técnico 2020-2023 4.2 Ponts / Bridges / Puentes
  • Domain(s): Road Bridges
  • Type: Technical Report
  • PIARC Ref.: 2022R23EN
  • ISBN: 978-2-84060-709-0
  • Number of pages: 348