Determination Of Design Working Life For Port Concrete Structures

Concrete structure is unable to achieve the intended service life due to the lack of durability in many cases in today, especially the port concrete structure that located in severe environmental conditions. It is an important issue of practical engineering technological to improve the quality of port project and the service life of structure, to reduce the whole life costs of project. Based on Western Communications Construction Scientific and Technological Project "Theoretical analysis and Research of whole life costs technical of port engineering", the service life of reinforced concrete and pre-stressed concrete were estimated using the procedure in the'Technical Specification for Detection and Assessment of Harbour and Marine Structures'in this paper. This dissertation presented here focus on the following aspects:1. Discuss the survey results of port concrete structure durability both China and Norway, research the changes of concrete durability in revising port concrete specification in China. This paper introduces the influences of durability on structural safety and usability, and explains the affection degree of durability on port structure reliability index by a numerical example.2. Basic measures and additional measures of improving durability and lengthening service life of port structure are discussed in this thesis, also introduces the durability design requirement in foreign related standards; Based on the specification of maximum water cement(binder) ratio and minimum concrete cover depth in code both at home and abroad, the service live of reinforced concrete and pre-stressed concrete were estimated using the procedure in the'Technical Specification for Detection and Assessment of Harbour and Marine Structures'. A comprehensive comparison of the strict degree of durability regulation is made utilizing service life as an index.3. The selection of structure design, maintenance and servicing scheme under the design service life are analysed based on the whole life of port structure; researches the methods of determining the design service life of port structure from the view of the whole life costs design, and provides the methods of determining the service life based on the optimum benefit.