Lebensdauerberechnung mit praxisüblicher Software

Structural life-time assessment employing well-established engineering software

Currently Germany's infrastructure shows a progressively downgraded state of preservation due to aging along with an always increasing number of heavy good transports on the roads. In this context also the remaining bearing capacities of bridges gain rising importance. For an assessment lifetime prognoses can be very helpful. Therefore, an implementation of structural lifetime-simulations employing commercial software has been developed at the institute of concrete structures of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The concept is now proven by application to an existing pre-stressed concrete bridge.
Generally, structural lifetime prognoses are based on repeated nonlinear simulation of a discretized bridge structure by finite elements up to the ultimate limit state. Once, appropriate software is chosen with respect to the simulation demands previously defined, the reference bridge is idealized by finite elements. Relevant load scenarios in view of pivotal damage mechanisms are identified and consequently set up. Next, the concept of structural lifetime simulation accounting for relevant damage mechanisms and imprecise input data is introduced briefly. A suited computational algorithm is developed and verified in a test case. Subsequently the concept is transferred to the reference bridge. Post-processing of the simulation results identifies the relevant working principles and proves practical abilities of the simulation concept.