Improving Safety and Durability of Civil Structures

Society expects that failure of civil structures is extremely rare and relies on the care and expertise of the professionals involved in the design, construction and maintenance of structures. Analysis shows that human errors are a major source of structural failures. Relevant measures to improve the safety of civil structures include combating human error, applying hazard recognition methods, establishing organisational documents and performing adequate monitoring and maintenance of structures. Nowadays dealing with existing structures is a major engineering task. Safety evaluation of existing structures follows a stepwise procedure with an increasing degree of refinement of investigations. Target safety levels may be defined as a function of the hazard scenario and the characteristics of the structure under consideration. To improve durability of structures an original concept is to use Ultra-High Performance Fibre Reinforced Concrete (UHPFRC) to “harden” those zones of the structure that are exposed to severe environment and high mechanical loading. This conceptual idea combines efficiently protection and resistance properties of UHPFRC and significantly improves the structural performance. The concept is validated by means of a numerical simulation and applications.