Resilience Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Bridges in a Multihazard Environment of Flood and Corrosion

Abstract

Abstract Extreme floods pose significant threats to bridges, specifically due to hydrodynamic forces on inundated bridge superstructures and foundation scour, which can cause excessive lateral deflection at the deck level and instability of bridges. Such bridge damage produces immediate socioeconomic impacts on the society the bridges serve. The impact increases in a corrosive environment, where gradual corrosion deterioration combined with flood hazards creates a multihazard scenario. This study proposes a framework to estimate the resilience of degrading bridges subjected to randomly occurring flood events of varying intensities during their service life. The framework comprises four steps: flood hazard assessment, corrosion analysis, hydraulic analysis, and resilience assessment. A river-crossing bridge on the Mahi River in India was considered for demonstrating the framework using region-specific, real-life data. Finite-element analyses of the bridge at different degraded states were performed under various flow conditions resulting from flood events in the river. The obtained results demonstrate that bridge degradation, along with scour and inundation, causes increased flood vulnerability and decreased resilience of the bridge. A parametric study highlights the resilience’s sensitivity to key socioeconomic factors. Overall, research findings emphasize the need for further studies on various bridge types to enhance bridge safety during such multihazard scenarios.