Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

According to the 2019 Canadian Infrastructure Report Card, 38.7% of Canadian bridge infrastructure is in either poor or fair condition. There are several degradation mechanisms that affect Reinforced Concrete (RC) highway infrastructure in Canada. The prevalent one is chloride-induced corrosion of the reinforcing steel due to the use of de-icing salts in the winter. However, other deterioration mechanisms, such as frost damage and carbonation-induced reinforcement corrosion, are also present, often times acting simultaneously. In addition, almost 40% of Canadian highway bridges have been in service for over 50 years. Bridges in Canada are both aging and deteriorating as a result of several factors, such as harsh climate, high use of de-icing salts, Freezing-Thawing Cycles (FTC), and an increase in traffic demand. This deterioration is likely to be aggravated by the changes in local climatic conditions and by the increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events caused by global warming. Hence, it is important to integrate the adverse effect of climate change in the design of new infrastructure and the maintenance/adaptation of existing one. Existing Canadian standards for design of RC infrastructure mainly focus on the structural performance of new structures, without detailed guidelines on the capacity assessment of existing aging and deteriorating infrastructure. In addition, there is a pressing current need to develop tools/practices to better adapt existing infrastructure to the impacts of climate change on local exposure conditions. To assure sustainable and safe in-service performance and minimize the risk of failure, it is imperative that evaluation tools are developed to assess/forecast the consequences of this deterioration during the lifetime of the RC infrastructure. The primary goal of this research is to assess the impact of deterioration and climate change on the serviceability, structural capacity, and service life of RC infrastructure. Three aspects of this problem are to be investigated: (i) the impact of climate change on the onset of reinforcement corrosion; (ii) the characterization of damage and ensuing deterioration of mechanical properties; and (iii) the development and verification of behavioral models for the assessment/adaptation of aging RC members adversely affected by change in climatic conditions. This research addresses two of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: goal 9 (build resilient infrastructure) and goal 13 (combat climate change and its impacts). The significance of this research is the improved understanding of the effects of deterioration and climate change on the performance of RC structures, and the direct application of this knowledge to the effective management of Canada's aging and deteriorating infrastructure.