review · Buildings
Bridges serve as vital transportation infrastructure but suffer from progressive damage and deterioration throughout their operational life spans. A mixed review combining scientometric and systematic methods examined more than 300 academic publications from 1985 to 2023 across the Scopus and Web of Science databases to evaluate deterioration models and critical degradation elements in reinforced concrete bridges. The analysis categorised the wide range of contributing factors into seven principal clusters: chemical, material properties, design and construction, physical, operational, environmental, and force majeure events. Furthermore, the findings highlight a clear gap in existing academic literature regarding deterioration models that integrate non-destructive evaluation techniques. By mapping these degradation mechanisms, the research provides a consolidated overview of how various physical, structural, and environmental variables interact to affect reinforced concrete bridge performance over time.
Bridges are crucial to transportation networks, but keeping them safe requires understanding how and why concrete degrades over decades of use. Consolidating the major structural, environmental, and operational causes of deterioration helps infrastructure managers recognise key risk factors. It also identifies a crucial need for better predictive models that incorporate non-destructive inspection data to track bridge health over time.
As a broad literature review, this work represents early-stage conceptual synthesis rather than a deployable technology. It primarily informs civil engineers, asset management software developers, and infrastructure authorities seeking to refine structural health algorithms. Real-world application depends on translating these identified clusters and closing the highlighted gap in non-destructive evaluation methods to build practical condition-monitoring tools.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
Bridges are generally acknowledged as one of the vital structures of transportation systems. Meanwhile, they are prone to time-variant damage and deterioration mechanisms over their life span. With that in mind, this research study aims to explore state-of-the-art work in relation to deterioration models and related critical factors of reinforced concrete bridges. Particularly, this study presents a mixed review methodology (scientometric and systematic) that reviews over 300 publications in Scopus and Web of Science databases over the period 1985–2023. The study scrutinized and categorized the wide spectrum of deterioration factors in reinforced concrete bridges with the help of deterioration models. Results manifested that implicating deterioration factors can be grouped into seven main clusters, namely chemical, material properties, design & construction, physical, operational, environmental, and force majeure. In addition, it is noted that hitherto, there has been a lack of sufficient research efforts on non-destructive evaluation-based deterioration models.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.3390/buildings14113425
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
