Many structures in Germany – especially bridges – are prematurely limited in their use and replaced by new structures even though for some their use would be safe for many more years. By demolishing and replacing them too early, resources are unnecessarily spent. Particularly in view of responsible use of resources and a low CO2 footprint it is essential to maintain the operation of brides for as long as possible, and only replace them with a new structure when it is actually necessary for safety reasons.
The reason behind the premature demolition of structures is, amongst other, that existing resources cannot be used for the re-calculation of structures as information about their actual state is not available and currently there are no standardised rules for analysing and subsequently directly using the analysis in a statistical calculation.
The research project ZfPStatik will change this in the future. Goal is the design of a calculation standard for the analysis of existing structures by means of indestructible data based on the semi-probabilistic verification method. This allows for more efficient analysis of existing structures and to guarantee that a premature demolition and replacement does not unnecessarily use up resoures.
The research project is led by BAM (Federal Institute for Material Research and Analysis). Moreover, the University of the Federal Armed Forces, Munich and the University for Technology and Economics, and in addition to SSF several engineering offices participate at the project. Funding is provided in the framework of the WIPANO program (knowledge and technology transfer via patents and standards) sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.
