Concept and requirements of sustainable development in bridge engineering

Abstract

The concept of sustainability is described in this paper using a single sustainable principle, two goals of sustainable development, three dimensions of sustainable engineering, four sustainable requirements and five phases of sustainable construction. Four sustainable requirements and their practice in China are discussed in particular. The safe reliability of bridges is first compared with the events of bridge failure in China and in the rest of the world and followed by structural durability, including the cracking of concrete cable-stayed bridges, deflection of concrete girder bridges and fatigue cracks of orthotropic steel decks. With respect to functional adaptability, lateral wind action on vehicles and its improvement are introduced regarding a sea-crossing bridge located in a typhoon-prone area. The Chinese practice of using two double main span suspension bridges and a twin parallel deck cable-stayed bridge is presented in discussing the final sustainable requirement: capacity extensibility.

Keywords

sustainable engineering / safe reliability / structural durability / functional adaptability / capacity extensibility

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Acknowledgments

The work described in this paper is partially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 90715039 and 51021140005) and by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant Nos. 2006AA11Z108 and 2008BAG07B02).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg