Conservation methods for prestressed concrete bridges and composite bridges with concrete and steel

Conservation of road bridges in Japan is based on “Periodic Inspection Procedure for Road Bridges” (MLIT in Japan). In order to properly and efficiently carry out conservation including inspection of road bridges, it is necessary to prepare a manual or the like that concretely shows the method of conservation of the targeted bridge or part/member. For these reasons, the conservation manual of concrete bridges adopting prestressed concrete structure, and composite bridges adopting composite structure of concrete and steel was prepared by JPCI. In this paper, the gist and policy of this manual is described. In this manual, it is described about points of focus of inspection, estimated degradations, methods of evaluating performance and etc. at the occurrence of degradation, based on past degradation cases, design results, and experimental results. The target bridge types cover most of bridges adopting the prestressed concrete structure in Japan.