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Title: Performance Monitoring of Patterson River Bridge, Nepean Highway, Melbourne – 14 Years Later

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Publication: CIA

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Date: 2/28/2011

Abstract:
The Patterson River Bridge carries Nepean Highway over Patterson River in Carrum, and was constructed in 1995 as part of a multi-level protection approach incorporating high quality concrete with supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), application of protective coatings, many other durability provisions and testing for volume of permeable voids/permeability (VPV). The bridge consists of 4 spans and 3 piers each with two columns. The columns, crossheads, pile caps, prestressed concrete beams, wing walls and abutments were constructed using VicRoads concrete of grade VR 470/55, suitable for very aggressive exposure environment. The substructure concrete has a minimum cementitious material content of 470 kg with 10% silica fume replacement, and is of 55 MPa strength grade. VicRoads has been monitoring the corrosion susceptibility of the bridge for the past 14 years, since construction, by monitoring the ingress of chloride ions into concrete and by measurement of half-cell potential of the steel and its corrosion rate. The last measurements were conducted in 2001. Another round of measurements was conducted in 2008 to check whether the corrosion activity has increased over the past few years. This paper provides the results of the 2008 measurements in comparison with the previous measurements and finds that no changes have been observed, in the intervening 7 to 8 year period. No corrosion activity is anticipated at least in the next 15 years and beyond.