Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Bridges

The scope of this project is to study and apply Life- Cycle Cost Analysis to standard bridges with a length of ca. 20 m by collecting information about the previous and futures initial investments, planning&design, MR&R, user and demolition costs, in order to understand which is the most cost-efficient type of bridge. A second scope is to study the impact of the different cost items on the LCC, to be able to plan accurate investment strategies and, finally, improve the method itself. Eleven bridges of reinforced concrete (with different structural characteristic) and two alternative designs with timber and soil-steel have been studied. The cost of the time the users lose by rerouting or delays during operations on the bridge have been estimated by an application available in BatMan, the National Database of Swedish Road Administration. To make the analysis more reliable, this tool has been improved by creating, for each bridge, a function of the traffic volumes by collecting historical data, and by using the Swedish national traffic model SAMPERS and a linear extrapolation for the forecasting.