UHPFRC intervention reduces environmental and economic costs in bridge management

Conventional infrastructure management typically involves replacing bridges at the end of their intended service duration or when significant structural deficiencies arise, resulting in high costs and environmental impacts. Novel structural-strengthening methods using ultra-high-performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composite (UHPFRC) have allowed the preservation of hundreds of bridges. Their service duration has been extended, and the performance has been improved to achieve the same performance as a new structure. Examining the Swiss federal network (3,903 bridges), it is found that interventions with the UHPFRC method are feasible on more than 99.7% of structures, demonstrating that the structural intervention could be systematically applied to road bridge networks. Systematically applying the UHPFRC strategy would lead to savings of up to 7.7 MtCO2,eq, and 18.5 billion CHF over the next 80 years compared to current mainstream engineering practice. This study underscores the large potential of UHPFRC-method interventions for sustainable and cost-effective infrastructure management.