Because the long-span bridges among the Honshu-Shikoku Bridges cross over the ocean, they are in a severe corrosive environment where deterioration progresses rapidly, and access methods for inspection and repair are limited. In addition, they are located on important highways without alternative routes, so repair work requiring road closings must be avoided as much as possible. For this reason, in order to make it possible to use long-span bridges over the long term of 200 years or more, taking preventive maintenance as a foundation, we are working on creating systematic and reliable maintenance management using the concept of asset management and are planning to minimize the bridges’ life cycle cost.
- (1) Procedures for carrying out asset management
In the planned maintenance management for long-span bridges over straits, we are working on systematic preventative maintenance using the concept of asset management.
Through periodic inspections and investigations based on the plan, we fully grasp the bridges’ conditions, evaluate their soundness, and predict their future deterioration. Based on this, we conduct repairs and measures at the optimum timing, verify the results, and make use of them in the next inspection and repair plan.
This allows us to avoid large-scale repairs and renovations and minimize lifecycle costs.
Asset Management Flowchart - (2) Accumulation and utilization of inspection and repair history
In order to carry out preventive maintenance, it is necessary to accurately grasp the state of deterioration through inspections. In accordance with the PDCA cycle, we accumulate inspection data in a originally dedicated system, as well as predicting and evaluating deterioration through analysis of that data, and formulate an optimal repair plan based on it.
Also, by saving historical repair data in the system and having the entire group utilize it, we are making progress in unifying inspections and repair.
Utilization of inspection and repair history