Location

University of Leeds

Keywords

Cathodic Protection, structure repair, corrosion, chloride attack

Abstract

The Arousa Island Bridge, with its 1980 m is the only road access to the Arousa Island. Built in 1985, this single-cell box girder divided in 40 spans runs entirely on the sea. The deck is between 2 to 12 m above sea level, so after 25 years in a marine environment, the structure showed reinforcement corrosion, especially in piles and deck bottom. Attending to the corrosion damages, caused simply from a chloride attack, the local government decided to intervene with an ambitious repair project. This decision has been taken only after an exhaustive cost analysis to determine the feasibility of repairing the structure against the construction of a new one. In this project, the reparation was divided in three types of intervention: conventional reparation with patches, galvanic anode installation and hybrid anode installation. The objective of this division is the data collection for further repairs. The research will be explained in detail and the comparative results will be explained in depth, therefore examining the corrosion progresion and service life. Currently, after careful analysis of examining the last 6 years of data, the hybrid anode installation is the system with the better initial results. Though with the evolution of the years, the galvanic anode installation is just as effective.

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Comparison data between hybrid and galvanic anode installation in the Arousa Island Bridge

University of Leeds

The Arousa Island Bridge, with its 1980 m is the only road access to the Arousa Island. Built in 1985, this single-cell box girder divided in 40 spans runs entirely on the sea. The deck is between 2 to 12 m above sea level, so after 25 years in a marine environment, the structure showed reinforcement corrosion, especially in piles and deck bottom. Attending to the corrosion damages, caused simply from a chloride attack, the local government decided to intervene with an ambitious repair project. This decision has been taken only after an exhaustive cost analysis to determine the feasibility of repairing the structure against the construction of a new one. In this project, the reparation was divided in three types of intervention: conventional reparation with patches, galvanic anode installation and hybrid anode installation. The objective of this division is the data collection for further repairs. The research will be explained in detail and the comparative results will be explained in depth, therefore examining the corrosion progresion and service life. Currently, after careful analysis of examining the last 6 years of data, the hybrid anode installation is the system with the better initial results. Though with the evolution of the years, the galvanic anode installation is just as effective.