ARCHES - Assessment and Rehabilitation of Central European Highway Structures
Overview
Background & policy context:
Since 1 May 2004, the European Union road network, and accordingly the stock of highway structures, has increased significantly. Ten new Member States have brought nearly 924 500 kilometres of roads into the European network. These countries have huge numbers of highway structures, which, mainly due to their history, do not constitute a solid and trouble-free infrastructure. Structures have been affected by a lack of maintenance, regular overloading and even by the use of poor quality materials for construction.
In the near future, the same structures have to face increasing volume and weight of traffic and will therefore have to be reliably assessed and, if necessary, improved or replaced. All these processes will take time and have to be realised in a sustainable way for the economy, for society and for the environment.
No doubt the majority of European road infrastructures have reached an age where improvement costs (several billion euros annually) constitute a major part of infrastructure spending. This is hindering the development of the network by absorbing much-needed funds. This project develops new construction concepts for conservation (assessment, improvement and preventative maintenance) of highway structures.
Objectives:
The overall goal of the project was to develop ways to raise the standard of the highway structures of New Member States (NMS) and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) to the level necessary for their full economic integration into the EU and for the future development of the European Union.
Another important objective of this project is to help society and politicians to understand the need for sustainable maintenance of their road networks, together with their engineering infrastructure, and to help infrastructure managers spend their resources in a more effective way.
Methodology:
To achieve its scientific and technological objectives, this project focuses on structural assessment and monitoring strategies to prevent deterioration and optimum improvement of highway structures through complementary techniques.
The project was organised in four groups of activities, with the following conceptual approach:
- optimising the use of existing infrastructure through better safety assessment and monitoring procedures which will avoid interventions (i.e., avoid unnecessarily replacing or rehabilitating structures that are in fact perfectly safe);
- monitoring and preventing corrosion of existing reinforcement and develop new innovative reinforcement materials that are highly resistant to corrosion;
- strengthening the infrastructure of bridges by means of bonded reinforcements;
- hardening highway structures with Ultra High Performance Fibre Reinforced Concretes applied in severely exposed zones to dramatically increase their durability.
Share this page