| In a corrosive environment, structures are required to prepare countermeasures against corrosion, such as heavy duty coating for steel structures or epoxy coated re-bar for concrete structures. One of the alternatives for the these ordinal countermeasures is the adoption of FRP, which does not corrode, as the structural materials. FRP has some unique and outstanding properties comparing with the ordinal structural materials, and the design methods are also being studied. There are also some examples of FRP bridges and FRP hydraulic gates in Japan. However, application of FRP is not spreading so much yet, and one of the main reason seems to be in its relatively high initial cost. The problem of the initial cost will be solved considering the life-cycle cost because low maintenance cost is expected for the FRP. Based on the situations described above, the author carried out the life-cycle cost assessment for FRP bridges and an FRP hydraulic gate which recently constructed in Japan. The author also shows the results of long time durability of FRP under real condition, in order to confirm the suitability of condition in the life-cycle cost assessment that setting low maintenance cost.As the results of life-cycle cost assessment, initial cost of the FRP structures were about 1.5 to 2.0 times of the ordinal materials, however total initial cost becomes almost same or 1.2 times of ordinal materials when there are some better effect such as smaller substructures or easy construction. And the life-cycle cost of FRP structures also become lower than ordinal materials in these cases. |
