Anchors Built to Last: Navigating the Challenges of 100-Year Design Life in Civil Infrastructure
10 November 2023
Projects within Civil infrastructure such as bridges and tunnels are sometimes required to withstand a service life of 100 years. As a result of the extended service life of the structure, certain safety critical connections will also require a matching design life where replacing the connections during the service life of the system is not possible.
Products capable of a 100-year design life do not automatically comply to a 100 year design life requirement. With any design criteria for anchors, the 100-year design life capacity needs to be calculated and compared to the action loads for suitability. Post-installed anchor designs to AS5216:2021 has separate design capacities for anchor capacities for 50 years and 100 years.
Only chemical anchors are currently deemed suitable for 100-year design life. To obtain a design capacity for 100 years, products must be assessed to the European Assessment Document EAD 330499-01-0601.
Further to the assessments of the 50-year design life within the EAD, some of the additional testing requirements for the 100 year design life are shown below.
|
Testing Requirement |
50 Year Requirements |
100 Year Requirements |
|
Repeated load
test |
100,000 load
cycles |
200,000 load
cycles |
|
Crack Cycling |
1000 crack
cycles |
2000 Crack
cycles |
|
Sustained
Load |
3 months
monitoring |
6 months
monitoring |
The durability (corrosion resistance) of the anchor is not assessed within the test regime of the EAD or AS5216:2021, the suitability of anchoring material for corrosion should be separately assessed and determined by a durability engineer for the project.
For further technical information on our product range, please email [email protected] and one of our engineers will be available to assist.
