Sustainable Approach for Optimal Steel Sheet Pile Structure Assessment, Maintenance, and Rehabilitation

An improved steel sheet pile inspection procedure is proposed in this paper, which couples the field inspection condition-index methodology previously developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with reliability assessments to quantify the life-cycle costs and environmental impacts associated with various maintenance and repair (M&R) scenarios.

Maintenance and repair strategies over the analysis period (from present to the end of the structure’s lifetime) are determined through reliability assessment for structures with relatively low condition indices. The level of maintenance activity is then to be determined by the life-cycle cost analysis and environmental life-cycle assessment of M&R alternatives. The optimal M&R alternative is the one with the lowest cost combined with minimal environmental impact. Using these methodologies, the steel sheet pile structure owners will gain improved capabilities to monitor present-day conditions of steel sheet pile infrastructure and prioritize structures that will require sustainable M&R. Further research is proposed to collect real field-inspection data and create M&R records that can be used to estimate the reliability more accurately.

In addition, the methodology developed for this relatively simple type of structure can be extended to more complex and critical structural systems such as gates, valves, and other components making up locks, dams, and other related navigational facilities.

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