ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Recently, the demand on the practical application of life-cycle civil engineering (LCCE) for tender design, optimum design and maintenance/management of civil infrastructures is rapidly growing unprecedently in civil engineering practice. Accordingly, in the 21st century, it is almost obvious that life-cycle civil engineering together with value engineering will become a new paradigm for all engineering decision problems in practice. However, in spite of impressive progress in the researches on the LCCE, the application of the LCCE in most countries is not yet mature enough to be pervasive into the practice for the design and management of major civil infrastructures. Thus, this paper is intended to review the current practice and suggest improved and practical approaches to the application of various LCC methodologies including performance controlled maintenance based on performance degradation, lifetime/reliability assessment, and subjective and updated uncertainty assessment for the LCC analysis and design of civil infrastructures. In addition, the LCC software systems developed for LCC analysis of highway and railroad bridge structures are reviewed with emphasis on integrated LCC system models that include the direct and indirect cost models, user friendly knowledge-based database incorporating statistical assessment and updating, reliability/risk assessment and optimization modules. Based on a few illustrative examples taken from real bridge structures, the practical application of LCC-analysis and LCC-effective optimum design of civil infrastructures are demonstrated in this paper. Also, it is shown that some advanced but practical methods such as performance degradation-based LCC analysis and equivalent LCC optimum design are applicable in practice for LCC analysis and design of civil infrastructures.
