Abstract
The Houston Ship Channel is a modern engineering feat — major efforts in deepening and widening the channel over the last 100 years have enabled construction of a string of cargo wharves from Galveston Bay into the city limits of Houston. Service life assessment and modeling for these concrete and steel wharf structures present unique challenges compared to more typical coastal maritime structures. The channel contains brackish water with chloride contents ranging from 2000 mg/l upriver to around 10,000 mg/l in Galveston Bay. This paper focuses on the lower portion of that range, where measured surface chloride concentrations overlap the range of typical chlorideinduced corrosion thresholds. In these lower ranges chlorideinduced corrosion is a risk to concrete structures primarily where wetting and drying cycles concentrate the chloride. In addition, subsidence of 5 feet or more over the last 100 years in the Houston region has resulted in a net increase of water level and a change in exposure conditions as these structures age. These issues are explored in this paper reviewing methodologies and results of service life modeling from a recent multistructure assessment conducted by the authors.
