A worldwide survey of concrete service life in various climate zones

The durability of materials is the crucial element in determining the service life of concrete systems, and hence it contributes to the sustainability and resilience of lifelines and core infrastructures utilizing concrete. The rise in disasters due to climate change has required a paradigm shift in engineering design to implement quantitative sustainability and objective resilience in addition to standard health, safety, and welfare performance measures. This chapter aims to assess the performance of concrete materials in different applications and climate zones. Selected applications involve different environmental exposures, including parking garages, bridge decks, and ports, to showcase major categories of concrete infrastructure concerning durability. Climate zones include established categories with predefined characteristics concerning temperature and moisture worldwide. The analytical methodology relies on service life prediction modeling to quantify the influence of the climate and the environment using the diffusivity of concrete based on the given concentration and build-up rate of chloride ions transported from the concrete surface to the surface of reinforcing steel bars. Comparative evaluation of lifecycle measures includes cost, energy, and emissions. The presented study results highlight the sensitivity of evaluations to climate zone characteristics and provide insights on drafting the roadmap to implement climate change in practical engineering guidelines. This roadmap contributes to the understanding of climate change’s effect on concrete infrastructure as engineers continue to shift the design life of concrete applications to longer terms to reduce the life cycle footprints of concrete materials for enhanced sustainability. Hence, the concluding remarks endeavor to showcase the opportunities and challenges of developing long-life infrastructure and the significance of objective resilience to achieve target goals.