Abstract
In society today, infrastructure availability has become an essential day-today need. This clearly poses new challenges. On one hand, we must provide permanent usability by extending the service life of our civil infrastructures, and on the other, we must design and develop equipment that does not fall into early obsolescence, all while reducing maintenance and the need for replacement over time. This is why it will be necessary to take measures to find how to integrate these two service lives, which diverge such a great deal from one another.
While the number of users of these infrastructures grows year after year, ventilation equipment, considered safety elements within the global tunnel as a whole, increasingly require maintenance or renewal operations. This is due firstly to the lifespan of the equipment within the environment, and secondly to the increasing legal requirements in terms of their safety.
Tunnels tend to be highly aggressive environments, with highly corrosive conditions. This is due to polluting gases from vehicles (with roadway tunnels), severe environmental conditions, or ongoing operability with freshair equipment, or infrequent, with fume exhaust equipment.
Using materials designed for high-corrosion tunnels, new surface coverings, equipment designed for preventive maintenance, as well as operability guidelines for ventilation systems, can lengthen the lifespan of said equipment, thereby obtaining the sought-after availability of our infrastructures without impacting the lives of their users.