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In The Force Awakens, on the bridge, it's not clear to me if Han goes into his confrontation with Kylo Ren expecting the outcome, e.g.
that his son will kill him.
much less expecting to help Kylo Ren complete his task. If that's the case, I don't understand why things needed to work out the way they did.
No, there's no indication that Han knew or expected the outcome he got, let alone that he was intending to help Kylo Ren do it. Han confronted Kylo because that's what Leia asked him to do:
go out and bring their son back.
I'm sure Han knew he was talking a risk, but he seemed to genuinely believe he could turn Kylo away from the Dark Side, or at the very least, stall his progress and get him to reconsider his actions.
For Kylo's part, his conflict and the ultimate obligation he felt to go through with
killing his father
were laid out in a number of earlier scenes, including the initial exchange with Snoke when Kylo first learns that Han Solo is back in the picture, and later Kylo's monlogue with the Vader mask. Kylo is feeling conflicted over his decision to turn to the Dark -- not because he regrets it or wants to change it, but because he can't seem to get rid of the nagging "tug" pulling him back to the Light. He sincerely wants to obey Snoke and do what he feels is the "right" thing, but there's a small part of him that keeps telling him to repent.
When Kylo and Han face off, that conflict is brought up to the surface. Kylo now seems to recognize that
his father's presence in his life
is one of the key things holding him back from fully committing to the Dark Side, and he wants to eliminate that obstacle. The struggle on the bridge was, seemingly, the last ditch effort by his Light side to pull him back from the brink, which obviously didn't work.
No, Han doesn't know that Kylo will kill him (but I'm sure he was expecting the risk)
Han comes to the bridge in attempt to take Kylo home, to mend the fences. Kylo shows (or feigns) the sympathy, then attempts (or just pretends to) give the sword to Han, who tries to take it from him... and then Kylo runs him through, embracing the dark side.
It didn't happen because Kylo needed help killing his father, it happened because Kylo rejected Han's attempt to pull him to the light side.
In the moment that it happens, there is no evidence to suggest that he was expecting the outcome in any way. Whether Kylo is genuinely torn, or whether he is feigning it, Han has no reason to believe that at that particular time point in time, the subsequent events will happen.
If you go back in time to when he makes the choice to reveal himself, at that point he would likely have been aware of the risk, and the exchanges with Leia earlier would suggest that even if he felt it was more likely than not that his attempt would fail, he felt obliged to go through with it.
The lighting of the scene (shadow obscuring the light) is specifically meant to represent the pull of the Light, and the switch back to the Dark side, for whatever you want to read into that.
