Service life assessment of existing highway bridges with no planned regular inspections

2008-03-25
Safety of a highway infrastructure system depends very much on the proper maintenance of bridges. The level of required maintenance is, typically, determined through a series of regular field inspections with the guidance of safety–economy trade-off. In Turkey, bridge maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation are currently performed on an as-needed basis. Time-dependent reliability analysis cannot be utilized for Turkish bridges for the time being since the majority of the bridges are either not regularly inspected or not inspected at all. The purpose of this paper is to propose a simple method to assess the remaining service life of a bridge by defining a relationship between its current condition rating and its age by evaluating a set of bridges at different ages. In a case study, 28 bridges were inspected for the first time to assess the average life expectancy. The average life of a bridge was predicted to be 80years, and for this set of bridges, the main body components were found to deteriorate more than earth retaining and serviceability components.
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities

Suggestions

Performance of a Prestressed Concrete Pedestrian Bridge System under Equivalent Static Lateral Impact Loads
Baran, Eray; French, Catherine (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2013-08-01)
The resistance of prestressed concrete through-girder (PCTG) pedestrian bridges to lateral loads was studied in response to the increasing number of vehicular impacts in the United States. This research was motivated by the lack of reported studies analyzing the behavior of such bridges to lateral impact loads, as well as their potential vulnerability in comparison with bridges that are better able to redistribute and transfer locally applied impact loads through alternate load paths. Pedestrian bridges are...
Renovation of a safety-inspection methodology for river bridges
Yanmaz, Ali Melih; Caner, Alp (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2007-09-21)
River bridges and related infrastructural elements need to be monitored and inspected periodically for deterioration and loss of function due to aging, adverse hydraulic conditions, and chemical attacks. Necessary protective works and related actions should then be implemented to increase safety. Types of items to be inspected would be categorized as structural, geotechnical, hydraulic, and structural material conditions. Requirements for periodic inspections and the ways of handling these activities were d...
Inspection and evaluation of a network of concrete bridges based on multiple NDT techniques
Akgül, Ferhat (Informa UK Limited, 2020-07-01)
Bridge condition rating is a crucial variable used for prioritisation of bridge needs in bridge management systems (BMSs). At present, bridge rating is predominantly based on visual inspections. A practical method incorporating non-destructive testing (NDT) results for rating bridges in a BMS is not available. In this study, an integrated rating method for reinforced concrete bridges based on both visual inspection and multiple NDT techniques with the ultimate goal of incorporating it into BMSs was develope...
Bridge scour risk assessment and countermeasure design
Yanmaz, Ali Melih (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2012-08-01)
Statistical surveys conducted on investigation of reasons of bridge failures implied that the majority of bridges have failed because of excessive scouring at infrastructural elements. A bridge crossing an alluvial river should therefore be designed properly with special reference to possibility of this action at piers and abutments. On construction of a bridge, its scour criticality should be examined regularly throughout the service life spans to take necessary actions promptly. The Federal Highway Admini...
Rating and reliability of existing bridges in a network
Akgül, Ferhat (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2003-11-01)
Currently, the load rating is the method used by State DOTs for evaluating the safety and serviceability of existing bridges in the United States. In general, load rating of a bridge is evaluated when a maintenance, improvement work, change in strength of members, or addition of dead load alters the condition or capacity of the structure. The AASHTO LRFD specifications provide code provisions for prescribing an acceptable and uniform safety level for the design of bridge components. Once a bridge is designe...
Citation Formats
A. Caner, A. M. Yanmaz, and A. Yakut, “Service life assessment of existing highway bridges with no planned regular inspections,” Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, pp. 108–114, 2008, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/34443.