Abstract—In some countries, collapse of bridges initiated the formal requirements for the inspection of highway bridges. Almost in all developed countries, the bridge management systems have been developed for cost-effective allocation of limited budgets for deteriorating bridges. Visual inspections are one of the most important parts of a bridge management system. On the other hand, many new and promising techniques for the non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of highway bridges have emerged in the past decades. NDT methods are costly and time consuming as well; since they cannot be used widely in bridge management systems. However, NDT methods can be used as verification of visual inspections in bridge management systems. This paper discusses visual inspections of 200 reinforced concrete bridges in Turkey and non-destructive testing applications performed on 10 bridges, which were most deficient. Penetration resistance, ultrasonic pulse velocity, rebar locating and reinforcement corrosion tests are performed on decks, piers and beams of reinforced concrete bridges and the results are compared with the results of visual inspections.
Index Terms—Bridge, condition assessment, nondestructive tests
The authors are with Researcher at the Department of Engineering
Sciences of Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey (e-mail:
e168221@metu.edu.tr, akgul@metu.edu.t, e170611@metu.edu.tr)
[PDF]
Cite:F. Masoumi, F. Akgül, and A. Mehrabzadeh, "Condition Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Bridges by Combined Nondestructive Test Techniques," International Journal of Engineering and Technology vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 708-711, 2013.
