The highway system in the United States includes nearly 577,000 bridges, the majority of which were built during two major bridge building periods -- just before World War II (1930s) and in the first two decades of the Cold War (1950s and 1960s). Given the age and increased usage of these bridges over the years, many now require substantial maintenance to satisfy their desired level of service. The complex task of allocating scarce funds for the repair, maintenance, and rehabilitation of this large number of bridges led to the development of several optimization studies and two major bridge management system, namely BRIDGIT and Pontis. Pontis has emerged as the system of choice for all states in the Nation. At this time over 40 highway agencies continue to license, evaluate and implement the current AASHTOWARE Program, Pontis V. 3.2. However, all data currently required by Pontis to assess the structural stability and resulting suggestions for repair and maintenance of bridges are based on visual inspection and judgement. Consequently, all suggestions are based on that visual inspection. This paper discusses development of a plan for how non-destructive evaluation (NDE) data can be used to provide more information than visual inspection.

Date Published: 31 March 1998
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 3400, Structural Materials Technology III: An NDT Conference, (31 March 1998); doi: 10.1117/12.300118

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3400:
Structural Materials Technology III: An NDT Conference
Ronald D. Medlock; David C. Laffrey, Editor(s)