Abstract
Abstract Background Bridge deck inspection is essential task to monitor the health of the bridges. Condition monitoring and timely implementation of maintenance and rehabilitation procedures are needed to reduce future costs associated with bridge management. A number of Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) technologies are currently used in bridge deck inspection and evaluation, including impact-echo (IE), ground penetrating radar (GPR), electrical resistivity (ER), ultrasonic surface waves (USW) testing, and visual inspection. However, current NDE data collection is manually conducted and thus faces with several problems such as prone to human errors, safety risks due to open traffic, and high cost process. Methods This paper reports the automated data collection and analysis for bridge decks based on our novel robotic system which can autonomously and accurately navigate on the bridge. The developed robotic system can lessen the cost and time of the bridge deck data collection and risks of human inspections. The advanced software is developed to allow the robot to collect visual images and conduct NDE measurements. The image stitching algorithm to build a whole bridge deck image from individual images is presented in detail. The ER, IE and USW data collected by the robot are analyzed to generate the corrosion, delamination and concrete elastic modulus maps of the deck, respectively. These condition maps provide detail information of the bridge deck quality. Conclusions The automated bridge deck data collection and analysis is developed. The image stitching algorithm allowed to generate a very high resolution image of the whole bridge deck, and the bridge viewer software allows to calibrate the stitched image to the bridge coordinate. The corrosion, delamination and elastic modulus maps were built based on ER, IE and USW data collected by the robot to provide easy evaluation and condition monitoring of bridge decks.
Highlights
Bridge deck inspection is essential task to monitor the health of the bridges
To present test data and results in an effective and intuitive manner, the results of the nondestructive evaluation (NDE) surveys using the above mentioned three technologies are presented by two-dimensional contour maps (Figure 18)
Three different weight factors (100, 70, 40) are assigned to the area in different conditions and delamination and corrosion rates for each bridge which are calculated by delamination rating (Dr) and corrosion rating (Cr) in (12, 13)
Summary
Bridge deck inspection is essential task to monitor the health of the bridges. A number of Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) technologies are currently used in bridge deck inspection and evaluation, including impact-echo (IE), ground penetrating radar (GPR), electrical resistivity (ER), ultrasonic surface waves (USW) testing, and visual inspection. Condition monitoring and timely implementation of maintenance and rehabilitation procedures are needed to reduce future costs associated with bridge management. Application of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technologies is one of the effective ways to monitor and predict bridge deterioration. A number of NDE technologies are currently used in bridge deck evaluation, including. Automated technologies have gained much attention for bridge inspection, maintenance, and rehabilitation. Mobile robotic inspection and maintenance systems are developed for vision based crack detection and
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
