Evaluation of existing bridges using neural networks

Abstract

The infrastructure system in the United States has been aging faster than the resource available to restore them. Therefore decision for allocating the resources is based in part on the condition of the structural system. This paper proposes to use neural network to predict the overall rating of the structural system because of the successful applications of neural network to other fields which require a "symptom-diagnostic" type relationship. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the potential of using neural network in civil engineering applications and, particularly, in bridge evaluations. Data collected by the Tennessee Department of Transportation were used as "test bed" for the study. Multi-layer feed forward networks were developed using the Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithm. All the neural networks consisted of at least one hidden layer of neurons. Hyperbolic tangent transfer functions were used in the first hidden layer and log-sigmoid transfer functions were used in the subsequent hidden and output layers. The best performing neural network consisted of three hidden layers. This network contained three neurons in the first hidden layer, two neurons in the second hidden layer and one neuron in the third hidden layer. The neural network performed well based on a target error of 10%. The results of this study indicate that the potential for using neural networks for the evaluation of infrastructure systems is very good.