Fuzzy defect based condition assessment of concrete bridges

Abstract

An efficient bridge management strategy emanates from a reliable condition assessment of the existing bridge structures. This includes reporting of defects/distress indicators that may be possibly detected on the various bridge elements. Field inspection of bridge elements is mostly conducted on the basis of Visual Inspection (VI), which is inevitably associated with uncertainties and subjectivities inherent in the human being's judgments. In order to remediate those issues in the assessment process, this study employs a fuzzy logic based methodology as means to model inaccuracies in bridge inspectors' measurements/observations. A systematic procedure is proposed to develop a detailed concrete bridge condition assessment model by comprehensive aggregation of possible defects. Using fuzzy membership-based defect rating, in combination with a structural importance relative weighting approach, the proposed model will be able to translate uncertain measurements of defects into a fuzzy bridge condition rating. The output of this research is expected to be a fuzzy based framework for a detailed bridge condition assessment that incorporates a comprehensive weighted set of possible bridge defects and is compliant with current bridge inspection practices.