Nondestructive Damage Detection of Bridges: A Status Review

Abstract

The recent advances in detecting and locating damage in bridges by different kinds of non-destructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) methods are reviewed. From the application point of view, classifications for general bridge components and their damage types are presented. The relationships between damage, bridge components, and NDT&E techniques are summarized. Many useful WEB sources of NDT&E techniques in bridge damage detection are given. It is concluded that: (1) vibration-based damage detection methods are successful to a certain extent, especially when the overall damage is significant and, low frequency vibration can identify those areas where more detailed local inspection should be concentrated; (2) robust identification techniques that are able to locate damage based on realistic measured data sets still seem a long way from reality, and, basic research is still necessary in the mean time; (3) the rapid development of computer technology and digital signal processing (DSP) techniques greatly impacts upon the conventional NDT techniques, especially in control data processing and data displaying, as well as in simulation and modeling; (4) most of the NDT&E techniques introduced in this paper have their own practical commercial systems, but the effort required for combining the theoretical, experimental and engineering achievements, is still a challenging task when establishing the relationship between the unknown quantities and the measured signal parameters and specialised instruments have shown great advantages for doing some things more effectively than general ones; (5) in bridge damage detection, a problem usually requires the application of different NDT&E techniques; two or more independent techniques are needed to enable confidence in the results.