Abstract
The unknown bridge foundations issue remains one of the most persistent problems facing the bridge engineering community. Bridges are classified as having unknown foundations when the type (spread footing, piles, columns), material (steel, concrete, or timber), dimensions (length, width, or thickness), reinforcing, and/or elevation are unknown (HEC 18). The national cooperative highway research program (NCHRP) Project 21‐5 devoted considerable effort in developing new test methods to address this issue and some good progress was reported. However, there are still concerns on the reliability of the available technologies and associated costs. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is interested to initiate a new multi‐year research program to assist bridge owners to assess their unknown foundations, provide more accurate data for condition assessment and decision making, and ultimately improve safety and reliability. Innovations to be further pursued would be identified that could lead to characterizing bridges with unknown foundations. The exact nature of the program will be determined after input from a planned workshop. In this paper, a summary of the nondestructive testing (NDT)/geophysical methods used to date and recent FHWA guidance is presented.
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