Rating System for Bridge Condition Assessment

Road infrastructure in our country is increasing rapidly. Bridges are used to connect the road networks to cross obstacles like a river, railway crossings or grade separators. Bridges are now an integral part of the urban transport system where elevated roads and metro lines are constructed for efficient traffic management. Monitoring of the bridge is essential as the bridge failure may be catastrophic causing the death of human beings and loss of the national economy. Assessment of bridge condition in terms of condition rating gives a unique rating value that can be directly related to the condition of the bridge. Moreover, these rating values can also be used to develop the deterioration model of the bridge which can be useful for inspection engineers to prepare effective repair and rehabilitation strategies. The inspection data for bridge condition assessment may also be useful to identify the problems related to a design by analyzing the type of failure in the bridge. Further, these data can be used to investigate the deterioration phenomena which will use to avoid sudden failure of the bridges. In India, still, proper bridge condition assessment techniques have not been developed due to lack of inventory and inspection data. Conventional techniques of condition assessment are mostly based on visual inspection supplemented with some non-destructive evaluation techniques which are not capable of damage detection at a very early stage. To develop a rating system for the bridge, those parameters are identified which are sensitive to the damage in the bridge. In this paper, parameters of the existing bridge management system of different countries have been reviewed and some additional parameters have been recommended that are sensitive to incipient level damage.