Improving Bridge Deck Deterioration Curves by Combining Extreme Weather and Infrastructure Data Sources
With more than 600,000 bridges in service around the United States and half of them constructed before the 70s according to National Bridge Inventory (NBI) and an unprecedented number of record-level extreme weather phenomena within the last decade, there is a pressing need to improve the management and decision-making processes when it comes to predicting bridge performance and prioritizing maintenance activities. Such maintenance activities are typically emerging faster in bridge decks, due to the increased exposure of such elements to severe weather and traffic conditions. Attempts to include environmental and traffic factors in bridge performance indicators, such as deterioration curves, have demonstrated the need to develop region-specific approaches to better predict deterioration of transportation infrastructure. The objective of this study is to offer a detailed regional quantification of the impact that environmental and traffic factors have on bridge deck structural deterioration curves used for bridge maintenance by fusing environmental quantities (freeze thaw cycles, extreme heat, snow, rainfall) as captured by local monitoring stations (Mesonet grid) and by traffic data as recorded by NBI and probe vehicle data. The project, with a focus on bridge deck components, is also set to account for expansion joints, wherever present, and how their environmental deterioration might impact the overall deck performance. Also, issues related to traffic re-routing due to maintenance will be investigated utilizing a network level approach, to better capture local rerouting and temporary traffic increase, that might further burden neighboring bridges. Through this effort, a user-friendly, regional decision support system for complementing the current bridge management tools will be developed, to best inform the prioritization of maintenance interventions. Such advancement would allow for the consideration of multiple weather and traffic-driven accelerating factors in the decision making-process, enabling the projection of future deterioration rates. This work is expected to have impacts on the bridge management sector, since it is set to impact the transportation network in terms of enhancing the durability and sustainability of the bridge inventory and reduce the associated repair costs by intervening on the right time to prevent further deterioration that would result in higher repair costs. In addition to this, the granularity of information related to weather patterns could pave the way for the development of vulnerability indices for existing transportation infrastructure, depending on the availability of data regarding infrastructure performance levels. The following tasks will be pursued in this study. Task 1: Analyze weather data from Oklahoma’s Mesonet to build time series of environmental quantities (extreme temperature variations, freeze-thaw cycles, ice conditions, humidity, precipitation). Develop relationships looking to correlate bridge-deck deterioration rates to weather patterns. Task 2: Identify and process available information related to deck expansion joints, aiming to quantify the weather and traffic deterioration that such elements experience. After ensuring data quality, correlate the expansion joint condition to the deck condition, and identify importance of maintenance in such cases, given that damaged joints might allow water and humidity to penetrate further in the structural elements. Task 3: Perform network level analysis to incorporate aging information related to the bridge condition, along with weather patterns and traffic load data to identify critical locations within the system that will necessitate immediate interventions. Task 4: Combine the results/findings from the tasks above to develop a pilot platform.
- Record URL:
Language
- English
Project
- Status: Active
- Funding: $132,777.00
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Contract Numbers:
CY2-OU-05
69A3552348306
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Sponsor Organizations:
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology
University Transportation Centers Program
Department of Transportation
Washington, DC United States 20590 -
Managing Organizations:
Southern Plains Transportation Center
University of Oklahoma
202 W Boyd St, Room 213A
Norman, OK United States 73019 -
Project Managers:
Dunn, Denise
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Performing Organizations:
University of Oklahoma, Norman
School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science
202 West Boyd Street, Room 334
Norman, OK United States 73019 -
Principal Investigators:
Kyprioti, Aikaterini P
Sadri, Arif
Pei, Jin-Song
- Start Date: 20241001
- Expected Completion Date: 20250930
- Actual Completion Date: 0
- USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Bridge decks; Bridge management systems; Data fusion; Decision support systems; Deterioration; Expansion joints; Traffic data; Weather conditions
- Geographic Terms: Oklahoma
- Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Data and Information Technology; Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; Planning and Forecasting;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01941678
- Record Type: Research project
- Source Agency: Southern Plains Transportation Center
- Contract Numbers: CY2-OU-05, 69A3552348306
- Files: UTC, RIP
- Created Date: Jan 1 2025 3:51PM