Condition Improvement Measurement Using the Condition Evaluation Criteria of Concrete Bridge Decks

Abstract

Maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation (MR&R) are cost-effective activities for maintaining good serviceability of concrete bridge decks during their lifetimes. Many past studies were conducted to provide public agencies with optimal MR&R strategies for selecting the correct treatment types at the appropriate application times. While researchers did establish and confirm that the annual deterioration rate and the effectiveness of the MR&R activities are the key input factors that affect the outcomes of MR&R strategy models, they did not spend nearly as much time on engineering inquiry to measure the effectiveness of MR&R activities as they did on projecting the deterioration patterns of bridge systems. The issues of selection bias, empirical data reliability, and overstatement of the effectiveness of MR&R activities continue to compromise the present methods. Therefore, this paper presents a new method that addresses these issues by utilizing the bridge condition evaluation criteria commonly applied among state DOTs in the United States. The new method’s model was tested using a case study that verified its usefulness for a state DOT to establish reliable, practical MR&R strategies.