Combined Imaging Technologies for Concrete Bridge Deck Condition Assessment

Evaluating the condition of concrete bridge decks is an increasingly important challenge for transportation agencies and bridge inspection teams. Closing the bridge to traffic, safety, and time consuming data collection are some of the major issues during a visual or in-depth bridge inspection. To date, several nondestructive testing technologies have shown promise in detecting subsurface deteriorations. However, the main challenge is to develop a data acquisition and analysis system to obtain and integrate both surface and subsurface bridge health indicators at higher speeds. Recent developments in imaging technologies for bridge decks and higher-end cameras allow for faster image collection while driving over the bridge deck. This paper will focus on deploying nondestructive imaging technologies such as the three-dimensional (3D) optical bridge evaluation system (3DOBS) and thermal infrared (IR) imagery on a bridge deck to yield both surface and subsurface indicators of condition, respectively. Spall and delamination maps were generated from the optical and thermal IR images. Integration of the maps into ArcGIS, a professional geographic information system (GIS), allowed for a streamlined analysis that included integrating and combining the results of the complimentary technologies. Finally, ground truth information was gathered through coring several locations on a bridge deck to validate the results obtained by nondestructive evaluation. This study confirms the feasibility of combining the bridge inspection results in ArcGIS and provides additional evidence to suggest that thermal infrared imagery provides similar results to chain dragging for bridge inspection.