Abstract
As of 2013, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimated that one-third of the total bridge deck area in the United States was structurally deficient. Providing for the effective management and repair of these decks requires transportation agencies to have access to the best available information about structural conditions. Bridge deck inspection has long relied on sounding techniques, such as tapping and chain drag, which can be time intensive and may not provide enough information for accurate repair estimating. Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques may provide faster and more accurate data collection, but their value needs to be proven to transportation agencies and bridge owners. This paper describes a case study considering the two NDE techniques available for inspecting bridge decks with asphalt overlay: ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and infrared (IR) thermography. NDE scanning results and as-built repair data for four bridge decks were made available to the research team. Comparison of the NDE findings to the actual repaired areas demonstrates the limitations and advantages of putting NDE deck scans into routine bridge inspection practice. Inferences made from the comparison are used to suggest improvements to NDE practices to take fuller advantage of the available technology. The main recommendation is to include an additional data processing step for improving data interpretation.
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Acknowledgments
The authors sincerely thank John Deland, Randy Wampler, Adam Carmichael, Ken Maser, Infrasense, TSH Engineering, and CDOT for their continued support, insight, and valuable time contributed to this work. Without the support of those previously mentioned, this paper would not have been possible.
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Published In
Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction
Volume 22 • Issue 2 • May 2017
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 26, 2016
Accepted: Oct 24, 2016
Published online: Nov 18, 2016
Discussion open until: Apr 18, 2017
Published in print: May 1, 2017
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