Application of J-BMS to Performance Evaluation and Remaining Life Prediction of an Existing RC Bridge

Abstract

This paper describes a method of performance evaluation and remaining life prediction for an aged reinforced concrete (RC) T-girder bridge by J-BMS RC version via close visual inspection data, and also verifies the assessment results obtained as outputs from the Bridge Rating Expert System (RC-BREX) which is a subsystem of the J-BMS, to evaluate the effectiveness of the system. The Bridge Management System (J-BMS) that was previously developed by the authors, and which is capable of forecasting the deterioration process of existing bridge members, was applied to evaluate the safety indices (soundness score) and remaining life of the target bridge based on these test results. Using these methods, the remaining life of an aged RC-T girder bridge (SK-bridge) can be quantitatively estimated by applying the bridge rating expert (BREX) system, which is a subsystem of the J-BMS RC version that incorporates with the field inspection data. In this study, close visual inspection was carried out on the aged bridge by professional visual inspectors, during which all variations of the inspection results were evaluated using a five-step questionnaire. As a result, it was found that the soundness score (safety index) and remaining life predictions were influenced by the learning (supervised) data selection. Additionally, the predicted remaining lives were verified through concrete core tests extracted from main girders and deck slabs.