Evaluation of existing highway bridge systems

Abstract

Evaluation, repair and rehabilitation of bridges are increasingly important topic in current efforts to deal with the deteriorating infrastructure of developed countries. In fact, after several years of large scale construction projects to build new highway networks, the number of existing bridges is so large that current administrations need to invest increasingly large amounts of funds on the maintenance, diagnostic and repair of these bridges.

The objective of this study is to develop a comprehensive framework for the evaluation of existing highway bridge systems based on reliability techniques and accounting for the nonlinear behavior of structures.