UTC 2022 Funding - Cycle 2 Research Projects

Project Number: CY2-OU-05
Project Title: Improving Bridge Deck Deterioration Curves by Combining Extreme Weather and Infrastructure Data Sources
Performing Institution: University of Oklahoma
Principal Investigators: Aikaterini P. Kyprioti, Arif M. Sadri, and Jin-Song Pei
Proposed Start and End Date: 10/01/2024 to 09/30/2025
Project Description: With more than 600,000 bridges in service around the United States and half of them constructed before the 70s according to National Bridge Inventory (NBI) and an unprecedented number of record-level extreme weather phenomena within the last decade, there is a pressing need to improve the management and decision-making processes when it comes to predicting bridge performance and prioritizing maintenance activities. Such maintenance activities are typically emerging faster in bridge decks, due to the increased exposure of such elements to severe weather and traffic conditions. Attempts to include environmental and traffic factors in bridge performance indicators, such as deterioration curves, have demonstrated the need to develop region-specific approaches to better predict deterioration of transportation infrastructure. The objective of this study is to offer a detailed regional quantification of the impact that environmental and traffic factors have on bridge deck structural deterioration curves used for bridge maintenance by fusing environmental quantities (freeze thaw cycles, extreme heat, snow, rainfall) as captured by local monitoring stations (Mesonet grid) and by traffic data as recorded by NBI and probe vehicle data. The project, with a focus on bridge deck components, is also set to account for expansion joints, wherever present, and how their environmental deterioration might impact the overall deck performance. Also, issues related to traffic re-routing due to maintenance will be investigated utilizing a network level approach, to better capture local rerouting and temporary traffic increase, that might further burden neighboring bridges. Through this effort, a user-friendly, regional decision support system for complementing the current bridge management tools will be developed, to best inform the prioritization of maintenance interventions. Such advancement would allow for the consideration of multiple weather and traffic-driven accelerating factors in the decision making-process, enabling the projection of future deterioration rates. This work is expected to have impacts on the bridge management sector, since it is set to impact the transportation network in terms of enhancing the durability and sustainability of the bridge inventory and reduce the associated repair costs by intervening on the right time to prevent further deterioration that would result in higher repair costs. In addition to this, the granularity of information related to weather patterns could pave the way for the development of vulnerability indices for existing transportation infrastructure, depending on the availability of data regarding infrastructure performance levels.
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