Analysis of the brazilian federal bridge inventory

Abstract

Bridge Management aims to provide an appropriate support to decision-making for maintenance, rehabilitation and repair strategies under constraint of limited budgets. In this regard, the Federal Brazilian Department of Transportation (DNIT) has developed the SGO - a Brazilian Bridge Management System (B-BMS) - and promoted the most comprehensive road bridge inventory under its direct administration. To improve the management of these bridge assets, the DNIT is working to develop a statistical model to predict the future condition of bridge: the most efficient and effective tool in a BMS to planning when the maintenance actions will be required. The current paper reports on findings of inventory, predominantly composed of reinforced concrete bridges, focusing on potential deterioration agents reported and checking their influence on deterioration conditions. Based on national database, the paper proposes a methodology to forecast Brazilian bridges deterioration rates. An example of application is demonstrated and satisfactory prediction accuracy obtained, even for few inspection cycles and under restricted database information.

A new methodology to assess the structural capacity of bridge portfolios: application in Northeastern Brazilian bridges

“…About 50% of these bridges are located in Northeastern Brazil, which presents one of the highest seismic activities compared to other parts of Brazil [31]- [33]. Furthermore, bridges have the worst structural condition countrywide; 6.6% of them require immediate or mid-term interventions, as seen in [34]. Recurrent floods in the region also aggravate bridges' condition [7].…”

“…Therefore, they are used as material variabilities to create different bridge samples. A conservative approach is used in the characterization of the fc values, which is based on the C20 concrete class, since 77.7% of the age bridges recorded in DNIT reports were built up to 1975 [34]. Furthermore, the steel Young's Modulus is used as 210 GPa [36] for all analyses, as it has a small coefficient of variation value (i.e., about 3% in [37]).…”

Improvement of the Inspection Interval of Highway Bridges through Predictive Models of Deterioration

“…Equation (10) shows the developed transition probability matrices for a general bridge, representing the deterioration process under normal operational conditions in Brazil. Table 3 summarizes the Markov model's accuracy.…”

“…The analysis of these data provided more significant knowledge about the reality of bridges on Brazilian federal highways, producing subsidies for the planning of a bridge management system that is more compatible with reality and led to an understanding of the main aspects that guide state assessments of the bridges. According to [10], the reinforced concrete beam is the most used system (2764 bridges), representing more than 58%, followed by a reinforced concrete slab (777 bridges) and the prestressed concrete (622 bridges), within a spectrum of 4725 bridges. Almost 25.7% of the bridges in the inventory were constructed before 1960, and 52% were built between 1960 and 1975.…”

Long-Term Numerical Analysis of Subsurface Delamination Detection in Concrete Slabs via Infrared Thermography

“…The structural deterioration is accelerated by severe environmental events and the increase of the active loads, which are caused by the change in the traffic codes over the years, car accidents, and global climate change. In Brazil, the last report from the Federal Brazilian Department of Transportation [3] mentioned that 42% of the bridges under federal jurisdiction needed maintenance. Some bridges do not have a record about their age; however, for the structures having their ages documented, the evaluation condition worsens when the age increases.…”