Highway Bridge Infrastructure in the Province of British Columbia (BC), Canada

Abstract

Some recent catastrophic impacts on highway bridges around the world have raised concerns for assessing the vulnerability of existing highway bridges in Canada. Rapid aging of bridge infrastructure coupled with increased traffic volume has made it crucial to establish an advanced Bridge Management System (BMS) for highway bridges. This paper aims at developing a highway bridge inventory for the province of British Columbia (BC) which is critical for efficient assessment of the existing structural health condition of the bridges, predicting their future deterioration, and prioritizing their maintenance and retrofitting works. This inventory is an extensive assemblage of data on highway bridges in BC under the responsibility of the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (BC MoT) that includes more than 2500 highway bridges. It includes identification of the most common bridge types along with their location, structural and geometric parameters such as construction materials, bridge length, number of spans, deck width, skew angle, bridge pier, and foundation type, structural health condition rating and construction period. This information is of paramount importance for effective infrastructure management, proper rehabilitation solutions, and efficient design of a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Control System for enhancing structural resilience of highway bridges in BC. Several statistical analyses have been carried out for efficient utilization of the information available in the inventory for further research and analyses, as well as for developing a proper BMS for the province's bridges.

Predicting Maximum Effective Temperatures and Thermal Gradients for Steel I-Girder in Canadian Climate Regions

“…An increasing temperature due to climate change accelerates material degradation and exacerbates the bridge's structural integrity and serviceability [4,5]. The Canadian Infrastructure report card released in 2019 stated that functional and structural deficiencies are more noticeable for approximately 40% of Canadian bridges due to increasing climate change loads and not considering the temperature increase properly during the design phase [6,7].…”

Special Issue: “Concrete Structures: Present and Future Trends”

“…A wide range of topics are addressed: (1) material developments, namely, novelties in the scope of reduction of heat of hydration in ternary replacement mixtures [1] and improvements in freeze-thaw resistance of concrete road infrastructure using superabsorbent polymers [2]; (3) innovations in numerical and physical models, with methods for automatic shape generation and three-dimensional printing of reduced-scale models of ultrathin concrete shells [3]; (4) exploratory experimental tests to evaluate new solutions with high performance and low environmental impact [4]; (5) management of infrastructures by developing a bridge inventory for efficient assessment, predicting future deterioration, and prioritizing their maintenance and retrofitting works [5]; and (6) design optimization by the application of machine learning and optimality in multistory reinforced concrete frames [6].…”