MPC Research Reports
Report Details

Title:	Improved Element-Level Bridge Inspection Criteria for Better Bridge Management and Preservation
Authors:	Zhibin Lin, Hong Pan, Xingyu Wang, and Mingli Li
University:	North Dakota State University
Publication Date:	Dec 2019
Report #:	MPC-19-403
Project #:	MPC-504
TRID #:	01741574
Keywords:	bridge management systems, bridge members, condition surveys, data collection, data fusion, drones, inspection, literature reviews, maintenance management, sensors, structural health monitoring

Abstract

Bridge inspection data is an essential step in the bridge asset management operation and the bridge management system. As such, a reliability-based, holistic framework was proposed to effectively collect reliable data and perform data fusion and information fusion of sensory data used for element-level inspection and conditional assessment. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to better understand the current state of the research of and practice in the bridge element inspection.

To overcome the limitations of the visual inspection used in the routine bridge inspections, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was used to supplement the traditional visual inspection data by providing high quality, real-time, reliable data. Moreover, effective data fusion and information process methods were proposed to enhance the features extraction for sensor data for in-depth/special/damage inspections. This study explored the new data fusion methods based on three representative feature extraction techniques, while the kernel function-based support vector machine (SVM) was used to facilitate pattern recognition and improve identification. The effectiveness of these methods was verified even in conditions with high levels of noise interference.

In addition, this study attempted to unveil and reduce the structural uncertainty experienced in in-depth/special/damage inspection. The DBBN was herein used to extract statistical representation from vast amount of structural data, for probabilistically determining structural condition and health state for decision making.

How to Cite

Lin, Zhibin, Hong Pan, Xingyu Wang, and Mingli Li. Improved Element-Level Bridge Inspection Criteria for Better Bridge Management and Preservation, MPC-19-403. North Dakota State University - Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, Fargo: Mountain-Plains Consortium, 2019.