State-of-the-art review of defect detection in concrete bridge

Abstract

Bridges are considered vital structures in any country. Complete or partial failures that may happen to such structures risk people lives and cause economic losses. Accurate condition assessment of bridge elements is a mandatory step to choose the most appropriate maintenance strategy. In most countries, visual inspection plays the dominant role in assessing the current condition of bridge elements. Nevertheless, visual inspection suffers from several limitations such as subjectivity and uncertainty. Accordingly, a need was arisen to deploy new techniques in the inspection process to precisely assess the condition of bridge elements and to avoid the shortcoming of visual inspection. In this regard, researchers incorporated several nondestructive and remote-sensing technologies in the inspection of bridges such as GPR, Infrared Thermography, sensors, etc. This paper provides an overview of current technologies used in inspection of concrete bridge decks. The main features, advantages, and limitations of each technology are analyzed. The proposed evaluation approaches to rank these technologies are reviewed. The review revealed that combining several complementary technologies in inspection process effectively builds a comprehensive inspection system. However, more studies about the performance aspects of the nondestructive and remotesensing technologies are needed to optimize the design and application of such inspection systems.