Infrastructure Inspection During and After Unexpected Events - Phase IV

"Identifying the loading capacity of bridges in cities during and after natural disasters, such as river flooding and ground movement, is a very complicated and expensive task. Lives and financial resources can be saved, and critical supplies can be delivered to the affected areas if civil infrastructure damage conditions and bridges’ loading capacity are available to emergency responders and repair planners during or immediately after the extreme event. During flooding, for example, hydrodynamic loading on the bridge depend upon both the speed and the height of the water in the river. These hydrodynamic forces, depending on whether the bridge is inundated, will put the bridge under stress conditions that are different than the normal conditions, and that may reduce the bridge’s operational-loading capacity. Therefore, one goal of the proposed work is to predict the bridge loading capacity during flooding, thereby informing the weight and possibly the velocity of road-vehicles that can be allowed to cross the bridge during the events. While the performance and loading capacity of bridges are expected to change after the extreme event due to damage and other structural changes, existing computer finite element (FE) models of healthy bridges may not give realistic estimations of the bridges’ loading capacity.  Therefore, substantial work has been done in the literature, and is ongoing in many current projects, toward developing effective structure-updating schemes. Research in the time and frequency domains has been reported, but with limited success in real-life field applications. While work has been seen toward updating bridges under vibrational loading conditions, not much work has been seen toward updating bridges under flooding conditions"

The goal of this work is to integrate an FE model of a highway bridge with a damage-detection method to predict the loading capacity of the bridge under different damage and loading conditions like those involved in extreme weather events. With weather forecasting showing storms of increasing strength and frequency, the need for a tool that can predict the loading capacity of the structure during and after the events will be essential for emergency responders and the safety and management of the critical routes of the transportation system. The proposed methodology can be integrated with weather- and flood-prediction software in the future to provide a complete picture of the status of critical structures before, during, and after extreme weather events.

The MATC research program is designed to address the U.S. Department of Transportation’s strategic goals of the safety, good repair, economic competitiveness, and environmental sustainability of the U.S. transportation system. The proposed research addresses a major safety issue in U.S. highway systems with a proactive repair action and modification plan that can be determined based on the conditions of bridges during or after extreme weather events. The research also addresses the safety of drivers and goods transported during and after extreme natural events. As a result of the proposed research, emergency responders will be able to predict the conditions and loading capacity of bridges during and after the events and check their suitability for delivering essential services and materials to affected areas. The research will also contribute to road safety and improve the economic competitiveness of the U.S. transportation system.

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