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"The reassessment of bridges continues to take great importance both nationally and internationally. A major challenge is to find computation models reflecting the actual properties of the considered structures sufficiently accurate. Besides regular inspections, the conduction of advanced measurements is suitable to generate reliable information about a structure to be assessed. Prior to incorporating measurement results in reassessment, the relevance, the trueness, and the precision of the measured information needs to be stated. On the one hand, the use of information whose quality has not been assessed can lead to errors with serious consequences. On the other, the measurement of irrelevant information is inefficient. Although the use of measured data in assessment is currently mostly unregulated, their appreciation in reliability analyses is beneficial since the built environment can be assessed more realistically. Utilizing NDT in reassessment has the potential to extend remaining lifetimes of a structure, save resources, and improve infrastructural availabilities. The power of judgment regarding the decision on the reliability of an existing structure can be increased.
In this contribution, an approach is outlined to process non-destructively gathered measurement data in a comparableway in order to include themeasured information in probabilistic reliability assessments of existing structures. An essential part is the calculation of measurement uncertainties. The effect of incorporating evaluated NDT-results is demonstrated by means of a prestressed concrete bridge and GPR measurements conducted on this bridge as a case-study. The bridge is assessed regarding SLS Decompression using the NDT-results."
Reliability assessment of existing bridge constructions based on results of non-destructive testing
(2018)
The non-destructive testing methods available for civil engineering (NDT-CE) enable the measurements of quantitative parameters, which realistically describe the characteristics of existing buildings. In the past, methods for quality evaluation and concepts for validation expanded into NDT-CE to improve the objectivity of measured data. Thereby, a metrological foundation was developed to collect statistically sound and structurally relevant information about the inner construction of structures without destructive interventions. More recently, the demand for recalculations of structural safety was identified. This paper summarizes a basic research study on structural analyses of bridges in combination with NDT. The aim is to use measurement data of nondestructive testing methods as stochastic quantities in static calculations. Therefore, a methodical interface between the guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement and probabilistic approximation procedures (e.g. FORM) has been proven to be suitable. The motivation is to relate the scientific approach of the structural analysis with real information coming from existing structures and not with those found in the literature. A case study about the probabilistic bending proof of a reinforced concrete bridge with statistically verified data from ultrasonic measurements shows that the measuring results fulfil the requirements concerning precision, trueness, objectivity and reliability.
Each engineering decision is based on a number of more or less accurate information. In assessment of existing structures, additional relevant information collected with on-site inspections facilitate better decisions. However, observed data basically represents the physical characteristic of interest with an uncertainty. This uncertainty is a measure of the inspection quality and can be quantified by expressing the measurement uncertainty. The internationally accepted rules for calculating measurement uncertainty are well established and can be applied straightforwardly in many practical cases. Nevertheless, the calculations require the occasionally time-consuming development of an individually suitable measurement model. This contribution attempts to emphasize proposals for modelling the non-destructive depth measurement of tendons in concrete using the ultrasonic echo technique. The proposed model can serve as guideline for the determination of the quality of the measured information in future comparable inspection scenarios.
Existing concrete structures were usually designed for lifetimes of several decades. The current and urgently required efforts to increase sustainability and protect the environment will likely result in extended service lives up to 100 years. To achieve such objectives, it is required to assess structures over their entire lifecycles. Non-destructive testing (NDT) methods can reliably support the assessment of existing structures during the construction, operational, and decommissioning phases. One of the most important and safety-relevant components of a prestressed concrete structure are the tendons. NDT methods such as the ultrasonic echo method are suitable for both the detection and the localization of the tendons, i.e., the measurement of their geometrical position inside the component. The uniqueness of structures, concrete heterogeneity, and varying amounts of secondary components such as the reinforcement represent obstacles in the application of these methods in practice. The aim of this contribution is to demonstrate a practicable procedure, that can be used in the field to determine the parameters required for the measuring data analysis without extensive knowledge about the investigated components. For this purpose, a polyamide reference specimen is used to show which steps are required to obtain reliable imaging information on the position of tendons from the measurement data. The procedure is then demonstrated on a concrete test specimen that covers various relevant and practice-oriented test scenarios, such as varying tendon depths and component thicknesses.
The dataset contains raw data gathered with the ultrasonic pulse-echo method on concrete specimens. The surfaces of the measuring objects were automatically scanned point by point. Pulse-echo measurements were performed at each of these measuring points. The test specimens represent two typical testing tasks in construction industry: the detection of objects and the determination of dimensions to describe the geometry of components. By automating the measurement process, the different test scenarios are examined with a high repeatability, precision and measuring point density. Longitu- dinal and transversal waves were used and the geometrical aperture of the testing system was varied. The low-frequency probes operate in a range of up to approximately 150 kHz. In addition to the specification of the geometrical dimensions of the individual probes, the directivity pattern and the sound field characteristics are provided. The raw data are stored in a universally readable format. The length of each time signal (A-scan) is two milliseconds and the sampling rate is two mega-samples per second. The provided data can be used for comparative studies in signal analysis, imag- ing and interpretation as well as for evaluation pur- poses in different, practically relevant testing scenarios.
This dataset contains raw data acquired in ultrasound measurements on a reference specimen made of concrete at Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), Berlin (Germany). The internal specimen identifier is “Pk266”. The measurements were conducted using the pulse-echo method. The upper surface of the specimen was defined as measuring area. The aim of the measurements is to determine both the geometrical dimensions (thickness) and the position of tendons to the measuring area. In addition to this, a second dataset of a second specimen with identifier is existing named “Pk050” has been acquired. Pk050 has the same geometrical dimensions and concrete recipe as Pk266 recipe but does not contain tendons [Reference: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/9EID5D].
Information about an existing structure can be collected at certain costs to evaluate the reliability and condition as realistically as necessary. This information can be relevant or irrelevant, true or biased, precise or imprecise. The incorporation of relevant and quality-assessed measured information into reliability reassessment offers the chance to extend remaining lifetimes and support decision making about optimal actions or maintenance strategies. This paper shows recent developments in a national research project that aims to produce a guideline on the NDT-based, structure-specific modification of partial safety factors. The general methodology, results from recalculations according to the Eurocodes and metrologically solvable testing tasks relevant in the recalculation of the concrete bridges are shown and compared with the non-destructive testing methods applicable to concrete bridges. A case study is used to demonstrate that as-built drawings, in this case of the positions of tendons and shear reinforcement, can be verified using the radar method.
Air-coupled ultrasonic (ACU) testing has proven to be a valuable method for increasing the speed in non-destructive ultrasonic testing and the investigation of sensitive specimens. A major obstacle to implementing ACU methods is the significant signal power loss at the air–specimen and transducer–air interfaces. The loss between transducer and air can be eliminated by using recently developed fluidic transducers. These transducers use pressurized air and a natural flow instability to generate high sound power signals. Due to this self-excited flow instability, the individual pulses are dissimilar in length, amplitude, and phase. These amplitude and angle modulated pulses offer the great opportunity to further increase the signal-to-noise ratio with pulse compression methods.
In practice, multi-input multi-output (MIMO) setups reduce the time required to scan the specimen surface, but demand high pulse discriminability. By applying envelope removal techniques to the individual pulses, the pulse discriminability is increased allowing only the remaining phase information to be targeted for analysis. Finally, semi-synthetic experiments are presented to verify the applicability of the envelope removal method and highlight the suitability of the fluidic transducer for MIMO setups.
With the mandatory introduction of the directive for recalculation of bridges in May 2011 in Germany, the administrations of the federal and state governments have a duty to demonstrate the stability of their bridge inventory. The requisite verification will be realized under consideration of the new increased traffic loads on the construction, in a four-step process. Particularly in older bridges the verification succeeds only using the computational resources of the original structural design. One option these reserves to be considered is the exact determination of the dead weight of the bridge. Since the existing as-built documents of the construction often digress significantly from the real dimensions, there are two options to resolve the issue. In addition to the technically very complicated and relatively expensive method of weighing the construction, the calculation can also be done indirectly through a combined process of hotogrammetric measurement and non-destructive testing. On a practical case study will be demonstrated how the solution of this problem can succeed. For this is done in the first step to scan in detailed the inner topography of a part of the construction by a 3D laser scanner. The results of these tests are compared with the existing stock plans of the building. The aim of this study is to determine the dead weight of structure. Therefore, in the first part of this work sectional plans were extracted of the technical drawing and the point cloud to calculate the area of the interior. Based on the calculated areas in the sectional planes, the volume calculation should take place in the next step.
Elastic wave propagation of ultrasound in bituminous road surfaces – simulations and measurements
(2015)
Maintenance costs of road infrastructure are increasing steadily. Adverse environmental impacts on infrastructure get more and more important as well. Therefore, it is important to determine how limited financial resources can be directed with an optimum pay-out. The present study takes first steps towards the usage of low-frequency ultrasound as a tool to evaluate the road condition.