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Reliability assessment of existing concrete bridges with geometrical NDT results - Case studies
(2023)
The results of and the validity in reliability assessment of existing bridges essentially depend on the information available about the considered system. Information about the actual condition as well as structural and material characteristics can be observed on-site to refine the computation models used in assessment. Non-destructive testing (NDT) methods for concrete structures are capable of reconstructing missing, questioned, or inconsistent as-built plans. This contribution summarizes recent developments within the scope of the national pre-standardization project “ZfPStatik”, which aims to prepare a guideline about NDT-supported structural analyses. The focus is on the purposeful and explicit utilization of geometrical tendon and reinforcement bar positions (measured on-site using the ultrasound echo and ground penetrating radar (GPR) techniques) in probabilistic reliability analyses — shown by means of real case studies. The well-established first order reliability method is applied to different concrete bridges, which are typical for the German road bridge stock, to demonstrate the utility of incorporating quality-evaluated NDT-results in terms of changes in structural reliability.
Making optimal decisions about the reliability of existing structures requires that the information used in assessment adequately represents the properties and the condition of the structures. The knowledge gap regarding a structure to be assessed can be successively filled by individually purposeful observations on site. This paper gives an overview of an approach for utilizing nondestructively gathered measurement results in reliability assessment of existing structures. An essential part of measurement-based stochastic modeling of basic variables is the calculation of measurement uncertainties, which serves to establish confidence in measurement, to ensure the comparability of unambiguously expressed measurement results, and to quantify the quality of the measured information. Regarding the current discourse on how to treat information collected on-site in the context of assessment, the authors recommend that measurement uncertainty becomes an uncertainty component mandatorily to be represented in measurement-based stochastic models. The main steps of the proposed concept are presented, and the advantages of its application are emphasized by means of a prestressed concrete bridge as case study. The bridge is assessed regarding the serviceability limit state decompression using ultrasonic and radar data measured at the structure.