Study On Maintenance Strategy Of Bridges Based On Life Cycle Cost Analysis

Bridge system plays a vital role for the development of national economy.With the accelerating process of urbanization, the demand for a more economic,efficient transportation system becomes more urgent. Therefore, the increasingtraffic volume, vehicle loads brings challenges for our bridge system. Besides,bridge system also faces enormous pressure such as aging, lack of propermaintenance. Hence, how to guarantee the safety and reliability of exiting bridesas well as how to conduct reasonable cost analysis for new construction becomesthe major concern of this paper. The main content of this paper include:1. Introduced the common causes of bridge element deterioration. Analysisand comparison of current application of NDT methods as well as maintenance,rehabilitation, repair methods are performed based on the objects and testclassification.2. Based on the data provided by Department of Transportation, NorthCarolina, combined with the prediction of deterioration rate and maintenance cost,the analysis of optimization of level of service is conducted. The result shows thatunder unlimited budget, the level of service of all bridge components shouldremain at a higher level. Hence, the most economic maintenance policy should beincreasing survey frequency and performing preventive maintenance withadequate budget.3. According to the improved algorithm that uses a dual simplex scheme tosolve the linear programming sub-problem, which permits rapid re-optimization,the optimization of level of service under limited budget is calculated. The resultshows that with limited resources, components with higher cost-benefit ratioshould be check more frequently and kept to a higher level of service. There bymaximize the utilization of limited budget in order to ensure the safety andreliability of the bridge as a whole structure.