The researchers — Hayder Rasheed, associate professor of civil engineering, Yacoub Najjar, professor of civil engineering, and Ahmed Al-Rahmani, doctoral student in civil engineering at United Arab Emirates — found that the usual method of bridge inspection can be too subjective to be useful.
"It varies from inspector to inspector," Rasheed said in a press release. "They measure the cracks in the bridge, but they have no objective way to calculate how much it is damaged. Because the inspectors decide which bridges are repaired first, it's very important to make the process objective across the board." Even experienced inspectors can have widely varying opinions, he said.
The researchers’ new system, which could also be used in other applications such as dams, buildings and airplanes, was created based on thousands of simulations. Researchers and graduate students built synthetic bridges to simulate varying conditions.
The measurements placed into the network then go through two cycles of analysis, Rasheed said. “We come up with damage detection of where we expect the cracks to be and how deep and how wide they are. It's a very intelligent system," he said.
The new system also has the advantage of being simple. "The health index is one systematic approach in a sense," Najjar said. "Inspectors gather information about the bridge, put in the information and they receive the health index of the bridge. It makes it easier to study the bridge because you bring all of these dimensions into one number. But when you have multiple dimensions, it is difficult to rate them."
The researchers’ next step is to test bridge beams, and after that they will test actual bridges throughout Kansas. The project has received funding from the Kansas Department of Transportation and may eventually yield a tool that can be used by the state.
