• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.283-300
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• 2015

Visual condition inspections remain paramount to assessing the current deterioration status of a bridge and assigning remediation or maintenance tasks so as to ensure the ongoing serviceability of the structure. However, in recent years, there has been an increasing backlog of maintenance activities. Existing research reveals that this is attributable to the labour-intensive, subjective and disruptive nature of the current bridge inspection method. Current processes ultimately require lane closures, traffic guidance schemes and inspection equipment. This not only increases the whole-of-life costs of the bridge, but also increases the risk to the travelling public as issues affecting the structural integrity may go unaddressed. As a tool for bridge condition inspections, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or, drones, offer considerable potential, allowing a bridge to be visually assessed without the need for inspectors to walk across the deck or utilise under-bridge inspection units. With current inspection processes placing additional strain on the existing bridge maintenance resources, the technology has the potential to significantly reduce the overall inspection costs and disruption caused to the travelling public. In addition to this, the use of automated aerial image capture enables engineers to better understand a situation through the 3D spatial context offered by UAV systems. However, the use of UAV for bridge inspection involves a number of critical issues to be resolved, including stability and accuracy of control, and safety to people. SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) is a technique that could be used by a UAV to build a map of the bridge underneath, while simultaneously determining its location on the constructed map. While there are considerable economic and risk-related benefits created through introducing entirely new ways of inspecting bridges and visualising information, there also remain hindrances to the wider deployment of UAVs. This study is to provide a context for use of UAVs for conducting visual bridge inspections, in addition to addressing the obstacles that are required to be overcome in order for the technology to be integrated into current practice.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.31-35
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• 2021

The expansion joints installed on the bridge for the accommodation of expansion and contraction of the supper structure are essential members of the bridge. However, the expansion joints are deteriorated over time and the waterproof function weakens, causing rainwater to penetrate and deteriorate the structure. In order to solve the traffic congestion caused by frequent replacement of the old expansion joints along with the deterioration of the structure, a post-integrated abutment bridge in which the existing expansion joints are removed and replaced with reinforced concrete link connection has been applied to highway bridges since 2016. After the post-integrated abutment method was applied, it was partially applied to bridges in which the superstructure and abutment were jammed. In this study, the causes of problems that may occur when the post-integrated abutment method is applied to the jammed bridge were analyzed numerically. It was analyzed that damage occurred in the link connection part. Based on the results of this study, the application condition for the post-integrated abutment method is reinforced as it is not possible to apply the post-integrated abutment method to bridges are already jammed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.149-154
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• 2008

Service life of bridges should be evaluated by physical life considering damage/deterioration. But it is difficult to identify optimal maintenance scenario due to insufficient research related to that. To identify optimal maintenance scenario, it is needed to develope life cycle profile model of condition state variation by deterioration factor. The LCP model has been developed in consideration of regression analysis and survey in this study. It is expected that the LCP model could help to achieve HBMS system improvement.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.93-101
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• 2022

RC Slab bridges in Korea account for more than 70% of the total bridges for more than 20 years of service. As the number of aging structures increases, the importance of safety diagnosis and maintenance of structures increases. For highway bridges, cracks are a main cause of deck deterioration, which is very closely related to the decrease in bridge durability and service life. In addition, the damage rate of expansion joints and bearings accounts for approximately 73% higher than that of major members. Therefore, this study defined damage scenarios combined with devices damages and deck deterioration. The stress distribution and maximum stress on the deck were then evaluated using design vehicle load and daily temperature gradient for single and combined damage scenarios. Furthermore, this study performed damage-spread analysis and predicted condition ratings according to a deck deterioration model generated from the inspection and diagnosis history data of cracks. The heterogeneous damages combined with the member damages of expansion joints and bearings increased the rate of crack area and damage spread, which accelerated the time to reach the condition rating of C. Therefore, damage to bridge members requires proper and prompt repair and replacement, and otherwise it can cause the damage to bridge deck and the spread of the damage.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.339-342
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• 2003

The bridge columns with lap-splice reinforcements in earthquake suffered a brittle bond-slip failure due to deterioration of the lap-spliced longitudinal reinforcements without developing its flexural capacity or ductility. In this case, such a brittle failure can be controlled by the seismic retrofit using FRP wrapping. The retrofitted columns using FRP wrapping showed significant improvement in seismic performance due to FRP's confinement effect. This paper presents the circumferential confinement effect of existing circular bridge pier strengthened with FRP wrapping for poor lap-splice details. The effects on the confinement of FRP wrapping, such as gap lengths between footing and FRP, fiber orientations, and thicknesses of FRP, were investigated by quasi-static experiments.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.139-155
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• 2012

Structural health monitoring systems are often installed on bridges to provide assessments of the need for structural maintenance and repair. Damage or deterioration may be detected by observation of changes in bridge characteristics evaluated from measured structural responses. However, construction materials such as concrete and steel cables exhibit certain time-dependent behaviour, which also results in changes in structural characteristics. If these are not accounted for properly, false alarms may arise. This paper proposes a systematic and efficient method to study the time-dependent effects on the dynamic properties of cable-stayed bridges. After establishing the finite element model of a cable-stayed bridge taking into account geometric nonlinearities and time-dependent behaviour, long-term time-dependent analysis is carried out by time integration. Then the dynamic properties of the bridge after a certain period can be obtained. The effects of time-dependent behaviour of construction materials on the dynamic properties of typical cable-stayed bridges are investigated in detail.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.280-287
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• 2003

The bridge columns with lap-splice reinforcements in earthquake suffered a brittle bond-slip failure due to the deterioration of lap-spliced longitudinal reinforcement without developing its flexural capacity or ductility. In this case, such a brittle failure can be controlled by the seismic retrofit using FRP wrapping. The retrofitted columns using FRP laminated circular tube showed significant improvement in seismic performance due to FRP's confinement effect. This paper presents the circumferential confinement effect of existing circular bridge pier strengthened with FRP wrapping for poor lap-splice details. The effects on the confinement of FRP wrapping, such as gap lengths between footing and FRP, fiber orientations, and thicknesses of FRP, were investigated by Quasi-static experiments.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.922-927
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• 2006

There is a concern with worldwide deterioration of highway bridges, particularly reinforced concrete. The advantages of fibre reinforced plastic(FRP) composites over conventional materials motivate their use in highway bridges for replacement of structures. Recently, an FRP deck has been installed on a state highway, located in New York State, as an experimental project. In this paper, a systematic approach for analysis of this FRP deck bridge is presented. Multi-step linear numerical analyses have been performed using the finite element method to study the structural behavior and the possible failure mechanism of the FRP deck-superstructure system Deck's self-weight and ply orientations at the interface between steel girders and FRP deck are considered in this study. From this research, the results of the numerical analyses were corroborated with field test results. Analytical results reveal several potential failure mechanism for the FRP deck and truss bridge system The results presented in this study may be used to propose engineering design guideline for new and replacement FRP bridge deck structure.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.133-142
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• 2018

The deterioration of existing bridges has become a major problem around the world. In the paper, a new model and an associated stress checking method are proposed for concrete box girders strengthened by external prestressing. The new model called the spatial grid model can analyze all the spatial behaviors clearly by transforming the box girder into discrete orthogonal grids which are equivalent to plate elements. Then the three-layer stresses are employed as the stress checking indices to evaluate the stress state of the plate elements. The initial stress check before strengthening reveals the cracked and potential cracking areas for existing bridges, making the strengthening design more targeted and scientific; the subsequent stress check after strengthening evaluates the strengthening effect and ensures safety. A deficient bridge is selected as the practical example, verifying the accuracy and applicability of the proposed model and stress checking method. The results show that principal stresses in the middle layer of plate elements reflect the main effects of external prestressing and thus are the key stress checking indices for strengthening. Moreover, principal stresses check should be conducted in all parts of the strengthened structure not only in the webs. As for the local effects of external prestressing especially in the areas near anchorage and deviator, normal stresses check in the outer and inner layers dominates and local strengthening measures should be taken if necessary.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.189-197
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• 2008

Using a 5 year(2003 to 2007) pavement condition survey data from the highway pavement management system(HPMS), the roughness of the bridge deck pavement was analyzed. Based on the result of this analysis, this study tried to identify the factors affecting the deterioration of the bridge deck pavement condition. The data from HPMS indicates that the roughness of the bridge deck pavement is worse than that of the general pavement on the roadbed. The worse roughness of the bridge deck pavement is caused by the settlement of approach slab as well as the surface distress on the bridge deck pavement. In order to improve effectively the roughness of the bridge deck pavement, a management system was established in which not only the regular automated pavement condition survey to check the distress of surface of the bridge deck pavement was adopted but an automated surface profiler to check the degree of settlement of approach slab was applied.