The Swedish Road
Administration has, at the present, a relatively intact and well-organised
bridge archive system. Most of the former bridge inspections performed on the
public road network after the nationalisation of the Swedish roads in 1944, are
documented and stored in different archives throughout the country. The
information from these inspections has been fed into a Microsoft Access
database called BEA (Bridge Element Analysis), with the purpose to explore the
possibility to determine the
damage occurrence, damage growth and the real
service life for bridge
structural members. In this case study it is examined, if
certain information and factors like geographical location, traffic, and
weather data at the time of casting, affect the service life of bridge
structural members thus the service life of bridges. Based on the information
stored in the BEA database, the service life of bridge structural members in
certain service life conditions may be estimated. For example, the real service
life of bridge members as a function of the outside airs temperature at the
time of the concrete casting. The information stored in the da tabase may also
be used in the development of a damage growth model based on the assessed
condition at the time of inspection.
More abstracts about the Learning from the Damage History of Bridges - A Case Study