Maintenance, rehabilitation, and reconstruction of
concrete bridge decks substantially represent the
highest expenditure in the overall cost of bridge
management. However, the current practice of
bridge deck condition assessment relies mostly on
visual inspection and simple nondestructive evaluations
using chain drag and hammer sounding. Advanced
(NDE) techniques are being used, but their
wide application has been held back due to the low
speed and high cost of evaluation. In addition, significant
expertise is needed in both the data collection
and data analysis and interpretation. Two systems
under development are presented. The first
system is called ANDERS (Automated Nondestructive
Evaluation and Rehabilitation System) and concentrates
on early problem detection and rehabilitation.
The second system is RD2 (Robotic Deck
Diagnostics) and concentrates on comprehensive
condition assessment of concrete bridge decks