A system model for the lifecycle monitoring of bridges

In current bridge maintenance practice, condition grades are assigned to individual bridges, based on regularly performed inspections. One of the main limitations to this approach is the subjective nature of grade assignment. To overcome this issue, major bridge authorities are developing new methods for condition assessment, based on collecting and evaluating sensor data. A major challenge in this context is to correctly model the impact of local deterioration on the condition of the bridge as whole. In this research, a new system model-based approach has been developed to accurately model the correlations between the deterioration mechanisms and the measurement values indicating the progress of the deterioration. In addition, the system model describes the impact of the condition of individual bridge components on the condition of the overall bridge system. To this end, the bridge is hierarchically decomposed taking the structural system and mutual dependencies into account. The actual state propagation mechanism is achieved by means of logical connection elements. The resulting impact tree can be used for propagating the condition assignments from the leave nodes (the sensors) to the top (the entire bridge).