| dc.description.abstract | The priority of bridge maintenance is usually determined based on the condition of bridge components, without considering the risk of collapse of the bridge. At present, Taiwan′s highway bridges use the DER&U method regulated by the Ministry of Communications (MOTC) for inspection, and the overall bridge condition index (CI) is calculated from the D, E, R and U values of each component of the bridge after inspection. However, there are many problems in the implementation of this method, such as: (1) the bridge condition index CI cannot correctly reflect the difference in the actual condition of the bridge, and the risk of collapse of bridges with similar CI values may not be the same; (2) the calculation of CI is based on a point-deduction mechanism of component deterioration, and the CI value of bridges with a large number of bridge components will be relatively low; (3) although all the detection data of D, E, R and U are important for the overall condition of the bridge, however, the U value of the component becomes the decisive factor in the current maintenance priority.
Therefore, in order to solve these issues, this study reviews the bridge condition indexes (including risk-based indexes) used in different countries, and establishes a bridge risk assessment framework suitable for DER&U inspection methodology to calculate the risk index (RI) of bridges, taking into account their inspection results and establishment of indexes. In this study, seven different types of bridges were randomly selected from the Taiwan Bridge Management System (TBMS) to calculate their CI and RI to verify the results of this study. The results show that the bridge with the most deterioration of important components will have the highest RI value, that is, the maintenance priority will be the highest. Even if the non-critical component is severely deteriorated, the RI value of the bridge will be low, and its maintenance priority will be lower. Therefore, the bridge risk assessment framework established by this study can highlight the possible collapse risk of the overall bridge, which can be used as a reference for bridge management machines when formulating bridge maintenance priority decisions.
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