Development and Practical Application of Prestressed Concrete Bridge Rating Expert System

The author has been developing a practical Bridge Management System that is referred to as the Japanese Bridge Management System (J-BMS) for existing concrete bridges. This paper introduces a newly developed bridge management system for the prestressed concrete (PC) bridges (J-BMS PC version) which integrated with the PC bridge rating expert system (PC-BREX). The proposed system is able to predict the deterioration process of the existing PC bridge superstructure components as well as assess a broad array of optional corrective strategies. The system also has the capability to search and retrieve from a J-BMS database system(J-BMS DB), the necessary information, carry out suitable analyses to arrive at some recommendations that would help users to optimize their decisions based on engineering aspects, cost and economic issues and bridge management policies. A comparison of the results of applying the system to some actual in-service PC bridges with a special designed survey form to experts shows that optimal maintenance planning as well as bridge rating can be predicted accurately by using the system.