Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering(IRISE)

-Project Scope of Work-(Year 2 Annual Work Program)

SUMMARY PAGE

Project Title: Improving Bridge Assessment through the Integration of Conventional Visual Inspection, Non-Destructive Evaluation, and Structural Health Monitoring Data

Person Submitting Proposal: Amir H. Alavi

Proposed Funding Period: 12/01/2019 - 11/30/2021

Project Duration: 24 months

Project Cost: $ 199,330

Project Title: Improving Bridge Assessment through the Integration of Conventional Visual Inspection, Non-Destructive Evaluation, and Structural Health Monitoring Data

Problem Statement:Given the large scale of civil infrastructure systems, their inspection is hampered by access issues that result in large costs and relatively long intervals between inspections. Further, current assessment approaches are generally subjective in nature and provide only qualitative data reflective of surface or near-surface condition. To overcome these challenges, recently, there have been numerous investigations on merging the fast-growing cyber-physical structural health monitoring (SHM) technologies as well as non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques into infrastructure monitoring. Despite the obvious advantages of all these techniques, there is a huge gap in the establishment of effective approaches to fuse the data acquired from all these paradigms to make informed decisions related to assessment, management, preservation, and renewal. In essence, currently there is not a comprehensive integration framework to integrate the results taken from NDE/SHM/visual inspection, and they are mostly conducted/analyzed in a fragmented and piecemeal manner.

Project Objectives: The primary purpose of this study is to establish a framework capable of leveraging emerging SHM and NDE techniques to provide improved performance assessment of bridges. In particular, the proposed framework would focus on addressing the principal challenges associated with studying the service life of bridge structures, which are related to (a) the long-time scales (which requires accelerated aging), and (b) the diverse outputs related to bridge condition (in terms of data collected through SHM, NDE, and visual inspection). The primary focus would be on identifying the synergies among bridge degradation, remaining service life, and the results taken from the multimodal sensing technologies (such as SHM, NDE).

Project Scope: Through a collaboration with the Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (CAIT) at the Rutgers University along with Wiss, Janney, Elstner (WJE) Inc. (industry partner), this research will leverage access to the unique dataset generated by the Bridge Evaluation and Accelerated Structural Testing (BEAST) facility1 to identify the many potential synergies between SHM, NDE, and visual inspection for improving the current bridge condition assessment practice. BEAST is the first full-scale bridge specimen located in Piscataway, New Jersey (Figure 1). The BEAST facility is the first facility nationwide capable of applying controlled and accelerated live load, environmental, and maintenance demands on full-scale bridge superstructures. The specimen is a multi-girder steel composite bridge (30 by 50 ft), that will be subjected to rapid-cycling environmental changes and extreme traffic loading to speed up deterioration as much as 30 times in order to simulate 15-20 years of wear-and-tear in just a few months. In particular, the specimen will be exposed to over 8 million cycles of live loading (60 kips), 400 freeze-thaw and hot-dry cycles, as well as the application of de-icing agents (6% 1 Additional information, including a mini-documentary on the laboratory can be found atcait.rutgers.edu/beast

brine solution) to simulate common winter maintenance practices. The primary target is to validate performance models by measuring stresses and deterioration caused by live, environmental, and maintenance loading in an extremely compressed time frame.

Figure 1 – Bridge Evaluation and Accelerated Structural Testing (BEAST) Laboratory at Rutgers University

In this project, Rutgers University will periodically collect the NDE data (inclusive of high resolution data collected by Impact Echo, Ultrasonic Wave, Ground Penetrating Radar, Electrical Resistivity, Half-Cell Potential, Shear tomography, and Infrared Thermography), SHM data (inclusive of monitoring the deck and girders via a series of strain, temperature, displacement, and acceleration gages), and visual inspection (HD images taken by an unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)) from the specimen while it is subjected to rapid-cycling environmental changes and extreme traffic loading during a 9-12 months period. The University of Pittsburgh will help in collecting the UAV and additional (such as visual inspection) data based on the needs of this project. Once accomplished, Pitt will analyze the NDE, SHM and visual inspection data to investigate the potential correlation among the bridge degradation, remaining service, and the results taken from the collected data. Of particular interest will be the identification of the level of unique information provided by each data modality as well as the development of fusion techniques that can reliably operate on data with various levels of spatial and temporal resolution.

Proposed Work:

The objectives of this project will be realized through the completion of the following tasks:

Task A: Collection of High-Resolution and High-Temporal Data from the BEAST SpecimenRutgers University will kick-in the accelerated testing at project initiation. It is anticipated that the experiment will last approximately 9-12 months from the start date. Through this task, Rutgers University will provide the University of Pittsburgh with a series of high resolution and temporal raw data (NDE, SHM, and Visual Inspection via UAV) frequently collected from the specimen. The University of Pittsburgh along with WJE will then work closely to interpret the data in such a way to meet the analytical objectives of the proposed framework to be established in the current project. The data will provide the full life cycle of bridge performance (deterioration, initiation, and propagation) from the first day of service until to the point that the deck will be functionally deficient and out of service.

Deliverable: A progress review meeting with IRISE Steering Committee representatives, including the PennDOT SME team, will be held 2-months after project initiation.

Task B: Processing of Collected DataOnce the raw data is collected, the University of Pittsburgh and WJE will closely collaborate for further data processing and quality assessment. The processing will include the determination of certain performance indexes from the data to fuse within a multi-modal integration framework. For example, the Impact-Echo data will be processed using different types of filtering approaches to determine the extent and type of deck delamination.

Deliverable: A progress review meeting with IRISE Steering Committee representatives, including the PennDOT SME team, will be held 3-months after project initiation.

Task C: Advanced Statistical Data AnalyticsThe processed data and the defined performance indexes will be passed to the University of Pittsburgh for advanced statistical analysis. Given the large size of the collected data, they must be fused and integrated in a way that could be easily deployed for simulation purposes. To that extent, advanced statistical data analysis techniques (inclusive of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)) will be specifically employed for data reduction, data fusion, and exploratory analysis.

Deliverable: A progress review meeting with IRISE Steering Committee representatives, including the PennDOT SME team, will be held 18-months after project initiation.

Task D: Development of Recommendations The processed data will be assessed by defining a number of case scenarios. The difference among these scenarios will correspond to the variation of spatial resolution, temporal resolution, type of data, and their effectiveness in the determination of bridge condition. The final outcome of this task would be a series of recommendations regarding the effectiveness of each sensing technology (or a group of techniques in conjunction with each other) as well as the most appropriate data collection configurations (in terms of temporal and spatial resolutions). The cost benefit of each sensing technology (or a group of techniques in conjunction with each other) will be also discussed throughout the final report.

Deliverable: The draft list of recommendations will be included in the draft final report and discussed with IRISE Steering Committee representatives, including the PennDOT SME team, as described in Task E.

Task E: Final Report

A draft final report will be prepared and distributed to IRISE Steering Committee representatives 20-months after project initiation. The report will describe the use of the BEAST facility and the experimental design including the SHM, NDE and UVA technologies tested; the data collected and how that data was processed and analyzed; the case scenarios analyzed; and a set of recommendations for the improvement of data collection technologies using SHM (such as strain and acceleration monitoring), NDE (such as Ground Penetrating Radar), and visual inspection (such as using UAV) for the current bridge condition assessment practice. And the effectiveness of each or each group of technologies, including cost benefit information. Final recommendations will be further drafted as suggested revisions to PennDOT publications and or provisions (such as Publication 238 Bridge Inspection Manual and/or Pub 15M Design Manual Part 4).

A progress review meeting with IRISE Steering Committee representatives, including the PennDOT SME team, will be held 21-months after project initiation. Review comments will be due 1-month after the progress review meeting. A final report that reflects consideration of reviewer comments will be prepared and distributed 23-months after initiation of the project.

Deliverables:

In addition to the deliverables listed above, it is also anticipated that the findings of this research will be published and presented at key technical conferences (e.g. TRB, ASCE Structural Congress, among others) and journal publications.

Key Personnel:

Principal Investigator:

Amir H Alavi, PhDAssistant ProfessorUniversity of PittsburghSwanson School of EngineeringDepartment of Civil & Environmental Engineering3700 O'Hara Street,729 Benedum Hall Pittsburgh, PA 15261-2294 USATelephone: 517-526-1455 | Fax: 412-624-0135E-mail: alavi@pitt.edu

Collaborators:

Franklin Moon, PhDProfessorRutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Richard Weeks Hall, Room 428F500 Bartholomew Rd, Piscataway, NJ 08854Tel: 848 445 2870 | Fax: 732 445 0577Email: franklin.moon@rutgers.edu

Saeed Babanajad, PhDBridge Engineering Associate IIIWiss, Janney, Elstner (WJE) Associates Inc.330 Pfingsten Rd, Northbrook, IL 60062Tel: 847 753 6387 | Fax: 847 291 9599Email: sbabanajad@wje.com

Other Personnel:

Grad Student:

Qianyun (Gloria) ZhangUniversity of PittsburghDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Schedule:

2020 2021

Months Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Task A: Collection of Data from the BEAST Specimen

Task B: Processing of Collected DataTask C: Advanced Statistical Data AnalyticsTask D: Development of RecommendationsTask E: Draft Final ReportTask E: Final Report

Budget: The total project cost is $199,330.