Inspection Survey of Support Bearings in Road Bridges

Support bearings have a very important role in the structural performance of bridges. As an integral part of the bridge, bearings must guarantee a service life that is compatible with that of the remaining bridge components. However, the service life of support bearings is often lower than that of the bridge, leading to repair or replacement operations, which can be relatively expensive and may cause considerable inconvenience to the traffic flow. This paper follows a recent study performed by the authors, in which an inspection and diagnosis system for road bridge structural bearings was proposed. It presents the application of the system to a sample of 152 support bearings in Portuguese road bridges, which is also deemed representative of bridge bearings in most European countries. The results obtained allowed performing a statistical analysis in which a number of aspects were evaluated, namely, the characteristics of the bearings, the anomalies, their causes and degree of urgency of intervention, the inspection and diagnosis methods, and the most appropriate maintenance and rehabilitation techniques. The results obtained allow characterizing and understanding in further depth the behavior of these bridge components, providing a number of lessons on bridge bearing design, execution, and maintenance. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.