Framework for incorporating nondestructive evaluation (NDE) into pavement and bridge management systems

One of the major components of an infrastructure management system is the condition assessment or deterioration modeling. With application to highway pavements and bridges, this paper presents conceptually how nondestructive evaluation (NDE) results can be utilized to provide a quantitative assessment of the infrastructure condition in a format usable for network-level pavement management systems and bridge management systems. NDE techniques typically applied to pavements include Visual Rating, Failing Weight Deflectometer (FWD), Dynaflect, Seismic Pavement Analyzer (SPA), and the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). Bridges can also be evaluated using the GPR. NDE is particularly useful at the network level of infrastructure management because of the mobility of conducting the tests. Detailed mechanistic methods have been suggested for NDE interpretation but this method may not be practical at network level. Interpretation of NDE results, through knowledge-based systems and intelligent databases indicate the defects and residual capacity of infrastructures, Measured physical properties and defects in the infrastructure component materials can be correlated to existing scales of condition assessment such as in the NBI and PONTIS formats for bridge management and also to an index or rating such as the PSI in highway pavements.