TERRESTRIAL LIDAR-BASED BRIDGE EVALUATION

1 online resource (191 pages) : PDF

2010

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Considering the over half million bridges in the US state highway system, more than 70% of which were built before 1935, it is of little wonder that bridge maintenance and management is facing severe challenges and the significant funding scarcity rapidly escalates the problem. Commercial remote sensing techniques have the capability of covering large areas and are suggested to be cost effective methods for bridge inspection. This dissertation introduces several applications of the remote bridge inspection technologies using ground-based LiDAR systems. In particular, the application of terrestrial LiDAR for bridge health monitoring is studied. An automatic bridge condition evaluation system based on terrestrial LiDAR data, LiBE (LiDAR-based Bridge Evaluation), is developed. The research works completed thus far have shown that LiDAR technology has the capability for bridge surface defect detection and quantification, clearance measurement, and displacement measurement during bridge static load testing. Several bridges in Mecklenburg County, NC, and other areas have been evaluated using LiBE and quantitative bridge rating mechanisms are proposed. A cost-benefit analysis has been conducted that demonstrates the relevancy of the technique to current nation-wide bridge management problem, as well as, the potential of reducing the bridge maintenance costs to the stack holders. The results generated from these technologies are valuable for bridge maintenance decision making.

doctoral dissertations

Civil engineering

Ph.D.

Bridge Inspection
Bridge Load Testing
Damage Detection
Lidar

Infrastructure & Environmental Systems

Chen, Shen-en

Hauser, Edd
Teng, Gary
Pulugurtha, Srinivas
Zhou, Jing

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2010.

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