Paper 158, ENT 209 Risk Assessment of Highway Bridges: A Reliability-based Approach

Many countries are currently experiencing deteriorating bridge networks due to aging and growth of vehicular loads in both magnitude and volume. Repair and rehabilitation are necessary to preserve the load capacity and service performance of these bridges. Highway bridges need to be assessed to identify the structurally deficient ones early. In this way, the state, local, and federal policymakers can determine which bridges are in need of immediate attention. Note that the assessment of bridges involves a significant amount of uncertainty. To this end, the reliability theory of structures can be a helpful tool to quantify the risk involved in this process of bridge assessment. This paper addresses this issue and examines the safety and reliability of bridges using reliability-based algorithms