Vulnerability analysis of a reinforced concrete structure by visual inspection

The article outlines a new, reliable and robust approach for estimating the vulnerability of reinforced concrete structures, developing a survey methodology based only on visual inspection. The results of visual inspection are subjective assessments of the structural safety yet easy to obtain employing unskilled operators. Aim of our work is to obtain an objective assessment of the safety level by manipulating the linguistic judgments using fuzzy logic, chosen for its ability to quantitatively treat the uncertainty of reality and inaccuracy of natural language. In this procedure the fuzzy rules that are applied to the linguistic judgments are previously stated by experts, technically competent to evaluate the different types of degradations that will be under view and their weight on the overall safety level of the structure. This inference process makes it possible to obtain an objective safety statement from a subjective linguistic statement. This method was applied to an existing reinforced concrete structure, a bridge 3 km long, located in an aggressive seawater environment