Maintenance planning optimization of a reinforced concrete bridge element using genetic algorithms and dynamic programming

摘要

The management of existing bridges has become a major social concern worldwide. In order to perform an appropriate management for existing bridges, a broad array of optional corrective maintenance strategies needs to be evaluated. In this paper, a search algorithm based on the mechanism of natural selection and natural genetics is adopted for the determination of an optimal or suboptimal maintenance plan for reinforced concrete bridges. The results including the searching time of optimal/suboptimal solution and the precision of searching the optimum are compared to those provided by using dynamic programming.