Damage Evaluation of RC Bridge Deck under Wheel Loading Test by Means of AE Tomography

摘要

Remediation and replacement of deteriorated reinforced concrete (RC) bridge decks are severely concerned in Japan, and thus intensive studies for long-term operation of the decks are recently carried out. For implementing proper remediation program of the deck, damage evolution should be evaluated in advance. So far, damage grading has been conducted from crack patterns by naked eyes. This kind of visual investigation is well implemented for the correcting maintenance procedure, where the repair shall be conducted when the remarkable deterioration is found on the surface of the deck. However, to reduce the repair budget, leading to the decrease in the amount of road investment as well as life-cycle cost, the deterioration and damage should be evaluated before being visually identified on the surface. To this end, internal damage of RC decks due to fatigue is reproduced experimentally by wheel-loading apparatus. Then, the damage progress is quantitatively and visually evaluated by AE tomography analysis.