2020 Volume 76 Issue 1 Pages 63-82
The correlation between the deterioration of RC slabs of bridges and the pothole formation above the slabs is empirically known. While it takes enormous labor and expenses to inspect RC slabs visually, the situation of pothole formation can be checked through daily road patrol. In this study, the authors develop a Poisson hidden Markov deterioration hazard model explicitly considering the correlation between the deterioration of RC slabs and pothole formation, and propose an inspection scheme expecting the streamlining of visual inspection and the shift to state-dependent inspection measures. In detail, the authors develop an inspection method for securing safety when the interval between visual inspections of RC slabs is extended, by using the frequency of pothole formation, which can be grasped through daily road patrol, as complementary information. Lastly, the appropriateness of the proposed model is empirically checked by applying it to the actual RC slabs of road bridges.
