Evaluation of amounts of salt adhering to bridge girders using statistical method

Abstract

It is important to evaluate the amount of salt on each member of bridge girders for effective maintenance. In this paper, the authors sought to propose a method for a long-term evaluation of the salt amounts by using a statistical method. Conducting the Monte Carlo simutaion based on probability distribution functions of meteorological data and airborne sea salt concentrations, the authors clarified that the salt amounts can be reproduced by the statistical method with consideration of correlations among random variables. Additionally, to describe wind direction using a probalitiy distribution function, a new method which decomposes wind speed and wind direction into two orthogonal components of wind speed was proposed. The effectiveness was shown using data from on-site observations.