SENSITIVITY OF MECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF BRIDGES FOR THEIR DAMAGE ASSESSMENT

The diagnosis of bridge serviceability has been performed by a combination of field inspection of the bridges such as a visual inspection and static and dynamic loading tests and an analytical study. Because the mechanical behavior of bridges with various damages could not be made clear, it is very difficult to estimate exactly both of the damage mode and degree of damage of existing bridges.In this paper, the sensitivity of both static and dynamic behaviors of bridges for their damage assessment is proved through the experiments on model bridges induced some specified artificial damages. And also a method of damage assessment of bridges based on these behaviors is discussed in detail.