Loading...
Identifying the Factors Impacting Bridge Deterioration in the GCC
Al-Rashed, Rawan Abdullah
Al-Rashed, Rawan Abdullah
Date
2023-04
Author
Advisor
Type
Thesis
Degree
Citations
Altmetric:
Files
Description
A Master of Science thesis in Civil Engineering by Rawan Abdullah Al-Rashed entitled, “Identifying the Factors Impacting Bridge Deterioration in the GCC”, submitted in April 2023. Thesis advisor is Dr. Akmal Abdelfatah and thesis co-advisor is Dr. Sherif Yehia. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Completion Certificate, Approval Signatures, and AUS Archives Consent Form).
Abstract
Bridge management systems (BMS) are one of the effective tools that can efficiently help in managing bridges at both project and network levels. A BMS usually contains four basic modules, which are database, maintenance cost, deterioration, and decision making and optimization. The deterioration module is a crucial component since it predicts the future condition of the bridge. The development of BMS within the GCC is still in its infancy and there are almost no well-developed deterioration models for bridges. The aim of this research is to identify the factors that could be considered while developing deterioration models within the GCC countries. To best identify these factors, the research was performed in three stages. In the first stage, a review of literature has been conducted to investigate the factors that have been adopted in deterioration models around the world. This review has revealed 33 factors adopted in different deterioration models. After filtering the factors to include only the ones that can be applicable in the GCC countries, a list of 27 factors has been identified. This list has been utilized in an interview targeting bridge experts to select; based on their experience, the factors that contribute to bridge deterioration and assign each factor a weight that represents its impact on bridge deterioration. In the third phase, the list of factors identified by the experts has been included in a survey that was distributed to bridge engineers to identify the final selection and rank the factors according to their importance level. Based on the relative importance index, the final results indicate that steel reinforcement protection, design load, chloride attack, type of defect, and age are the most important factors impacting bridge deterioration in the GCC.