Developing a Deterioration Threshold Model for the Assessment of Concrete Bridge Decks Using Ground Penetrating Radar

The Half-cell potential (HCP) technique is a generally accepted method for identifying active corrosion in reinforced concrete bridge decks. The method is supported by an American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) standard with well defined thresholds distinguishing actively corroded and non corroded areas. The HCP method, however, is a slow point-by-point method and it is difficult to implement on decks with overlays. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) data has been shown to correlate reasonably well with HCP data on bridge decks. Since GPR can be implemented at higher speeds and is not limited in the presence of overlays, it has been the objective of this work to use GPR as a sole tool to assess the corrosion state of bridge decks. In order to do so, the authors have developed a thresholding procedure to distinguish corroded from non corroded areas. This has been carried out by analyzing the GPR rebar reflection amplitudes, collected using a 2.6 GHz ground coupled system, of a large library of bridge decks with descriptive statistics including the mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis. Each of these statistics was compared to the amount each bridge deck was corroded, computed using the HCP measurements. The analysis indicated that the product of the skew and mean provides the best correlation (93%) with the percentage each deck was corroded. This led to a rebar reflection amplitude threshold model which can be used to predict the percent a deck is corroded, in addition to providing the ability to compute the associated amplitude threshold to distinguish corroded from healthy areas.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFF40 Field Testing and Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) of Transportation Structures.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Martino, Nicole
  • Birken, Ralf
  • Maser, Kenneth
  • Wang, Ming
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 10p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bridge decks; Corrosion; Deterioration; Ground penetrating radar; Reinforced concrete; Skew bridges
• Identifier Terms: American Society for Testing and Materials
• Uncontrolled Terms: Half cell potential
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; I61: Equipment and Maintenance Methods;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01519232
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-3861
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 24 2014 12:02PM