ABSTRACT
India has taken major leap into investing in road infrastructure & hence widening of existing roads and bridges is major construction activity. Health Assessment of Bridges hence is an extremely critical task ahead of Central Government and the State Governments of all the States.
As the reliance on infrastructure is growing, the engineered components of transportation infrastructure are aging, deteriorating, and exhausting their capacity to meet the everexpanding operational demands. The mammoth task of inventory preparation and health assessment of all the bridges across the country by is taken up by The Ministry of Transport.
Ensuring operational and structural safety and security of the transportation infrastructure is an essential task. Hence Health assessment and residual / remnant life assessment is needed to be carried out. Load carrying capacity and life cycle cost analysis of existing bridges is yet another area of consultancy needed.
In most cases, job of health assessment is yet left to the experienced engineer who visits the bridge for visual inspection. Sudden collapses of bridges and untimely / unplanned job of major repairs are common. There is a huge loss of human life, fuel and time of commuters due to the same.
Author proposes to cover various Non Destructive Testing (NDT) techniques used in India, methods for health assessment of bridges and few case studies in this article.
Keywords: Non Destructive Testing (NDT) of the bridges, In situ Permeability Tests of concrete, Ground penetrating Radar survey, Infrared Thermography, Load Test of bridges, Metro structures.
