ABSTRACT
The aging bridge infrastructure presents a significant challenge to owners for maintaining the system in a cost-effective manner while ensuring safety and optimizing operational levels. New materials such as fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) materials have received considerable attention from bridge engineers to improve the durability of the infrastructure while reducing delays associated with the construction. Conventional inspection procedures are not sufficient to evaluate and quantify possible defects in these materials. This, combined with limited understanding and experience, is becoming a hindrance for successful application and optimization of components and structures made of FRPs. Thus, nondestructive evaluation technologies and structural health monitoring may play a big role in the future in assisting the infrastructure owners in condition assessment of structures that utilize FRPs. Part VI will focus on nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of FRP components used in bridge structures and reviews NDE techniques and inspection methodologies for FRP materials applied to civil structures. This field is rapidly progressing as the use of FRP materials becomes more widespread. The aging of FRP materials under realistic field conditions is still not well understood, and advanced NDE techniques will be required in the future to address in-service inspections.
