ABSTRACT Cont.'d : Finally, determined conductivities were compared to chloride contents measured from cores taken from each deck at the time of testing. Conductivity was shown to increase linearly with chloride content, confirming the ability of ground penetrating radar to detect chlorides. This relationship can be used to map chloride content across a bridge deck and estimate the time to corrosion, greatly increasing the efficiency of bridge deck inspection.

As the nation's infrastructure continues to age, there is a need to effectively and economically monitor and inspect bridges. With the introduction of non-destructive testing technologies such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) for condition assessment of bridge decks, states will be better equipped to inspect, assess, and prioritize transportation funding to maintain, preserve, and improve infrastructure. The objective of the research is to improve the condition assessment of bridge decks through the use of GPR which can increase the speed, effectiveness, and accuracy of inspections. The non-destructive evaluation technique provides information that can be used to identify the potential amount of internal deterioration of a concrete bridge deck that cannot be identified with a visual inspection. As in many other states, New Mexico currently uses the chain drag method in which the inspection of the deck condition is solely based on inspector's subjective interpretation of the sound produced by dragging a chain over the bridge deck. The use of GPR has the potential to greatly improve the quality of the inspections by collecting more reliable and less subjective information on the condition of bridge decks. Through the collection and analysis of data acquired from the GPR on a set of reinforced concrete decks, this research seeks to provide a better understanding of GPR technology, data acquisition, and training needs for adoption of GPR in bridge deck inspections in the state of New Mexico. With a better understanding of the technology, GPR can become and indispensable tool for more informed decisions for the allocation of funds for maintenance and improved asset management. This research improves implementation and provides effective economic methods to employ this technology to improve the inspection and maintenance of bridge infrastructure.

Assessing the condition of bridge deck surfaces using ground penetrating radar (GPR), using electromagnetic pulses to text, characterize, or detect subsurface anomalies.

"This study is a GPR-based assessment of three bridge decks, two with a hot bituminous wearing surface and one with a bare concrete slab. The primary objectives of this study were: 1) to assess the integrity of the three bridge decks using a 1.5 GHz ground-coupled GPR antenna, and 2) to evaluate the utility of the 1.5 GHz ground-coupled antenna for bridge deck investigations. Core control (chloride ion concentration data and core integrity data) and visual inspection were used as interpretive constraint. The acquired GPR data were interpreted, and two plan view maps were generated. One depicts the magnitude of the reflections from the uppermost mat of rebar, and the second shows the arrival time of these reflections. Analysis of the GPR data and core control indicates that the magnitude of the reflected GPR signal from the uppermost mat of rebar is a direct function of concrete integrity. Higher magnitude reflections indicate higher quality concrete. To a lesser extent, the arrival time of the reflected energy is also indicative of concrete quality. Faster arrival times generally indicate higher quality concrete. Exceptions to this rule occur where the depth to the top layer of rebar varies. In this study, relative reflection amplitudes of less than 3000 on the bare concrete bridge and less than 5000 on the bituminous surface bridges indicate severe deterioration. Core control data was interpreted based on chloride ion corrosion threshold. Corrosion of rebar occurs once chloride ions content adjacent to the rebar reaches a threshold of approximately 0.033% to 0.04% by weight of concrete (or 330 ppm to 400 ppm). The GPR data correlates well with the core control, indicating that the 1.5 GHz antenna is an effective tool for assessing the condition of bridge decks"--Abstract, leaf iii

Concrete bridge decks require periodic condition assessment and preventive maintenance to extend their useful lifespan. Nondestructive evaluation methods such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) are slowly beginning to replace or complement the manual (visual) assessment of bridge conditions for detecting defects at their early stages. However, GPR scans of bridge decks are frequently cluttered with high amplitude reflections from known parts of the bridge deck, which make the detection of defects low amplitude reflections difficult. One such known part is the embedded steel reinforcement bars known as rebar. This dissertation presents a novel approach to the automated detection of defects in concrete bridge decks by removing known reflections such as rebar from GPR scans of reinforced concrete bridge decks. The algorithm detects reflections from rebar with a frequency-domain pulse detection method, groups detected pulses into clusters, interpolates synthetic rebar reflections based on each cluster, and subtracts the synthetic rebar reflection from the original GPR scan data. This algorithm will facilitate the automated, non-destructive condition assessment of bridge decks.

"Ground penetrating radar (GPR) data were acquired across four bridge decks with the objective of developing an advanced workflow for GPR operation that would allow the bridge owners to estimate repair quantities for certain bridge decks, based on GPR data. The primary contributions from this research are as follows: 1. It was demonstrated that the conditions of bridge decks can be cost-effectively and efficiently assessed using the GPR tool. 2. The GPR tool's ability to provide rapid and reliable results in comparison with conventional bridge deck condition assessment techniques was established. 3. The qualitative and quantitative relationships between the GPR reflection amplitude and depth of concrete degradation were analyzed to develop an effective technique to estimate the amount of deteriorated concrete present in a particular bridge deck; this technique could enable bridge owners to use the GPR tool (only) to estimate the thickness of concrete that would be removed by processes such as hydro demolition. 4. The air-launched and ground-coupled GPR systems were compared in terms of accuracy of data acquisition and reliability of results. It was determined that air-launched GPR is a reliable tool for the fast and cost-effective assessment of bridge decks. This work is new and important because it extends the traditional use of the GPR technique and presents the advanced approach for data interpretation and concrete material removal estimation, especially in areas where deterioration was not visually exposed"--Abstract, page iii.