“Computational Civil Engineering - "Intersections" International Journal

“Computational Civil Engineering 2005”, International SymposiumIaşi, România, May 27, 2005Prediction of condition of structures using Markov chainsRodian Scînteie 1 , Constantin Ionescu 21 CESTRIN Bucharest, Romania2 Technical University "Gheorghe Asachi" Iasi, RomaniaSummaryThe article considers the derivation of prediction models for highway bridgecondition indices. The prediction is needed as an important part of bridgemanagement system. Deduction of equations, graphics and probabilities oftransition is presented for a significant sample of bridge inspection records. Theresults are used to simulate the evolution of the technical condition of a bridge.KEYWORDS: bridge, Markov chains, prediction, bridge inspection, bridgemanagement.1. INTRODUCTIONA modern road management implies a set of technical, mathematical, economicand informational instruments to perform analysis concerning the behavior of thestructures and the corresponding costs to maintain the functional parameters in theadmitted limits.It is important to assess the present technical condition of the bridges to verify thenecessity of urgent intervention works, their type and costs. In the same time, it isimportant that condition prediction methods are available to estimate the effectsinduced to the system or its components by committing or delaying of works.The approach of condition prediction consists from the following consecutivesteps: monitoring the bridges, data collection, statistical analysis, regressionanalysis, development of transition diagrams.By monitoring the bridge over its life time most exact results are obtained.Unfortunately, these results may not be applied anymore once the system they arededuced for is out of use. The most effective approach consists in collecting andanalyzing data from a set of similar entities. The implied assumption is that similarsystems have similar behavior. In such manner, we obtain a cross section throughdata.