Lifetime Modeling of Deficient Bridges in New York

Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

4-10-2014

Faculty Mentor

Daniel Coster

Abstract

Given the importance of bridges to a state's economy and strength, and the costs involved in building and maintaining them, maximizing their service life is essential. In order to safely extend a bridge's utility as long as possible, an understanding of its lifetime processes is needed. This paper attempts to model the lifetime of a bridge in New York once it has become deficient. Lifetime is defined to be the length of time between deficiency classification and failure. A bridge is considered deficient when certain structural components receive a poor rating in the National Bridge Inventory, which is compiled annually by the Federal Highway Administration. A list of bridge failures was provided by the New York State Department of Transportation. In 2012 the Federal Highway Administration showed that 39.5 percent of New York's bridges were deficient. Using ANOVA and considering a bridge failure to be a Bernoulli trial, this paper shows that deficient bridges are typically older than non-deficient bridges, and that they are also more susceptible to failure. From survival analysis techniques an estimate of the mean time to failure of a deficient bridge is found to be 47.2 years. Finally, a statistical model is created to predict the lifetime of a deficient bridge, while accounting for influential factors such as average daily traffic, bridge age, and span length.

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