Determination of prioritization for maintenance of the upper structure of truss bridge

Abstract

Bridge maintenance is one of the major issues of infrastructure problems. Deterioration of a bridge’s structure will continuously increase without proper maintenance. This condition will adversely affect the service life of a bridge. Moreover, the damage will also have a direct impact on structural and functional failure of the bridge. This paper aims at identifying the damages of truss bridges and determining the most significant criteria and sub-criteria used in prioritizing bridge maintenance. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to assess the most important criteria that give significant weight to bridge maintenance analysis. The objects of research were nine truss bridges with a wide range of types and levels of damage. It was found that there were approximately 900 m' of components damaged at the railing of Baruga Bridge and 227 m' truss damages due to poor quality of the galvanized paint. Furthermore, based on the analysis, the most significant criteria were the level of damage (27.6%), the technical aspects (25.7%), the finance (21%), the vehicle load (13.6%) and the resources (12%). The results of this research showed important findings in determining the priority scales for bridge repair and maintenance systems.