A logical retrofit strategy optimization framework for resiliency bridge infrastructure management considering life-cycle cost

Abstract

Bridges play an important role in providing essential services to communities as one of the most critical components of transportation infrastructure. In this regard, selecting reliable, robust, and efficient indicators is necessary to prepare a disaster management strategy. This study presents a multi-objective optimization framework for decision-makers to find the most optimal retrofit strategies that satisfy a given threshold of functionality/Resilience (R) while minimizing a structure's Life-Cycle Cost (LCC). Accordingly, various retrofit strategies include different materials (steel, Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP), and Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP)), thicknesses, arrangements, and timing of retrofitting actions. In each scenario, the fragility curves are derived through nonlinear time-history Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) to evaluate the LCC and resilience. In the subsequent step, the LCC analysis is conducted, considering the proposed formulation of multiple occurrences of seismic events, which incorporates the effects of complete/incomplete repair actions of damage conditions induced by previous seismic events. This study employs an elitist Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) to identify the optimal set of solutions. The various aspects of the optimal retrofit strategies are thoroughly investigated and discussed for a bridge as a case study infrastructure. Results show that the considered objectives lead to reasonable and sense-making retrofit strategies.

Keywords

• resilience
• life-cycle cost
• infrastructures management
• retrofit optimization framework
• multiple occurrences hazards
• damage accumulation