Prioritizing of repair and rehabilitation for concrete bridges of road network in Khorasan Razavi province, using analytical hierarchy process (AHP)

Abstract

Considering the necessity of developing the road network, bridges as infrastructures, play a key role in helping and sustaining vital activities in the recovery phase after natural disasters and events. So, In Khorasan Razavi province, with regard to climatic conditions on the one hand, and the presence of corrosive agents in the soil profile of many areas, as well as seasonal rivers with high water salinity, on the other hand, many concrete structures of roads such as bridges, culverts and concrete foundations are subject to corrosion and degradation. Therefore, the present study aimed to prioritize the restoration and reconstruction of important concrete bridges in the main roads of Khorasan Razavi province. This prioritization provides the possibility of allocating the annual budget necessary for the maintenance and utilization of concrete bridges of the roads in this province. In this research, 52 concrete bridges with a length of more than 15 meters were studied under precision field observations after geotechnical studies, review of design procedure and as-built maps and after weighing the failure criteria according to the expert opinion, concrete bridges that requiring repair and Rehabilitation were prioritized using Analytical Hierarchy Process with Expert Choice software and finally 10 bridges with the highest priority were identified. Results show that the most important and influential criterion in prioritizing the restoration and reconstruction of concrete bridges is the general characteristics of the bridge site with a priority index of 0.115 and the least effective criterion in this field is creating green area which leads to deterioration of foundation materials near footing, with priority index of 0.014. Results of the sensitivity analysis based on performance for prioritization criteria of the bridges needed restoration and reconstruction showed that the bridge importance criterion has the most sensitivity in prioritizing the restoration and reconstruction of large concrete bridges.

Keywords

• analytical hierarchy process
• concrete bridge
• corrosion
• expert choice
• sensitivity analysis