A new methodology for nondestructive evaluation and rating of bridges

The growing number of highway bridges in poor condition requires the development of effective tools for inspecting and evaluating bridges. To address the limitations of current assessment practices, a new nondestructive evaluation methodology, incorporating global and local evaluation techniques to obtain a quantitative assessment of the structural condition, is proposed. In this study, a simple global damage identification and assessment method, called the differential damage factor (DDF) method, is presented. The results from preliminary analyses of the proposed DDF method performed on numerical and experimental models are discussed.