View Important Policies and System Requirements for this course.

Instructor:  Amir Gheitasi, Ph.D., P.E., MASCE

Purpose and Background

As civil engineers, most of us are familiar with the condition state of the national infrastructure system through ASCE Infrastructure Report Cards. Bridges, as one of the critical components of the national transportation infrastructure, often receive a lot of attention as they provide lifeline between communities for transporting goods and services, and their failures could result in loss of lives, detours, and economic hardship. Despite the attention, more than 20% of the national bridge inventory are in a state of disrepair, being classified as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. This would result in maintenance and management of in-service bridges being a continuous and growing challenge for the owners at federal, state and local governments.

While it is challenging to keep up with maintenance needs of all the deteriorated structures at the same times given the budgetary constraints, it is crucial to prioritize such efforts for bridges with more critical conditions. Such determination is not always straightforward given the wide range of construction material and their susceptibility of environmental conditions, various bridge geometrical configurations, as well as existing damage and deteriorating conditions. Achieving this goal requires comprehensive understanding of bridge performance and behavior especially in the presence of deteriorating conditions. Refined analysis can help identifying such performance by providing insights on realistic load path and distributions within bridge structures.

This course will review potentials of refined analysis that can support bridge owners in executing their bridge asset management policies including load rating, posting, and resource allocations for maintenance and rehabilitation of their managed bridge inventory. At the end of the course, it is envisioned that the attendees will be able to recognize potentials of refined analysis and leverage those capabilities where possible to come up with cost-saving and efficient solutions to bridge management problems.

Learning Outcomes and Benefits

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Explain common practices in bridge management including load rating, load testing, structural health monitoring, and maintenance and rehabilitation
• Explain the basics and fundamental of refined analysis in bridge industry
• List the potentials and capabilities of refined analysis to support bridge management
• Apply knowledge from the review of case-studies offering realistic demonstration of successful implementation of refined analysis in bridge industry
• Apply an improved understanding of bridge performance and behavior
• Explain and utilize means and methods for evaluating in-service bridge performance, especially in the presence of damage and deteriorating conditions
• Explain details of refined analysis including numerical modeling, data postprocessing and result extraction
• Identify key considerations in modeling and analysis procedure to validate the accuracy of the results

Assessment of Learning Outcomes

Students' achievement of the learning outcomes will be assessed via a short post-assessment (true-false, multiple choice and fill in the blank questions).

Intended Audience

Civil, structural, and bridge engineers, bridge management and preservation focus

Webinar Outline

• Introduction
• Problem Statement
• Means and Methods
• Analysis Approach Implications (case studies)
• Lessons Learned
• Conclusions

How to Earn your CEUs/PDHs and Receive Your Certificate of Completion

To receive your certificate of completion, you will need to complete a short on-line post-test and receive a passing score of 70% or higher within 1 year of purchasing the course.

How do I convert CEUs to PDHs?

1.0 CEU = 10 PDHs [Example: 0.1 CEU = 1 PDH]