Establishing NDE Protocols for Use in Early Age Bridge Deck Preservation Strategies

A bridge deck serves as the protective layer of the structure. However, the ingress of moisture and early age cracking in a steel-reinforced concrete bridge deck are often overlooked in their relationship to the overall trajectory of its deterioration.

The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's NCHRP IDEA Final Report for Project 243: Establishing NDE Protocols for Use in Early Age Bridge Deck Preservation Strategies presents a method to calculate a vulnerability index for a given bridge deck as well as units of surface area on the said bridge deck.