A Novel Markovian Framework for Optimum Maintenance of Deteriorating Bridges in Earthquake-prone Areas

Abstract

The performance of bridges can deteriorate during their lifetime due to aging, traffic load-induced fatigue, and environmental corrosion. In earthquake-prone areas, structural deterioration increases the seismic vulnerability of the bridges, which means a rise of potential economic and social losses in the future. Therefore, it is of critical importance to determine the optimum maintenance strategies considering bridge deterioration. To this end, the present paper proposes an infinite-horizon hybrid Markov decision process model, where the processes of both earthquake occurrence and structural deterioration are integrated into a unified Markovian framework. The structural deterioration process is modeled by a Markov chain, and a simplified earthquake-induced state transition probability matrix is adopted. For the purpose of demonstration, the proposed model is applied to a simple case study.