Assessment of bridges' expansion joints in Egypt
First and foremost, I feel always indebted to Allah the Most Beneficent and Merciful. I wish to express my deepest thanks, gratitude and appreciation to my supervisor Prof. Dr. Ossama Hosny, from the Department of Construction Engineering at The American University in Cairo, for his meticulous supervision, kind guidance, patience, valuable instructions and generous help. Also, I wish to also thank sincerely my supervisor Dr. Hatem Elbehairy, Assistant Professor from the department of Civil Engineering at AlAzhar University, for his sincere efforts and fruitful encouragement. Genuinely, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Alkhayam Dorra, for his truthful effort and pure assistance and guidance. I can hardly find the words to express my gratitude to Eng. Saied Nagy, Demonstrator at Al-Azhar University, for his tremendous efforts to provide continuous Support. Special acknowledgement to Eng. Mohamed Ismail, Technical Office Manager ,bridges maintenance department, Arab Contractors Co. ; Eng. Ola Esam, Technical Office Manager, SAMCO co., for providing me with essential data through the whole research process. Special thanks go to my friends Soliman Abu-Samra and Ayman Elhakea for their valuable help, encouragements and support throughout the work. I am deeply thankful and respectful to my father, mother, brothers and sisters, whom I owe all what I have achieved and will accomplish throughout my life and for their outstanding support, and providing a comfortable environment where I got my stamina to finish this thesis. Last but not least I would like to express my gratitude to my wife Noura whose patience, understanding and self-sacrifice were the incentives for completing this work.
Abstract
Bridges play a vital role in resolving transportation problems in Egypt. The objective of this research is to predict the conditions of bridges expansion joints, with the aim of proposing appropriate maintenance and repair strategies in order to extend their lifespans. A thorough literature review of existing bridges expansion joints maintenance and repair strategies are conducted. Furthermore, visual inspections and surveying of existing bridges expansion joints in Egypt are conducted, with the findings of such observations documented and recorded. Moreover, an expansion joint management system (EJMS) is developed with the aim of recommending the optimum maintenance strategy for bridges that optimizes annual condition index (ACI) and cost. This model uses a combination of Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) in order to provide optimal recommendations. In addition, a transition matrix for predicting deterioration of expansion joints EJ using Markov Chain (MC) is developed. In order to test the model, several case studies of existing bridges in Egypt are used and the results are assessed against those documented through visual inspection. The comparison indicated that the developed EJMS is efficient in predicting the bridge EJs condition, where there is a deviation of 5% between the predicted condition from EJMS and the actual conditions observed through visual inspections. In addition, EJMS can play an important role in supporting decision makers in selecting the optimum maintenance and repair strategy that would maximizes the overall condition of expansion joints while meeting a certain budget constraint.