Abstract
The biggest challenge bridge agencies face is the maintenance of bridges, keeping them safe and serviceable, with limited funds. To maintain the bridges effectively, there is and urgent need to predict their remaining life from a system reliability viewpoint. In this paper, a model using lifetime functions to evaluate the overall system probability of survival of a rail road bridge is proposed. In this model, the rail load bridge is modeled as a system. Using the model, the lifetime of the rail road bridge is predicted.