• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.6A
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• pp.1023-1032
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• 2006

In this paper, a new method for the bridge maintenance is proposed to overcome the limit of the existing methods and to implement the preventive bridge maintenance system. The proposed method can establish the lifetime optimum maintenance strategy of the deteriorating bridges considering the life-cycle performance as well as the life-cycle cost. The lifetime performance of the deteriorating bridges is evaluated by the safety index based on the structural reliability and the condition index detailing the condition state. The life-cycle cost is estimated by considering not only the direct maintenance cost but also the user and failure cost. The genetic algorithm is applied to generate a set of maintenance scenarios which is the multi-objective combinatorial optimization problem related to the life-cycle cost and performance. The study examined the proposed method by establishing a maintenance strategy for the existing bridge and its advantages. The result shows that the proposed method can be effectively applied to deciding the bridge maintenance strategy.