Technological developments as an answer to bridge management challenges

IABSE Symposium 2019, Towards a Resilient Built Environment - Risk and Asset Management, GUIMARAES, PORTUGAL, 27-/03/2019 - 29/03/2019Bridge management is a challenge as owners have to deal with limited financial resources to maintain the functionalities and safety of ageing structures. Demands on transportation networks change, due to regulatory developments, society's evolution and shifts with high expectations on the operational performance of roadway bridges with reduced congestion, delay, and accidents. To minimize intrusion in the transport flow, inspection and monitoring methods should be non?destructive, minimally invasive. They should be capable of yielding rapid and accurate inspection results allowing an adequate response from the asset manager. Research aims at including autonomously operating equipment (e.g. robotics), non?intrusive (remote or proximity) observation techniques, or other methods that ensure quality and performance control of the roadway bridges in time, more safely, more quickly and/or to a higher degree of accuracy and precision.The innovation subgroup in COST action TU1406 investigates novel condition monitoring and sensing technologies for the assessment of structural serviceability and safety. Advanced, integrated, cost-effective and reliable instrumentation solutions, techniques and concepts are looked at with the aim to provide data, that will be used to compute innovative performance indicators. In this context, this paper briefly reminds some significant challenges associated with bridge management and presents three examples of innovation in bridge monitoring and NDT investigation techniques

Effectiveness of Dental and Maxillary Transverse Changes in Tooth-Borne, Bone-Borne, and Hybrid Palatal Expansion through Cone-Beam Tomography: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Background and Objectives: Palatal expansion is a common orthodontic technique able to increase the transverse changes for subjects with constricted maxillary arches. The aim of the present investigation was to evaluate through a systematic review the tomography effectiveness of different palatal expander approaches. Materials and Methods: The database used to perform the screening and determine the eligibility of the clinical papers was PubMed (Medline). Results: The database search included a total of 284 results, while 271 articles were excluded. A total of 14 articles were included for the qualitative assessment. Conclusions: The effectiveness of the present studies reported that skeletal expansion was a useful approach to increase the transverse changes for subjects with constricted maxillary arches