Fuzzy logic based diagnostic tool for management of timber bridges

Australia has a large number of timber bridges currently in need of new and effective management practices. Timber bridges have a high maintenance cost and are affected significantly by a number of deterioration mechanisms which are not fully understood. Early diagnosis of possible deterioration scenarios can lead to effective management strategies. This paper presents development of an expert system which aids the non-expert to diagnose the cause of the distress in timber bridges using the cause and effect diagrams and fuzzy logic approach. The inputs to the system are linguistic variables such as the type of element, the visual symptoms, the environmental conditions, method of construction and the location of the bridge. The expert system executes fuzzy interface to evaluate the cause of the distress using these input data and built in rules.