Inspection peculiarities of the bridge supports underwater part and watercourse beds by modern diagnostic complexes

   Currently, the assessment of the state of the bridge supports underwater part is mainly carried out on the basis of testing cores drilled from the underwater part through the surface part of the support. The bearing capacity of a section with an area of several tens of square meters had to be judged by the strength of single cores drilled, as a rule, from the central part of the support. Equipment for drilling cores from concrete of hydraulic structures directly under water is not produced by the domestic industry.
   Along with this method, diagnostics of the support underwater part is used using specialists from the central diving station. At the same time, the complexity of the work increases, because in case of poor visibility, each section of the structure should be inspected in several steps. The results of the examination must be transmitted to the surface by telephone, and, if possible, recorded on a voice recorder.
   Based on the data obtained, the issue of the possibility of further operation of the supports, justification of the need to repair the underwater part of one or another support and the order of repair on the scale of roads and the network as a whole is being decided. Mistakes in solving this issue can lead to both unreasonable costs of large material resources and funds, and to a violation of traffic safety.
   Both methods are quite laborious and expensive, and the frequency of examinations does not allow obtaining a sufficiently large amount of statistical diagnostic data and includes errors from the influence of the human factor.
   In order to reduce labor intensity and obtain more reliable and statistically valid diagnostic data, it became necessary to assess the state of the underwater part of the bridge supports without cores drilled from the underwater part through the above-water part of the support, and without the involvement of divers, i.e., using modern methods and means, one of which are remote-controlled uninhabited underwater vehicles (RUUV).
   This article discusses the main technological aspects of diagnosing the bridge supports underwater part using RUUV. The purpose of diagnostics of bridge supports using RUUV is to increase the efficiency of surveying the support underwater part, the possibility of a more accurate and less laborious assessment of the real state of railway bridge supports for the final decision on the service life of railway bridge supports.

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