Abstract
Implementation of Structural Health Monitoring systems on long-span bridges has become mandatory in many countries to ascertain the safety of these structures and the public, taking into account an increase in usage and threats due to extreme loading conditions. However, the successful delivery of such a system is facing many challenges including the failure to extract damage and reliability information from monitoring data to assist bridge operators with their maintenance planning and activities. Supported by the European Space Agency under the Integrated Applications Promotion scheme, the project ‘GNSS and Earth Observation for Structural Health Monitoring of Long-span Bridges’ or GeoSHM aims to address some of these shortcomings (GNSS stands for Global Navigation Satellite System). In this paper, the background of the GeoSHM project as well as the GeoSHM sensor system on the Forth Road Bridge (FRB) in Scotland will be briefly described. The bridge response and wind data collected over a two-year period from 15 October 2015 to 15 October 2017 will be analysed to demonstrate the high susceptibility of the bridge to wind loads. Close examination of the data associated with an extreme wind event in 2018—Storm Ali—will be conducted to reveal the relationship between the wind speed and some monitored parameters such as the bridge response and modal frequencies.
Highlights
As marvels of civil engineering, long-span bridges are attractive due to their aesthetic appearance, and due to their critical roles in regional cooperation and economic and social development
Using the data of the Forth Road Bridge (FRB) collected during the GeoSHM Demonstration Project, the paper reports on the analysis of some monitoring parameters derived from a Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) measurement in relation to extreme wind effects
Using the bridge response and wind speed data collected from the GeoSHM sensor system over a two-year period (15 October 2017 to 15 October 2018), this paper has demonstrated the susceptibility of the FRB to wind loads
Summary
As marvels of civil engineering, long-span bridges are attractive due to their aesthetic appearance, and due to their critical roles in regional cooperation and economic and social development. Extensive studies have been carried out to address technical limitations of GNSS in structural deformation monitoring such as influences of the GPS satellite and pseudolite geometry [16], pervasive existence of dynamic multipath [17,18,19], low sampling rate in measuring dynamic responses [20], and communication stability in Real-Time-Kinematic-GPS (RTK-GPS) positioning [21]. As with other large-scale civil engineering infrastructure, effective SHM systems on long-span bridges rely on dense sensor systems On one hand, such systems give engineers an opportunity to monitor different parameters and obtain better insight into bridge behaviour. Using the data of the FRB collected during the GeoSHM Demonstration Project, the paper reports on the analysis of some monitoring parameters derived from a GNSS measurement in relation to extreme wind effects.
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