Design of a Long-Term Monitoring System for a PSC Continuous Box-Girder Bridge

Abstract

Structural Health Monitoring is becoming an increasingly common tool to obtain the long-term performance of infrastructures and buildings. Many structural health monitoring systems were developed and applied to different bridges in the world. However, very little is known on the applications in extreme cold environment. Fu Sui Bridge, a 1070 m variable cross-section continuous box-girder bridge, is located in the coldest province -- Heilongjiang province, China. In order to monitor the static and dynamic responses of the bridge under the traffic and environmental variation, a long-term continuous monitoring system was designed and installed on Fu Sui Bridge in April 2012. A hydrostatic leveling system was used to measure the displacement and fiber Bragg grating sensors were used to measure strain, acceleration and temperature. Moreover, other necessary components including data acquisition and transmission, data calculation and analysis software are also described. Summer and winter monitoring data are also presented. This paper focuses on: (1) the design and installation of the long-term continuous monitoring system hardware and (2) the operating pattern and function of the automatic monitoring system. After more than one year successful conducting, the system has provided a large amount of data records for daily management and research of the bridge. This system can be applied to extremely cold region.