Development of immersive bridge digital twin platform to facilitate bridge damage assessment and asset model updates

Abstract

Conventional infrastructure asset management practices have heavily relied on static data collection and suffered from decision lags. Though advanced Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems were extensively explored based on multi-functional sensor deployment, asset model updating has not been achieved to facilitate timely and effective decision-making of infrastructure managers due to a lack of system integration. To address this challenge, this study develops the Immersive Bridge Digital Twin Platform (IBDTP) to allow infrastructure managers to automate the SHM processes of bridges and engage them in immersive decision-making processes based on Scan-to-BIM and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies. A novel 3D game engine is proposed as part of IBDTP and was tested using a single-span concrete arch bridge located in Poland. Results show that the measurement data collected and presented in IBDTP improves the infrastructure managers' accessibility to major damage data of the bridge to plan for future interventions. The functions of the IBDTP can be potentially scaled for different types of bridges and critical infrastructure, substantially improving the traditional SHM in terms of data management and 3D structural visualization.