In-service inspection of deck beam bridge

Abstract

Economic and effective evaluation of the actual condition of a bridge is an important issue for bridge maintenance and preservation. The current condition of the bridge is usually far more different from the construction design and also with the bridge being in service for few years, a quantitative evaluation is essential. Assimilating reviews and comparisons of traditional inspection and evaluation methods, this paper promotes the concept of application of wireless sensors developed at the Bridge Research Center for rapid installation and low power requirements for in-service real-time bridge inspection. The concept focuses on obtaining useful data such as strain, displacement, frequency for estimating the actual characteristics of the bridge while in service, thus avoid closing the traffic as compared to traditional load test which needs traffic closure causing inconvenience to public and indirectly affecting economy. Plans and procedures of the field inspection are detailed as well as the data processing and the analysis results are presented. The effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed real-time inspection based on wireless sensors approach are illustrated via the practical inspection of a deck beam bridge.