Integrated system of structural health monitoring and intelligent management for a cable-stayed bridge.

Bin Chen,Xu Xie,Dezhang Sun,Xu Wang

doi:10.1155/2014/689471

Abstract

It is essential to construct structural health monitoring systems for large important bridges. Zhijiang Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge that was built recently over the Hangzhou Qiantang River (the largest river in Zhejiang Province). The length of Zhijiang Bridge is 478 m, which comprises an arched twin-tower space and a twin-cable plane structure. As an example, the present study describes the integrated system of structural health monitoring and intelligent management for Zhijiang Bridge, which comprises an information acquisition system, data management system, evaluation and decision-making system, and application service system. The monitoring components include the working environment of the bridge and various factors that affect bridge safety, such as the stress and strain of the main bridge structure, vibration, cable force, temperature, and wind speed. In addition, the integrated system includes a forecasting and decision-making module for real-time online evaluation, which provides warnings and makes decisions based on the monitoring information. From this, the monitoring information, evaluation results, maintenance decisions, and warning information can be input simultaneously into the bridge monitoring center and traffic emergency center to share the monitoring data, thereby facilitating evaluations and decision making using the system.

Highlights

In recent years, the designs of bridges have tended to become more flexible, where their form and function are increasingly complex
This study provides a reference to facilitate the construction of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems for other bridges
We used the integrated system of structural health monitoring and intelligent management of Zhijiang Bridge as an example to provide a detailed explanation of the components and model functions employed by a largescale bridge SHM system

Summary

Introduction

The designs of bridges have tended to become more flexible, where their form and function are increasingly complex. Structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques are becoming important for guaranteeing the safety of bridge structures, especially for the large-span bridge structures. The application of devices such as wireless sensors and GPS [11, 12] to large-span bridge health monitoring has addressed the problem of inconvenient wired sensor placement and facilitated the construction of SHM systems and the long-term monitoring of large-span bridges [13,14,15,16]. The integrated system of structural health monitoring and intelligent management of Zhijiang Bridge in Hangzhou City, China, is used as an example to illustrate the overall system and the four functional subsystems used in a SHM, that is, an information acquisition system (IAS), data management system (DMS), evaluation. This study provides a reference to facilitate the construction of SHM systems for other bridges

Bridge Description

Bridge Monitoring System

Design and Implementation of the IAS

Conclusions