Abstract
Currently, over half of the U.S.’s railroad bridges are more than 100 years old. Railroad managers ensure that the proper Maintenance, Repair, and Replacement (MRR) of rail infrastructure is prioritized to safely adapt to the increasing traffic demand. By 2035, the demand for U.S. railroad transportation will increase by 88%, which indicates that considerable expenditure is necessary to upgrade rail infrastructure. Railroad bridge managers need to use their limited funds for bridge MRR to make informed decisions about safety. Consequently, they require economical and reliable methods to receive objective data about bridge displacements under service loads. Current methods of measuring displacements are often expensive. Wired sensors, such as Linear Variable Differential Transformers (LVDTs), require time-consuming installation and involve high labor and maintenance costs. Wireless sensors (WS) are easier to install and maintain but are in general technologically complex and costly. This paper summarizes the development and validation of LEWIS2, the second version of the real-time, low-cost, efficient wireless intelligent sensor (LEWIS) for measuring and autonomously storing reference-free total transverse displacements. The new features of LEWIS2 include portability, accuracy, cost-effectiveness, and readiness for field application. This research evaluates the effectiveness of LEWIS2 for measuring displacements through a series of laboratory experiments. The experiments demonstrate that LEWIS2 can accurately estimate reference-free total displacements, with a maximum error of only 11% in comparison with the LVDT, while it costs less than 5% of the average price of commercial wireless sensors.
Highlights
Today’s critical infrastructure is subjected to pressing demands, such as a long-life cycle, sustainability, and reliability
This paper summarizes the development of a second generation of the low-cost, battery-powered, efficient wireless intelligent sensor (LEWIS2) that collects reference-free total displacements of timber railroad bridges
The LEWIS2 sensor performs the following two actions: it first collects the acceleration in the three axes at the sampling rate of fLS = 500 Hz, and, subsequently, it transmits the captured data to base stations using XBee
Summary
Today’s critical infrastructure is subjected to pressing demands, such as a long-life cycle, sustainability, and reliability. Industry is interested to consider implementing sensors in their MRR decisions if sensors: (1) are low-cost; (2) can estimate total reference-free displacements; and (3) can be placed on the bridge with battery and storage capability. This paper summarizes the development of a second generation of the low-cost, battery-powered, efficient wireless intelligent sensor (LEWIS2) that collects reference-free total displacements of timber railroad bridges. The end user is interested in this level of accuracy to make decisions, which is currently not available in the field Another innovation of LEWIS2 is that the sensor platform is powered by an affordable battery and can save the measured data onboard on a Secure Digital (SD) card providing data persistency for posterior analysis. This section introduces the low-cost, battery-powered, efficient wireless intelligent sensor LEWIS2 and describes its components
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