Optimal Sensor Layout for Bridges Subject to Ship Collision

Abstract

<p>Post-collision damage evaluation is of significant importance for decision making on if closure of the bridge to traffic is necessary and for planning the consequent bridge strengthening or retrofitting. On-line structural health monitoring (SHM) systems provide an effective means to monitor the bridge response during ship collisions and evaluate the structural damage. However, reliable</p><p>damage evaluation using the monitoring data from a SHM system depends largely on the sensor layout. In this paper, a sensor layout optimization (SLO) method targeting the post-collision damage evaluation of bridges is proposed to select the optimal sensor set so that the measured data are most informative for damage evaluation. The sensor layout is optimized by a multi-objective optimization algorithm which simultaneously minimizes the information entropy index for each ship-bridge collision scenario. The cable-stayed Ting Kau Bridge (TKB) is employed to testify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.</p>