Simple Smart Piezoelectric Bolt Sensor for Structural Monitoring of Bridges

Abstract

Ageing and heavy traffic affect the structural condition of bridges and evaluation of their structural integrity is an important task to ensure their safety utilizat ion. Structural health monitoring constitutes a method for continuous evaluation of the condition of a target construction and for this purpose many sensors and systems have been developed. In this research a simple s mart piezoelectric sensor was develop and description of the proposed system, basic experiments to estimate the properties of the sensor and preliminary application to evaluate the dynamic characteristics of a target bridge are discussed. The applicab ility of this new sensor to estimate appropriately the structural condition of bridges was verified by comparing the measurements results with those obtained by means of more sophisticated sensors. In this research a new sensor that is based on piezoelectric cable inserted into a bolt is developed and its applicab ility to perform health monitoring of structures is verified by means of a shaking table test series. Then the proposed deviceis emp loyedtocarryoutafieldmeasurement of the dynamic characteristics of a provisional bridge located in Yu rihonjo city, Akita prefecture, Japan. The results obtained with this new simp le smart sensor are comparab le with those obtained with more sophisticated and expensive commercial sensor.