Status of structural health monitoring of long‐span bridges in the United States

Abstract

AbstractThis paper gives an overview of ongoing research and development in the field of structural health monitoring technologies in the US, with application to long‐span bridges. Specifically, this paper attempts to review various key structural health monitoring technologies, including sensor development, data processing, damage detection algorithms, data analysis and information processing. Several examples are cited from the aerospace, civil and mechanical communities. Monitoring of constructed systems are of considerable interest since the consequences of failure can have a significant effect on the society at large. For instance, consider the 1100 major long‐span bridges in the USA (those with spans of 100 m or longer), many are over 50 years old, and several notable ones are over 100 years old. These bridges fall outside the Standard Specifications issued by AASHTO (1998), and there is little generic experience related to maintaining their performance, especially after they age and/or following any damage. More than 800 of the long‐span bridges in the National Bridge Inventory are classified as fracture‐critical. It follows that structural health monitoring techniques may prove to be useful for maintaining and preserving this population of aging civil infrastructure. It is hoped that the following will stimulate additional discussion regarding the importance of structural health monitoring as an emerging research area for a variety of aerospace, civil and mechanical applications.