Structural Health Monitoring of Major Danube Bridges in Bratislava

Abstract

The paper presents some of the intermediate results obtained in the framework of the research program APVV No. 0236-12 granted by the Slovak Research and Development Agency entitled “Bridge Structural Health Monitoring via Repeated Dynamic Tests”.The paper describes initial structural health monitoring (SHM) tests of the Port Bridge and of the Slovak National Uprising Bridge across the Danube River in Bratislava, Slovakia. The first one is a highway and railway continuous steel truss bridge with 4 spans and a total length of 460.8 meters (largest span 240.8 m). The second one is an asymmetric cable-stayed steel bridge with an orthotropic 2-box beam supported in one plane by cables from an inclined pylon. The total length is 431.8 meters (largest span 303 m). The paper is aimed at different topics: the description of the test setups, the measuring accelerometer polygons synchronized by Wi-Fi connection, synchronization of the video footage with the measurements, etc. Some natural frequencies and mode shapes have been identified from the operational modal analyses.