Abstract
The resilience of the built environment to extreme weather events is fundamental for the day-to-day operation of our transport network, with scour representing one of the biggest threats to bridges built over flowing water. Condition monitoring of the bridge using a structural health monitoring system enhances resilience by reducing the time needed to return the bridge to normal use by providing timely information on structural condition and safety. The work presented in this report discusses use of rotational measurements in structural health monitoring. Traditionally tiltmeters (which can be a form of DC accelerometer) are used to measure rotation but are known to be affected by dynamic movements, while gyroscopes react quickly to dynamic motion but drift over time. This review will introduce gyroscopes as a complementary sensor for accelerometer rotational measurements and use sensor fusion techniques to combine the measurements from both sensors to get an optimised rotational result. This method was trialled on a laboratory scaled model, before the system was installed on an in-service single-span skewed railway bridge. The rotational measurements were compared against rotation measurements obtained using a vision-based measurement system to confirm the validity of the results. An introduction to gyroscopes, field test measurement results with the sensors and their correlation with the vision-based measurement results are presented in this article.
Highlights
The transport network in many regions around the world is vulnerable to extreme weather events
structural health monitoring (SHM) systems offer a credible alternative to traditional scour monitoring devices, which can give an indication of the presence of scour but do not inform the bridge owners about the condition of the bridge
This paper presents a SHM system which uses rotational measurements to define the quasi-static behaviour of a bridge under traffic loading
Summary
The transport network in many regions around the world is vulnerable to extreme weather events. A review of the fragility of the transport system can assist asset owners to determine the most vulnerable structures at risk on the transport network. With these studies, an understanding remains that risk cannot be removed from all bridges, which means prioritising at-risk vulnerable structures but means that a residual level of risk will still exist for exceptional weather events (e.g. flooding in Journal of Civil Structural Health Monitoring (2020) 10:543–555. Rotation can be measured directly with mechanical gyroscopes, which are usually very expensive. Mechanical gyroscopes, measuring angles directly, consist of a spinning wheel mounted on two gimbals, allowing friction-free movement on all three axes. Gimbal lock can be an issue, which occurs when two of the three gimbals are rotated to a parallel position and get locked together, reducing the movement of the device to two axes
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