An Experimental Study on Intelligent Bearing System for Bridge Health Monitoring

Abstract

Bridge Bearings are important devices for transferring loads between the upper and lower structures of bridges. They can ensure the safety of bridges and regulate deformation. They can also prevent bridge displacement caused by temperature changes, seismic forces, and other factors in various structural types. The status of bridge bearings can effectively reflect the healthy status of the bridge. Monitoring of stresses on bridge bearings can be used to evaluate the healthy status of the bridge structure. However, bridge bearings are installed in invisible locations, and traditional manual inspection methods cannot accurately determine their damage and degree of destruction. In this paper, an intelligent bearing pair is designed to resolve this problem. The designed intelligent bearing status assessment system with multi-level threshold values can trigger a warning when the threshold is exceeded. Experiments have been conducted to verify the accuracy of its signal processing.