Automated Real-Time Assessment of Stay-Cable Serviceability Using Smart Sensors

Abstract

The number of cable-stayed bridges being built worldwide has been increasing owing to the increasing demand for long-span bridges. As the stay-cable is one of critical load-carrying members of cable-stayed bridges, its maintenance has become a significant issue. The stay-cable has an inherently low damping ratio with high flexibility, which makes it vulnerable to vibrations owing to wind, rain, and traffic. Excessive vibration of the stay-cable can cause long-term fatigue problems in the stay-cable as well as the cable-stayed bridge. Therefore, civil engineers are required to carry out maintenance measures on stay-cables as a high priority. For the maintenance of the stay-cables, an automated real-time serviceability assessment system using wireless smart sensors was developed in this study. When the displacement of the cable in the mid-span exceeds either the upper or the lower bound provided in most bridge design codes, it is considered as a serviceability failure. The system developed in this study features embedded on-board processing, including the measurement of acceleration, estimation of displacement from measured acceleration, serviceability assessment, and monitoring through wireless communication. A series of laboratory tests were carried out to verify the performance of the developed system.

Fatigue Behavior and Fracture Surface Analysis of Corroded High-Strength Bridge Cable Wires

“…As shown in Figure 9, the fitting coefficient, i.e., R 2 , is about 0.90, and the 95% confidence interval covers most of the scattered data points, which indicates a good fit and a satisfactory fitting result. The fitted equation is as follows: (8) Materials 2024, 17, x FOR PEER REVIEW 13 of 21 in strength was further enhanced when coupled with corrosion-induced damage. However, static tensile tests on aged cable wires had shown that corrosion fatigue damage cannot affect the constitutive characteristics of the actual bridge wires [35].…”

“…Hence, the combined action of corrosion and fatigue was involved in some cable failures of existing bridges. As the critical load-carrying parts on large-span bridges, the replacement of cables, while technically feasible, often incurs substantial costs [8,9]. Therefore, the assessment and determination of load-bearing capacity and fatigue behavior of corroded wires used in bridges are of significant value for bridge maintenance and management.…”

Automated wireless monitoring system for cable tension forces using deep learning

“…Wireless smart sensors have been widely adopted to construct a system for structural health monitoring. 8,13,[29][30][31][32][33] The smart sensor is regarded as having the capability of communicating with other sensors wirelessly and of computing on-board processing.…”

Fatigue Life Evaluation of Parallel Steel-Wire Cables under the Combined Actions of Corrosion and Traffic Load

“…Currently, the fatigue assessment and life prediction methods of the stay cables can be generally classifed into two categories: datadriven methods and fnite element model-based methods. Data-driven methods use the data processing methods such as data statistics and data mining to directly assess the condition of the diagonal cable based on the monitoring responses [23,[28][29][30][31]. Unlike the data-driven method, the fnite element model-based approach uses fnite element analysis to indirectly obtain the tension force of cables under diferent loading conditions, and then perform condition assessment and life prediction of the stay cable using suitable fatigue life models [28,[32][33][34].…”