Rapid-to-deploy wireless monitoring systems for static and dynamic load testing of bridges: validation on the grove street bridge

Abstract

Bridge management officials have expressed a keen interest in the use of low-cost and easy-to-install wireless sensors to record bridge responses during short-term load testing. To illustrate the suitability of wireless sensors for short-term monitoring of highway bridges, a wireless monitoring system is installed upon the Grove Street Bridge to monitor structural responses during static and dynamic load testing. Specifically, load testing of the Grove Street Bridge is conducted after its construction to validate the behavior of a novel jointless bridge deck constructed from a highperformance fiber reinforced cementitious composite (HPFRCC) material. A heterogeneous array of sensing transducers are installed in the bridge including metal foil strain gages, accelerometers and linear variable differential transducers (LVDTs). First, the acceleration response of the bridge is monitored by the wireless system during routine traffic loading. Modal parameters (modal frequencies and mode shapes) are calculated by the wireless sensors so that an analytical model of the bridge constructed in a standard commercial finite element package can be updated off-line. Next, the bridge is closed to traffic and trucks of known weight are parked on the bridge to induce static deformations. The installation strategy of the wireless monitoring system during static load testing is optimized to monitor the strain and rotation response of the HPFRCC deck. The measured static response of the deck is compared to that predicted by the updated analytical model.

Concise Historic Overview of Strain Sensors Used in the Monitoring of Civil Structures: The First One Hundred Years

“…Examples of modern versions of these sensors are given in Figure 4 , Figure 5 and Figure 8 . The first-generation sensors continue to be extensively used in the XXI century, empowered by wireless sensing capabilities, of which developments started in the last third of the XX century (e.g., [ 52 , 53 , 54 ]) and rapidly matured in terms of commercialization and field applications (e.g., [ 32 , 55 , 56 ]). These wireless technologies are mostly based on so-called wireless nodes, which require an energy source, typically provided by a battery or an energy harvesting device.…”

Field Testing of a Prestressed Concrete Bridge With High Performance and Locally Developed Ultra-High Performance Concrete Girders

“…Load testing has been used to evaluate and rate bridge response, investigate fatigue life (Alampalli and Lund, 2006) and to evaluate new construction materials and technologies (Hou and Lynch, 2006;Kleinhans et al, 2007). Load testing was used to load rate a bridge in New York, USA that replaced the bridge deck with a fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) deck, that was 80% lower in weight compared to the original concrete deck (Alampalli and Kunin, 2003).…”

Bridge Deck Load Testing Using Sensors and Optical Survey Equipment

“…Tasks involved in a program of load testing typically include the determination of testing objectives and load configuration, the selection and placement of instrumentation, the adoption of appropriate analysis techniques, and the evaluation and comparison of test results and analytical results [10]. Load testing is being carried out widely to evaluate and rate bridge response on a case-by-case manner to evaluate new construction materials and technologies [10,11]. While a number of bridge load testing studies can be found in the literature, such studies on bridges using embedded sensors, which is the focus of this paper, are almost nonexistent.…”