Structural health monitoring of a cable-stayed bridge using smart sensor technology: deployment and evaluation

Abstract

Structural health monitoring (SHM) of civil infrastructure using wireless smart sensor networks (WSSNs) has received significant public attention in recent years. The benefits of WSSNs are that they are low-cost, easy to install, and provide effective data management via on-board computation. This paper reports on the deployment and evaluation of a state-of-the-art WSSN on the new Jindo Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge in South Korea with a 344-m main span and two 70-m side spans. The central components of the WSSN deployment are the Imote2 smart sensor platforms, a custom-designed multimetric sensor boards, base stations, and software provided by the Illinois Structural Health Monitoring Project (ISHMP) Services Toolsuite. In total, 70 sensor nodes and two base stations have been deployed to monitor the bridge using an autonomous SHM application with excessive wind and vibration triggering the system to initiate monitoring. Additionally, the performance of the system is evaluated in terms of hardware durability, software stability, power consumption and energy harvesting capabilities. The Jindo Bridge SHM system constitutes the largest deployment of wireless smart sensors for civil infrastructure monitoring to date. This deployment demonstrates the strong potential of WSSNs for monitoring of large scale civil infrastructure.

Proof of concept of wireless TERS monitoring

“…Wind speed, acceleration and strain, were measured across a heterogeneous network. Multiple aspects of this deployment have been documented: Jang et al [10] describe the hardware and physical deployment including details of the 4 networks (3 single hop networks of 23 nodes covering 175 m, and 1 multi-hop network) and emphasise that antenna placement is key to increased transmission ranges, while Nagayama et al [18] evaluated the use of multi-channel transmission to increase the available throughput of the network in high data rate applications.…”

Damage detection using curvatures obtained from vehicle measurements

“…Many researchers have applied SHM methods for civil engineering structures [6][7][8][9]. Several methods have been developed for SHM of bridges as critical components of transport infrastructure [10][11][12][13].…”

Rapid deployment of a WSN on the Clifton Suspension Bridge, UK

“…SHM using WSNs for bridge structures has been the subject of much recent research (Hoult et al, 2008(Hoult et al, , 2009Lynch et al, 2006;Rodenas-Herráiz et al, 2016;Stajano et al, 2010;Webb et al, 2014), with a number of large-scale deployments (e.g. Jang et al, 2010Jang et al, , 2011Kurata et al, 2013;Lynch et al, 2006). Another technology much less discussed in the field of SHM is the use of application interfaces (APIs) and open-source software (OSS) for data management.…”