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Abstract
The reliability of typical highway bridges is becoming a concern as America’s interstate highway system ages. Visual inspection practices used to determine the condition of these bridges can be inconsistent and do not yield the quantitative data needed to completely assess the health of the structure. The ability to quickly determine the overall condition of a bridge has become a major interest of bridge owners. Structural health monitoring systems are thought to be a viable solution to this problem, providing numeric data on the current condition of a bridge.
The University of Delaware has developed a permanent structural health monitoring system to evaluate the overall condition of common highway bridges. The system will serve as a model for the Federal Highway Administration’s Long-Term Bridge Performance Program (LTBPP). The goal of the LTBPP is to determine the cause of bridge deterioration and will use some permanently installed monitoring systems to collect data for this purpose. The structural monitoring system was installed on Bridge 1-821, a typical slab on steel girder bridge located in Wilmington, Delaware. The system consists of 61 sensors that collect data to assess the overall health of the structure.
This thesis discusses the further development of the structural monitoring system. Unforeseen plans to paint Bridge 1-821 forced the removal of the system for several months: a detailed description of the removal and re-installation process is presented. The management of collected data is also discussed, including the use of a trigger to initiate data collection and the development of a data management and filtering program. Samples of what can be generated by the data management system are presented. An example of a basic dynamic spectral analysis is presented using acceleration data that was collected by the system, highlighting the possible uses of the data. Lastly, future work to make advancements to the monitoring system is presented.
