A Novel Multi-Sensor Wireless Network for Bridge Structural Health Monitoring

The ability to monitor the integrity of a bridge structure and detect damage or condition changes at early stages is of significant importance for bridge operation safety. Currently, the most widely used damage detection methods rely on subjective, incremental visual assessments or localized testing techniques. In this proposal, we propose to develop and test a low cost and efficient bridge structural health monitoring system. The system combines various types of sensor information and provides early warning of critical structural problems through cooperative data processing and diagnosis. With minimal human intervention, the system can potentially achieve real-time “smart” health monitoring of primary and secondary bridge structures such as beams, truss, joints, welds that are critical for bridge integrity. Besides steel bridge structures, concrete pavement monitoring is also very important. The proposed health monitoring system will also be applied to monitoring conditions of concrete structures from fresh concrete mix for quality control to aged structures for damage monitoring. The envisioned system has great potential for maintenance cost reduction and structural safety improvement..