Obtaining Accurate Traffic Loading using Bridge Weigh-In-Motion Technology

According to a recent survey, 178 million trips are taken across U.S.’s 46,000 structurally deficient bridges every day. Due to concerns over their actual load-carrying capacity, some of these bridges have posted weight and speed restrictions. The lack of enforcement of these load postings is an issue nationwide and presents risks for human lives and costly failures. To address this issue, this proposal aims to develop a low-cost, practical and robust technological solution to enforce bridge load postings using Bridge Weigh-In-Motion (B-WIM) technology. A B-WIM is a system that uses site monitoring data from sensing systems on an instrumented bridge to transform it into a mechanism to determine actual traffic loading. It consists of sensors for measuring deformations induced by vehicles, axle detectors for collecting information on vehicle velocity and axle spacing, a camera system for automatic number plate recognition, and a data acquisition system to collect time-synchronized data from the multiple systems. This proposal aims to investigate the feasibility of the proposed system for the long-term monitoring of traffic loading at load restricted bridges and develop a system prototype to address the shortcomings in current practice.