Vibration Measurement of a Steel Bridge Using Smart Sensors: Deployment and Evaluation

Abstract

Civil infrastructure provides the means for a society to function and include buildings, pedestrian and vehicular bridges, tunnels, factories, conventional and nuclear power plants, etc. Structural health monitoring (SHM) represents one of the primary applications for new sensor technologies. In these cases, structural health monitoring (SHM) can be implemented for damage detection and characterization strategy of engineering structures. The design, fabrication, and construction of smart structures are one of the ultimate challenges to engineers as they form the essence of system intelligence and the cores of smart structures technology centers around innovative sensors and sensor systems. In this study, an attempt has been made to monitor the force and vibration components in a Whipple truss bridge and has been verified it analytically. This paper presents a novel piezoelectric cable vibration sensor prototype for use in a monitoring system that can easily evaluate the vibrations of a steel bridge quantitatively. Results obtained using sensor were compared with results obtained with accelerometers and Abaqus software and it was found that the natural frequencies of vibrations estimated from both procedures are in good agreement. However, additional investigation is required to improve the accuracy and reliability of proposed sensor.