Long-term deflection monitoring for bridges using X and C-band time-series SAR interferometry

Abstract

This study aims to monitor the deformation of bridges, namely in the form of long-term deflection and thermal dilation, using multi-temporal interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) observations. To precisely estimate the vertical and longitudinal displacements, we used the InSAR time-series technique with multi-track stacks of Sentinel-1 SAR dataset and a single-track stack of COSMO-SkyMed SAR data over two extradosed bridge cases; Kimdaejung and Muyoung bridges between 2013 and 2017. The vertical and longitudinal displacements are estimated using multi-track Sentinel-1 SAR data and orientation angle of bridges, and we converted the displacements into thermal dilation and long-term vertical deflection. From COSMO-SkyMed data, we calculated the horizontal thermal dilation and long-term vertical deflection assuming that they dominantly contribute to the horizontal and vertical displacements, respectively. This assumption appeared reasonable based on the comparison with calculations from Sentinel-1 data. The deflection patterns exhibit downward movements at the mid-spans between towers. The results reveal that both bridges have been suffering long-term deflection over the observation period. Thus, this study verifies the potential to monitor the long-term deflection and implies that the bridges need to be monitored periodically.