EVALUATION OF EXIS TINGTECHNIQUESON STRUCT URAL HEALTH M ONITORINGOF BRIDGES

The global higher transportati on network operates about 2.5 million bridges all over the world. Current bridge management systems rate th em using various methodologies and approaches . Based on studies in the US Federal Highway Agency (FHWA), about 30% of bridges are rated as bein g deficient, with only a portion of these being deficient for structural reasons. For this reason, it is necessary to focus on bridges that definitely require structural health diagnosis, improvement and monitoring. Struc tural Health Monitoring (SHM) should be used in a preventi ve capacity before bridges become deficient. Stru ctural health monitoring is the implementation of a damage identification strategy to the civil engineering infrastructures. Damage is defined as changes to the material and/or geometric properties of these systems, including changes to the boundary conditions and system c onnectivity. Damage affects the current or future performance of such systems. Structural health monitorinng has several techniques, the methods are categorized based on the type of measured data used, and/or the technique used to identify the damage from th e measured data. In this paper, first a review of the technic al literature concerning the detection, location, and characterization of structural damage via techniques that examine changes in measured structural vibration response are investigated and then recent resear ch and application activities on smart sensing, monitoring, and damage detection for bridges are briefly introduced.

Keywords:

Structural Health Monit oring , Damage Detection , Bridges