Long-Term Structural Health Monitoring of the San Ysidro Bridge

As part of the Lifecycle Innovative Financing Evaluation initiative, the San Ysidro Bridge along U.S. Route 550 will be monitored throughout a 10?year warranty period to determine changes in deflection, stiffness, and load-carrying capacity. This paper discusses an initial live-load test on the San Ysidro Bridge as well as a subsequent load test on a full-scale single lane test bridge. The two load tests in conjunction with finite element modeling were used to determine the load rating for both shear and moment of the San Ysidro Bridge. This load rating was then compared with the load rating using the distribution factors from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Standard and Load and Resistance Factor Design Specifications. According to both AASHTO specifications, the interior girder shear controlled the load rating of the San Ysidro Bridge. Using the finite element modeling scheme of frame and shell elements the interior girder moment was found to control the design. This load rating will be used as a baseline for comparison with future load ratings throughout the warranty period.     

Dynamic Monitoring of Steel Girder Highway Bridge

Currently there are different monitoring techniques that have been considered for use in the structural evaluation of bridges. These include approaches based on both static and dynamic behavior. The use of dynamic properties has advantages over static properties, since components of the dynamic properties are only marginally influenced by variations in the loading. When dynamic properties are used, field studies have shown that it is not always sufficient to use only natural frequencies and modal displacements. Some research for structural evaluation of bridges indicates that techniques based on use of derivatives of the natural frequencies and the modal displacements may be more effectively used to generate effective diagnostic parameters for structural identification. This paper presents the results of applying one of these methods, the modal flexibility approach, to a field study of a bridge in which the bearings were partially restrained in colder weather. While others have used impact methods with the modal flexibility method, in this study the approach is modified so that excitation is provided by vehicular traffic. The results show that the modified modal flexibility method provides a clear indication that there have been changes in the bridge’s structural behavior.     

Implementation of a Long-Term Bridge Weigh-In-Motion System for a Steel Girder Bridge in the Interstate Highway System

This technical paper discusses the implementation of a long-term bridge weigh-in-motion system for use in determining gross vehicle weights of trucks crossing steel girder bridges. The system uses strain data to determine truck weights using an existing structural health monitoring system installed on a interstate highway bridge. The applied system has the advantage of not using any axle detectors in the roadway; and instead all analyses are performed using strain gauges attached directly to the steel girders, providing for a long-term monitoring system with minimal maintenance. Long-term data has been used to demonstrate that this method can be readily applied to gain important information on the quantity and weights of the trucks crossing the highway bridge.     

Inclusion of Crawl Tests and Long-Term Health Monitoring in Bridge Serviceability Analysis

Due to limited resources, structural health monitoring (SHM) of highway bridges has to be integrated in structural performance assessment in a cost-effective manner. The instrumentation and the long-term SHM procedures are generally chosen with emphasis on most critical bridge components for a particular failure mode. However, global structural analysis is necessary to obtain useful structural performance information. It is then a major challenge to use monitoring data at some locations to perform a structural reliability analysis at other locations. In this paper, a methodology for lifetime serviceability analysis of existing steel girder bridges including crawl tests and long-term monitoring information is presented. The case where the initial goal of monitoring is to provide data for a fatigue analysis of some bridge components is considered. The monitoring results are used to perform a structural reliability analysis of different sections that are critical considering serviceability of the bridge. Limit state equations are used firstly by adhering to the load and strength formulas and requirements set forth in AASHTO specifications, and secondly by integrating monitoring information. Serviceability with respect to permanent deformation under overload is estimated for the girders with these two different methods and a time-dependent performance analysis is conducted by considering corrosion penetration. The proposed approach is applied to the I-39 Northbound Bridge over the Wisconsin River in Wisconsin. A monitoring program of that bridge was performed by the Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems Center at Lehigh University.     

Long-Term Durability of State Street Bridge on Interstate 80

Destructive and nondestructive techniques were employed to evaluate the long-term durability of the carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite and externally CFRP-reinforced concrete of the State Street Bridge. Nondestructive evaluation was conducted through strain gauges, tiltmeters, thermocouples, and humidity sensors installed on the bridge bents for real-time health monitoring. Destructive tests were performed to determine the ultimate tensile strength, hoop strength, concrete confinement enhancement, and bond-to-concrete capacity of the CFRP composite for 3 years of exposure. Thermographic imaging was used for detection of voids between CFRP composite and concrete. Although environmental conditions were found to have an effect on the durability of the CFRP composite and CFRP-reinforced concrete substrate, no evidence of steel reinforcement corrosion was observed, and the CFRP composite retrofit is still effective after 3 years.     

Long-Term Performance Monitoring of the Tech 21 All-Composite Bridge

Tech 21 is the third all-composite vehicular bridge installed in the United States. The deck has sandwich configuration with a center core made by bonding orthotropic fiberglass and polyester tubes. The three trapezoidal beams supporting the deck were fabricated using E-glass fibers with polyester resin. Each beam was fabricated as an integral unit with its deck section to facilitate transportation to the site, erection, and construction. The two-lane bridge is the first fully instrumented all-composite vehicular bridge, including an extensive health-monitoring system installed during its fabrication. A nearly four-year long continuous monitoring was carried out to demonstrate the performance of the bridge. Field monitored information was studied to evaluate the behavior and durability of composites in the harsh infrastructure environment. This evaluation determines the level of confidence in the long-term field benefits of composite materials and technology.     

Development and Implementation of a Continuous Strain Monitoring System on a Multi-Girder Composite Steel Bridge

This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of a long-term strain monitoring system on a three-span, multisteel girder composite bridge located on the interstate system. The bridge is part of a network of bridges that are currently being monitored in Connecticut. The three steel girders are simply supported, whereas the concrete slab is continuous over the interior supports. The bridge has been analyzed using the standard AASHTO Specifications and the analytical predictions have been compared with the field monitoring results. The study has included determination of the location of the neutral axes and the evaluation of the load distributions to the different girders when large trucks cross the bridge. A finite-element analysis of the bridge has been carried out to further study the distribution of live load stresses in the steel girders and to study how continuity of the slabs at the interior joints would influence the overall behavior. The results of the continuous data collection are being used to evaluate the influence of truck traffic on the bridge and to establish a baseline for long-term monitoring.     

Ambient Vibration Monitoring of a Highway Bridge Undergoing a Destructive Test

Developing a technique to continuously monitor in-service highway bridges is one of the major research focuses at the Connecticut Department of Transportation and the University of Connecticut. The goal has been to use ambient traffic loading as the force to excite a measurable parameter that is sensitive to overall structural integrity. In this study, the dynamic responses of a full-scale steel-girder highway bridge during the passage of a small truck were measured using a number of sensors that could be reasonably implemented on a network of in-service bridges. Measurements were taken before and during the staged introduction of a simulated crack in one of the main supporting girders. The crack was introduced in five stages until it extended through two-thirds of the depth of the girder. Accelerometers were placed at various locations on each girder. Frequency spectra for each stage of the testing were compared to those recorded before the introduction of the crack to determine which aspects of the spectra were sensitive to the change in stiffness. The results indicate that monitoring the amplitudes at the natural frequencies and the frequency response spectrum using the cross signature assurance criterion can be used as an indicator that significant cracks have developed in a multigirder highway bridge.     

Bridge Structural Condition Assessment Based on Vibration and Traffic Monitoring

A stochastic model of traffic excitation on bridges is developed assuming that the arrival of vehicles traversing a bridge (modeled as an elastic beam) follows a Poisson process, and that the contact force of a vehicle on the bridge deck can be converted to equivalent dynamic loads at the nodes of the beam elements. The parameters in this model, such as the Poisson arrival rate and the stochastic distribution of vehicle speeds, are obtained by image processing of traffic video data. The model reveals that traffic excitations on bridges are spatially correlated. This important characteristic is usually incorrectly ignored in most output-only methods for the identification of bridge structural properties using traffic-induced vibration measurement data. In this study, the stochastic traffic excitation model with partial traffic information is incorporated in a Bayesian framework, to evaluate the structural properties and update their uncertainty for condition assessment of the bridge superstructure. The vehicle weights are also estimated simultaneously in this procedure. The proposed structural assessment methodology is validated on an instrumented highway bridge.     

Long-Term Performance of a Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Truss Bridge

In the summer of 2005, after eight years of use as a temporary bridge during the winter, the Pontresina Bridge for pedestrians was transported to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne for a detailed assessment of the structural safety, serviceability, and long-term durability of the bridge. The assessment included a visual inspection, quasistatic testing identical to that performed in 1997, and detailed investigations of material degradation. The visual inspection showed a variety of different local defects and damage such as local crushing caused by impact, local cracks due to inappropriate storage and lifting of the structure, fiber blooming, degradation of cut surfaces, and damage due to vandalism. Comparisons between load tests performed in 1997 and 2005 showed, however, that the structural safety and serviceability of the bridge have not been affected by these local damages. The stiffness of the pultruded shapes remained unchanged, whereas a slight decrease in strength between 13 and 18% was measured, which, however, is not critical when taking into consideration the high effective safety factors. In view of a further service period of 5 years until the next inspection, the visible damages were repaired. This experience showed that the durability is primarily affected by inappropriate constructive detailing and that pultruded glass fiber-reinforced polymer shapes, if correctly manufactured and processed, can offer good long-term performance and durability.     

Sensor Network for Structural Health Monitoring of a Highway Bridge

A bridge monitoring TestBed is developed as a research environment for sensor networks and related decision-support technologies. A continuous monitoring system, capable of handling a large number of sensor data channels and three video signals, is deployed on a four-span, 90-m long, reinforced concrete highway bridge. Of interest is the integration of the image and sensor data acquisition into a single computer, thereby providing accurate time synchronization between the response and corresponding traffic loads. Currently, video and acceleration records corresponding to traffic induced vibration are being recorded. All systems operate online via a high-speed wireless Internet network, allowing real-time data transmission. Elements of the above health monitoring framework are presented herein. Integration of these elements into an automated functional system is emphasized. The recorded data are currently being employed for structural system identification via a model-free technique. Effort is also underway to correlate the moving traffic loads with the recorded accelerations. Finally, the TestBed is available as a resource for verification of new sensor technologies, data acquisition/transmission algorithms, data mining strategies, and for decision-support applications.     

Research on Steel Shell of a Road Bridge Made of Corrugated Plates during Backfilling

This paper presents the results and conclusions of the research conducted on a backfilled shell structure made of Super Cor SC-56B corrugated steel plates of a road bridge located in Gim?n, Sweden. The conclusions drawn from the tests can be helpful mostly for the assessment of the behavior of this type of steel–soil bridge structure under the load of backfilling. In consideration of an even more frequent application of this type of structure for small and middle-sized road and rail bridges, conclusions from the conducted research can be generalized to the whole class of such structural solutions.     

Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Strengthening and Monitoring of the Gr?ndals Bridge in Sweden

The Gr?ndal Bridge is a large freivorbau bridge (prestressed concrete box bridge), approximately 400?m in length with a free span of 120?m. It was opened to tram traffic in the year 2000. Just after opening cracks were noticed in the webs, these cracks have then increased, the size of the largest cracks exceeded 0.5?mm, and at the end of 2001 the bridge was temporarily strengthened. This was carried out with externally placed prestressed steel stays. The reason for the cracking is still debated and will be further discussed in this paper. Nevertheless, it was clear that the bridge needed to be strengthened. The strengthening methods used were CFRP plates at the serviceability limit state and prestressed dywidag stays at the ultimate limit state. The strengthening was carried out during 2002. At the same time monitoring of the bridge commenced, using LVDT crack gauges as well as optical fiber sensors.     

Design of the Fulton Road Bridge Precast Segmental Concrete Arches

This paper describes the design of the Fulton Road Bridge segmental concrete arches. The posttensioning concept, superstructure–arch interaction considerations, effective length k factor for moment magnification, and construction sequence analysis methods used for design are discussed.     

Bridge Reliability Assessment Based on Monitoring

During the past decade, monitoring concepts for structural systems have been subjected to a rapid development process. They have become more and more important in the intervention planning (e.g., maintenance, repair, rehabilitation, replacement) on new and existing structures. Nevertheless, there is still a strong need for the efficient use of structural monitoring data in the reliability assessment and prediction models. Updating prediction models, based on monitoring data, affect the intervention strategies. Since these strategies involve costs, monitoring systems assist the efficient spending of available budgets. Therefore, the demand for the efficient use of monitoring data is not only related to structural reliability, but also to cost aspects. In an extended sense, structural monitoring can be considered similar to quality assurance and acceptance sampling, since it is not practically possible to continuously monitor all performance indicators in all critical sections of an entire structural system. Nevertheless, the continuous and simultaneous measurements at discrete points of a deteriorating structural system, as provided by monitoring, allow the assessment of the performance of a structure with respect to different limit states. The aim of this paper is twofold: (a) To present an approach for the efficient inclusion of monitoring data in the structural reliability assessment process; and (b) to demonstrate the use of monitored data for the development of prediction models. The approach is illustrated on an existing highway bridge (the Lehigh River Bridge SR-33), a structure located in Pennsylvania and monitored by the Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems Center, a National Engineering Research Center at Lehigh University.     

Small-Format Aerial Photography for Highway-Bridge Monitoring

Small-format aerial photography (SFAP) is a low-cost solution for bridge-surface imaging and is proposed as a remote bridge-inspection technique to supplement current bridge visual inspection. Providing top-down views, photos taken from airplanes flying at 305?m (1,000?ft) allow for the visualization of subinch (i.e., large) cracks and joint openings on bridge decks or highway pavements. An onboard global positioning system can help geo-reference images collected and allow automated damage detection. However, the site lighting, surrounding tree shades, and highway surface reflectivity may affect the quality of the images. Several examples of bridge evaluation using SFAP are presented to demonstrate the capability of remote sensing as an effective tool for bridge-construction monitoring and condition assessment. A deck condition rating technique for large crack detection is proposed to quantify the condition of the existing bridge decks.     

Balancing Connectivity of Deteriorating Bridge Networks and Long-Term Maintenance Cost through Optimization

Due to aggressive environmental stressors and increasing traffic loads, highway bridges are undergoing significant deterioration in both condition and safety. Timely and adequate maintenance interventions are therefore crucial to ensure the functionality of existing bridges in a network. Under budget constraints, it is important to prioritize maintenance needs to bridges that are most significant to the functionality of the entire network. In this paper, the network-level bridge maintenance planning problem is posed as a combinatorial optimization and is automated by a genetic algorithm (GA) to select and allocate maintenance interventions of different types among networked bridges as well as over a specified time horizon. Two conflicting objective functions are considered simultaneously: (1) The overall performance of a bridge network expressed by the time-dependent reliability of connectivity between the origin and the destination locations and (2) the present value of total maintenance cost over the specified time horizon. A variety of maintenance types, which differ in unit costs as well as in effects on bridge performance in terms of improvement in structural reliability levels, are used in the optimization. An event tree analysis is carried out to obtain a closed-form expression for the network connectivity reliability. As an illustration example, the GA-based procedure is applied to deteriorating deck slabs of an existing 13-bridge network located in Colorado. It is shown that the proposed maintenance planning procedure has the capability of both prioritizing scarce maintenance needs to deteriorating bridges that are most crucial to the network performance and cost-effectively distributing maintenance interventions over the time horizon.     

Safety Analysis of Moving Road Vehicles on a Long Bridge under Crosswind

This paper presents a safety analysis of high-sided road vehicles running on a long span cable-stayed bridge when the road vehicle enters a sharp-edged crosswind gust while the bridge is oscillating under fluctuating winds. Road vehicle accidents, including overturning, excessive sideslip, and exaggerated rotation, are defined first. The mathematical model and the equation of motion of coupled road vehicle–bridge systems under crosswind are then established, which include road surface roughness, vehicle suspension, and the sideslip of the vehicle tire relative to the bridge deck in the lateral direction. A case study using a real long cable-stayed bridge and a high-sided road vehicle is finally conducted, and an extensive computational work is performed to obtain a series of accident vehicle speed against mean crosswind speed, by which the decision on the threshold of mean wind speed above which the bridge should be closed to the road vehicle can be made. The obtained accident vehicle speeds are also compared with those for the same vehicles running on the ground. It is shown that the oscillation of the cable-stayed bridge will lower the accident vehicle speed when wind speed reaches a certain level.     

Field Monitoring and Repair of a Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Bridge Deck

This paper reports on the monitoring and repair of a pilot field deployment of a glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) deck on a small steel girder bridge in the Washington State. Deck deflections were monitored periodically over a 10-month period and were found to increase significantly over that time. The GFRP deck is an adhesively bonded assembly of GFRP tubes and top and bottom plates. After 9 months of service, wearing surface cracking was observed, and upon closer inspection, the top GFRP plate was found to be delaminated from the tubes over a fairly large area. Deck deflections in the area of delamination were found to be considerably larger than those observed during previous monitoring in undamaged locations. A retrofit solution was employed where the top plate was reconnected to the tubes using screws coated with a two-part epoxy that mixed when they were driven. At the time of writing the retrofit was successful in reattaching the delaminated top plate.