Sensing solutions for assessing and monitoring of bridges

Abstract

Bridges are popular candidates for condition assessment and long-term monitoring because they are critical infrastructure components, while being accessible, visible and usually publicly owned and operated. They represent the widest application of sensing technology, from traditional, mature and reliable to novel, experimental and (perhaps) less reliable. Being able to trial the novel alongside the mature provides valuable opportunities to advance the field of sensor technology for all types of structure so that technologies viewed as experimental 10 or 20 years ago are now reliable and commercially viable. The sensors described here are used to sense directly or indirectly both environmental and loading parameters and to measure directly the response through various measures of deformation at various timescales.