Sensing and Information Extraction for Bridge Structural Health Monitoring

桥梁的故障或突然关闭可能会导致交通混乱，例如2015年12月关闭的第四路大桥造成了大规模的中断。未来的交通网络必须强大，以抵御这类令人震惊的事件。最近，2018年吉奥纳莫兰迪大桥坍塌事件(43人死亡)进一步强调了对更有效的桥梁管理/监测的迫切需要。然而，预算限制意味着不太可能进行重大的额外投资，因此需要创新的方法来应对这一挑战。该项目的影响将是为克服这一挑战做出贡献。该项目的目的是开发有助于避免上述类型事件发生的状态监测技术。该项目将着眼于通过监测桥梁对外部因素(例如车辆荷载或温度)的反应来确定桥梁的状况。在总体目标范围内，该项目的目标是(1)传感和数据收集以及(2)数据解释。(I)的挑战是，桥梁是大型结构，通常没有电力或外部通信能力。因此，以具有成本效益的方式收集相关数据具有挑战性。对于(2)，问题是，即使有数据，也需要对这些数据进行改进/处理，以产生对决策支持有用的信息。根据目标(I)和(Ii)，本项目的研究方法是研究如何以新的方式利用现有传感器从桥梁中提取有用信息，并特别强调牢记最终用户的需求，在这种情况下，最终用户通常是桥梁所有者和/或道路运营商。由于目前有许多不同的传感选择，该项目将调查一些不同的桥梁反应，例如加速度或位移和环境因素，如温度。除了单独查看桥梁，还将调查使用框架整体查看它们的可能性。该项目与EPSRC的结构工程研究领域紧密结合，在较小程度上也与基础设施和城市系统研究领域相一致。该项目符合EPSRC的战略，即带来经济影响和社会繁荣，因为它希望促进公共基础设施(即桥梁)的低成本损坏检测系统，因此，将允许及早干预和进行预防性维护，减少公路网突然关闭的次数。

The failure or sudden closure of a bridge can cause transport chaos, e.g. closure of Forth Road Bridge in December 2015 caused massive disruption. The transport networks of the future must be robust against these kinds of shock events. More recently, The Morandi bridge collapse in Geona in 2018 (43 fatalities) has further emphasised the urgent need for more effective bridge management/monitoring. Budget constraints, however, mean significant extra investment is unlikely, and so innovative approaches are needed to address the challenge. The impact of this project will be to contribute toward overcoming this challenge. The aim of this project is to develop condition monitoring techniques that can contribute to avoid the above type of events occurring. The project will look at identifying the condition of the bridge by monitoring its response to external factors (e.g. vehicle load, or temperature). Within the overall aim, the project has objectives on (i) sensing and data collection and (ii) data interpretation. The challenges with (i) is that bridges are large structures, often with no electrical power or external communication capability. Therefore, collecting relevant data in a cost effective manner is challenging. For (ii) the issue is that even when data is available, that data needs to be refined/processed to produce information useful for decision support. Following from objectives (i) and (ii) the research methodology for this project is to look at how existing sensors can be used in novel ways to extract useful information from bridges with a particular emphasis on remaining mindful of the needs of the end user which, in this case, is often the bridge owner and/or road operator. As a number of different sensing options are currently available, the project will investigate a number of different bridge responses e.g. acceleration or displacement and environmental factors such as temperature. As well looking at bridges individually, the potential to use a frame work to look at them collectively will be investigated. This project is strongly aligned to the EPSRC research area on Structural Engineering, and, to a lesser extent, Infrastructure & Urban Systems. This project is in keeping with the EPSRC strategy of delivering economic impact and social prosperity as it looks to contribute to low cost damage detection systems for public infrastructure, namely bridges, and as a result, would allow for early intervention and for preventative maintenance to be carried out, reducing the number of abrupt closures to road networks.