Sensing and Information Extraction for Bridge Structural Health Monitoring

桥梁的故障或突然关闭会导致交通混乱，例如2015年12月第四公路大桥的关闭造成了大规模的混乱。未来的交通网络必须能够抵御这类冲击事件。最近，2018年在乔治亚的莫兰迪大桥坍塌（43人死亡）进一步强调了迫切需要更有效的桥梁管理/监测。然而，预算限制意味着不太可能进行大量额外投资，因此需要采用创新方法来应对这一挑战。这个项目的影响将有助于克服这一挑战。该项目的目的是开发状态监测技术，以有助于避免上述事件的发生。该项目将通过监测桥梁对外部因素（例如车辆负载或温度）的反应来确定桥梁的状况。在总体目标中，该项目有以下目标：(i)传感和数据收集以及（ii）数据解释。(i)的挑战在于桥梁是大型结构，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（ii）问题是，即使有数据，也需要对这些数据进行提炼/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颖的方式使用现有传感器从桥梁中提取有用的信息，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，该项目将研究许多不同的桥梁响应，如加速度或位移，以及环境因素，如温度。除了单独观察桥梁外，还将研究使用框架来整体观察桥梁的可能性。该项目与EPSRC的结构工程研究领域密切相关，并且在较小程度上与基础设施和城市系统研究领域密切相关。该项目符合EPSRC提供经济影响和社会繁荣的战略，因为它希望为公共基础设施（即桥梁）提供低成本的损坏检测系统，因此可以进行早期干预和预防性维护，减少道路网络突然关闭的数量。

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.