Long-term structural health monitoring system for a FRP composite highway bridge structure

This article discusses the implementation of a long-term structural health monitoring system for a FRP highway bridge using vibration-based monitoring techniques. The design and installation of such a system is prompted by the need to present a quantitative assessment of structural response to owners and operators in order to provide early warnings for major changes in response in the case of impending catastrophic failures. The bridge under discussion is instrumented with accelerometers as well as corresponding data acquisition and transmission equipment for automatic data collection. Ambient vibration based techniques are used to extract modal parameters from measured bridge response. Information regarding the change of internal structural characteristics is then obtained through a mode shape curvature based approach. Structural stiffness change is based on the analysis of collected data. A finite element model updating technique is used to provide an improved baseline model. The updated model is then used for simulation of damage effects.