Public-participant quick cable force investigation method using smartphone for bridges in disaster area

Abstract

Numerous infrastructures, especially the bridge, require some safe inspection and assessment at the soonest when hit by a disaster like catastrophic earthquake. However, plenty of bridges within disaster area and limited resources for inspections may lead to the traffic delays and hampering the quick post-disaster assessment and rebuilt. In this article, a public-acceptant method, where cable force of bridges can be investigated quickly based on ubiquitous smartphones, was proposed to raise the efficiency of inspection and assessment in post-disaster emergency. First, public-participant post-disaster emergency disposal system was supported by the developed mobile software Orion-CC. Second, the lab's comparison experiment was conducted with the mature wireless monitoring method, which verified the feasibility of the above-mentioned method. Third, the field experiment in totally three bridges in Dalian including Hualu Bridge which used three iPhones demonstrated the feasibility, practicability, high efficiency, and stability of the novel method, and showed its huge potential for the application in bridges' quick health investigation. Besides, utilizing the smartphonebased cable force investigation method as the breakthrough, the data collection network and the framework of publicparticipant post-disaster emergency disposal system were preliminary established.

Smartphone Prospects in Bridge Structural Health Monitoring, a Literature Review

“…With this validation study, they have shown that tension cable force can be inferred from a smartphone providing a low-cost alternative to traditional and expensive instrumentation and eventually expanded the validation protocol to an actual cable-stayed bridge study. The same researchers also presented a framework for the cloud operation nature of smartphones for cable vibration monitoring with an app called Orion-CC [ 49 ] and discussed the potential of using it in a public participation framework [ 50 ]. They performed similar observations with a broader range of experimental and field studies, where many cables were monitored with smartphone sensors and the frequency–cable force relationships were compared using a reference system [ 51 ].…”