Tracking bridge tilt behaviour using sensor fusion techniques

Abstract

The resilience of the built environment to extreme weather events is fundamental for the day-today operation of our transport network, with scour representing one of the biggest threats to bridges built over flowing water. Condition monitoring of the bridge using a structural health monitoring system enhances resilience by reducing the time needed to return the bridge to normal use by providing timely information on structural condition and safety. The work presented in this report discusses use of rotational measurements in structural health monitoring. Traditionally tiltmeters (which can be a form of DC accelerometer) are used to measure rotation but are known to be affected by dynamic movements, while gyroscopes react quickly to dynamic motion but drift over time. This review will introduce gyroscopes as a complementary sensor for accelerometer rotational measurements and use sensor fusion techniques to combine the measurements from both sensors to get an optimised rotational result. This method was trialled on a laboratory scaled model, before the system was installed on an in-service single-span skewed railway bridge. The rotational measurements were compared against rotation measurements obtained using a vision-based measurement system to confirm the validity of the results. An introduction to gyroscopes, field test measurement results with the sensors and their correlation with the vision-based measurement results are presented in this article.

Condition Monitoring of Rail Transport Systems: A Bibliometric Performance Analysis and Systematic Literature Review

“…Condition monitoring concerns various rail vehicles, passenger and freight cars, and rail infrastructure—especially tracks. Some studies were also conducted in order to monitor the condition of rail bridges, as in Faulknet et al [ 263 ]; the authors developed a rotational measurement system, which operates by measuring quasistatic and dynamic measurements of a bridge, and which consists of accelerometer(s) and gyroscopes . Gyroscopes were treated in this system as complementary sensors for the instrumentation of the rotational accelerometer.…”

Risk-informed asset management to tackle scouring on bridges across transport networks

“…Movement sensors: Sensors such as tiltmeters and accelerometers measure tilting, vibration or acceleration of the bridge and allow for bridge or route managers to enforce bridge closures if necessary. Tiltmeters measure the relative rotation of a structural element and can be employed to measure differential settlement (Faulkner et al, 2020). Accelerometers are easy to install and measure the acceleration of a structural member in three directions and should ideally be installed alongside tiltmeters.…”

“…The foremost cause of bridge failure worldwide is scouring (Faulkner, Brownjohn, Wang, & Huseynov, 2020), with 6000 bridge failures in the USA and 140 UK rail bridge failures during 1846-2013 reported being scour-related (Prendergast & Gavin, 2014;van Leeuwen & Lamb, 2014). Scouring is defined as the removal of material from the bed and banks of a river by the action of water (May, Ackers, & Kirby, 2002).…”

Identifying damage on a bridge using rotation-based Bridge Weigh-In-Motion

“…The accuracy of rotation measurements obtained using accelerometers has been investigated by the authors in recent studies [31][32][33]. In [31,32], the authors instrumented a railway bridge with QA-750 accelerometers to measure rotations at five locations along the bridge span. Using this [34], they calculated the midspan deflections of the bridge deck.…”