Cost-Efficient Bridge Scour Health Monitoring using Commercial Sensors

Bridge scouring has been a major international issue regarding bridge health and the overall longevity of a bridge. A common bridge health concern such as scouring accounts for close to 60% of bridge failures in the United States and is a leading cause to a bridge being in critical condition. Traditional methods to combat this failure is to measure the scour depth to assess a bridge health. Due to safety concerns of the traditional method, this study proposes to monitor a bridge’s health using a vibration-based technique. At present, vibration-based techniques have yet to be utilized reliably in the field. The sensor system chosen for this study is the accelerometers. Acceleration data collected from the sensors can be translated into frequency and amplitudes to monitor bridge health status. A laboratory experiment is conducted within this study with an oscillating platform to simulate expected vibrations that would be seen within the field. Once laboratory verifications were done, the sensor system will be deployed in the field for further observations. Collected data from this study is expected to show distinction between oscillation behavior of a scour critical bridge and non-scour critical bridge when compared to the theoretical natural vibration of a bridge. The laboratory and field collected data from this study will be discussed in the symposium