A Tale of Five Bridges; the use of GNSS for Monitoring the Deflections of Bridges

The first Bridge Monitoring surveying was carried out in 1996 by the authors, through attaching Ashtech ZXII GPS receivers onto the Humber Bridge’ parapet, and gathering and further analysing the resulting 1Hz RTK GPS data. Various surveys have subsequently been conducted on the Humber Bridge, the Millennium Bridge, the Forth Road Bridge, the Severn Suspension Bridge and the Avonmouth Viaduct. These were all carried out using survey grade carrier phase/pseudorange GPS and later GNSS receivers. These receivers were primarily dual frequency receivers, but the work has also investigated the use of single frequency receivers, gathering data at 1Hz, 10Hz, 20Hz and even 100Hz. Various aspects of the research conducted are reported here, as well as the historical approach. Conclusions are shown in the paper, as well as lessons learnt during the development of this work. The results are compared to various models that exist of the bridges’ movements, and compare well. The results also illustrate that calculating the frequencies of the movements, as well as looking at the magnitudes of the movements, is an important aspect of this work. It is also shown that in instances where the magnitudes of the movements of the bridge under investigation are small, it is still possible to derive very accurate frequencies of the movements, in comparison to the existing models.Humber Bridge Board, the Forth Estuary Transport Authority and Arup for the Millennium Bridge wor

Using satellites to monitor Severn Bridge structure, UK

The Severn Bridge is a large UK suspension bridge. In 2010, a series of field surveys was commissioned to monitor the magnitude and frequencies of the bridge’s movements, through attaching nine dual-frequency survey grade global navigation satellite system receivers on the bridge and two reference satellite receivers adjacent to the structure. The satellite antenna locations and configuration allow the movements of the north cable to be analysed at four locations, as well as the differential movements of the two suspension cables to each other. In addition, this configuration allows the movements of the tops of the towers to be compared to the cables’ movements, as well as with each other. All in all, this allowed the relative movements of the various locations on the bridge’s suspension cables and tower tops to be compared to each other, at a rate of up to 20 Hz. Overall, some 3 days of raw code and carrier phase satellite data were gathered. During these sessions, normal traffic loading was experienced. This paper describes the survey, presents a selection of the key results and draws conclusions about the effective use of satellite positioning systems to enhance structural health monitoring.The Highways Agency, Severn River Crossing plc and Mott MacDonal