Railway bridge structural health monitoring and fault detection: state-of-the-art methods and future challenges

Railway importance in the transportation industry is increasing continuously, due to the growing demand of both passenger travel and transportation of goods. However, more than 35% of the 300,000 railway bridges across Europe are over 100-years old, and their reliability directly impacts the reliability of the railway network. This increased demand may lead to higher risk associated with their unexpected failures, resulting safety hazards to passengers and increased whole life cycle cost of the asset. Consequently, one of the most important aspects of evaluation of the reliability of the overall railway transport system is bridge structural health monitoring, which can monitor the health state of the bridge by allowing an early detection of failures. Therefore, a fast, safe and cost-effective recovery of the optimal health state of the bridge, where the levels of element degradation or failure are maintained efficiently, can be achieved. In this article, after an introduction to the desired features of structural health monitoring, a review of the most commonly adopted bridge fault detection methods is presented. Mainly, the analysis focuses on model-based finite element updating strategies, non-model-based (data-driven) fault detection methods, such as artificial neural network, and Bayesian belief network–based structural health monitoring methods. A comparative study, which aims to discuss and compare the performance of the reviewed types of structural health monitoring methods, is then presented by analysing a short-span steel structure of a railway bridge. Opportunities and future challenges of the fault detection methods of railway bridges are highlighted

Optimization of preventative maintenance strategies for bridges

The use of preventative maintenance (PM) has been acknowledged as an effective way of reducing the whole life cost of maintaining bridges in good, safe and functional condition. However, there are many uncertainties associated with the need and effectiveness of PM. Such uncertainties if not addressed can lead to incorrect decisions and wastage of resources. In addition optimization procedures are necessary to produce strategies with minimum cost while maintaining the reliability of the bridge at an acceptable level. This paper examines the issue of effectiveness of different PM on reinforced concrete bridges deteriorating due to the corrosion of reinforcement from chloride ions. It investigates the applicability of an optimization methodology, using the principles of genetic algorithm (GA) to identify optimum PM strategies based on their effectiveness and cost. © 2006 Taylor & Francis Group