Structural Health Monitoring of Highway Bridges Subjected to Overweight Trucks, Phase I – Instrumentation Development and Validation

State departments of transportation (DOTs) in the west have been under increasing pressure to permit and route overweight trucks transporting machinery and equipment for the energy sector through their state and interstate highway systems. DOT engineers are called upon daily to rate their bridges for overweight trucks to determine appropriate truck routing and to assess the impacts of the trucks on bridge safety and durability. Many of these overweight trucks have nonstandard configurations, which further complicates the rating and permitting process. Hence, it is critical that bridge engineers in the DOTs develop confidence that their bridge analysis and rating software accurately predicts the response of bridges to overweight trucks, especially for bridges on the most frequently traveled routes. The long-term objectives of this project were to develop and validate an instrumentation package for structural health monitoring (SHM) of bridges subjected to overweight trucks and to develop plans for field deployment of the instrumentation on a pilot scale. Ultimately, the objective is to accurately correlate long-term field performance data to the behavior of the bridges predicted by analysis and rating software. The field instrumentation package incorporates use of optical fiber sensors, specifically fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), to monitor strains at critical locations in bridges that are considered most vulnerable to overweight truck loads and are most difficult to effectively rate with currently used software.

• Record URL:
  https://www.ugpti.org/resources/reports/details.php?id=844
• 
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This document was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, University Transportation Centers Program.
• Corporate Authors:

  University of Wyoming, Laramie

  Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering
  1000 East University Avenue
  Laramie, WY  United States  82071

  Mountain-Plains Consortium

  North Dakota State University
  Fargo, ND  United States  58108

  Wyoming Department of Transportation

  Cheyenne, WY  United States 

  Research and Innovative Technology Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Schmidt, Richard J
• Publication Date: 2016-3

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Figures; Photos; References;
• Pagination: 59p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data collection; Highway bridges; Instrumentation; Optical fibers; Overweight loads; Sensors; Structural health monitoring; Validation
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Data and Information Technology; Highways; Maintenance and Preservation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01598406
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: MPC 16-307
• Files: UTC, TRIS, RITA, ATRI, USDOT, STATEDOT
• Created Date: May 2 2016 10:16AM