Identification of Structural Changes on a Movable Bridge

Abstract

Movable bridges are unique structures in terms of their design, operation and maintenance. Florida has the highest number of bascule type movable bridges in the United States. According to Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) engineers, movable bridges maintenance cost is considerably higher than that of a fixed bridge because of the problems encountered due to their proximity to waterways and special operational demands. Therefore, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) can be used to track and evaluate incidents, anomalies, damage and deterioration in movable bridges. In this study, two most critical structural problems of a pilot movable bridge are monitored and evaluated by using a correlation based data analysis method. It is shown that the proposed methodology can be used to monitor the structural condition of the movable bridges effectively using traffic induced strain data.