Bridge Structural Health Monitoring Systems

Bridges are an integral and vital part of our highway infrastructure and must be maintained to assure safe operation. Although most bridges are visually inspected periodically, internal deterioration due to corrosion, fatigue, stress, and vibration can go undetected.

However, sensor and monitoring system technology is available that can provide cost effective, automated bridge monitoring solutions to detect these conditions. 

Often, high speed data collection and processing is needed to capture certain infrequent dynamic events such as a passing heavy load or seismic activity. To monitor such events, EMS has implemented bridge monitoring systems that normally collect data on a periodic basis, such as every 4 hours, but are programmed to detect when a threshold level is exceeded for a measured parameter and automatically switch to high speed data collection at a rate of 1000 measurements per second or higher. Following the event, these monitoring systems are programmed to automatically return to the slower data collection rate for use in evaluating long term performance trends.

Bridge owners today not only need real-time automated data collection, they also need timely access to this data on their company wide computer network. By utilizing today’s communications technology, EMS has provided bridge owners with access to their critical bridge monitoring data from any PC in their computer network or even from a remote PC utilizing a simple web browser interface.