Technology issues in developing structural health monitoring systems for long-span bridges

Recent advances in sensing, data acquisition, computing, communication, data and information management have made increasing applications of long-term structural health monitoring systems in bridges. Successful implementation and operation of structural monitoring systems on bridges have been reported worldwide. An issue of great concern with bridge health monitoring systems is how to use the monitoring data for health and condition assessment of the instrumented bridges. In this paper, we explores the methodologies for bridge structural health and condition assessment and their applications to the cable-supported bridges in Hong Kong by use of long-term monitoring data. Due to the limited space, this presentation is focused on the assessment techniques rather than vibration- or modal-based approaches, including: (i) fatigue life assessment using monitoring data; (ii) condition assessment of expansion joints using monitoring data; and (iii) component failure probability assessment using monitoring data and its linkage with bridge maintenance. State-of-the-practice in bridge monitoring systems is also outlined in the present paper.