Development of a remote and low-cost bridge monitoring system

Resumo

Structures made from concrete, metal or any other material, are designed to have a long service life.
However, to ensure a durable structure, it must have constant and efficient maintenance. Structural Health
Monitoring (SHM) can be described as the method of monitoring and evaluating the structural health through the
collection and analysis of data extracted from sensors, which are connected or not to the structure in matter. In this
way, the difficulties are in how to collect that data, analyze it and have information about it to give a final response
about the structure status. This research focus at the development of a low-cost bridge management system, which
will allow remote monitoring of special structures and shows its real time status. Subjects as Finite Element (FE)
modelling, dynamic test and Internet of Things (IoT) are studied to create a viable system. The first step is
modelling a case-study bridge on SAP2000 to analyze the theoretical behavior of the bridge. The second step is
using low-cost devices to extract data with low noise, process it and send a response about the structure status,
involving Wireless Sensor Networks. Then, experimental results are analyzed.