Development of a Reference-Free Indirect Bridge Displacement Sensing System

Bridge displacement measurements are important data for assessing the condition of a bridge. Measuring bridge displacement under moving vehicle loads is helpful for rating the load-carrying capacity and evaluating the structural health of a bridge. Displacements are conventionally measured using a linear variable differential transformer (LVDT), which needs stable reference points and thus prohibits the use of this method for measuring displacements for bridges crossing sea channels, large rivers, and highways. This paper proposes a reference-free indirect bridge displacement sensing system using a multichannel sensor board strain and accelerometer with a commercial wireless sensor platform (Xnode). The indirect displacement estimation method is then optimized for measuring the structural displacement. The performance of the developed system was experimentally evaluated on concrete- and steelbox girder bridges. In comparison with the reference LVDT data, the maximum displacement error for the proposed method was 2.17%. The proposed method was successfully applied to the displacement monitoring of a tall bridge (height = 20 m), which was very difficult to monitor using existing systems.