Advance Sensor Technologies on Korean Bridges: Field Benchmark Opportunities

The United States and Korea have vast national bridge inventories that require vigilant inspection and repair. With a new generation of sensing technologies and computational tools emerging from interdisciplinary research between civil engineering and other engineering disciplines, bridge management strategies are rapidly improving. Foremost among the new sensors are wireless sensors, EM stress sensors, vision-based displacement sensors and piezoelectric active sensors. For example, wireless sensors eradicate the need for extensive wiring between sensors rendering systems cheaper. EM sensors are powerful tools for measuring stress in bridge cables. Furthermore, active sensors based on piezoelectric materials (e.g. PZT and piezoelectric paint) introduce and record elastic stress waves in local areas of metallic and concrete structures. This paper describes a new US-Korean joint collaboration exploring the installation of these sensors on testbed bridges in Korea. The heterogeneous set of sensors fused into a single comprehensive structural monitoring system effectively capture global and local behavior leading to improvement in structural health assessment. 3306 Bridge Maintenance, Safety, Management, Health Monitoring and Informatics – Koh & Frangopol (eds) © 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-46844-2