Measure point arrangement strategy for in-service continuous girder bridge SHM with consideration of structural robustness (Special Issue of ICAST 2019)

In-service bridges, under long-term service operational environment, are usually accompanied by different damage types. Traditional method for the measure point arrangement of in-service bridge SHM is usually based on engineering experience. A large number of SHM sensors are usually arranged on the structure, followed by a high engineering cost and a heavy maintenance task. These sensors will also produce large amounts of data, creating a challenge for operators requiring to deal with data processing in an effective manner. This study serves as a part of the series of studies on the measure point arrangement strategy of in-service bridge SHM. In this study, the SHM sensor measure point arrangement of in-service continuous girder bridge (a common structural style of high way bridge in China) is proposed. Two-span continuous beam, three-span continuous beam, and four-span continuous beam are taken as examples. Detailed comparison and verification are also performed with consideration of numerical simulation and previous studies. Different traffic speeds and different bridge spans are considered. The effect of different damage locations and different damage degrees are analyzed in detail. This study shows that a general similar trend can be observed for the structural robustness of in-service continuous girder bridge. The elements with smaller structural robustness of this kind of bridge are basically located around the middle cross section of side spans (first span and last span), followed by the middle span. Moreover, the numerical value of structural robustness of different elements in a continuous girder bridge is significantly different from each other, due to the complexity of the joint effect of different traffic speeds and damage locations. Therefore, the measure point should be generally arranged at the side span firstly, followed by the middle span. With consideration of the specific traffic speed and damage location in engineering application, a detailed analysis is also proposed for the further optimization of SHM sensor measure point arrangement. Once the elements are arranged in order of the numerical value of structural robustness, the SHM sensor measure point arrangement of this kind of bridge can be more targeted, and the number of sensors can also be greatly reduced.