The importance of dense monitoring of long-span bridges for its performance re-evaluation

Monitoring of structures is expected to offer rich information on structural performance evaluation. While the performance of existing structures may differ from their designs, monitoring of dynamic behaviors potentially provides indications of how close or far the performance is to the designs and unexpected differences that might be important to the safety. In this paper, monitoring of two bridges in Japan as well as dynamic and structural analyses of the monitoring data is presented. Ambient vibration and seismic response records are utilized in performance evaluation of these bridges. The dense sensor instrumentation on the bridges and long-term monitoring provides exceptional opportunities to obtain insight into the behaviors of the bridges and performance of their components.