ABSTRACT
Because of limitations in current sensor technologies described above, the SHM system of large-scale structures requires a large number of sensors for structural global and local information collection. A long-gauge FBG sensor that can measure structural local and global information is described in this article, and its application on a long-span rigid-frame bridge is investigated. The long-gauge FBG sensor has a gauge length of 20 cm∼2 m, and can be connected in series to make an FBG sensor array for area-distributed macro-strain measurement (Zhang et al. 2014). The concept and development of the long-gauge FBG sensor is presented in Section 2. The objective of this work is to show how to use the longgauge FBG sensor for effective SHM. To achieve
1 INTRODUCTION
Bridge collapses such as the I-35 W Bridge over the Mississippi River in 2007 have received tremendous public attention, which emphasizes the importance of effective management of civil infrastructure. Their maintenance is expensive and available budgets are limited, especially in developed countries. According to Federal Highway Administration data, of a total of ∼590,000 bridges in the United States, 152,136 bridges are damaged or have functional problems. An available budget of $10.5 billion is insufficient to cover the annual required $17 billion maintenance costs (ASCE 2013). Similarly, it has been reported that 7.2 billion Euros will be required in Germany for civil infrastructure maintenance over the next 15 years, which is 70% higher than the available budget. Therefore, the importance of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is becoming increasingly recognized by researchers and civil engineers, and is highly expected to be a promising tool to improve safety and maintain civil infrastructure efficiency.
