• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.113-119
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• 2020

The IoT-based sensor network is one of the methods that can be efficiently applied to maintain the facilities, such as bridges, at a low cost. In this study, based on LoRa LPWAN, one of the IoT communications, sensor board for cable tension monitoring, data acquisition board for constructing sensor network along with existing measurement sensors, are developed to create bridge structural health monitoring system. In addition, we designed and manufactured a smart sensor node for LoRa communication and established a sensor network for monitoring. Further, we constructed a test bed at the Yeonggwang Bridge to verify the performance of the system. The test bed verification results suggested that the LoRa LPWAN-based sensor network can be applied as one of the technologies for monitoring the bridge structure soundness; this is excellent in terms of data rate, accuracy, and economy.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.285-299
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• 2020

Long term structural health monitoring has gained wide attention among civil engineers in recent years due to the scale and severity of infrastructure deterioration. Establishing effective damage indicators and proposing enhanced monitoring methods are of great interests to the engineering practices. In the case of bridge health monitoring, long term structural vibration measurement has been acknowledged to be quite useful and utilized in the planning of maintenance works. Previous researches are majorly concentrated on linear time series models for the measurement, whereas nonlinear dependences among the measurement are not carefully considered. In this paper, a new bridge health monitoring method is proposed based on the use of long term vibration measurement. A combination of the fundamental ARMA model and copula theory is investigated for the first time in detecting bridge structural damages. The concept is applied to a real engineering practice in Japan. The efficiency and accuracy of the copula based damage indicator is analyzed and compared in different window sizes. The performance of the copula based indicator is discussed based on the damage detection rate between the intact structural condition and the damaged structural condition.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.453-476
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• 2013

DuraMote is a remote sensing system developed for the "NIST TIP project: next generation SCADA for prevention and mitigation of water system infrastructure disaster". It is designed for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) of ruptures in water pipes. Micro-electro mechanical (MEMS) accelerometers, which record the vibration of the pipe wall, are used detect the ruptures. However, the performance of Duramote cannot be verified directly on a water distribution system because it lacks an acceptable recordable level of ambient vibration. Instead, a long-span cable-stayed bridge is an ideal test-bed to validate the accuracy, the reliability, and the robustness of DuraMote because the bridge has an acceptable level of ambient vibration. The acceleration data recorded on the bridge were used to identify the modal properties of the structure and to verify the performance of DuraMote. During the test period, the bridge was subjected to heavy rain, wind, and a typhoon but the system demonstrates its robustness and durability.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.477-496
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• 2013

Due to their cost-effectiveness and ease of installation, wireless smart sensors (WSS) have received considerable recent attention for structural health monitoring of civil infrastructure. Though various wireless smart sensor networks (WSSN) have been successfully implemented for full-scale structural health monitoring (SHM) applications, monitoring of low-level ambient strain still remains a challenging problem for WSS due to A/D converter (ADC) resolution, inherent circuit noise, and the need for automatic operation. In this paper, the design and validation of high-precision strain sensor board for the Imote2 WSS platform and its application to SHM of a cable-stayed bridge are presented. By accurate and automated balancing of the Wheatstone bridge, signal amplification of up to 2507-times can be obtained, while keeping signal mean close to the center of the ADC span, which allows utilization of the full span of the ADC. For better applicability to SHM for real-world structures, temperature compensation and shunt calibration are also implemented. Moreover, the sensor board has been designed to accommodate a friction-type magnet strain sensor, in addition to traditional foil-type strain gages, facilitating fast and easy deployment. The wireless strain sensor board performance is verified through both laboratory-scale tests and deployment on a full-scale cable-stayed bridge.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.209-228
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• 2012

Structural health monitoring with wireless sensor networks has received much attention in recent years due to the ease of sensor installation and low deployment and maintenance costs. However, sensor network technology needs to solve numerous challenges in order to substitute conventional systems: large amounts of data, remote configuration of measurement parameters, on-site calibration of sensors and robust networking functionality for long-term deployments. We present a structural health monitoring network that addresses these challenges and is used in several deployments for monitoring of bridges and buildings. Our system supports a diverse set of sensors, a library of highly optimized processing algorithms and a lightweight solution to support a wide range of network runtime configurations. This allows flexible partitioning of the application between the sensor network and the backend software. We present an analysis of this partitioning and evaluate the performance of our system in three experimental network deployments on civil structures.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.345-365
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• 2020

At present, many machine leaning and data mining methods are used for analyzing and predicting structural response characteristics. However, the platform that combines big data analysis methods with online and offline analysis modules has not been used in actual projects. This work is dedicated to developing a multifunctional Hadoop-Spark big data platform for bridges to monitor and evaluate the serviceability based on structural health monitoring system. It realizes rapid processing, analysis and storage of collected health monitoring data. The platform contains offline computing and online analysis modules, using Hadoop-Spark environment. Hadoop provides the overall framework and storage subsystem for big data platform, while Spark is used for online computing. Finally, the big data Hadoop-Spark platform computational performance is verified through several actual analysis tasks. Experiments show the Hadoop-Spark big data platform has good fault tolerance, scalability and online analysis performance. It can meet the daily analysis requirements of 5s/time for one bridge and 40s/time for 100 bridges.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.1324-1327
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• 2009

Social infrastructure is the basis of public welfare and should be recognized and managed as important assets. Bridge is one of the most important infrastructures to be managed systematically because the impact of the failure is critical. It is essential to monitor the performance of bridges in order to manage them as an asset. But current analytical methods such as predictive modeling and structural analysis are very complicated and difficult to use in practice. To apply these methods, structural and material condition data collection should be performed in each element of bridge. But it is difficult to collect these detailed data in large numbers and various kinds of bridges. Therefore, it is necessary to collect data of major measurement items and predict the life of bridges roughly with advanced information technologies. When certain measurement items reach predefined limits in the monitoring bridges, precise performance measurement will be done by detailed site measurement. This paper describes the selection of major measurement items that can represent the tendency of bridge life and introduces automated bridge data collection test-bed using wireless sensor network technology. The following will be major parts of this paper: 1) Examining the features of conventional bridge management system and data collection method 2) Mileage concept as a bridge life indicator and measuring method of the indicator 3) Test-bed of automated and real-time based bridge life indicator monitoring system using wireless sensor network

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.49-56
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• 2023

With the development of technology worldwide, bridges are becoming larger, and the number of old bridges is also rapidly increasing. Monitoring the structural health of large, aging bridges is essential to preventing large-scale accidents. In this study, the application of a LoRa low-power wide-area network (LPWAN)-based wireless measurement system was investigated, and a LoRa wireless measurement system was established in the cable-stayed bridge section of Cheonsa Bridge, located in Shinan-gun, Jeollanam-do, Korea. The applicability of the LoRa LPWAN-based wireless monitoring system to large marine bridges was reviewed by comparing the performance and economic feasibility with wire-based monitoring systems that were built and operated by establishing a measurement system for the pylons, cables, and reinforcing girders of the bridge.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.12 no.3_4
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• pp.415-426
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• 2013

Condition assessment and monitoring of bridges is critical for safe passenger travel, public transportation, and efficient freight. In monitoring, displacement measurement capability is important to keep track of performance of bridge, in part or as whole. One of the most important parts of a bridge is the expansion joint, which accommodates continuous cyclic thermal expansion of the whole bridge. Though expansion joint is critical for bridge performance, its inspection and monitoring has not been considered significantly because the monitoring requires long-term data using cost intensive equipment. Recently, a wireless smart sensor network (WSSN) has drawn significant attention for transportation infrastructure monitoring because of its merits in low cost, easy installation, and versatile on-board computation capability. In this paper, a rapid wireless displacement monitoring system, wireless hybrid sensor (WHS), has been developed to monitor displacement of expansion joints of bridges. The WHS has been calibrated for both static and dynamic displacement measurement in laboratory environment, and deployed on an in-service highway bridge to demonstrate rapid expansion joint monitoring. The test-bed is a continuous steel girder bridge, the Founders Bridge, in East Hartford, Connecticut. Using the WHS system, the static and dynamic displacement of the expansion joint has been measured. The short-term displacement trend in terms of temperature is calculated. With the WHS system, approximately 6% of the time has been spent for installation, and 94% of time for the measurement showing strong potential of the developed system for rapid displacement monitoring.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.539-558
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• 2012

The diagnosis of bridge serviceability is carried out by a combination of in-situ visual inspection, static and dynamic loading tests and analyses. Structural health monitoring (SHM) using information technology and sensors is increasingly being used for providing a better estimate of structural performance characteristics rather than above traditional methods. Because the mechanical behavior of bridges with various kinds of damage can not be made clear, it is very difficult to estimate both the damage mode and degree of damage of existing bridges. In this paper, the sensitivity of both static and dynamic behaviors of bridges are studied as a measure of damage assessment through experiments on model bridges induced with some specified artificial damages. And, a method of damage assessment of bridges based on those behaviors is discussed in detail. Finally, based on the results, a possible application for structural health monitoring systems for existing bridges is also discussed.