Structural performance monitoring of an urban footbridge

This paper presents the structural performance monitoring of an urban footbridge located in Hangzhou, China. The structural health monitoring (SHM) system is designed and implemented for the footbridge to monitor the structural responses of the footbridge and to ensure the structural safety during the period of operation. The monitoring data of stress and displacement measured by the fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-based sensors installed at the critical locations are used to analyze and assess the operation performance of the footbridge. A linear regression method is applied to separate the temperature effect from the stress monitoring data measured by the FBG-based strain sensors. In addition, the static vertical displacement of the footbridge measured by the FBG-based hydrostatic level gauges are presented and compared with the dynamic displacement remotely measured by a machine vision-based measurement system. Based on the examination of the monitored stress and displacement data, the structural safety evaluation is executed in combination with the defined condition index.