Application of operating vehicle load to structural health monitoring of bridges

For health monitoring purpose usually the structure is instrumented with a large scale and multi-channel measurement system. In case of highway bridges, operating vehicle could be utilized to reduce the number of measuring devices. First this paper presents a static damage detection algorithm of using operating vehicle load. The technique has been validated by finite element simulation and simple laboratory test. Next the paper presents an approach of using this technique to field application. Here operating vehicle load data has been used by instrumenting the bridge at single location. This approach gives an upper hand to other sophisticated global damage detection methods since it has the potential of reducing the measuring points and devices. It also avoids the application of artificial loading and interruption of any traffic flow.