Monitoring bearing damage in bridges using accelerations from a fleet of vehicles, without prior bridge or vehicle information

• Published in: Engineering structures 2024-03, Vol.302, p.117414, Article 117414
• Main Authors: OBrien, Eugene J., McCrum, Daniel P., Wang, Shuo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acceleration; Drive-by; Dynamic; Fleet monitoring; Structural health monitoring
• ISSN: 0141-0296; 1873-7323
• DOI: 10.1016/j.engstruct.2023.117414

This paper describes a novel method for detecting bridge damage that uses a partially instrumented vehicle fleet, each vehicle being instrumented with just one accelerometer. Importantly, no prior knowledge of the bridge or individual vehicle properties is required. Firstly, a model simplification concept is proposed to calculate the displacement under the vehicle wheel from single acceleration measurements on a half-car model. Then, optimisation is used to find individual vehicle properties using simulated noisy measurements from a fleet of vehicles. Finally, accelerations from the fleet are used to find the ‘apparent profile difference’, which contains bridge deflection data. The difference is found to be independent of surface profile but dependent on vehicle axle weight differences and a moving reference influence function (MRIF). When the axle spacings and the relative axle weights are reasonably consistent in a subset of the fleet, the MRIF can be simplified into a compound MRIF. Even when the MRIF and individual axle weights are not available on-site, the shape of the compound MRIF can be determined through an iterative process and used to monitor bridge health condition. Bearing damage is represented in this paper as an increase of rotational resistance of the bearings. The numerical results show that the damage severity and location can be identified. •A new drive-by fleet monitoring concept is introduced using a partially instrumented vehicle fleet without knowing individual vehicle properties.•A new concept, vehicle model simplification, is introduced to enable monitoring bridges using partially instrumented vehicles.•Vehicle wheel displacement is successfully obtained from vehicle accelerations and used in structural health monitoring.•The relation between bridge deflection under the wheel and vehicle load is modelled as a moving reference influence function. This influence function is simplified to monitor bridges.