Automatic Management and Monitoring of Bridge Lifting: A Method of Changing Engineering in Real-Time

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 19; no. 23; p. 5293
• Main Authors: Fang, Yao Min, Chou, Tien Yin, Hoang, Thanh Van, Lee, Bing Jean
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 01.12.2019; MDPI
• Subjects: Bridge design; Bridge foundations; Bridges; Columnar structure; Construction costs; Earthquake damage; Earthquake resistance; Earthquakes; Exploitation; Highway construction; Hypotheses; Monitoring; Monitoring systems; Reconstruction; Renovation & restoration; Seismic engineering; Sensors; Strain gauges; Traffic; United States > US; Europe; China; Taiwan; bridge dynamics; structural health monitoring (SHM); lifting method
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s19235293

In recent years, owing to the increase of extreme climate events due to global climate change, the foundational erosion of old bridges has become increasingly serious. When typhoons have approached, bridge foundations have been broken due to the insufficient bearing capacity of the bridge column. The bridge bottoming method involves rebuilding the lower structure while keeping the bridge surface open, and transferring the load of the bridge temporarily to the temporary support frame to remove the bridge base or damaged part with insufficient strength. This is followed by replacing the removed bridge base with a new bridge foundation that meets the requirements of flood and earthquake resistance. Meanwhile, monitoring plans should be coordinated during construction using the bottoming method to ensure the safety of the bridge. In the case of this study, the No. 3 line Wuxi Bridge had a maximum bridge age of 40 years, where the maximum exposed length of the foundation was up to 7.5 m, resulting in insufficient flood and earthquake resistance. Consequently, a reconstruction plan was carried out on this bridge. This study took the reconstruction of Wuxi Bridge as the object and established a finite element model using the SAP 2000 computer software based on the secondary reconstruction design of the Wuxi Bridge. The domestic bridge design specification was used as the basis for the static and dynamic analyses of the Wuxi Bridge model. As a result of the analysis, the management value of the monitoring instrument during construction was determined. The calculated management values were compared with the monitoring data during the construction period to determine the rationality of the management values and to explore changes in the behavior of the old bridges and temporary support bridges.