Advanced Weakness Determination & Assessment of Bridges - HOT SPOT
This project encourages a completely new, advanced decision support for owners of bridge infrastructure, which is based on permanent monitoring-systems of highway-bridges. It is aspired to conceive cheap and effective observation systems for bridges which are of higher priority (purposeful, well targeted amount of used measurement sensors). Contrary to
the present practice of manual inspection - permanent monitoring systems in bridges are aspired to provide structure-specific, objective parameters by representing the bridge’s hot spots. Readily available information is going to be of eminent importance for bridge owners to make faster and more accurate decisions in the course of maintaining their infrastructure.
The objectives of the project are:
(1) Measurement-based determination of Weaknesses - to be observed:
These so-called Hot Spots indicate potential damages, being of extensive consequence.
(2) Development of two pilot and demonstration facilities for permanent monitoring:
Future demands of tailored, permanent observation systems are going to be demonstrated explicitly.
(3) Maturity of an automatic report-generators & alarm system:
Procedures, which turned out to be appropriate for structural assessment, are going to be automated, evaluated and will be implemented into a report continuously.
(4) Stable, remote access for maintenance & servicing and data exchange with the bridge owner and the system operator:
Some already gained experience of the proposer with its permanent monitoring system "Europabrücke" might be of supportive character. The discussed, advanced monitoring system within the present proposal shall be developped via two pilot and demonstration facilities at the A13 Brenner-highway (Luegbrücke, Gschnitztalbrücke). It includes a calibrated alarm system and an online access, which enables remote servicing as well as an automatic delivery of bridge-status-reports periodically (weekly, monthly). Subsequently the approach and methodology can be adapted and refined for other structures (in particular also for railway bridges).
