Structural Health Monitoring System (SHMS) for Bridge Girders Retrofitted with CFRP Composites

1. Structural Health Monitoring System (SHMS) for Bridge Girders Retrofitted with CFRP Composites Mohsen A. Issa, Ph.D., P.E., S.E., FACI, Department of Civil and Materials Engineering The Study is Supported by the Illinois Toll Highway Authority • It is imperative that bridges are always open to traffic, resistant to natural disaster, and undaunted by millions of loading cycles. • Early signs of deterioration are often not seen because bridge components mask them. It is hard to visually inspect or using hardwiring sensors in some components of special bridges. • Structural health monitoring (SHM) is the diagnostic monitoring of the integrity or condition of a structure capable of detecting and locating damage or degradation in its components. • It is crucial to evaluate and recommend long-term bridge monitoring systems that are cost-effective, durable, and reliable. • Health monitoring systems were incorporated in large-scale bridge members, full-scale bridge prototypes, and actual Toll Highway Authority bridges. • The critical locations were selected based on laboratory experimental programs and nonlinear finite element analysis. • The effectiveness of the health monitoring systems were evaluated based on: accuracy of data, simplicity of installation, cost, reliability, and durability. • Various health monitoring systems were incorporated in actual repair projects of damaged I-girders. The data is continuously collected and showed consistence results with the actual conditions of the repaired girders. • The current and future work are focused toward designing and selecting wireless health monitoring systems that are durable, reliable, and smart to send understandable and accurate messages about the conditions of the major bridge components.