Search

State Departments of Transportation and regional city government officials are beginning to view the long-term monitoring of infrastructure as being beneficial for structural damage accumulation assessment, condition based maintenance, life extension, and post-earthquake or –hurricane (-tornado, -typhoon, etc.) damage assessment. Active and passive structural monitoring systems were installed over the last few years to monitor concerns in a wide range of civil infrastructure applications. This paper describes the monitoring technologies and systems employed for such applications. Bridge system applications were directed at monitoring corrosion damage accumulation, composite reinforcements for life extension, general service cracking damage related to fatigue and overloads, and post-earthquake damage. Residential system applications were directed primarily at identifying damage accumulation and post-earthquake damage assessment. A professional sports stadium was monitored for isolated ground instability problems and for post-earthquake damage assessment. Internet-based, remote, data acquisition system experience is discussed with examples of long-term passive and active system data collected from many of the individual sites to illustrate the potential for both passive and active structural health monitoring. A summary of system-based operating characteristics and key engineering recommendations are provided to achieve specific structural monitoring objectives for a wide range of civil infrastructure applications. © 2000 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]