Health Monitoring of Bridges using Wireless Sensor Nodes.

Abstract

This paper highlights the look & implementation aspects of health monitoring of bridges using Wireless Sensor Nodes (WSN). Structures including civil infrastructures, such as bridges, buildings, dams, among others are major parts of society’s economic and industrial success. Bridges are one of the most important points of a country’s transport network but their maintenance and construction cost is very high.  The major parameters monitored are bending, vibration, overloading and strain. Different sensors are installed at the key locations of the bridges and data from sensor is collected. For short distance (among sensors in the bridge) ZigBee is used as wireless network, and GSM is used for long distance (between the bridge and the management center) data communication. This technology will enable the bridge maintenance engineers to monitor the condition of the bridge in real time. The bending, traffic, weight of the vehicles etc is monitored by various sensors installed in different parts of bridge. At any point of time if any of these parameters cross their threshold value the communication system informs the management center giving an alarm for taking precautionary measures.