A Wireless Sensor Network with Enhanced Power Efficiency and Embedded Strain Cycle Identification for Fatigue Monitoring of Railway Bridges

Wireless sensor networks have been shown to be a cost-effective monitoring tool for many applications on civil structures. Strain cycle monitoring for fatigue life assessment of railway bridges, however, is still a challenge since it is data intensive and requires a reliable operation for several weeks or months. In addition, sensing with electrical resistance strain gauges is expensive in terms of energy consumption. The induced reduction of battery lifetime of sensor nodes increases the maintenance costs and reduces the competitiveness of wireless sensor networks. To overcome this drawback, a signal conditioning hardware was designed that is able to significantly reduce the energy consumption. Furthermore, the communication overhead is reduced to a sustainable level by using an embedded data processing algorithm that extracts the strain cycles from the raw data. Finally, a simple software triggering mechanism that identifies events enabled the discrimination of useful measurements from idle data, thus increasing the efficiency of data processing. The wireless monitoring system was tested on a railway bridge for two weeks. The monitoring system demonstrated a good reliability and provided high quality data.

[1]  Kameswari Chebrolu,et al.  Brimon: a sensor network system for railway bridge monitoring , 2008, MobiSys '08.

[2]  G. Agha,et al.  Wireless Strain Sensor Development for Civil Infrastructure , 2004 .

[3]  Alain Nussbaumer,et al.  Finite Element Analysis for Fatigue Damage Reduction in Metallic Riveted Bridges Using Pre-Stressed CFRP Plates , 2014 .

[4]  Harry W. Shenton,et al.  System for In-Service Strain Monitoring of Ordinary Bridges , 2006 .

[5]  Matthew J. Whelan,et al.  Design of a Robust, High-rate Wireless Sensor Network for Static and Dynamic Structural Monitoring , 2009 .

[6]  Glauco Feltrin,et al.  Long-term monitoring of cable stays with a wireless sensor network , 2010 .

[7]  Eugen Brühwiler,et al.  Ermüdungssicherheit von Brücken – Teil 2: Nachweis basierend auf den Messwerten des Monitoring-Projekts „Bahnbrücke Eglisau“ , 2012 .

[8]  Ping Wang,et al.  Investigation of Wireless Sensor Networks for Structural Health Monitoring , 2012, J. Sensors.

[9]  Yi-Qing Ni,et al.  Statistical analysis of stress spectra for fatigue life assessment of steel bridges with structural health monitoring data , 2012 .

[10]  Billie F. Spencer,et al.  Develoment of high-sensitivity wireless strain sensor for structural health monitoring , 2013 .

[11]  Hojung Cha,et al.  Structural Health Monitoring system based on strain gauge enabled wireless sensor nodes , 2008, 2008 5th International Conference on Networked Sensing Systems.

[12]  Darrell F. Socie,et al.  Simple rainflow counting algorithms , 1982 .

[13]  Jerome P. Lynch,et al.  Automated Modal Parameter Estimation by Parallel Processing within Wireless Monitoring Systems , 2008 .

[14]  Sung-Han Sim,et al.  Decentralized random decrement technique for efficient data aggregation and system identification in wireless smart sensor networks , 2011 .

[15]  Andreas Andersson,et al.  Monitoring and enhanced fatigue evaluation of a steel railway bridge , 2010 .

[16]  Glauco Feltrin,et al.  Vibration monitoring of a footbridge with a wireless sensor network , 2013 .

[17]  Jerome P. Lynch,et al.  FATIGUE LIFE MONITORING OF METALLIC STRUCTURES BY DECENTRALIZED RAINFLOW COUNTING EMBEDDED IN A WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK , 2010 .

[18]  Olga Saukh,et al.  A versatile software architecture for civil structure monitoring with wireless sensor networks , 2012 .

[19]  Alain Nussbaumer,et al.  Design criterion for fatigue strengthening of riveted beams in a 120-year-old railway metallic bridge using pre-stressed CFRP plates , 2015 .

[20]  Yang Wang,et al.  Performance monitoring of the Geumdang Bridge using a dense network of high-resolution wireless sensors , 2006, Smart Materials and Structures.

[21]  Christian Meyer,et al.  Ermuedungssicherheit von Bruecken - Teil 2: Nachweis basierend auf den Messwerten des Monitoring-Projekts "Bahnbruecke Eglisau" / Fatigue safety of riveted bridges - Part 2: Verification based on the monitoring data of the project "Railway bridge at Eglisau" , 2012 .

[22]  Lennart Elfgren,et al.  Event-based strain monitoring on a railway bridge with a wireless sensor network , 2009 .

[23]  Tommy H.T. Chan,et al.  Fatigue criteria for integrity assessment of long-span steel bridge with health monitoring , 2006 .