Continuous, Long-Term Monitoring of Two Advanced Polymer Composite Bridges

Continuous, long-term monitoring systems have been designed for two polymer composite bridges recently built in Delaware. The Magazine Ditch bridge has been continuously monitored for more than a year. The monitoring system provides data to investigate the effects of sustained load, environmental factors and live load on the bridge. Early results show that daily and seasonal temperature changes can induce strains in the bridge that are equal in magnitude to the maximum live load strains. A similar system has been designed for the first State owned composite bridge in Delaware. The monitoring system for bridge 1-351 is expected to be on-line by the summer 2000. Presented in the paper is a brief overview of the systems and sample results from the data collected for the Magazine Ditch bridge.