Implementation of SHM system for a railway truss brigde

A railway bridge has been the object of investigation since mid 2007 as a response to increasing interest in structural health monitoring (SHM) from Polish Railways. It is a typical 40 m long, steel truss structure spanning a channel in Nieporęt near Warsaw. There is over 1500 similar bridges in the railway network in Poland. The paper presents various aspects of 3year monitoring of the truss bridge. The final objective of the investigation is to design, test and implement an SHM system dedicated to railway infrastructure. The system consists of two integrated subsystems the weigh in motion (WIM) and the actual SHM. Piezoelectric sensors collecting strain responses are used in both systems as an alternative to strain gauges or optical fibers. The measurements are then processed by a customized system for wireless transmission of data. Numerical model of the bridge corresponds well to the experimental data. This is a good starting point for considering different scenarios of simulated damage in the structure by adding local masses in future research.