Structural evaluation of bridges through vibration monitoring: A new comprehensive proposal

An important part of the operating costs of existing bridges lies in their corrective maintenance. For this reason, it is imperative to have more precise structural evaluation procedures in bridges. To do that, several damage detection methods based on vibration monitoring have been applied. These methods have showed better performance than traditional ones. However, up to now, it has not been proposed a comprehensive procedure that can give us the structural integrity of the bridge at any time and with high precision. In this research, trying to propose a more rational method to evaluate bridges, AVT on one scale model of a bridge (a steel mesh structure) was carried out with different damage scenarios. Using vibration based damage detection methods, a comparison of the dynamic parameters before and after damage was done for localising and identifying damage in the scale models. Moreover, it was evaluated the proposed comprehensive method for detecting the induced damages. The results found in this work makes possible to have a procedure that optimizes the process of damage detection giving a more rational method to evaluate the structural behaviour of bridges.