Health monitoring system of great structures based on virtual instrument

The safety of great structures in active service is very important for national economy and people's life. Health monitoring of great structures are getting more and more attention all over the world. The key of health monitoring is to monitor the whole behavior of the structure in real-time and to evaluate the state of the structure intelligently. High-speed and great-capacity data acquisition, remote control and transfer, data and information share through web are required in such monitoring systems. According to the actual health monitoring requirements of a steel bridge, a new health monitoring system based on virtual instrument is developed. All the essential requirements above are realized in the new system that consists of field data acquisition subsystem, remote monitoring and data transport subsystem and analysis and evaluation subsystem. Being installed in the steel bridge for nearly half a year, the system fulfils the expectant goals very well. The design of the whole system, the performance of software and hardware, the functions of the system are introduced in detail in this paper.