Wireless Sensor Network-Based Structural Health Monitoring System for Highway Bridges

A real-time wireless sensor network platform for integrated bridge health monitoring system is presented in this paper. The platform is designed flexibly to provide a variety of sensors typical to structural health monitoring, including accelerometers, strain gauge, and temperature sensors. Especially, an acceleration sensor board, a strain sensor board and an S-mote node are developed to meet the requirements for structural monitoring. Software components have been implemented within the TinyOS operating system to provide a flexible software platform, while background data process software can address the analysis of acceleration, dynamic displacement and real-time strain data. The prototype WSN is deployed on a highway bridge along three spans. The data acquired from the platform are used to examine the capability of the network and assess the health condition of the bridge. The experiment results show that the platform can provide long-term structure health monitoring for in-service highway bridge.