Assessment of bridge expansion joints using long-term displacement measurement under changing environmental conditions

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of condition assessment of bridge expansion joints using long-term measurement data under changing environmental conditions. The effects of temperature, traffic loading and wind on the expansion joint displacements are analyzed and interpreted, which reveal that measured displacements are observed to increase with an increase in temperature and to decrease with increased traffic loading, while the correlation between displacement and wind speed is very weak. Two regression models are developed to simulate the varying displacements under the changes in temperature and traffic loadings. Based on these models, the effects of the environmental conditions are removed to obtain the normalized displacement. Statistical process control using mean value control charts is further used to detect damage to the bridge expansion joints. The results reveal that the proposed method had a good capability for detecting the damage-induced 1.0% variances of the annual changes in the expansion joint displacements.

Keywords

structural health monitoring / displacement / expansion joint / temperature effect / wind effect / traffic loading / statistical process control / suspension bridge

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 50725828, 50808041 and 50978056), the Ph.D. Program Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 200802861011) and the Teaching and Research Foundation for Excellent Young Teachers of Southeast University.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg