Non-contact monitoring for assessing potential bridge damages

Abstract

Structural monitoring of objects is primarily executed to assess external and internal effects on the object, in order to ensure the safety of people, animals, and material assets. Such monitoring can be executed through various methods, depending on the object, conditions for execution, and purpose of the monitoring. In this case, the focus is on the execution of the monitoring of Maribor footbridge, where the dynamic effects of the object are monitored. For this purpose, geophone, accelerometer, and geodetic methods—using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Robotic Total Station (RTS) equipment—are used, of which one is controlled by the additional programme GeoComZG. The emphasis of our experiment is on the application of non-contact geodetic methods, with which the measurements of dynamic response are typically performed, as they enable measurements up to 30 and 100 Hz with RTS and GNSS, respectively. In this article, the application of various procedures of non-contact data capture on the footbridge are detailed and a comparison and analysis of the obtained values for monitoring the dynamic response of the structure are presented.