Bridge monitoring using six-component ground motion measurements

Abstract

In the context of ageing infrastructure, structural health monitoring is crucial for safety and integrity assessment, as well as for planning preventive maintenance. While classical methods rely on single-component sensors to track vibrations and identify structural changes, this paper proposes an alternative approach for real-time, continuous seismic structural health monitoring. Our system uses collocated triaxial seismometers and rotational sensors (six-component or 6C measurements). In a validation experiment, we simulate damage through controlled loading and prestressing with weight-drop sources generating elastic waves on a concrete bridge model. This study demonstrates the effectiveness and high spatiotemporal resolution of the proposed amplitude-ratio method using 6C data for monitoring structural changes. The approach is further validated through traditional modal analysis and numerical simulations.