Remote sensing for bridge health monitoring

摘要

This paper addresses the potential applications of commercial remote sensing (CRS) technologies for bridge monitoring. High resolution optical-photonic images can provide bridge damage information including through-deck collision damages, large permanent deformations, overload cracking and surface erosions, as well as surrounding environmental information. This paper summaries bridge issues that can be detected from high resolution remote sensing imageries based on visual interpretation as guidance for remote sensing imagery based bridge inspection, and the development of future automatic detection methods. A LiDAR based automatic bridge evaluation system LiBE (LiDAR Bridge Evaluation) is introduced in this paper with an application example of a test bridge maintained by the Los Angeles County (CA) Department of Public Works. Laser scanning techniques have also been used for bridge load testing in a new bridge near Charlotte, NC and maintained by the North Carolina DOT. The primary results of these preliminary tests are also presented. Remote sensing techniques are introduced as a supplement to the existing, required visual bridge inspections.