Research on Long-Term Monitoring and Evaluating Systemfor Wuhu Yangtze River Bridge

摘要

The installing and debugging of a bridge monitoring system has beenrnfinished on the Wuhu Yangtze River Bridge in China in 2004. The system consists ofrnstrain sensors, acceleration instruments, displacement transducers, and other testingrninstruments which are all installed at selected locations across the bridge. Thernobjective is to do safety evaluation for fatigue, vibration, and deformation of thernbridge in operation. The Wuhu Yangtze River Bridge was constructed in 2000. It is arnstayed-cable bridge with the use of both highway and railway. The fly-pastrnconfiguration of the main crossing is 180m + 312m + 180m. The stiffening girder is arntruss made of welded steel plates of H style and box style sections with thickness ofrnup to 44mm. The top chord of the steel truss is made composite with the concreterndeck. The monitoring system continuously records traffic-induced strains andrntransfers the data into stress spectrums. The structural details for fatigue evaluationrninclude various welded details in truss members as well as in cross beams andrnlongitudinal stringers in tension regions. Connections between the stayed cables andrnthe floor system are also instrumented. Various features have been developed in therndata processing software for satisfying specific needs of fatigue analysis. This is arnkey research project sponsored by the China Railway Ministry. The objective is torndevelop an effective and safe monitoring system and evaluating method to be appliedrnto other extra-long bridges in China.