Sensors Monitor Scour, Warn of Bridge Failure

摘要

According To ASCE's Geo-Institute, more than 1,000 bridges collapsed in the United States between 1961 and 1991, and approximately 60 percent of those failures were due to scour, that is, the erosion of soil and sediments that provide support to bridge foundations within a waterway. Because no truly reliable methods currently exist to determine the rate of scour, such bridge failures typically occur without warning, resulting in significant disruption to transportation systems and, in some cases, injuries and deaths. In the hope of changing that, an engineering instructor at a university in Cleveland is developing what he calls "smart structure" technology, which is intended to monitor scour and the insidious effect it has on bridge supports.