Upgrading of São João Bridge Structural Health Monitoring System

Abstract

São João Bridge is a railway bridge, 1028 m long, with a main span of 250 metres. This bridge was instrumented during its construction and its structural behaviour has been experimentally followed since then. After fifteen years in service, the system used for this purpose was updated in order to get automatic data acquisition as well as dynamic monitoring, with remote access and real time data processing. This paper presents how the original sensors were integrated in the new structural health monitoring system and the new devices used. Finally, some experimental results are presented and compared with the analytical values predicted by a finite element model.