A Vehicle Bridge Interaction based approach for the monitoring of bridges through an electric mobile platform

The main purpose of the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques applied in
bridges is to monitor many structural parameters to prevent serious damage that may eventually lead to collapse of the entire structure. To date, Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) methods are widely seen as the most reliable SHM technique. These encompass a series of procedures for deriving the modal parameters of a structure using the data acquired under its operating conditions, without recording the external excitation. However, traditional OMA methods generally require expensive setup and time-consuming procedures. With the aim of overcoming these issues, in this paper, an innovative Vehicle-Bridge Interaction (VBI) based approach is investigated as a low-cost monitoring system for the identification of the structural modal parameters. These are obtained from the analysis in the frequency domain of the measured vehicle’s vibration response during several passages on the structure. Therefore, the proposed approach has been adopted in an experimental campaign on a pedestrian bridge in the city of Palermo (Italy). In particular, a very low-cost setup comprising a scaled-up electric vehicle as mobile platform and few accelerometers has been used.