Experimental Evaluation of Unmanned Aerial System for Measuring Bridge Movement
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 25, Issue 1
Abstract
Highway bridges are the key element of a transportation system and are essential for transportation of goods, services, and people. They are, however, vulnerable to extreme geologic and hydraulic events such as earthquakes, scour, and hurricanes. It is imperative to collect key perishable data during and after extreme hazard events for engineering evaluation and improving the current and future bridge design and maintenance practices. The objective of the posthazard damage assessment is to collect engineering data related to global structural behavior of different components of a highway bridge such as decks and piers. This paper studies the feasibility of using unmanned aerial systems (UASs) for posthazard damage assessment of highway bridges subjected to extreme geologic and hydraulic hazards through a mock-up test setup. For this purpose, a model bridge was developed to simulate movements of the key components of a highway bridge. Three types of structural movements in bridges have been studied: translation, rotation, and settlement. The results show the capability of the UAS and ground-based tripod assembly with high-resolution camera to detect these movements with high accuracy. The average absolute differences observed between the measured and estimated values were 0.7 cm (0.28 in.), 1 cm (0.39 in.), and 1.4 cm (0.55 in.) in the translation, rotation, and settlement movement experiments, respectively.
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Acknowledgments
This work was done under FHWA Contract No. DTFH61-14-D-00010 0209 entitled “Post-Hazard Engineering Assessment of Highway Structures: Scanning and Convening Meeting and Demonstration of Reconnaissance Technologies.” This project was also partially funded by the INSPIRE University Transportation Center (UTC). Financial support for INSPIRE UTC projects is provided by the US Department of Transportation, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (USDOT/OST-R) under Grant No. 69A3551747126 through INSPIRE University Transportation Center (http://inspire-utc.mst.edu) at Missouri University of Science and Technology. The views, opinions, findings, and conclusions reflected in this publication are solely those of the authors and do not represent the official policy or position of the FHWA, USDOT/OST-R, or any State or other entity.
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Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 25 • Issue 1 • January 2020
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 18, 2018
Accepted: Jul 29, 2019
Published online: Oct 25, 2019
Published in print: Jan 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Mar 25, 2020
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