The low frequency sound radiated from bridges under traffic is one of the environmental problems especially in land scarce major cities of Japan, since the low frequency sound can shake houses near the sound source and also can cause psychological and physiological influences to residents. The research aims to develop a general platform simulating traffic-induced vibrations that can even apply to assess the low frequency sound radiated from a viaduct.

More than 85 percent of bridges in Japan are classified as short and medium span bridges. A crucial issue in maintenance of those bridges, thus, is development of rapid and cost-effective tools for bridge health monitoring (BHM). The research covers developing novel damage sensitive features, fault detection by means of statistical pattern recognition and Bayesian approach, drive-by inspection, smart wireless sensor system and a novel un-manned aerial vehicle (UAV) for bridge inspection.

The research is intended to investigate the seismic response of a highway viaduct under moving traffic loadings as well as stationary traffic loadings by means of a three dimensional dynamic response analysis considering a bridge-vehicle interaction when subjected to severe earthquakes. Developing a platform to simulate the nonlinear dynamic response analysis under seismic and traffic. It also is useful to investigate the safety of running vehicles on the bridge during earthquakes.

This challenging research project aims to develop a smart way to monitor the health condition of bridges, especially short and medium span bridges, utilizing the responses of a inspection vehicle when it passes across the target bridge. The key idea is that the inspection vehicle acts as an actuator and message carrier that collect bridge information.

Aiming to develop bridge health monitoring techniques, a long-term monitoring test is being conducted on a simply-supported steel girder bridge. The sensor installation and equipment set-up took place at the midnight of 23, 24 August. After that, the measurement of acceleration, displacement, temperature, and other responses would be going on for one year. We are looking forward to good data and interesting findings. Check our activity update.