STUDY ON FATIGUE DAMAGE DETECTION IN STEEL BRIDGES USING PIEZOELECTRIC SENSOR AND MEMS ACCELEROMETER

Abstract

Fatigue damage detection using sensor technology have been investigated to detect fatigue damage at an early stage. Among them, there is a method to detect the strain change due to fatigue damage. However, because the magnitude of the external force in an in-service bridge is not constant, this method alone cannot be applied to an actual in-service bridge.

In this study, we propose the fatigue damage detection system that utilizes a piezoelectric sensor and a MEMS accelerometer. The field measurement results indicate the possibility of fatigue damage detection from the response measured by the piezoelectric sensor based on the external force information obtained using MEMS accelerometer.