PROPOSAL FOR A SIMPLE FATIGUE DAMAGE DETECTION SYSTEM USING ONLY PIEZOELECTRIC SENSORS FOR STEEL BRIDGES

Abstract

Recent studies have considered a fatigue damage detection method using piezoelectric sensors. The authors have proposed a system that combines a MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) accelerometer and a piezoelectric sensor. This system can utilize in actual in-service bridges where the magnitude of the load varies. However, the proposed method is complicated because it requires a combination of different measurement methods. Therefore, this study proposes a simple monitoring system using only piezoelectric sensors. To achieve this system, we attempted to determine the integration range and the acquisition of external force information with piezoelectric sensors. The measurement results on actual bridges show the possibility of monitoring fatigue damage with a simple system than the conventional method.