Bridge Condition Monitoring System Using Wireless Network

Bridges & flyover Condition Monitoring System

Using Wireless Network
ABSTRACT
Bridge monitoring system is significant to health diagnosis of railway bridges. This
paper proposed and developed a novel architecture for large span bridge monitoring.
A 3-level distributed structure is adopted in the monitoring system which includes
central server, intelligent acquisition node and local controller. Acquisition nodes are
located across the bridge. All the acquisition nodes are managed by one local
controller. Every acquisition node has 8 channels which can sample displacement,
acceleration and strain of bridge. To get high precision data, a 24bits A/D converter
ADS1278 is used. Compare to the traditional method, the proposed architecture has
two features. First, the acquisition node is a smart device based on powerful DSP
processor. Signals of field sensors are analyzed and real time compressed in the
acquisition node. Only the processing results are sent to local controller through
IEEE802.11 wireless network. This operation can relieve load of central server and
decrease demand of communication bandwidth. Second, 3G wireless network is
utilized to provide enough bandwidth for real-time data transmission between local
controller and central server. The intelligent monitoring system has runon a large
span railway bridge for six months. Running results show that the
proposed system is stable and effective.

Introduction
Bridge Condition Monitoring System Using Wireless Network

Railway systems are critical in many regions, and can consist of several tens of
thousands of bridges, being used over several decades. It is critical to have a system to
monitor the health of these bridges and report when and where maintenance operations
are needed. Advancements in sensor technology have brought the automated real-time
bridge health monitoring system. Many long span bridges in Korea and in Japan have
adopted this real-time health monitoring system. However, current system uses
complicated and high cost wired network amongst sensors in the bridge and high cost
optical cable between the bridge and the management centre, which increases the overall
cost of installation and maintenance cost of health monitoring system. The complicated
wiring also makes the installation and repair/replacement process difficult and expensive.

In this project an idea of bridge health monitoring system using wireless is

proposed. For short distance (among sensors in the bridge) RF module is used as wireless
network, and GSM is used for long distance (between the bridge and the management
centre) data communication. This technology can be called MBM (Monitoring Based
Maintenance) that enables the bridge maintenance engineers monitor the condition of the
bridge in real time. The sensors installed on various parts of the bridge as shown in Fig.1
monitors the bend, beam sustainability, weight of the Train etc. At any point of time if
any of these parameters cross their threshold value the communication system informs
the management centre giving an alarm for taking precautionary measures. The complete
parameters of the bridge are taken by a PIC microcontroller and sent to another module
which is located in a short distance. Here the communication established is using RF
module that uses wireless Transmitter and Receiver circuitry. The receiver module as
shown in Fig.2 takes the parameters from the transmitter and sends a message with all the
parameters to a database centre. The communication established between the
intermediate module and the database centre is using GSM technology. The sensory
inputs are process to represent the condition of the bridge against seismic loads, loads etc.

RF module:
A radio frequency module consists of an encoder (HT12E) connected to
Bridge Condition Monitoring System Using Wireless Network

transmitting antenna at the Sensor point and a receiver on the Data Acquision device
consists of decoder (HT12D) with receiving antenna for effective communication.

This project will facilitate the understanding of the following topics:

 Visual basic programming.
 RS232 interfacing.
 Interfacing PC with GSM
 Interfacing GSM with PIC microcontroller
 Interfacing Wireless Transmitter and Receiver with PIC microcontroller
using Encoder and Decoder
 Uses of Load Cell, Flex sensor and accelerometer and their interfacing
with PIC microcontroller.

Block Diagram
Railway Bridge
Bridge Condition Monitoring System Using Wireless Network

C C
A B A

ARM P ARM
LPC2148 I LPC2148
L
L
A
R

Encoder Encoder
HT12E HT12E

TLP TLP

A - Load Cell to check the weight of Train

B – Accelerometer/vibrator to detect the jerks in bridge.
C – Flex or bend sensors

Fig 1: Sensor Network Location and Wireless Transmission

R ARM
L Decoder LPC2148 PC
P HT12D

GSM
Modem

Fig 2: Intermediate Module: Sensor Parameters Receiving and Further Processing

Bridge Condition Monitoring System Using Wireless Network

Hardware and the Software Requirements:

Hardware:
 Microcontroller – ARM-LPC 2148
 LCD - 16 x 2
 Restive flex sensor
 Stepper Motor
 Load Cell
 Vibrator
 7812/ 7805 voltage regulators for power supply
 Power supply circuit

Software:
 Embedded c
 Keil - c compiler
 Flash magic burner software.

Technical specifications:
 Operating voltage of embedded circuitry is 5vdc
 Current consumption of device in active mode 200mill amp
 Operating frequency of device is 11.0592MHZ

Advantages:
 Safety of bridges is achieved
 Cracks can be monitored in the initial Stage
 Avoiding Traffic in Bridges
Bridge Condition Monitoring System Using Wireless Network

Disadvantages:
 Initial Cost is high

 Sensor Dependent System

 Initial Implementation is difficult

 Maintenance

Applications:
 RAILWAY/Metro BRIDGE Monitoring.
 Highway bridge Monitoring
 Hanging Bridge Monitoring

References:
Microcontroller Muhammad Ali Mazadi book
www.microdiditaled.com
www.8052.com
www.keil.com
www.fsinc.com
http://developer.intel.com/design/mcs51/doc_mcs51.htm