Sensitivity of SHM Sensors to Bridge Stiffness

Bridges play an important role in transport infrastructure and it is necessary to frequently monitor them. Current vibration-based bridge monitoring methods in which bridges are instrumented using several sensors are sometimes not sensitive enough. For this reason, an assessment of sensitivity of sensors to damage is necessary. In this paper a sensitivity analysis to bridge flexural stiffness (EI) is performed. A discussion between the use of strain or deflections is provided. A relation between deflection and stiffness can be set by theorem of virtual work, expressing the problem as a matrix product. Sensitivity is obtained by deriving the deflection respect to the reciprocal of the stiffness at every analysed location of the bridge. It is found that a good match between the deflection and the bridge stiffness profile can be obtained using noise-free measurements. The accuracy of sensors is evaluated numerically in presence of damage and measurement noise. Field measurements in the United States are also described to identify the potential issues in real conditions.