Feasibility of Using Measurements of Laser Displacement Sensors and Wireless Acceleration Sensors to identify Bridge Steel Bearing Malfunction

Steel bearings were employed to a large number of bridges in the past and now these are losing their functions mainly because of ageing and maintenance shortages. This malfunctioning behaviour could affect the performance of bridge systems. In this paper, a response based bearing malfunction identification approach is discussed that mainly exploit the traffic-induced response of bearing vicinity. Malfunctioned and good condition steel bearings of a bridge in Yokohama, Japan were instrumented with laser displacement sensors and wire-less acceleration sensors. Results of response analysis and their comparison reasonably showed the dissimilarity of bearing performances and this approach could potentially be used to identify the bearing malfunctioning.