Bridge Engineering Center

About the research

The Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) started investing in research (through both the Iowa Highway Research Board and the Office of Bridges and Structures) in 2003 to develop a structural health monitoring (SHM) system capable of identifying damage and able to report on the general operational condition of bridges. In some cases, the precipitous for these developments has been a desire to avoid damage that might go unnoticed until the next biennial inspection. Of specific and immediate concern was the state’s inventory of fracture-critical structures.

The goal of this project was to bring together various components of recently-completed research at Iowa’s Regent Universities with the following specific objectives:

• Final development of the overall SHM system hardware and software
• Integration of vibration-based measurements into current damage-detection algorithm
• Evaluation and development of energy-harvesting techniques suitable for wireless sensor networks