Bridges: Colle Isarco

Case study: SOFO System

Permanent and remote monitoring
140 sensors installed
Girder and piles monitoring
3D deformation analysis

Project Description

Summary: Spatial displacement monitoring of a prestressed concrete bridge. Prestressing cables and piles are also monitored. About 140 sensors installed. Permanent automatic and remote monitoring

Clients: Autostrade del Brennero Spa

Place: Brennero Highway (Italy)

Period: 1999 - N/A

Installation: Autostrade del Brennero Spa

Structure's short description: The project of the Colle d?Isarco viaduct on the Italian Brenner-Highway A22, near the Austrian border, is an example of a global monitoring approach in establishing a bridge management system. This bridge is the most important work of this highway section and carries most of the traffic between Italy and Austria, including a large number of heavy trucks. The bridge has recently been refurbished. The overall length of the instrumented section is 378 m. The height of the girders near the supports number 8 and 9 is 11 m, at the supports 7 and 10 the height is 4.50 m. The girders have a uniform width of 6 m, the arrangement for each road bed is approximately 11 m wide.

Aim of monitoring: A wide set of sensors have been installed, including both traditional and fiber optic sensors and, due to the large dimensions of the section, a data acquisition system able to collect widely distributed sensing units was also installed. The data is used to monitor the long-term evolution of critical bridge parameters.

Number of sensor: 140

Main Results: The SOFO sensors monitor the local tension of the girders and columns. The vertical displacements of the three spans of the two parallel bridges are calculated using the SPADS software package.

SOFO reading unit installed inside the bridge

L-bracket adapter for SOFO sensor

Connection box between sensors and multi-fiber cable

Bibliography:

Global monitoring concepts for bridges, K. Bergmeister, U. Santa, Structural concrete, Vol 2, No 1, p 29-39, 2001

Monitoring of bridges and concrete structures with fiber optic sensors in Europe, A. Del Grosso, K. Bergmeister, D. Inaudi, U. Santa, IABSE conference on cable-supported bridges, Seoul, invited paper, 2001

Monitoring of Bridges and Concrete Structures with Fibre Optic Sensors in Europe , A. Del Grosso, K. Bergmeister, D. Inaudi, U. Santa, IABSE Conference, Seoul, Korea, August 2001, 2001

State of the Art in Fiber Optic Sensing Technology and EU Structural Health Monitoring Projects , D. Inaudi, First International Conference on Structural Health Monitoring and Intelligent Infrastructure, Tokyo, November 13-15, 2003

Overview of fibre optic sensing to structural health monitoring applications , D. Inaudi, ISISS'2005, International Symposium on Innovation & Sustainability of Structures in Civil Engineering, Nanjing, China, November 20-22, 2005