Monitoring of the New rsta Railway Bridge

using traditional and fibre optic sensors

Introduction
The new rsta Bridge spans across a body of fresh water known as the
rstaviken, an attractive inlet that separates the districts of Tanto and rsta,
2km to the south of the centre Stockholm. The rstaviken treasured by the
people of Stockholm, providing not only an unblemished organic landscape,
but also a place of peace and tranquillity.

CIVIL COMPONENT

The bridge is 833 m long, 19,5 m wide and has ten piers with an elliptical
cross- section measuring 7 x 2,5 m.

The pier height varies from 9 to 25 m.

In order to reduce the weight of the bridge structure and to distribute

forces the beam height is decreased by eliminating the ballast and
embedding the rail fasteners directly in the concrete structure.
 The superstructure is built in two different ways:

1) On the north side, the curved section of the bridge, use is made of
conventional fixed scaffolding

2) from the south, the straight section of the bridge, launching formwork is
used and gradually advanced as each span is completed.

The New rsta Railway Bridge is a delicate structure and requires verifying the
uncertainties of the design and the maintenance status by health monitoring.
One span of the New rsta Railway Bridge is monitored with

1) 40 fibre optic sensors

2) 9 thermocouples

3) 24 strain transducers embedded in concrete and

4) 6 accelerometers.

In addition, the rails are instrumented with strain gauges to monitor the
railway traffic on the bridge.

Strain transducers

The New rsta Railway Bridge is a massive pre-stressed concrete structure. It is

necessary to comprehend the behaviour of the concrete in all stages, from
pouring to long-term effects.

There are seven main sources of strains appearing in the concrete during its
service life

1)Plastic shrinkage, p

2)autogenous shrinkage a

3)drying shrinkage and swelling, h

4)carbonisation shrinkage car

5)thermal strain t
6)strain due to load, s

7) creep, .

Strain transducers are installed for the measurement of the internal strains
within different sections of the bridges span.

The transducers are preassembled before casting by tying them onto the
reinforcement, both the longitudinal and transversal one, so that they are
embedded in the concrete during casting

PRINCIPLE OF WORKING OF STRAIN TRANSDUCERS

When force is applied to any metallic wire its length increases due to the
strain. The more is the applied force, more is the strain and more is the
increase in length of the wire. If L1 is the initial length of the wire and L2 is the
final length after application of the force, the strain is given as:

=(L2-L1)/L1

Further, as the length of the stretched wire increases, its diameter decreases.
Now, we know that resistance of the conductor is the inverse function of the
length. As the length of the conductor increases its resistance decreases.
Physics component
Fibre Optic Technology

Fibre optic sensors in civil engineering can be used to measure strains,

structural displacements, vibrations frequencies, acceleration, spatial modes,
pressure, temperature, humidity and so on. The list is long and the techniques
are innovative and in the explosive stage of development. The monitoring of
the structure can be either local, concentrating on the material behaviour or
global, concentrating on the whole structural performance. Fibre optic sensors
offer a wide variety of sensors for short-gauge length, long-gauge length as
well as environmental parameter monitoring.

An optical fibre is a thin, transparent fibre, usually made of fused silica for
transmitting light over large distances with very little loss. The diameter of
optic fibre is of a human hair and the core of it serves to guide the light along
the length of the optical fibre. The core is surrounded by cladding with slightly
lower index of refraction than the core. Cladding minimise the losses as the
light propagates in the fibre and also physically supports the core region.

This optical fibre sensors that are used are divided into two types of sensors:

1) Intensiometric sensors
2) Interferometric sensors

Interferometric sensors are widely used in the monitoring of the Arsta Bridge
and a special type of Interferometric sensors called Michelson fibre optic
interferometer is used.

Michelson fibre optic interferometer

This sensor consists of two arms that are both single mode optical fibres and
have chemical mirrors in end parts. One fibre is the sensing fibre and it is fixed
in definite points and the other fibre is a reference fibre that is loose in such a
way that the strain in it will always stay in a zero level. This loose fibre
compensates for the temperature so that additional measurement for the
temperature variation would not be needed. Elongation or compression in the
reference fibre will change the strain and therefore the difference in the
optical path as well. Light from a laser source in reading unit is sent to the
sensor, divided by a coupler and sent to the both fibres. The mirrors reflect the
light back to the coupler where the light is again divided and finally returns to
the reading unit. Any activity in the reference fibre will cause a phase
difference in the returning light signal and this phase difference can be read by
a mobile mirror and transmitted to an external PC. These sensors are suitable
for global monitoring of large structures like bridges, tunnels etc.

SOFO system -Surveillance dOuvrages par Fibres

Optiques
SOFO system (French acronym for Surveillance dOuvrages par Fibres Optiques
Structural Monitoring using Optical Fibres) is based on low-coherence
interferometry in optical fibre sensors. The SOFO system consists of sensors, a
reading unit and data acquisition and analysis software. Both static and
dynamic measurements can be performed with the system.

The optical signal, the light is sent from the reading unit through a coupler to
the sensor, where it reflects off mirrors placed at the end of each fibre and
returns back to the reading unit where it is demodulated by a matching pair of
fibres. The returned light contains information concerning the deformations of
the structure, which is decoded in the reading unit and visualized using a
portable PC as shown in the picture shown above.

ELECTRICAL COMPONENT

Use of SOFO Thermocouples

SOFO thermocouples (Figure 2.20) are temperature sensors based on principle

that electrical resistance in bimetallic joint is temperature dependent

These thermocouples consist of bimetallic joint (thermocouple) and electrical

connecting cable. The sensor is quickly and easily installed and its resolution is
0.2 C (-10C / +100C).

The sensor can be quickly and easily installed without affecting the
construction schedule. It can be directly embedded in concrete and mortars, or
surface mounted. Resolution of the thermocouple is 0.2 C (-10C / +100C).
They are waterproof, insensitive to corrosion and vibrations and may be
influenced but not damaged by electromagnetic fields. The use of ADAM
module allows the automatic reading of electrical sensors like SOFO
thermocouples The SOFO Bridge allows the connection to the SOFObus. Once
connected to the SOFObus via the bridge and the ADAM modules (Figure 2.20),
electrical sensors can be configured and read in the same manner as the SOFO
deformation sensors (manually, automatically, in interactive or data logger
mode). The results are stored in the same database structure and can be
viewed and manipulated in the similar way as the SOFO deformation
measurements.

USE OF ACCELEROMETER

Accelerometer measures acceleration and the signal can be electronically

integrated, the first time to provide the velocity signal and the second time to
provide the displacement signal. Every accelerometer has its own individual
calibration system. This provides accurate data on several parameters like
sensitivity, frequency response, capacitance and weight and even
environmental effect. These are relatively small in size, have high output and
stiffness.

Most accelerometers are Micro-Electro-Mechanical Sensors (MEMS).The basic

principle of operation behind the MEMS accelerometer is the displacement of
a small proof mass etched into the silicon surface of the integrated circuit and
suspended by small beams.

Two different types of accelerometers are used. They are:

1) Capacitive accelerometer

2) Piezoelectric accelerometer

Capacitive accelerometer
 Capacitors are used in accelerometers to measure force in the following way:
if a moving mass alters the distance between two metal plates, measuring the
change in their capacitance gives a measurement of the force that's acting.

Piezoelectric accelerometer

The operation principal is similar to capacitive accelerometers but on smaller

scale. The central plate is supported on four suspension beams. When the
sensor is provided with acceleration the inertial force acting on central plate
causes the movement relative to the support points. That in addition, causes
unequal capacitances between the central multi-plate electrode and the two
fixed electrodes. This accelerometer is an essential tool when measuring low
frequency acceleration with high accuracy in heavy large scale structures and
in seismic strong motion network .

MATHEMATICS COMPONENT

All the information obtained from the different sensors is stored in

their repective databases . This information is used to calculate many
parameters required for the monitoring of the bridges, like ,

The total strain at time t after the pouring of concrete can be

expressed as:

(t) = s(t) + (t)+ T(t) + p(t) + a(t) + h(t) + car(t)

where the functions have their meanings as explained in the civil

component.

Using all the data obtained from all the various devices installed,it is
essential to analyse the data manually inorder to understand the
real behaviour of the structure and therefore,it is essential to plot
graphs of various domains to analyse and come to a conclusion
about the behaviour of the bridge.

Modal analysis is the process of determining the inherent dynamic

characteristics of a system in forms of natural frequencies, damping
factors and mode shapes, and using them to formulate a
mathematical model for its dynamic behavior.

In the modal analysis of all the data obtained from various sensors ,
three different effective output-only algorithms are used namely:

1) Stochastic Subspace Identification (SSI)

2) Autoregressive Moving-Average (ARMA)

3) Fourier Transformations(FFT)
Stochastic Subspace Identification (SSI): SSI is an identification
method constructed based on the state space formulation and the
input of the dynamic system is assumed to be purely stochastic.

Auto-Regressive Moving Average (ARMA):ARMA is capable to

provide estimated modal parameters of a structural system using its
discretely sampled response.

Fourier Transform (FT)

Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) decomposes a data set (i.e.

acceleration responses) into components of frequencies so that the data
set is transformed from the time domain into the frequency domain.

The graph shows accelerations , measured from the accelerometers , in time

domain.
This graph is the transformed graph from time domain to the frequency
domain in order to analyse it in this domain and by using Inverse Fourier
Transformations ,the generated equations can be traced back to the frequency
domain.

References

Merit Enckell-El Jemlia, Raid Karoumia, Flavio Lanarob , Smart

Structures and Materials 2003: Smart Systems and Nondestructive
Evaluation for Civil Infrastructures, Shih-Chi Liu, Editor, Proceedings of
SPIE Vol. 5057 (2003) 2003

M. J. Haydon1, A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE NEW RSTA BRIDGE,

STOCKHOLM

Merit Enckell ,Structural Health Monitoring using Modern Sensor

Technology - Long-term Monitoring of the New rsta Railway Bridge

CheeKian Teng , Structural Health Monitoring of a Bridge Structure

Using Wireless Sensor Network