Structural health monitoring and intelligent vibration control of cable-supported bridges: Research and application

Advances in structural health monitoring and intelligent vibration control technologies can have a great impact on the performance enhancement of civil engineering structures. In Hong Kong, a sophisticated long-term monitoring system has been devised by the HKSAR Highways Department to monitor structural performance and health conditions of three cable-supported bridges and monitoring systems for two new long-span bridges are also being developed. Implementation of these on-structure monitoring systems motivates associated technological and methodological investigations which are outlined in this paper. Newly emerging auto-adaptive and intelligent materials offer enormous potential for developing smart damping devices for vibration control of civil structures. Successful application of smart magneto-rheological (MR) dampers has recently been realized in the cable-stayed Dongting Lake Bridge for mitigating rain-wind-induced cable vibration. Experience and lessons learned from this engineering practice are summarized in this paper.