Structural monitoring of Lezíria Bridge since its construction

Currently, automatic monitoring systems are increasingly used in the civil engineering structures especially in bridges with a high socioeconomic impact. In the last decades, the technology evolution that the world has being subjected allow, nowadays, the implementation of monitoring systems capable of observe the structural behavior in a programmable, remote and real-time manner. The databases originated by the sensors records are valuable information to understand better the real behavior of the monitored structures as well to improve the numerical models used in the analysis and prediction. This work presents the Lezíria Bridge case, equipped with an integrated and automatic monitoring system. This system allows the observation of the structural behavior and the materials durability. A presentation and discussion of a set of results obtained since the bridge construction is performed. The principal considerations refer to: (i) environmental effects – temperature and humidity; (ii) rheological effects of concrete – creep and shrinkage; (iii) events related with the bridge construction, long-term behavior and short-term behavior correlated to the bridge traffic. A final discussion is presented which is focused the usefulness of the information obtained by the monitoring system for the assessment and surveillance of the structure.