Application of Wireless Monitoring System for the Ambient Vibration Study of the WuYuan Steel Arch Bridge

In this paper, the academic wireless monitoring system with smart sensing units developed at Stanford University and Michigan University is applied for the ambient vibration study of a steel arch bridge in Xiamen, China. Ambient acceleration responses of the bridge measured by the wireless sensing units are compared with those collected by a traditional wire-based data acquisition system. Clock synchronization performed by the wireless sensing network based on a centralized beacon signal is assessed. The local signal processing capacity of the smart sensors is also validated. Due to the low cost and easy installation advantages of the wireless sensing system, it is applied to the identification of modal properties of the bridge. Ambient acceleration responses of the bridge acquired by the wireless sensing units are used to identify the modal properties of the bridge based on the advanced stochastic subspace identification (SSI) method. It is shown that the ambient vibration data collected by the wireless monitoring system are accurate and these data can be applied to identify the dynamic properties of the bridge.