A Large Scale SHM System: A Case Study on Pre-stressed Bridge and Cloud Architecture

In recent decades, external prestressing is increasingly being used especially in motorway and railway bridge structures due to the substantial savings in terms of construction time and costs. In such systems, internal and external steel tendons work together with concrete elements to withstand external actions. This means that the deterioration or failure of these elements reduces structural safety in a meaningful way. Real time monitoring of prestressing tendons can provide useful information on the health of the bridge under service loads, detecting possible fatigue, corrosion and damage/deterioration processes. However, most of the currently used structural monitoring systems are rather expensive and time consuming to install.