Design of a Long-term Monitoring System for a PSC Continuous Box- girder Bridge Chen Chuang 1,2,a , Mosbeh R.Kaloop 1,3,b , Wang Zonglin 1,c , Gao Qingfei 1,d , and Zhong Junfei 1,e 1 School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, 150090 2 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, U.S., 08854 3 Public Works and Civil Engineering Department, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt, 35516 a chuang0925@hotmail.com, b mosbeh.kaloop@gmail.com, c wangzonglin@vip.163.com d gaoqingfei1986@gmail.com, e kranyi@163.com Keywords: Structural health monitoring system; static and dynamic responses; PSC continuous box-girder bridge; hydrostatic leveling system; fiber Bragg grating Abstract. Structural Health Monitoring is becoming an increasingly common tool to obtain the long-term performance of infrastructures and buildings. Many structural health monitoring systems were developed and applied to different bridges in the world. However, very little is known on the applications in extreme cold environment. Fu Sui Bridge, a 1070 m variable cross-section continuous box-girder bridge, is located in the coldest province -- Heilongjiang province, China. In order to monitor the static and dynamic responses of the bridge under the traffic and environmental variation, a long-term continuous monitoring system was designed and installed on Fu Sui Bridge in April 2012. A hydrostatic leveling system was used to measure the displacement and fiber Bragg grating sensors were used to measure strain, acceleration and temperature. Moreover, other necessary components including data acquisition and transmission, data calculation and analysis software are also described. Summer and winter monitoring data are also presented. This paper focuses on: (1) the design and installation of the long-term continuous monitoring system hardware and (2) the operating pattern and function of the automatic monitoring system. After more than one year successful conducting, the system has provided a large amount of data records for daily management and research of the bridge. This system can be applied to extremely cold region. 1 Introduction Long-scale prestressed concrete (PSC) continuous box-girder bridges are universally undergoing the overlarge deformation and cracks with the shortage lifecycle due to long-term overload, loss of prestress and environmental factors. Untimely inspection and maintenance may generate potential society risks. Previous studies suggest that structural health monitoring (SHM) system could be used to obtain the long-term continuous information of the bridges so as to assess the condition and identify the damage [1]. There are many advantages of a SHM system include early warning if a bridge becomes unsafe, the capability to locate and quantify damage in a bridge, and better targeting of maintenance resources by identifying which structures most need maintenance [2]. Long-term continuous monitoring is one strategy of SHM. In this case, deformation, strain, acceleration and temperature of a bridge and the traffic and environmental variations can be measured and recorded. These basic records can be determined to use for bridge condition assessment. SHM system aims to acquire static and dynamic responses [3-5], identify the damage [6] and analyze the responses under the environmental variation [7, 8] for PSC continuous box-girder bridges. However, monitoring results can be quite variable with environmental variation. Key Engineering Materials Vol. 619 (2014) pp 1-9 © (2014) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.619.1 All rights reserved. No part of contents of this paper may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of TTP, www.ttp.net. (ID: 117.16.196.177-04/07/14,16:47:49)