Time-Series and Frequency-Spectrum Correlation Analysis of Bridge Performance Based on a Real-Time Strain Monitoring System

Monitoring bridges' performance is a vital task to ensure their safety and to plan their maintenance operations. Therefore, it is very important to monitor bridges' behavior and to analyze their measured data. In this study, the time-series and frequency-spectrum correlation analyses are used to study the performance of Fu-Sui Bridge under harsh environmental and traffic loads. It investigates the bridge performance based on a real-time strain monitoring system, and the ambient environmental and traffic loads are studied and discussed. Furthermore, a simplified method based on signal processing is developed and used to estimate the traffic volumes. The results of this study reveal that the traffic loads influence on static strain is obviously lower than that of air temperature and temperature changes of the bridge cross-section; the non-linearity behavior of the bridge during summer time is more than winter time; and the stability of the whole bridge during winter time is more than during summer time. The time-series and vibration analyses also show that the bridge performance in terms of its rigidity and stability is higher during winter time.