A signal processing, result management and visualization system for evaluation of long term dynamic behavior of bridges

Abstract

This paper describes a system developed in LabVIEW environment to monitor the long term dynamic behavior of bridges. This system comprises three main parts: an automated signal processing toolkit, including automated vibration level detection and system identification; a database to organize the results, in text and graph format, generated from the signal processing toolkit; and a user-friendly results visualization toolkit. This system automatically processes, both in real-time and offline model, the signals acquired in every setup and generates the corresponding daily and monthly variation of vibration levels and modal parameters. The usefulness of this system is illustrated with an application to data continuously acquired by the permanent dynamic monitoring system of a Portuguese lively footbridge.