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Spanning gaps, crossing rivers, untangling traffic.
Bridges play a vital role in our daily lives. But how do we know an aging bridge is safe?
Or a stressed bridge is sound? Professor Farhad Ansari is developing new,
inexpensive sensors using optical fibers and advanced computer telemetry to measure day-to-day stresses.
He is training a new generation of civil engineers
to design, maintain and monitor bridges. We are developing new sensor technologies
for the monitoring of bridges. What we have tried to do is that we use the latest technology,
like fiber optic sensors, so that we could make it fast, accurate and very affordable,
and therefore, many highway agencies could use it without any hesitation.
This is a 64th scale of a cable-stay large structure in Chongqing, China.
And this particular bridge is called the Twin Rivers Bridge. It goes over a river by the city. The structure
is supported by these cable stays. Placing sensors on this particular structure is an
expensive adventure. We have developed one line of optical fiber. This one line of optical fiber
does the job of 10,000 sensors. On the bridge on the Stevenson, we have a
project with IDOT where we're trying to monitor the health of our bridges to facilitate a
new technique whereas we weigh the trucks as they pass over the bridge - weigh in motion.
But the sensors that we place on there specifically just measure the shear strains in the bridge
components, or the girders, and as the trucks pass over, causes peaks in that shear strain.
We pick out those peaks with software that we developed. It is a lot better process than
the weigh stations on the side of the road where they are stopping all of the trucks.
Our students who are graduating from here, they are all going to be really specializing
in a niche area. I am very proud that our university is one of the very few that are
doing that, so that they are structural engineers, but they are also having this telecommunication
and advance intelligence type of knowledge. With these sensors, we are hoping that many
of the highway agencies use them, and make our bridges more safe.