Jiangyin Yangtze River Highway Bridge is the world's fourth longest suspension bridge with its main span of 1385 metres. It was opened to traffic in October 1999.

 

Working in a consortium with Cleveland Bridge Ltd and James Scott, James Fisher Strainstall (JF Strainstall) designed a structural monitoring system, a development from their bridge management system and combining their establishment dynamic analysis in real-time technology (DART) with several innovative sensing systems. The key features of the bridge to be monitored are:

• Load in main cable strands at anchorages using Magnetoelastic sensor equipment
• Hanger loads with JF Strainstall load measuring pins at deck connections
• Deck, cables and hanger vibration using accelerometers and real-time dynamic data processing within the DART2 units
• Deck profile and cross-section movement using laser based optical system
• The monitoring system is comprised of a fibre optic computer network, with a management workstation at the bridge office (off the bridge) and 8 DART2 outstations. The DART2s are sited close to groups of sensors for data collection, real-time calculation and storage functions.

In normal operation mode, summary data is downloaded periodically to the management work station computer. Extra data is acquired and reported if an alarm condition is exceeded on any data channel. The system will also be used to build up a history of the bridge's structural and loading condition for use in future design work.

A the heart of the system, a network of eight DART2s located at the outstations, perform data acquisition and real-time data processing remotely from the bridge management workstation.