| In realistic scenarios, in-service bridge structures are at risk from structural degradation, service demands of increasing traffic flow and heavier truck loads, natural or man-made disasters, or deferred maintenance. Condition assessment of these public facilities for future serviceability and safety is a challenging task to their owners and engineers. A paradigm of integrating structural health monitoring (SHM) data into procedures of structural condition assessment is expected to achieve objective and quantitative condition assessment in practice. The research described in this dissertation chiefly contributes to the development of a systematic framework for condition assessment of existing bridge structures making use of long-term monitoring data of strain response. This approach involves multi-component analysis of strain monitoring data, mixture distribution model based reliability assessment, KF based optimal estimation of neutral-axis position, and experimental verification of neutral-axis position based damage detection. Following this approach, objective and quantitative condition assessment of in-service bridge structures is realized. |
