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Using Satellites To Monitor Bridge Safety
__roo writes: In an effort to detect crumbling infrastructure before it causes damage and costs lives, the European Space Agency is working with the UK's University of Nottingham to monitor the movements of large structures as they happen using satellite navigation sensors. The team uses highly sensitive satnav receivers that transmit real-time data to detect movements as small as 1 cm combined with historical Earth observation satellite data. By placing sensors at key locations on the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland, they detected stressed structural members and unexpected deformations.
This makes no sense to me. Shouldn't we be able to measure them from much closer up with much greater accuracy than 1 cm?
Oh, it's pretty easy... if the bridge vanishes from the orbital image, then it is classified as "unsafe"
Other than high precision GPS what does this have to do with satellites?
Sensor technology is improving so fast that tools better than this are possible
and inexpensive. It just takes doing it. Perhaps a gaggle of folk from
the Makers Fair will do it for $101.00 next weekend.
In all fairness bureaucratic constipation costs lives.
Positive train controls should have been installed years ago on all rolling stock in the US.
Baring that a software and map update to a common sub $200 GPS that could track and log train speed
as well as sound a Klaxton to alert the engineer. It need not be integrated to the train in a
way that requires system review. Management could apply a GPS-RF transparent optionally solar powered box to
the outside of engines and other common rolling stock to record travel data. DOT could do the same
and track to see if management pressure is pushing engineers to operate outside of guidelines.
A little harder is realtime track monitoring but a shipping container bed could be modified with sensors and
a container of instrument systems mounted on it. Again there is no need to touch critical controls in ways that
risk safety for many audits. Lasers could locate surfaces on tracks with precision. G-sensors, accelerometers
acoustic audits, time, temperature are all possible. To get back to the original topic the container would
"see" track as well as bridges. Offloaded to a truck bed the container would see highways and rubber wheel
only bridges and roads. Tesla seems to have helped with the battery packaging but older Fe based power
storage would be fine as the "pig" need not be weight limited like a car.
Some of this is already happening just not enough of it. More agility is needed.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
This makes no sense to me. Shouldn't we be able to measure them from much closer up with much greater accuracy than 1 cm?
They're just putting survey quality GPS/GLONAS/Galileo systems on the bridges and monitoring them real time.
The author of TFA doesn't have a clue. This idea is useless as bridges, particularly suspension bridges, deflect by much more than 1 cm under traffic and wind loads.
Here is a time lapse video of the Manhattan bridge to illustrate normal deflections:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgXveBf_l6k
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Yes. But that would be more expensive than just installing GPS receivers on key structural components.
As long as the efforts actually pass scientific muster, as opposed to simply frightening a gullible public into ineffective tax and spend policies, it's a good idea.
That said, when an article begins with the assertion that infrastructure is crumbling, it's already biased.
Yes. But that would be more expensive than just installing GPS receivers on key structural components.
But you see, that is exactly what they did:
The team fixed highly sensitive satnav receivers for detecting movements as small as 1 cm at key locations on the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland.
So they just gather routine movements of the bridge, and send them electronically. If they ever start moving beyond the historical envelop they send someone to inspect. By that time the failure process is well underway.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
We've learned from other bridge collapses in the past that it is more important to place - or relieve - blame after the collapse than it is to actually do something about it. Will the satellites speed up that process as well?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Lately, bridges seem to fall over because someone hits them, not because they're "crumbling infrastructure."
Do the authors really think satellites will help with collisions or crumbling? How about an annual or semi-annual inspection instead?
What's the supposed benefit of using GPS instead of lasers? Using lasers to detect structural movement is tried and tested, and offers precision and relative simplicity. It's also not susceptible to interference with GPS signals.
Relies on someone going out there each time it needs evaluation. Or were you suggesting running lasers running 24/7 to some tamper proof target sensors? Run the numbers. Gps is way cheaper.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Receivers that transmit? WTF
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
It's not THAT expensive to send out a surveying crew to get even more precise data.
Survey grade GPS receivers have been used for this type of monitoring for some time, including hydro dams, and geological monitoring (uplift and landslide). Different processing of the data required, but still a form of monitoring. The advantage is that the monitoring is continuous, and unlike a robotic theodolite of laser range finder you don't need a stable position within sight of the monitoring point. As another poster points out, it is about monitoring movement and comparing to design boundaries.
There are laser location sensors in several underground stations in London that have construction work nearby. One laser thing on a robot seems to routinely measure the distance to many fixed targets.
GPS isn't an option, so you could still be right that it's cheaper.
will use this as an excuse to spend even less money on bridges. They hate us and refuse to provide jobs via infrastructure projects. They would rather have us all die on broken bridges than give one job to a single person. Here in the Republican-ruled shithole of Seattle, our waterfront has been destroyed by something called the Alaskan Viaduct, or as the locals call it, the Republican Monster. It is horrible. It is falling down. Even the Republicans admit that it is dangerous and is going to fall. But, because it uglifies the waterfront, the Republicans want to keep it. They hate us and want to make our lives so ugly. So ugly. The Republicans in Seattle are full of hate.
Typical liberal. Completely against education and knowledge.
If you want to go live in a cave with your hairy, sinky-snatch woman. Go ahead. Retarding society and ruining it for the rest of us.
Imagine if you will, we knew what bridges were going to fail. Or, even if we knew how to make better ones that lasted longer because we know how they fail. Or, maybe this technology becomes cheap, you know, like every other motherfucking thing we do now, and can be simply bolted on a bunch of places on a bridge, with each sensor scanned with a bar code (for it's location and bridge number) in an afternoon by two guys in a pickup truck and $ 700 worth of sensors.
Or, we could just do nothing, sitting around confused by too much dirty hippy pot, unable to think of anything but the faint smell of dirty snatch in the cave.