Tamar Bridge Structural Health Monitoring System

Tender description

This project concerns replacing an existing, malfunctioning and aged Structural Health and Environmental Monitoring System that has reached the end of its useful service life. The existing equipment and system was installed some 20 years ago to provide key data principally to assist with the design/analysis of the Tamar Bridge strengthening and widening scheme. Since then the system has continued to provide a range of essential information used for a wide range of purposes such as daily environmental conditions (wind speed/direction, air temperature, road surface temperature) as well as structural information from key locations on the bridge (stresses/movement/loads etc.) to aid daily operational and future strategic decision making. Much of the existing system/equipment is old technology and now obsolete so it is not possible to maintain the system, even adequately, as virtually all replacement parts are unavailable. Numerous sensors have failed in recent years and the opportunity to collect useful data from these has been lost. It is now an appropriate time replace the system using current technology while also providing an opportunity to improve the quality and the amount of data collected to assist with other key decisions/projects planned over the next 3-5 years, e.g., resurfacing of the Main deck. Keywords: Structural, Health, Environmental