Development of a benchmark problem for bridge health monitoring

ABSTRACT: An international effort has been initiated under the auspices of the International Association for Bridge Maintenance and Safety (IABMAS) to facilitate a systematic examination of bridge health monitoring methodologies through the development of benchmark problems. The purpose of this paper is to propose an analytical bridge health monitoring (BHM) benchmark problem directed toward medium-span bridges. This paper outlines the background and motivation for this benchmark problem, describes the structure considered, and defines the criteria to be used for evaluation of the results of this problem. For this numerical benchmark study, the structure will be evaluated for different conditions which were identified based on challenges proposed by both researchers and bridge engineers from state and federal agencies.