Infrastructure maintenance depends on information – and the more up to date, the better. Mageba’s next generation of bearings and joints are engineered with integrated sensors into them to deliver asset owners, the data, at the very moment they need it.
When it comes to infrastructure maintenance, regular inspections are vital. An expert arrives on site, examines the structure for fissures and flaws that could undermine its integrity, and orders the necessary repairs and replacements to keep the asset operating safely and efficiently.
But even the tightest structural health monitoring regime can only observe the condition of an asset while an inspector is reporting on it. If a weakness develops in the interim, asset owners traditionally have little recourse; it’s difficult to order repairs for damage that no one is aware exists yet.
“Consider the worst-case scenario: a bridge in a remote location that has a biannual inspection schedule,” said Virendra Ghodke, CEO of Mageba Australia.
“Within a few days of the most recent inspection, one of the bearings experiences an accidental force that damages it. Due to that, other elements in the structure’s bearing scheme, such as the expansion joints, experience additional forces that could be detrimental to their service and their lifespan.”
In such a scenario, an early inspection might identify the problem. Less promisingly, the bridge elements could start to crack, leading to potential disaster.
“The only time the asset owner will find out is the next inspection, which is scheduled for six months down the track,” Ghodke said.
“By that time the possibility of greater damage to the structure is more than likely.”
Sense and respond
The solution, Ghodke said, is to change our approach to infrastructure maintenance from a costly reactive one – he describes it as an “inspect and replace” method – to a proactive, data-driven, “sense and respond” approach.
“Mageba’s bearings are now equipped with inbuilt monitoring sensors that can tell you what loads they are undergoing, what rotations they’re experiencing, what impacts they are enduring,” he said.
“For bridge designers, that offers them verification of their design. It tells them whether the loads that they have calculated are correct and if the factor of safety is correct.
“And asset managers and owners no longer need to physically visit a site to find out what’s happening on one of their bridges. They can log into a computer from their office and find out from there if all the bearings are performing as anticipated.”
Ghodke pointed to the Hunter Expressway in New South Wales as an example.
“Those bridges were built in an area prone to mining subsidence,” he said.
“The monitoring was critical to understand if there was abnormal movement on the piers or one of the bearings. Then, they could deploy an emergency crew to mitigate any potential damage and prevent accidents.”
Facilitating this transformation in infrastructure maintenance is a recent and remarkable revolution in the cost of sensor technology. Mageba has implemented smart sensor technology into its bridge bearings and joints at an almost imperceptible cost, Ghodke said.
“You can add an integrated monitoring system into the bearing so that the initial cost outlay is negligible compared to the vast array of benefits it brings after the fact,” he explained.
“You can inform yourself how the bearings are behaving and anticipate when you might expect a problem. It makes monitoring the bridges – their bearings and their joints – more affordable and accessible.”
Real-time verification
Using Mageba’s sensor-enhanced components offers further benefits to engineers and asset owners.
A cable-stayed bridge, for instance, could have sensors integrated into its cables that monitors the tension in them or corrosion to the strands. Sensors can be attached to concrete reinforcement to detect rusting. Bridge designers can verify their design assumptions according to a bridge’s live-loading response after it has begun operating.
“If you have bearings that are already taking the load from the bridge equipped with such monitoring sensors, then bridge designers can use that data to compare it side by side against their assumptions,” Ghodke said.
“They can then go back and, for the next design, optimise the numbers so that they don’t overdesign bridge components, which saves on concrete and steel, ultimately leading to lower carbon dioxide emissions.”
The power of the data gathered from the sensors is enhanced when it’s combined with a digital twin. Engineers know well how effective it can be to have access to a virtual representation of a structure; such technology becomes significantly more powerful if its attributes can be accurately updated in real time.
“Having a digital twin stored somewhere in the cloud is one thing, but then measuring and monitoring the forces and the conditions that the existing bearing is undergoing and updating the digital twin based on that data is equally important,” Ghodke said.
“If a bearing fails or has some other sort of problem, it’s easier for someone to go into the cloud, find the digital twin and replicate that bearing.”
The alternative would require physically visiting the site, inspecting the bearing, and bringing it back to be remanufactured or reengineered, a time-consuming and expensive process.
“It reduces the errors that can be made while re-engineering. We are transforming critical bridge components from passive, unmonitored liabilities into active, intelligent assets, Ghodke said.
“In short, it’s about replacing uncertainty with data-driven confidence.”
Find out more about Mageba’s smart bearings and joints at the website or call our designers to discuss your current/new project to check if the monitoring can be added to the bearings and deck joints, on 1300mageba (1300 624322).
