Inactive

Current capability in the military bridge community consists of a soldier based inspection with no standoff and no on-site capability to update existing data sources that address the condition of the ... Current capability in the military bridge community consists of a soldier based inspection with no standoff and no on-site capability to update existing data sources that address the condition of the bridge/infrastructure. Classification of bridges is completed by physical characterization through visual means. This places the soldier in harm’s way. There is currently no way to determine how many vehicles have crossed the bridge nor its remaining useful life. Improvements are needed to determine load bearing capacity and operationally relevant information for movement and traffic conditions across the span. There is no suite of sensors that will operate and survive in all mission areas, in order to monitor bridge health, traffic flow, classify crossing vehicles and contribute to bridge security to allow for the economy of force at the crossing site. With increases in the Army’s OPTEMPO and bridge missions; bridges are continuously subjected to destructive effects of material aging, corrosion of steel structures and components, increasing traffic volume and overloading, or simply overall deterioration and aging. The Army needs a reliable way to assess structural integrity of bridges to maintain the continuous operation of the road network while ensuring the safety of the force and the public. Scheduled maintenance and periodic inspections offer only limited knowledge of structural condition, and these methods are costly in terms of extensive labor and downtime. They are also qualitative and can only assess outward appearance. Any internal damage may go unnoticed for a long period of time. BHM will provide Commanders a real time autonomous, self-health monitoring capability that generates digital data that can be shared across the combat elements. This also eliminates the need for soldier inspection of bridges that may take hours or days and many times requires evacuation of the asset to a maintenance facility. It provides remaining useful life data on the emplaced bridge(s). Thus, the importance of BHM development so Army Commanders will be able to continuously monitor, inspect and detect damage of structures with minimum labor involvement.