Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2011
This study develops a neural network system to monitor the safety of a bridge structure. A truck of constant mass is driven at constant speed through the target bridge. Then, the maximal and minimal values of the bridge elongations are processed by a monitoring system to evaluate the current condition of the bridge. The monitoring system is composed of parallel backpropagation neural networks. Each neural network monitors a part of the bridge. The neural networks are trained using simulation data. The numerical example shows that the monitoring system is effective in the damage detection of the bridge.