Highways Agency Reports

This report presents a review of the literature on smart monitoring techniques, as applied to fatigue life assessment of existing steel bridges. In particular, the principles and applications of two techniques, acoustic emission and line sensors, are reviewed. The former has been used more frequently than the latter for the type of monitoring considered herein. It is concluded that these techniques can play a role in bridge management but their use should be considered in conjunction with traditional NDT techniues for crack detection.