Photo: Maarten van den Heuvel | Unsplash
Smartphones could be used to monitor the safety of bridges much more quickly and cheaply than currently possible, providing engineers with data they can use to fix the structures before they become dangerously unstable. In tests that involved driving across San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and a reinforced concrete bridge in Italy, researchers at West Point Military Academy and other universities found that just two smartphones could provide data of similar accuracy to 240 stationary sensors. The phones pick up on naturally occurring vibrations, allowing researchers to monitor structural changes over time, and could extend bridge longevity by 30% by helping maintenance crews make more timely repairs. But some experts think visual inspections of the 600,000 bridges in the US will remain the primary monitoring method for the next 10 to 20 years, although eventually visual observation will be combined with smartphone data.
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