TOWARDS EGYPTIAN BRIIIGE SHM 1 from 2

THE HBRC-ISHMII BTMA2, THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BRIDGE TESTING, MONITORING & ASSESSMENT

The Bridge inventory in Egypt now more than ever needs to be structurally evaluated and assessed. Many of the nation’s major
bridges are several years old and require carefully designed maintenance programs specially with the current economic situation.
This is clearly known and outlined by the Egyptian bridge authorities specially after some failures took place recently due to lack of assessment and hence lack of proper maintenance. This will also be mandatory in the very near future as a requirement of the new Egyptian code of bridges which is going
to be issued this coming year.

Effective maintenance cannot be achieved without proper planning. This planning must technically be based on reliable assessment studies and technical site measurements and investigations. One of the major problems which faced the HBRC bridge testing team previously during the study of some bridges is the inaccessibility of some elements and the difficulty to run the wiring system and cables for the measurements with existing traffic conditions and over waterways. For such important national problems to be solved it is internationally established that Structural Health Monitoring (SHN) is the
solution.
The foreign experiences in this field currently uses wireless or remote sensing and measurement systems, GPS and Satellite
controlled measurements, internet remote system controls among others. The required systems are customary remotely controlled to collect data of simultaneous strains, deformations, rotations, accelerations, gap conditions, and temperatures at critical positions of the bridge