Application of Epson M-A352AD10 accelerometer in railway bridge deflection monitoring and detection

    By the end of 2023, there will be 1.0793 million highway bridges in China, including over 187000 large and super large bridges (data source: Ministry of Transport). Bridge safety monitoring is an important field. In recent years, railway operators have been facing challenges in maintaining steel railway bridges and girders, both in terms of saving manpower and measuring accuracy. This has led to a growing demand for monitoring solutions that use high-precision accelerometers to automatically measure the vertical motion or deflection of the beam when the train passes over it. Therefore, high-precision accelerometers have become an important application field for safety monitoring of large highway and railway bridges.

    M-A352AD10 is an accelerometer that uses Epson's own quartz crystal technology to clearly identify the main frequency and capture very small accelerations - something that ordinary accelerometers cannot reliably achieve. Regardless of the magnitude of the deflection, vibration can be measured with high precision, making significant contributions to JR East's construction of an accelerometer based deflection detection algorithm. The high durability and good temperature stability of M-A352 are key to developing practical monitoring equipment, as these devices are installed outdoors and require long-term use. The Epson M-A352AD10 accelerometer can be integrated into bridge measurement devices to measure the deflection of the bridge body through changes in the deflection of the EPOSN accelerometer M-A352AD10. The bridge flexibility measurement data can be stored and analyzed through cloud servers using other supporting equipment such as data recorders and communication devices, serving as an important reference for governments and bridge administrators to develop bridge maintenance plans.

    Epson's high-precision accelerometer has been applied and achieved good results in Japan. For example, TTES is a representative of Tokyo Technology Engineering Solutions, which provides an engineering service that includes equipment installation support, measurement support, analysis support, and network hosting services. They rent measuring devices to bridge administrators, mainly local governments, and their profits come from cloud computing usage fees. This jointly developed monitoring device uses Epson's M-A352 sensor to automatically measure these deviations. Signal processing is used to convert measurement results into easily manageable data, which is then sent to operators via email. This device enables remote measurement, thereby facilitating automation of monitoring work that traditionally relied on on-site personnel.

Measurement of deflection of bridge

The amount of deformation or displacement from its original position is what we call deflection.

When vehicles carrying goods pass over a bridge, vibrations are generated, and bridge monitoring equipment can measure the acceleration changes caused by these vibrations using the M-A352AD10 accelerometer.

By analyzing the flexibility curve measurement results and characteristics of the accelerometer, the vibration and deflection of the bridge body can be effectively evaluated.

The monitoring and detection of bridge deflection is of great significance for the safety management of bridge administrators

By measuring the deflection of multiple bridges, bridge managers can promptly identify potential risks and determine appropriate maintenance priorities, making a ranking of bridges that require priority maintenance.