Abstract
A health monitoring system becomes a useful tool to obtain information on long term behavior of the important railway structures such as very long span and special type bridges. The health monitoring system not only gives the direct measurement data of the railway bridges but also provides the basic data on the maintenance of the structures. Therefore, periodic calibrations of the health monitoring system will be a necessary step toward precise and accurate assessment of the railway bridges. In this study, the calibration and gauge factor readjustment process made for the health monitoring system installed in the railroad bridges is reviewed and some findings are explained in detail: specifically, the calibrators made for this purpose are illustrated and the regression processes of the calibration on long-term displacement using water level sensor, longitudinal displacement using LVDT sensor, instantaneous displacement using LVDT sensors and accelerometer are described in full length. Based on the regression results, it was found that the gauge factors need to be readjusted according to the regression equation but, since the deviation or shift is not serious so far, long-term observation on each sensor is also recommended. Future work will be concentrated on the long-term analysis of each sensor and on the database creation so that the assessment of the structures is possible.
