The state-of-the-art in health monitoring of long-span cable supported bridges in Turkey

Long-span cable-supported bridges are one of the most important links in the transportation network of a city. This is why their structural health during construction and in operation is very vital and should be monitored. Especially over the last two decades due to safety concerns and to reduce costs, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems have become extremely useful tools for making well-informed decisions regarding the operation and management of bridge structures. Numerous experts in SHM have identified and summarized the challenges and future trends of health monitoring for civil infrastructure. However, the field is extremely dynamic and rapidly evolving, so visions should be updated in a timely manner. Therefore, this work aims to provide the current status of long-span cable-supported bridges’ health monitoring in Turkey by introducing SHM systems and their design considerations for eight long-span bridges. In addition, since these bridges are exposed to both strong seismic excitations and wind incidents due to the geographical locations where they are built, such extreme events may create critical load conditions on the bridges. For this reason, these events recorded by SHM systems are also provided in this work. It is believed that this study will be beneficial to bridge management authorities in order to extent their knowledge on the SHM and its potential use.