Abstract:
São João Bridge is a railway bridge, 1028 m long, with a main span of 250 metres. This bridge was
instrumented during its construction and its structural behaviour has been experimentally followed
since then. After fifteen years in service, the system used for this purpose was updated in order to
get automatic data acquisition as well as dynamic monitoring, with remote access and real time data
processing. This paper presents how the original sensors were integrated in the new structural health
monitoring system and the new devices used. Finally, some experimental results are presented and
compared with the analytical values predicted by a finite element model.