Accurate vision-based displacement and vibration analysis of bridge structures by means of an image-assisted total station

Today, short- and long-term structural health monitoring of bridge infrastructures and their safe, reliable and cost-effective maintenance have received considerable attention. For this purpose, image-assisted total station (here, Leica Nova MS50 MultiStation) as a modern geodetic measurement system can be utilized for accurate displacement and vibration analysis. The Leica MS50 measurements comprise horizontal angles, vertical angles and distance measurements in addition to the captured images or video streams with practical sampling frequency of 10 Hz using an embedded on-axis telescope camera. Experiments were performed for two case studies under (1) a controlled laboratory environment and (2) a real-world situation observing a footbridge structure using a telescope camera of the Leica MS50. Furthermore, two highly accurate reference measurement systems, namely, a laser tracker Leica AT960-LR and a portable shaker vibration calibrator 9210D in addition to the known natural frequencies of the footbridge structure calculated from the finite element model analysis are used for validation. The feasibility of an optimal passive target pattern and its accurate as well as reliable detection at different epochs of time were investigated as a preliminary step. Subsequently, the vertical angular conversion factor of the telescope camera of the Leica MS50 was calibrated, which allows for an accurate conversion of the derived displacements from the pixel unit to the metric unit. A linear regression model in terms of a sum of sinusoids and an autoregressive model of the coloured measurement noise were employed and solved by means of a generalized expectation maximization algorithm to estimate amplitudes and frequencies with high accuracy. The results show the feasibility of the Leica MS50 for the accurate displacement and vibration analysis of the bridge structure for frequencies less than 5 Hz