Non-invasive damage monitoring of concrete structures by means of Acoustic Emission (AE) requires multitransducers, multi-channel acquisition, high sampling frequency and long observation time. Owing to its propagation in concrete, the signal from AE reduces its amplitude during the propagation, and, consequently, some events can be lost due to lower signal intensity than the trigger level set on one sensor only. The innovative proposal discussed in the paper consists in the introduction of a Flat Amplifier and Trigger generator block (FAT) in order to generate a logical trigger when the AE is detected by any transducer. Experimental tests confirm the effectiveness of the FAT to acquire all the AE events and to increase the evaluation accuracy of damage indexes.

Monitoring and structural health assessment are the primary requirements for performance evaluation of damaged bridges. This paper highlights the case-study of a damaged Reinforced Concrete (RC) bridge structure by considering the outcomes of destructive testing, Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) evaluations, static and 3D non-linear analysis methods. Finite element (FE) modelling of this structure is being done using the material properties extracted by the in-situ testing. Analysis is carried out to evaluate the bridge damage based on the data recorded after the static linear (AXIS VM software) and 3D non-linear analysis (ATENA 3D software). Extensive concrete cracking and high value of crack width are found to be the major problems, leading to lowering the performance of the bridge. As a solution, this paper proposes a proper Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system, that will extend the life cycle of the bridge with minimal repair costs and reduced risk of failure. This system is based on the installation of three different types of sensors: Liquid Levelling sensors (LLS) for measurement of vertical displacement, Distributed Fiber Optic Sensors (DFOS) for crack monitoring, and Weigh in Motion (WIM) devices for monitoring of moving loads on bridge.