Continuous remote monitoring of a motorway section using geophones

Abstract

Pavement monitoring has been a widespread area of research. Monitoring pavements using embeddable sensors and a data acquisition system is an active research topic, with important questions about the selection of appropriate sensors and data acquisition systems, and interpretation of data. This work presents results of the instrumentation of a French motorway section, using geophones and temperature probes. The sensors are connected to a remote monitoring system which is compact, has a low power consumption, and real-time data processing capabilities. This system performs continuous monitoring, under a heavy motorway traffic and transmits the data wirelessly to a remote server. This work focuses on the treatment and analysis of the sensor signals. It indicates a good reliability of the system and embedded sensors, and presents different methods of interpretation of the data, to monitor pavement deflections, but also traffic composition and traffic loads, which could be used for pavement management, for detection of pavement damage and preventive maintenance.

Keywords

• Remote road monitoring
• Geophones
• Pavement instrumentation and pavement engineering