Design And Construction Of A Bridge Disaster Tracking System Using GPS And GSM

ABSTRACT

Many of the bridges last over decades and centuries, these brides are never looked over when it comes to their condition monitoring and maintenance. This stands as the primary cause for bridge disasters which lead into heavy death toll. This death toll increases all the more as there is no proper communication between social organizations such as Police stations, Fire Brigade stations, Zonal authorities and Hospitals. Thus Bridge Disaster Tracking System helps to communicate properly between these major organizations so that rapid help is provided to the victims.

Also the real time behavior of the system helps in the pre indication of the disaster.

This system can be implemented using simple PIC microcontroller rather than going into deep complexity of various other systems. This implementation is based upon interfacing various sensors like Richter scale, water flow meter, ultrasonic sensor

and modules like GPS and GSM with PIC microcontroller by considering threshold of various climatic parameters acting on the bridges using Bridge analysis.

 CHAPTER ONE

1.0                                                        INTRODUCTION

Many highly advanced Bridge Monitoring systems are available to look upon the condition of the bridges but the major drawback being that these systems are never taken care of by the concerned authorities and hence disasters occur even after their existence.

The main aim of this system is to provide a rapid aid to the disaster hit victims with the help of proper coordination between the government organizations.

The current system [Bridge Disaster Tracking System Using GSM and GPS] will give a real time response due to its effective means of communication with precise coordination describing the impact and alerting the commuters who are about to cross the bridge.

1.2                                         BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT

Construction began in 1871 of a bridge to be supported by brick piers resting on bedrock. Trial borings had shown the bedrock to lie at no great depth under the river. At either end of the bridge, the bridge girders were deck trusses, the tops of which were level with the pier tops, with the single track railway running on top. However, in the centre section of the bridge (the “high girders”) the bridge girders ran as through trusses above the pier tops (with the railway inside them) in order to give the required clearance to allow passage of sailing ships to Perth.

The bedrock actually lay much deeper than the trial borings had shown, and Bouch had to redesign the bridge, with fewer piers and correspondingly longer span girders. The pier foundations were now constructed by sinking brick-lined wrought-iron caissons onto the riverbed, and filling these with concrete. To reduce the weight these had to support, Bouch used open-lattice iron skeleton piers: each pier had multiple cast-iron columns taking the weight of the bridging girders. Wrought iron horizontal braces and diagonal tiebars linked the columns in each pier to provide rigidity and stability. The basic concept was well known, but for the Tay Bridge, the pier dimensions were constrained by the caisson. For the higher portion of the bridge, there were 13 girder spans. In order to accommodate thermal expansion, at only 3 of their 14 piers was there a fixed connection from the pier to the girders. There were therefore 3 divisions of linked high girder spans, the spans in each division being structurally connected to each other, but not to neighbouring spans in other divisions. The southern and central divisions were nearly level, but the northern division descended towards Dundee at gradients of up to 1 in 73.

On the evening of Sunday 28 December 1879, a violent storm (10 to 11 on the Beaufort scale) was blowing virtually at right angles to the bridge. Witnesses said the storm was as bad as any they had seen in the 20–30 years they had lived in the area; one called it a ‘hurricane’, as bad as a typhoon he had seen in the China Sea. The wind speed was measured at Glasgow – 71 mph (114 km/h) (averaged over an hour) – and Aberdeen, but not at Dundee. Higher windspeeds were recorded over shorter intervals, but at the inquiry an expert witness warned of their unreliability, and declined to estimate conditions at Dundee from readings taken elsewhere. One modern interpretation of available information suggests winds were gusting to 80 mph (129 km/h).

Usage of the bridge was restricted to one train at a time by a signalling block system using a baton as a token. At 7:13 p.m. a train from the south (consisting of a 4-4-0 locomotive, its tender, five passenger carriages, and a luggage van (brake van)) slowed to pick up the baton from the signal cabin at the south end of the bridge, then headed out onto the bridge, picking up speed. The signalman turned away to log this and then tended the cabin fire, but a friend present in the cabin watched the train: when it got about 200 yards (183 m) from the cabin he saw sparks flying from the wheels on the east side, this continued for no more than three minutes, by then the train was in the high girders; then “there was a sudden bright flash of light, and in an instant there was total darkness, the tail lamps of the train, the sparks and the flash of light all … disappearing at the same instant.” The signalman saw none of this and did not believe when told about it. When the train failed to appear on the line off the bridge into Dundee he tried to talk to the signal cabin at the north end of the bridge, but found that all communication with it had been lost. Because of all these lost brought about the invention of this device – bridge disaster tracking system. This device uses GPS and GSM network for their operation.

1.3                                                   AIM OF THE PROJECT

The main aim of this system is to construct a device that will provide a rapid aid to the disaster hit victims with the help of proper coordination between the government organizations.

1.4                                             OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT

The main objective of this project is to:

1. Provide the multi sensor railway track geometry surveying system.
2. Railway Bridge damage status is monitored by the sensor and transfer through wireless modules.
3. For easy surveying and with less delay the information can be send to the authority.
4. To avoid accident and to safeguard the people.
5. GSM and GPS are used for geodetic measurement.

1.5                                                 SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

The real time system designed for the detection of tsunami and earthquake which have been the major hazards. This system is developed using PIC18F542 microcontroller. The main components used in this system are sensors, GSM, GPS. If any sensor detected any disturbance, transmitter transmits the signal to the receiver and it display the alerting message in LCD at receiver using GSM, it can send the message to the authority in the base station. Finally, this project works as per the specification. In future, to increase the performance of this project, the database system can be included to store the real time data.

1.6                                          ADVANTAGES OF THE PROJECT

The following are the advantages of the system:

1. Multi sensors are used for detecting the different disaster, it is one of the advantage of this system compared to other system that uses multi sensors to detect the single disaster.
2. GSM module is used for sending the alerting message to the base station authority.
3. It reduces the huge complications because of wireless connections
4. Low cost wireless network between the bridge and the management centre, which decreases the overall cost of installation and maintenance cost of system.

1.8                                         APPLICATIONS OF THE PROJECT

The following are the applications of the system:

1. It can avoid accidents caused by the extreme weather conditions.
2. Key solution for pre and post disaster occurrence.

1.9                                            PROBLEMS OF THE PROJECT

1. Less accuracy.
2. Cost is high.

• Delay in transmitting the information.