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Review Paper | Structural Engineering | Volume 15 Issue 8, August 2026 | Pages: 539 - 552 | India
Structural Health Monitoring of Aging Bridges: A PRISMA 2020 Systematic Review
Abstract: Aging bridges are exposed to interacting deterioration mechanisms, including reinforcement corrosion, fatigue cracking, prestress loss, deck delamination, bearing restraint, scour, settlement, and environmentally induced material degradation. Conventional visual inspection remains essential but is periodic, access-dependent, and often unable to quantify hidden damage or distinguish structural deterioration from normal operational variability. This paper presents a PRISMA 2020-aligned systematic review of structural health monitoring (SHM) methods for existing deteriorated bridges. The review integrates a focused synthesis of 20 recent studies published between 2020 and 2026 with foundational literature on sensing, non-destructive evaluation, vibration-based monitoring, bridge weigh-in-motion, computer vision, unmanned aerial vehicles, artificial intelligence, finite-element model updating, and digital twins. Evidence is organised by deterioration mechanism, bridge material, monitoring scale, validation level, and decision-making function. Local non-destructive methods provide direct evidence of corrosion, delamination, fatigue cracks, voids, and material decay, whereas continuous strain, acceleration, displacement, and environmental monitoring reveal changes in global behaviour. However, modal and data-driven indicators remain vulnerable to temperature, traffic, boundary-condition variation, sensor drift, missing data, and domain shift. Computer vision, UAVs, mobile sensing, and digital twins improve inspection coverage and data integration, but long-term field validation, interoperability, explainability, cybersecurity, and lifecycle cost evidence remain limited. The review concludes that no single technology can reliably support detection, localisation, severity assessment, and prognosis across all bridge types. Hybrid systems combining targeted local testing, global response monitoring, environmental compensation, physics-based modelling, uncertainty quantification, and maintenance-oriented decision support offer the most defensible pathway toward reliable predictive management of aging bridge infrastructure.
Keywords: aging bridges, structural health monitoring, non-destructive testing, vibration-based monitoring, sensor networks, computer vision, artificial intelligence, digital twins, predictive maintenance, infrastructure resilience
How to Cite?: Rithik Bidkar, Girish Joshi, "Structural Health Monitoring of Aging Bridges: A PRISMA 2020 Systematic Review", Volume 15 Issue 8, August 2026, International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR), Pages: 539-552, https://www.ijsr.net/getabstract.php?paperid=SR26807211220, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21275/SR26807211220