The present invention relates to a bridge inspecting device and an inspecting method. More particularly, it relates to a device and a method for inspecting a bridge's bottom.
Taiwan region belongs to island climate and is located on the circum-pacific earthquake belt. The typhoon brings abounding rainfall during the flood period every year and causes the river to rise rapidly, so that the bridge and piers thereof are seriously damaged. It is often seen very year in Taiwan that the bridge is broken by typhoon and so forth because the piers of the bridge are destroyed by the river flood. Therefore, the management and inspecting for aged bridges in the country are very important and is of great urgency, especially for the high density urban areas.
As to the bridge inspecting, a non-destructive inspecting method are applied generally, such as a visual method, a rushing hammer method, an ultra-sonic method, concrete material inspecting method, an ultra-sonic inspecting method and so on. However, due to the work load and the budget, the office for managing the bridges adopts the non-destructive inspecting method, a visual inspecting and an evaluating method, to evaluate and inspect the bridges, such as D.E.R.U. evaluating method or A.B.C.D. evaluating method. The inspecting process is just performed by examining the whole parts of the bridge via human's eye and recording the damaged degree and position via taking picture or sketching.
Although the above visual inspecting is quick and simple and could save money and time, the evaluating process would easily cause human omissions and/or the subjective judgment of the inspector so that it has no objective standard and precision. Under such visual operating mode, inspections for some parts of the bridge are usually omitted on the condition that the inspector could not achieve the proper position, especially the bottom of the bridge surrounded by the special terrains/landforms. The office has tried to configure a camera to a [-shaped stand and to put down the stand from the edge of the bridge to catch the image of the bottom of the bridge, but the center of gravity is not so steady and the visual angle is constrained so that the effect is not good.
Therefore, it would be useful to invent a bridge inspecting device and an inspecting method to circumvent all the above issues. In order to fulfill this need the inventors have proposed an invention “BRIDGE INSPECTING DEVICE AND METHOD”. The summary of the present invention is described as follows.
In the prior art, the conventional inspecting method or device for a bridge cannot effectively and properly examine the bottom of the bridge. The invention is to combine a pendulum system with an image sensing system, and using the pendulum principle to send the image sensing system into the bottom of the bridge so as to catch the image of the bridge bottom. The image is analyzed to complete the inspecting for the bridge and thereby the high efficiency and quality for inspecting could be achieved. Besides, it can be easily applied to inspecting the bottom of the bridge and effectively save the human resource and shorten the inspecting time. Furthermore, the present bridge inspecting device could be configured on a vehicle so that it has a high mobility and a portable convenience.
According to the first aspect of the present invention, a device for inspecting a structure of a bridge includes a vehicle having an arm; a pendulum mechanism having at least one pendulum element and two ends, one of which is secured to the arm; and at least one image sensing device connected to the other end of the pendulum mechanism.
Preferably, the device is provided, wherein the at least one pendulum element is one selected from a group consisting of a bar, a rope and a combination thereof, and the one end is optionally moved to a specific position of the arm and secured thereon.
Preferably, the device is provided, wherein the bar is a rigid bar and the rope is a soft rope.
Preferably, the device is provided, wherein the bar is one selected from a group consisting of a steel bar, an aluminum bar, an alloy bar and a combination thereof, and the rope is one selected from a group consisting of a steel rope, a wire rope, a carbon fiber rope, a fiber polymer rope, a high molecular polymer rope and a combination thereof.
Preferably, the device is provided, wherein the arm is a telescopic boom, the at least one image sensing device is a camera, and the vehicle a hoist or an engineering vehicle.
Preferably, the device is provided, wherein the pendulum mechanism includes two pendulum elements and a joint connecting the two pendulum elements.
Preferably, the device is disposed at an edge of the bridge and further includes a connector connecting the arm and the pendulum mechanism and a driving device driving the pendulum mechanism to swing.
According to the second aspect of the present invention, a bridge inspecting device includes an arm; a pendulum mechanism having at least two ends, one of which is connected to the arm; and an image sensing device connected to the other end of the pendulum mechanism.
Preferably, the device is provided, wherein the aim is disposed at an edge of a bridge, and the image sensing device is rotatable for taking images at a predetermined angle.
According to the third aspect of the present invention, an inspecting method for a bridge includes the steps of: (A) providing a pendulum mechanism with an image sensing device; (B) swing the pendulum mechanism; and (C) grabbing an image of the bridge through the image sensing device.
Preferably, the method further includes the step (B0) of driving the pendulum mechanism to swing with a predetermined mode, wherein the predetermined mode is one of a synchronous swing mode and a non-synchronous swing mode. Besides, the pendulum mechanism has two ends, one of the two ends fixed to an arm which is disposed at an edge of the bridge, and the other of the two ends is coupled to the image sensing device.
The foregoing and other features and advantages of the present invention will be more clearly understood through the following descriptions with reference to the drawings:
The present invention will now be described more specifically with reference to the following embodiments. It is to be noted that the following descriptions of preferred embodiments of this invention are presented herein for the aspect of illustration and description only; it is not intended to be exhaustive or to be limited to the precise from disclosed.
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The vehicle 11 is used for carrying the arm 12, and is preferably a hoist or an engineering vehicle. Preferably, the arm 12 is a telescopic boom. The arm 12 can extend in the transverse direction and protrude from the edge 13b of the bridge 13. The arm 12 is configured to suspend the pendulum mechanism 14, and a terminal 12a of the arm 12 is coupled to an end 14b of the pendulum mechanism 14 via a connector 12b such as a ring and so on. The position of the connector 12b is changeable depending on the situation. The other end 14b of the pendulum mechanism 14 is coupled to at least one image sensing device 15 such as digital camera, a video camera or other device capable of catching images. It is noted that the pendulum mechanism 14 could has at least two ends.
The pendulum mechanism 14 includes at least one pendulum element P. Preferably, the pendulum element P is a bar, a rope or a combination thereof. The bar could be a rigid bar and the rope could be a soft rope. Furthermore, the bar could be a steel bar, an aluminum bar, an alloy bar or a combination thereof, and the rope could be a steel rope, a wire rope, a carbon fiber rope, a fiber polymer rope, a high molecular polymer or a combination thereof. Usually, a cable consists of a plurality of ropes. Taking
After the bridge inspecting device 10 is disposed/configured on the bridge 13, the inspecting method of the present invention could be performed. When the structure of the bridge 13 is sought to be inspected, especially the structure of the bottom 13s, the pendulum mechanism 14 is driven to swing at a specific frequency, whereby the image sensing device 15 can be sent into the area below the bottom of the bridge 13 and catches images of the bottom 13s. Furthermore, the during the swinging process, there would be enough time for the image sensing device 15 to take pictures continuously so as to completely obtain images regarding the whole bottom 13b. Finally, the image stitch technique is applied to combine the images for adjacent senses so as to obtain the complete image of the bridge 13. The task for inspecting the bottom 13s could be achieved by the inspector via reviewing the combined image. It is noted that the bridge inspecting device 10 could has a driving device 11a configured on the vehicle 11 to drive the pendulum mechanism to swing. The end 14b could be optionally moved to a specific position of the arm 12 and secured thereon. Besides, the image sensing device 15 could be rotatable for taking images at a predetermined angle.
When examining, the engineer could introduce various analysis methods to detailedly analyze the image for the bridge. Therefore, the engineer can precisely and objectively investigate any possible damages at the underside of the bridge.
It is noted that the swings of the two pendulum elements P1 and P2 could be performed at a synchronous swing mode with the same frequency or at a non-synchronous swing mode with the different frequencies. For instance, the pendulum mechanism 14 shown in
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While the invention has been described in terms of what are presently considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiments, it is to be understood that the invention need not be limited to the disclosed embodiments. On the contrary, it is intended to cover various modifications and similar arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims, which are to be accorded with the broadest interpretation so as to encompass all such modifications and similar structures. Therefore the above description and illustration should not be taken as limiting the scope of the present invention which is defined by the appended claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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099100993 | Jan 2010 | TW | national |