About The Bridge

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The Brooklyn Bridge was built in the late 1800’s and was engineered by John A. Roebling, Washington A. Roebling, and Emily Warren Roebling. It is the first bridge to use pneumatic caissons and the first steel cable suspension bridge. The famous bridge is located in Manhattan, New York known around the world needing no introduction 

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Brooklyn Bridge 20 year Rehabilitation Plan

 

Objective

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The goal of the project was long-term monitoring of the structural Health of the old masonry building on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge approaches consisting of large masonry buildings for Roadway approach support. "Block A" and "Block B" main foundation are made of granite, concrete, stone and building walls are masonry with 3 story wood floors unique in design. These buildings are more than 125 years old and are beginning to show cracks from stress due to contouring and settling of the changing ground movements and load bearing walls. ChM4 is privileged to be a part of this 20 rehabilitation program, from the crack, acceleration, tilts and movement of vertical walls using optical sensors to assist in evaluation of new interior engineering design. The long term monitoring efforts for the approach spans where new modern piers and supports are built on the interior of these buildings support structure. By taking this approach the exterior of the building brick fa-sod stay intact as originally designed maintaining the historic bridges look. ChM4 is planning additional monitoring of approaches and suspension cable monitoring in the near future.

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Block A and B Projects

 

The customer, NYCDOT and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) using newly developed optical sensors chose ChM4 Inc. as the system integrator for "Block A" with assistance of UIC students to install the system. The project was completed in two phases to monitor cracks and settlement of "Block A" approach roadways using optical sensors. "Block A" was directly associated with the main Brooklyn Bridge suspension cables mechanical ground anchoring that could effect the building structure was also studied. With the success of the previous project a Phase 3 contract effort to monitor "Block B" was implemented to use Cleveland Electric Labs new optical displacement sensors to monitor cracks and building settlement. A Continuous 24/7 long term monitoring system contract was awarded to ChM4 to use our IntelliOptics® monitoring software implemented with virtual hosting  using Azure cloud services.