Case Studies

Infratico field projects including Alaska cold-region bridge monitoring and Mackinac Bridge structural monitoring.

Bridge monitoring in demanding field conditions.

Infratico engineers monitoring systems around each structure's constraints: climate, access, loading, available power, communications, and the questions the data needs to answer.

Below are interesting examples from field work in Alaska and Michigan, including the site challenges and the monitoring solutions built for them.

Alaska DOT / remote cold-region bridges Mackinac Bridge Authority / long-span monitoring

Alaska / Cold-Region Bridge Monitoring

Remote bridge instrumentation below -50°F.

Infratico worked with the Alaska Department of Transportation to install monitoring systems on multiple critical bridges in remote, high-loading areas. The project focuses on structural behaviors that are difficult to observe without continuous field data.

Bridge structure over an Alaska river with mountains in the distance

The project environment routinely drops below -50°F and can approach -60°F with high winds on exposed bridges. Infratico designed the monitoring hardware beyond the typical -40°F electronics envelope. The installed systems survived winter operation and continue collecting and processing bridge response data.

The work also combines automated drone inspection, custom finite element analysis, and patented anomaly detection methods so the field measurements can be reviewed in structural context.

Underside of an Alaska bridge over a river

Michigan / Mackinac Bridge Monitoring

Mackinac Bridge monitoring and Labor Day walk response.

Mackinac Bridge over the water at sunset

Infratico works with the Mackinac Bridge Authority on custom wireless sensors, loading analysis, vibration analysis, cloud-connected monitoring, and anomaly detection. Sensor installation began in 2016, and the systems continue sending monitoring data.

The sensors harvest power from bridge vibration, which supports long-term monitoring without routine battery changes in difficult maintenance locations.

The bridge has natural frequency content near the one hertz range, close to pedestrian walking cadence. During the Labor Day walk, thousands of pedestrians cross the bridge at once. Monitoring data from that event showed a large response compared with typical heavy-vehicle traffic days.

Labor Day walk response plot from Mackinac Bridge monitoring — **Labor Day walk response compared with monitored bridge response across ordinary traffic dates.** The Labor Day walk appears as a distinct high-response event relative to typical heavy-vehicle traffic days in the available measurements.

That event gives the monitoring program a useful reference case for fatigue-relevant bridge response and wireless sensor continuity. It turns an unusual public loading event into data the engineering team can compare against ordinary traffic behavior.

The point of the system is continuity: ordinary traffic, unusual loading, vibration behavior, and sensor performance all stay in the same review path instead of becoming separate one-off investigations.

Monitoring programs built around real field constraints.

Across remote cold-region bridges and long-span bridge monitoring, Infratico designs systems around the structure, the environment, and the engineering questions the data needs to answer.

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