Foundation scour is the main cause of bridge collapses in the U.S. In 2011, the principal investigator (PI) proposed smart rocks with embedded magnets for bridge scour monitoring. Once deployed around a bridge pier, smart rocks as field agents offer mission-critical information about the maximum depth of a scour hole developed around the bridge foundation – the key parameter that is used to assess foundation stability in engineering design and retrofit. Smart rocks have recently been deployed and tested at three bridge sites in California and Missouri. With multiple measurements, they can be located with an accuracy of 0.5 m. This level of performance, however, largely depends on the availability of a crane that extends the measurement station from the deck of a bridge to the proximity of a smart rock. The use of the crane often requires traffic closure and, more importantly, limits the number of measurement points and thus makes the detection of two or three smart rocks practically impossible.

This project aims to develop a moving unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform for the magnetic field measurement with and without smart rocks, and characterize the field performance of smart rocks so that the smart rock technology can be tested to its full potential for real time monitoring of bridge scour during significant flood events.