The Veteran?s Glass City Skyway (VGCS) is a large cable - stayed bridge in Toledo, Ohio owned by the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). During certain weather conditions, ice gets accumulated on the bridge stays, which can even make up to 19mm (3/4”) - 75mm in thickness. As the stays warm, ice shed up to two hundred and fifty feet to the roadway and the pieces of ice can be blown across several lanes of traffic on the bridge deck causing difficulty for motorists to commute and may cause potential traffic accidents. Currently manual checks are performed on the bridges to avoid such scenario, but it does not discard the possibility of hazardous ice shedding events being missed. The chances of such ice event occurrence are complimented by unique weather conditions at VGCS and its sheath structure, which is evident from the fact that four times in the last three years, ODOT closed the lanes due to ice accumulation.
Since no existing ice anti/deicing technology was found to be practical for VGCS, to deal with this situation in an effectual way a novel solution involving algorithmic modeling of meteorological data for ice accumulation and ice shedding is implemented. It aims at automated monitoring of the icing status using the meteorological variables: atmospheric temperature, type of precipitation, and sky cover. Dashboard is developed as a part of the solution that makes information accessible and viable. The tasks that have been completed are: realized criterions causing ice accumulation and ice shedding, developed algorithm to determine the ice events, a background study that included weather conditions for the past icing incidents and designed a one-click user friendly interface to monitor the icing status at VGCS.
This model was implemented at the site in winter 2011 and since then it has successfully predicted all the ice accumulation occurrences since the advent of VGCS. The algorithm also produced decent results when its performance is tested for the past icing events. Perhaps the algorithm needs few modifications to predict ice-shedding events more effectively. Though, the developed system use only previously installed sensors and does not require new instruments, but for future it is recommended to install additional sensors. Thus the system is a very good first step towards a long- term solution for icing/deicing issue at VGCS.