Assessment of the compressive strength of concrete plays a major role during formwork removal and in the prestressing process. In concrete, temperature changes occur due to hydration which is an influencing factor that decides the compressive strength of concrete. Many methods are available to find the compressive strength of concrete, but the maturity method has the advantage of prognosticating strength without destruction. The temperature-time factor is found using a LM35 temperature sensor through the IoT technique. An experimental investigation was carried out with 56 concrete cubes, where 35 cubes were for obtaining the compressive strength of concrete using a universal testing machine while 21 concrete cubes monitored concrete's temperature by embedding a temperature sensor in each grade of M25, M30, M35, and M40 concrete. The mathematical prediction model equation was developed based on the temperature-time factor during the early age compressive strength on the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 7^th days in the M25, M30, M35, and M40 grades of concrete with their temperature. The 14^th, 21^st and 28^th day's compressive strength was predicted with the mathematical predicted equation and compared with conventional results which fall within a 2% difference. The compressive strength of concrete at any desired age (day) before reaching 28 days results in the discovery of the prediction coefficient. Comparative analysis of the results found by the predicted mathematical model show that, it was very close to the results of the conventional method.

Fatigue crack is a fatal problem for steel structures. Early detection and maintenance can help extend the service life and prevent hazards. This paper presents the ultrasonic guided waves-based (UGWs-based) fatigue crack detection of a steel I-beam. The semi-analytical finite element model has been built to obtain the wave propagation characteristics. Damage indices in both time and frequency domains were analyzed by considering the characteristic variations of UGWs including the amplitude, phase angle, and wave packet energy. The pulse-echo and pitch-catch methods were combined in the detection scheme. Lab-scale experiments were conducted on welded steel I-beams to verify the proposed method. Results show that the damage indices based on the characteristic variations in the time domain can identify and localize the fatigue crack before it enters the rapid growth stage. The damage severity can be reasonably evaluated by analyzing the time-domain damage indices. Two nonlinear damage indices in the frequency domain give earlier warnings of the fatigue crack than the time-domain damage indices do. The identification results based on the above two nonlinear indices are found to be less consistent under various excitation frequencies. More robust nonlinear techniques needed to be searched and tested for early crack detection in steel I-beams in further study.

This study investigates the possibility of damage detection of a real bridge by means of a modal parameter-based finite element (FE) model update. Field moving vehicle experiments were conducted on an actual steel plate girder bridge. In the damage experiment, cracks were applied to the bridge to simulate damage states. A fast Bayesian FFT method was employed to identify and quantify uncertainties of the modal parameters then these modal parameters were used in the Bayesian model update. Material properties and boundary conditions are taken as uncertainties and updated in the model update process. Observations showed that although some differences existed in the results obtained from different model classes, the discrepancy between modal parameters of the FE model and those experimentally obtained was reduced after the model update process, and the updated parameters in the numerical model were indeed affected by the damage. The importance of boundary conditions in the model updating process is also observed. The capability of the MCMC model update method for application to the actual bridge structure is assessed, and the limitation of FE model update in damage detection of bridges using only modal parameters is observed.

Vibration-based structural health monitoring is used to ensure the safety of structures by installing sensors in structures. The peak picking method, one of the applications of vibration-based structural health monitoring, is a method that analyze the dynamic characteristics of a structure using the peaks of the frequency response function. However, the results may vary depending on the person predicting the peak point; further, the method does not predict the exact peak point in the presence of noise. To overcome the limitations of the existing peak picking methods, this study proposes a new method to automate the modal analysis process by utilizing long short-term memory, a type of recurrent neural network. The method proposed in this study uses the time series data of the frequency response function directly as the input of the LSTM network. In addition, the proposed method improved the accuracy by using the phase as well as amplitude information of the frequency response function. Simulation experiments and lab-scale model experiments are performed to verify the performance of the LSTM network developed in this study. The result reported a modal assurance criterion of 0.8107, and it is expected that the dynamic characteristics of a civil structure can be predicted with high accuracy using data without experts.

Bridge hangers, such as those in suspension and cable-stayed bridges, suffer from cumulative fatigue damage caused by dynamic loads (e.g., cyclic traffic and wind loads) in their service condition. Thus, the identification of damage to hangers is important in preserving the service life of the bridge structure. This study develops a new method for condition assessment of bridge hangers. The tension force of the bridge and the damages in the element level can be identified using the Bayesian optimization method. To improve the number of observed data, the additional mass method is combined the Bayesian optimization method. Numerical studies are presented to verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. The influence of different acquisition functions, which include expected improvement (EI), probability-of-improvement (PI), lower confidence bound (LCB), and expected improvement per second (EIPC), on the identification of damage to the bridge hanger is studied. Results show that the errors identified by the EI acquisition function are smaller than those identified by the other acquisition functions. The identification of the damage to the bridge hanger with various types of boundary conditions and different levels of measurement noise are also studied. Results show that both the severity of the damage and the tension force can be identified via the proposed method, thereby verifying the robustness of the proposed method. Compared to the genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and nonlinear least-square method (NLS), the Bayesian optimization (BO) performs best in identifying the structural damage and tension force.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a scalable grey predictive controller with unavoidable random delays. Grey prediction is proposed to solve problems caused by incorrect parameter selection and to eliminate the effects of dynamic coupling between degrees of freedom (DOFs) in nonlinear systems. To address the stability problem, this study develops an improved gray-predictive adaptive fuzzy controller, which can not only solve the implementation problem by determining the stability of the system, but also apply the Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) law to calculate Fuzzy change parameters. Fuzzy logic controllers manipulate robotic systems to improve their control performance. The stability is proved using Lyapunov stability theorem. In this article, the authors compare different controllers and the proposed predictive controller can significantly reduce the vibration of offshore platforms while keeping the required control force within an ideal small range. This paper presents a robust fuzzy control design that uses a model-based approach to overcome the effects of modeling errors. To guarantee the asymptotic stability of large nonlinear systems with multiple lags, the stability criterion is derived from the direct Lyapunov method. Based on this criterion and a distributed control system, a set of model-based fuzzy controllers is synthesized to stabilize large-scale nonlinear systems with multiple delays.

As the number of deteriorated buildings increases, the importance of safety diagnosis, maintenance, and the repair of buildings also increases. Traditionally, building condition assessments are performed by one person or one company and various inspections are needed. This entails a subjective judgment by the inspector, resulting in different assessment results, poor objectivity and a lack of reliability. Therefore, this study proposed a method to bring about accurate grading results of building conditions. The limitations of visual inspection and condition assessment processes previously conducted were identified by reviewing existing studies. Building defect data was collected using the reverse-engineered three-dimensional (3D) model. The accuracy of the results was verified by comparing them with the actual evaluation results. The results show a 50% time-saving to the same area with an accuracy of approximately 90%. Consequently, defect data with high objectivity and reliability were acquired by measuring the length, area, and width. In addition, the proposed method can improve the efficiency of the building diagnosis process.

This paper conducts a parametric study of a new tuned mass damper with pre-strained superelastic SMA helical springs (SMAS-TMD) on the vibration reduction effect. First, a force-displacement relation model of superelastic SMA helical spring is presented based on the multilinear constitutive model of SMA material, and the tension tests of the six SMA springs fabricated are implemented to validate the mechanical model. Then, a dynamic model of a single floor steel frame with the SMAS-TMD damper is set up to simulate the seismic responses of the frame, which are testified by the shaking table tests. The wire diameter, initial coil diameter, number of coils and pre-strain length of SMA springs are extracted to investigate their influences on the seismic response reduction of the frame. The numerical and experimental results show that, under different earthquakes, when the wire diameter, initial coil diameter and number of coils are set to the appropriate values so that the initial elastic stiffness of the SMA spring is between 0.37 and 0.58 times of classic TMD stiffness, the maximum reduction ratios of the proposed damper can reach 40% as the mass ratio is 2.34%. Meanwhile, when the pre-strain length of SMA spring is in a suitable range, the SMAS-TMD damper can also achieve very good vibration reduction performance. The vibration reduction performance of the SMAS-TMD damper is generally equal to or better than that of the classic optimal TMD, and the proposed damper effectively suppresses the detuning phenomena that often occurs in the classic TMD.