Structural health monitoring (SHM) covers a range of damage detection strategies for buildings. In real-time, SHM provides a basis for rapid decision making to optimise the speed and economic efficiency of post-event response. Previous work introduced an SHM method based on identifying structural nonlinear hysteretic parameters and their evolution from structural force-deformation hysteresis loops in real-time. This research extends and generalises this method to investigate the impact of a wide range of flag-shaped or pinching shape nonlinear hysteretic response and its impact on the SHM accuracy. A particular focus is plastic stiffness (K_p), where accurate identification of this parameter enables accurate identification of net and total plastic deformation and plastic energy dissipated, all of which are directly related to damage and infrequently assessed in SHM. A sensitivity study using a realistic seismic case study with known ground truth values investigates the impact of hysteresis loop shape, as well as added noise, on SHM accuracy using a suite of 20 ground motions from the PEER database. Monte Carlo analysis over 22,000 simulations with different hysteresis loops and added noise resulted in absolute percentage identification error (median, (IQR)) in K_p of 1.88% (0.79, 4.94)%. Errors were larger where five events (Earthquakes #1, 6, 9, 14) have very large errors over 100% for resulted K_p as an almost entirely linear response yielded only negligible plastic response, increasing identification error. The sensitivity analysis shows accuracy is reduces to within 3% when plastic drift is induced. This method shows clear potential to provide accurate, real-time metrics of non-linear stiffness and deformation to assist rapid damage assessment and decision making, utilising algorithms significantly simpler than previous non-linear structural model-based parameter identification SHM methods.

Hybrid simulation (HS) has attracted community attention in recent years as an efficient and effective experimental technique for structural performance evaluation in size-limited laboratories. Traditional hybrid simulations usually take deterministic properties for their numerical substructures therefore could not account for inherent uncertainties within the engineering structures to provide probabilistic performance assessment. Reliable structural performance evaluation, therefore, calls for stochastic hybrid simulation (SHS) to explicitly account for substructure uncertainties. The experimental design of SHS is explored in this study to account for uncertainties within analytical substructures. Both computational simulation and laboratory experiments are conducted to evaluate the pseudo-random Sobol sequence for the experimental design of SHS. Meta-modeling through polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) is established from a computational simulation of a nonlinear single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) structure to evaluate the influence of nonlinear behavior and ground motions uncertainties. A series of hybrid simulations are further conducted in the laboratory to validate the findings from computational analysis. It is shown that the Sobol sequence provides a good starting point for the experimental design of stochastic hybrid simulation. However, nonlinear structural behavior involving stiffness and strength degradation could significantly increase the number of hybrid simulations to acquire accurate statistical estimation for the structural response of interests. Compared with the statistical moments calculated directly from hybrid simulations in the laboratory, the meta-model through PCE gives more accurate estimation, therefore, providing a more effective way for uncertainty quantification.

As well-known, the extended Kalman filter (EKF) is a powerful tool for parameter identification with limited measurements. However, traditional EKF is not applicable when the external excitation is unknown. By using least-squares estimation (LSE) for force identification, an EKF with unknown input (EKF-UI) approach was recently proposed by the authors. In this approach, to ensure the influence matrix be of full column rank, the sensors have to be deployed at all the degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) corresponding to the unknown excitation, saying collocated measurements are required. However, it is not easy to guarantee that the sensors can be installed at all these locations. To circumvent this limitation, based on the idea of first-order-holder discretization (FOHD), an improved EKF with unknown input (IEKF-UI) approach is proposed in this study for the simultaneous identification of structural parameters and unknown excitation. By using projection matrix, an improved observation equation is obtained. Few displacement measurements are fused into the observation equation to avoid the so-called low-frequency drift. To avoid the ill-conditioning problem for force identification without collocated measurements, the idea of FOHD is employed. The recursive solution of the structural states and unknown loads is then analytically derived. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated via several numerical examples. Results show that the proposed approach is capable of satisfactorily identifying the parameters of linear and nonlinear structures and the unknown excitation applied to them.

After an earthquake, information regarding potential damage to buildings close to the epicenter is very important during the initial emergency response. This study proposes the use of crowdsourced measured acceleration response data collected from smartphones located within buildings to perform system identification of building structures during earthquake excitations, and the feasibility of the proposed approach is studied. The principal advantage of using crowdsourced smartphone data is the potential to determine the condition of millions of buildings without incurring hardware, installation, and long-term maintenance costs. This study's goal is to assess the feasibility of identifying the lowest fundamental natural frequencies of buildings without knowing the orientations and precise locations of the crowds' smartphones in advance. Both input-output and output-only identification methods are used to identify the lowest fundamental natural frequencies of numerical finite element models of a real building structure. The effects of time synchronization and the orientation alignment between nearby smartphones on the identification results are discussed, and the proposed approach's performance is verified using large-scale shake table tests of a scaled steel building. The presented results illustrate the potential of using crowdsourced smartphone data with the proposed approach to identify the lowest fundamental natural frequencies of building structures, information that should be valuable in making emergency response decisions.

The quasi-static component of the moving vehicle-induced dynamic response is promising in damage detection as it is sensitive to bridge damage but insensitive to environmental changes. However, accurate extraction of quasi-static component from the dynamic response is challenging especially when the vehicle velocity is high. This paper proposes an adaptive quasi-static component extraction method based on the modified variational mode decomposition (VMD) algorithm. Firstly the analytical solutions of the frequency components caused by road surface roughness, high-frequency dynamic components controlled by bridge natural frequency and quasi-static components in the vehicle-induced bridge response are derived. Then a modified VMD algorithm based on particle swarm algorithm (PSO) and mutual information entropy (MIE) criterion is proposed to adaptively extract the quasi-static components from the vehicle-induced bridge dynamic response. Numerical simulations and real bridge tests are conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed extraction method. The results indicate that the improved VMD algorithm could extract the quasi-static component of the vehicle-induced bridge dynamic response with high accuracy in the presence of the road surface roughness and measurement noise.

Using the most up-to-date system identification methods in both time and frequency domains, the dynamic monitoring data from the reinforced concrete Egebaekvej Bridge near Holte, Denmark, is examined in this investigation. The bridge was erected in the 1960s and was still standing during test campaign before demolishing. The ARTeMIS Modal was adopted to derive the modal parameters from ambient vibration data. Several Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) approaches were applied, including Enhanced Frequency Domain Decomposition (EFDD), Curve-fit Frequency Domain Decomposition (CFDD), and Frequency Domain Decomposition (FDD). Afterward, Principal Component (SSI-PC), Unweighted Principal Component (SSI-UPC) Stochastic Subspace Identification methods were utilized. Danish engineering consulting company, COWI with the allowance of the bridge contractor BARSLUND, allow the researcher for this experimental test to demonstrate the impact of OMA applications.

For long-span bridges with a structural health monitoring (SHM) system, environmental temperature-driven responses are proved to be a main component in measurements. However, anomalous structural behavior may be hidden incomplicated recorded data. In order to receive reliable assessment of structural performance, it is important to study therelationship between temperature and monitoring data. This paper presents an application of the cointegration based methodology to detect anomalies that may be masked by temperature effects and then forecast the temperature-induced deflection (TID) of long-span suspension bridges. Firstly, temperature effects on girder deflection are analyzed with fieldmeasured data of a suspension bridge. Subsequently, the cointegration testing procedure is conducted. A threshold-based anomaly detection framework that eliminates the influence of environmental temperature is also proposed. The cointegrated residual series is extracted as the index to monitor anomaly events in bridges. Then, wavelet separation method is used to obtain TIDs from recorded data. Combining cointegration theory with autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model, TIDs for longspan bridges are modeled and forecasted. Finally, in-situ measurements of Xihoumen Bridge are adopted as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the cointegration based approach. In conclusion, the proposed method is practical for actual structures which ensures the efficient management and maintenance based on monitoring data.

Nowadays fuzzy logic in control applications is a well-recognized alternative, and this is thanks to its inherent advantages. Generalized type-2 fuzzy sets allow for a third dimension to capture higher order uncertainty and therefore offer a very powerful model for uncertainty handling in real world applications. With the recent advances that allowed the performance of general type-2 fuzzy logic controllers to increase, it is now expected to see the widespread of type-2 fuzzy logic controllers to many challenging applications in particular in problems of structural control, that is the case study in this paper. It should be highlighted that this is the first application of general type-2 fuzzy approach in civil structures. In the following, general type-2 fuzzy logic controller (GT2FLC) will be used for active control of a 9-story nonlinear benchmark building. The design of type-1 and interval type-2 fuzzy logic controllers is also considered for the purpose of comparison with the GT2FLC. The performance of the controller is validated through the computer simulation on MATLAB. It is demonstrated that extra design degrees of freedom achieved by GT2FLC, allow a greater potential to better model and handle the uncertainties involved in the nature of earthquakes and control systems. GT2FLC outperforms successfully a control system that uses T1 and IT2 FLCs.