• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.849-868
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• 2014

An indirect approach is explored for structural health bridge monitoring allowing for wide, yet cost-effective, bridge stock coverage. The detection capability of the approach is tested in a laboratory setting for three different reversible proxy types of damage scenarios: changes in the support conditions (rotational restraint), additional damping, and an added mass at the midspan. A set of frequency features is used in conjunction with a support vector machine classifier on data measured from a passing vehicle at the wheel and suspension levels, and directly from the bridge structure for comparison. For each type of damage, four levels of severity were explored. The results show that for each damage type, the classification accuracy based on data measured from the passing vehicle is, on average, as good as or better than the classification accuracy based on data measured from the bridge. Classification accuracy showed a steady trend for low (1-1.75 m/s) and high vehicle speeds (2-2.75 m/s), with a decrease of about 7% for the latter. These results show promise towards a highly mobile structural health bridge monitoring system for wide and cost-effective bridge stock coverage.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.135-147
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• 2016

This paper describes a smart structural system, which uses smart materials for real-time monitoring and active control of bolted-joints in steel structures. The goal of this research is to reduce the possibility of failure and the cost of maintenance of steel structures such as bridges, electricity pylons, steel lattice towers and so on. The concept of the smart structural system combines impedance based health monitoring techniques with a shape memory alloy (SMA) washer to restore the tension of the loosened bolt. The impedance-based structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques were used to detect loosened bolts in bolted-joints. By comparing electrical impedance signatures measured from a potentially damage structure with baseline data obtained from the pristine structure, the bolt loosening damage could be detected. An outlier analysis, using generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution, providing optimal decision boundaries, has been carried out for more systematic damage detection. Once the loosening damage was detected in the bolted joint, the external heater, which was bonded to the SMA washer, actuated the washer. Then, the heated SMA washer expanded axially and adjusted the bolt tension to restore the lost torque. Additionally, temperature variation due to the heater was compensated by applying the effective frequency shift (EFS) algorithm to improve the performance of the diagnostic results. An experimental study was conducted by integrating the piezoelectric material based structural health monitoring and the SMA-based active control function on a bolted joint, after which the performance of the smart 'self-monitoring and self-healing bolted joint system' was demonstrated.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.935-956
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• 2015

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of steel towers has become a hot research topic. From the literature, it is impractical and impossible to develop a "general" method that can detect all kinds of damages for all types of structures. A practical method should make use of the characteristics of the type of structures and the kind of damages. This paper reports a feasibility study on the use of measured modal parameters for the detection of damaged braces of tower structures following the Bayesian probabilistic approach. A substructure-based structural model-updating scheme, which groups different parts of the target structure systematically and is specially designed for tower structures, is developed to identify the stiffness distributions of the target structure under the undamaged and possibly damaged conditions. By comparing the identified stiffness distributions, the damage locations and the corresponding damage extents can be detected. By following the Bayesian theory, the probability model of the uncertain parameters is derived. The most probable model of the steel tower can be obtained by maximizing the probability density function (PDF) of the model parameters. Experimental case studies were employed to verify the proposed method. The contributions of this paper are not only on the proposal of the substructure-based Bayesian model updating method but also on the verification of the proposed methodology through measured data from a scale model of transmission tower under laboratory conditions.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.915-934
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• 2015

Within the context of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), it is often the case that structural systems are described by uncertainty, both with respect to their parameters and the characteristics of the input loads. For the purposes of system identification, efficient modeling procedures are of the essence for a fast and reliable computation of structural response while taking these uncertainties into account. In this work, a reduced order metamodeling framework is introduced for the challenging case of nonlinear structural systems subjected to earthquake excitation. The introduced metamodeling method is based on Nonlinear AutoRegressive models with eXogenous input (NARX), able to describe nonlinear dynamics, which are moreover characterized by random parameters utilized for the description of the uncertainty propagation. These random parameters, which include characteristics of the input excitation, are expanded onto a suitably defined finite-dimensional Polynomial Chaos (PC) basis and thus the resulting representation is fully described through a small number of deterministic coefficients of projection. The effectiveness of the proposed PC-NARX method is illustrated through its implementation on the metamodeling of a five-storey shear frame model paradigm for response in the region of plasticity, i.e., outside the commonly addressed linear elastic region. The added contribution of the introduced scheme is the ability of the proposed methodology to incorporate uncertainty into the simulation. The results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methodology for accurate prediction and simulation of the numerical model dynamics with a vast reduction of the required computational toll.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.663-673
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• 2012

A number of mode shape-based structure damage identification methods have been verified by numerical simulations or experiments for on-line structure health monitoring (SHM). However, many of them need a baseline mode shape generated by the healthy structure serving as a reference to identify damages. Otherwise these methods can hardly perform well when multiple cracks conditions occur. So it is important to solve the problems above. By aid of the fractal dimension method (FD), Qiao and Wang proposed a generalized fractal dimension (GFD) to detect the delamination damage. As a modification of GFD, Qiao and Cao proposed the approximate waveform capacity dimension (AWCD) technique to simplify the calculation of fractal and overcome the false peak appearing in the high mode shapes. Based on their valued work, this paper combined and applied the AWCD method and curvature mode shape data to detect multiple damages in beam. In the end, the identification properties of the AWCD for multiple damages have been verified by groups of Monte Carlo simulations and experiments.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.181-207
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• 2013

In this paper, a statistical reference-free real-time damage detection methodology is proposed for detecting joint and member damage of truss bridge structures. For the statistical damage sensitive index (DSI), wavelet packet decomposition (WPD) in conjunction with the log likelihood ratio was suggested. A sensitivity test for selecting a wavelet packet that is most sensitive to damage level was conducted and determination of the level of decomposition was also described. Advantages of the proposed method for applications to real-time health monitoring systems were demonstrated by using the log likelihood ratios instead of likelihood ratios. A laboratory truss bridge structure instrumented with accelerometers and a shaker was used for experimental verification tests of the proposed methodology. The statistical reference-free real-time damage detection algorithm was successfully implemented and verified by detecting three damage types frequently observed in truss bridge structures - such as loss of bolts, loosening of bolts at multiple locations, sectional loss of members - without reference signals from pristine structure. The DSI based on WPD and the log likelihood ratio showed consistent and reliable results under different damage scenarios.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.12 no.3_4
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• pp.235-250
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• 2013

Optimal sensor placement (OSP) technique plays a key role in the structural health monitoring (SHM) of large-scale structures. According to the mathematical background and implicit assumptions made in the triaxial effective independence (EfI) method, this paper presents a novel multi-dimensional OSP method for the Canton Tower focusing on application demands. In contrast to existing methods, the presented method renders the corresponding target mode shape partitions as linearly independent as possible and, at the same time, maintains the stability of the modal matrix in the iteration process. The modal assurance criterion (MAC), determinant of the Fisher Information Matrix (FIM) and condition number of the FIM have been taken as the optimal criteria, respectively, to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. Numerical investigations suggest that the proposed method outperforms the original EfI method in all instances as expected, which is looked forward to be even more pronounced should it be used for other multi-dimensional optimization problems.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2009.04b
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• pp.38-40
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• 2009

In order to achieve a gearless construction of the wind energy conversion system(WECS), a low-speed generator should be used. Of the various candidate machine types, radial-field, multi-pole, permanent magnet, synchronous machines may be used for low-speed applications. So, this paper deals with the design of direct-coupled, multi-pole radial field machines with permanent magnet(PM) excitation for wind power applications for cogging torque reduction through the determination of optimum pole arc/pitch ratio. On the basis of an equivalent magnetic circuit method(EMCM) and a space harmonic method(SHM), an initial design is performed considering restricted conditions. And then, a detailed design is made using a non-linear finite element analyses(FEA). Finally, test results concerning generating characteristics are given to confirm the validation of the design.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.32-36
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• 2013

The large-scale structures have the possibility that there are defects such as cracks due to stress concentration caused by geometric discontinuities in the structure. In this respect, the assessment of fatigue life and the development of structural health monitoring(SHM) are very important. Fatigue design of structure is typically accomplished either using a set of stress cycle (S-N) data obtained from fatigue tests or using the fracture mechanics approach. The stress intensity factor(SIF) is required for the estimation of fatigue crack propagation life from the linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) perspective. In this study, Macro Fiber Composie(MFC) sensor for the measurement of SIF of two dimensional cracks is used. The SIF based on the piezoelectric constitutive law and fracture mechanics are calculated. The measured values of the SIF are later used for the prediction of the crack propagation life. In this study, the measured value of the SIF and the fatigue life are compared with the theoretical results.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2013.10a
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• pp.799-804
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• 2013

The sensor/actuator active sensor diagnostics procedure, where the sensors/actuators are confirmed to be functioning properly during operation, is a critical component to successfully complete the structural health monitoring (SHM) process with large numbers of active sensors typically installed in a structure. The basis of this process is to track the changes in the capacitive value of piezoelectric materials, which shows up in measured admittance. Due to the temperature dependent nature of piezoelectric materials, we investigated the effects of temperature variations on sensor diagnostic process. The effect of temperature variations found to be remarkable, modifying the measured capacitive values significantly. In addition we analyzed the effect of bonding agents between a PZT patch and a host structure. This paper summarizes considerations needed to develop such sensor diagnostic processes, experimental procedures and results, and additional issues that can be used as guidelines for future investigations.