• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.485-500
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• 2016

Stay cables in some cable-stayed bridges suffer large amplitude vibrations under the simultaneous occurrence of rain and wind. This phenomenon is called rain-wind-induced vibration (RWIV). The upper rivulet oscillating circumferentially on the inclined cable surface plays an important role in this phenomenon. However, its small size and high sensitivity to wind flow make measuring rivulet size and its movement challenging. Moreover, the distribution of the rivulet along the entire cable has not been measured. This paper applies the videogrammetric technique to measure the movement and geometry dimension of the upper rivulet along the entire cable during RWIV. A cable model is tested in an open-jet wind tunnel with artificial rain. RWIV is successfully reproduced. Only one digital video camera is employed and installed on the cable during the experiment. The camera records video clips of the upper rivulet and cable movements. The video clips are then transferred into a series of images, from which the positions of the cable and the upper rivulet at each time instant are identified by image processing. The thickness of the upper rivulet is also estimated. The oscillation amplitude, equilibrium position, and dominant frequency of the rivulet are presented. The relationship between cable and rivulet variations is also investigated. Results demonstrate that this non-contact, non-intrusive measurement method has good resolution and is cost effective.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.83-94
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• 2019

Passive negative stiffness dampers (NSDs) that possess superior energy dissipation abilities, have been proved to be more efficient than commonly adopted passive viscous dampers in controlling stay cable vibrations. Recently, inertial mass dampers (IMDs) have attracted extensive attentions since their properties are similar to NSDs. It has been theoretically predicted that superior supplemental damping can be generated for a taut cable with an IMD. This paper aims to theoretically investigate the impact of the cable sag on the efficiency of an IMD in controlling stay cable vibrations, and experimentally validate superior vibration mitigation performance of the IMD. Both the numerical and asymptotic solutions were obtained for an inclined sag cable with an IMD installed close to the cable end. Based on the asymptotic solution, the cable attainable maximum modal damping ratio and the corresponding optimal damping coefficient of the IMD were derived for a given inertial mass. An electromagnetic IMD (EIMD) with adjustable inertial mass was developed to investigate the effects of inertial mass and cable sag on the vibration mitigation performance of two model cables with different sags through series of first modal free vibration tests. The results show that the sag generally reduces the attainable first modal damping ratio of the cable with a passive viscous damper, while tends to increase the cable maximum attainable modal damping ratio provided by the IMD. The cable sag also decreases the optimum damping coefficient of the IMD when the inertial mass is less than its optimal value. The theoretically predicted first modal damping ratio of the cable with an IMD, taking into account the sag generally, agrees well with that identified from experimental results, while it will be significantly overestimated with a taut-cable model, especially for the cable with large sag.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.695-702
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• 2019

The number of cable-stayed bridges has been increasing worldwide, causing issues in maintaining the structural safety and integrity of bridges. The stay cable, one of the most critical members in cable-stayed bridges, is vulnerable to wind-induced vibrations owing to its inherent low damping capacity. Thus, vibration mitigation of stay cables has been an important issue both in academia and practice. While a semi-active control scheme shows effective vibration reduction compared to a passive control scheme, real-world applications are quite limited because it requires complicated equipment, including for data acquisition, and power supply. This study aims to develop an Arduino-based integrated cable vibration control system implementing a semi-active control algorithm. The integrated control system is built on the low-cost, low-power Arduino platform, embedding a semi-active control algorithm. A MEMS accelerometer is installed in the platform to conduct a state feedback for the semi-active control. The Linear Quadratic Gaussian control is applied to estimate a cable state and obtain a control gain, and the clipped optimal algorithm is implemented to control the damping device. This study selects the magnetorheological damper as a semi-active damping device, controlled by the proposed control system. The developed integrated system is applied to a laboratory size cable with a series of experimental studies for identifying the effect of the system on cable vibration reduction. The semi-active control embedded in the integrated system is compared with free and passive mode cases and is shown to reduce the vibration of stay-cables effectively.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.537-551
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• 2019

In this paper, a method for analyzing the damping performance of stay cables incorporating magnetorheological (MR) dampers in the passive control mode is developed taking into account the cable sag and inclination, the damper coefficient, stiffness and mass, and the stiffness of damper support. Both numerical and asymptotic solutions are obtained from complex modal analysis. With the asymptotic solution, analytical formulas that evaluate the equivalent damping ratio of the sagged cable-damper system in consideration of all the above parameters are derived. The main thrust of the present study is to develop an general design formula and a universal curve for the optimal design of MR dampers for adjustable passive control of sagged cables. Two sag-affecting coefficients are derived to reflect the effects of cable sag on the maximum attainable damping ratio and the optimal damper coefficient. For the cable configurations commonly used in cable-stayed bridges, the sag-affecting coefficients are directly expressed in terms of the sag-extensibility parameter to facilitate the control design. A case study on adjustable passive vibration control of the longest cable (536 m) on Stonecutters Bridge is carried out to demonstrate the influence of the sag for the damper design, and to figure out the necessity of adjustability of damper coefficients for achieving maximum damping ratio for different vibration modes.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.129-140
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• 2019

Accurately simulating the wind field of large-scale region, for instant urban areas, the locations of large span bridges, wind farms and so on, is very difficult, due to the complicated terrains or land surfaces. Currently, the regional wind field can be simulated through the combination of observation data and numerical model using observation-nudging in the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF). However, the main drawback of original observation-nudging method in WRF is the effects of observation on the surrounding field is fully mathematical express in terms of temporal and spatial, and it ignores the effects of terrain, wind direction and atmospheric circulation, while these are physically unreasonable for the turbulence. For these reasons, a spatial correlation-based observation-nudging method, which can take account the influence of complicated terrain, is proposed in the paper. The validation and comparation results show that proposed method can obtain more reasonable and accurate result than original observation-nudging method. Finally, the discussion of wind field along bridge span obtained from the simulation with spatial correlation-based observation-nudging method was carried out.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.102-112
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• 2020

In this study, in order to design a wedge-type anchor that can hold an wide carbon plate with a width of 100 mm or more that can be used in a bridge structure, the mechanical behaviors are evaluated based on the main design variables such as the angle of the wedge and the coefficient of friction between the guide and the wedge. The stress state of the carbon plate was calculated by numerical analysis method for each design variable, and the performance of the anchor in the critical state was evaluated according to the failure criteria for composite material, and the optimal design specifications of the anchor were determined based on numerical results. The performance of the optimally designed anchor was verified through actual experiments, and the results of this study are considered to be useful for the optimal design of the CFRP plate anchor to reinforce large structures.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.773-782
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• 2022

Estimation of cable tension through proper measurements is one of the essential tasks in evaluating the safety of cable structures. In this paper, a study on cable tension estimation using the built-in accelerometer and camera in a smartphone was conducted. For the experimental study, visual displacement measurement using a smartphone camera and acceleration measurement using a built-in accelerometer were performed in the cable-stayed bridge model. The estimated natural frequencies and transformed tensions from these measurements were compared with the theoretical values and results from the normal visual displacement method. Through comparison, it can be seen that the error between the method using the smartphone and the normal visual displacement is sufficiently small to be acceptable. It has also been shown that those errors are much smaller than the difference between the values calculated by the theoretical model. These results show that the deviation according to the type of measurement method is not large and it is rather important to use an appropriate mathematical model. In conclusion, in the case of cable tension estimation, it can be said that the visual displacement measurement and acceleration using a smartphone can be a sufficiently applicable method, just like the normal visual displacement method. It is also noteworthy that the smartphone accelerometer has a larger magnitude error and has more limitations such as high-frequency sampling instability compared to the visual displacement method, but shows almost the same performance as the visual displacement method in this cable tension estimation.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.161-168
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• 2021

Cracks affect the robustness of infrastructures such as buildings, bridge, pavement, and pipelines. This paper presents an automated crack detection system which detect cracks in diverse surfaces. We first constructed the combined crack dataset, consists of multiple crack datasets in diverse domains presented in prior studies. Then, state-of-the-art deep learning models in computer vision tasks including VGG, ResNet, WideResNet, ResNeXt, DenseNet, and EfficientNet, were used to validate the performance of crack detection. We divided the combined dataset into train (80%) and test set (20%) to evaluate the employed models. DenseNet121 showed the highest accuracy at 96.20% with relatively low number of parameters compared to other models. Based on the validation procedures of the advanced deep learning models in crack detection task, we shed light on the cost-effective automated crack detection system which can be applied to different surfaces and structures with low computing resources.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.561-571
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• 2021

Cofferdams made of teel sheet piles are commonly utilized as support structures for excavation of sea-crossing bridge foundations. As cofferdams are often subject to tide variation, it is imperative to consider potential effects of tide on stability and serviceability of sheet piles, particularly, ultralong steel sheet piles (USSPs). In this study, a real USSP cofferdam constructed using new construction technology in Nanxi River was reported. The design of key parts of USSP cofferdam in the presence of tidal action was first introduced followed by the description of entire construction technology and associated monitoring results. Subsequently, a three-dimensional finite-element model corresponding to all construction steps was established to back-analyze measured deflection of USSPs. Finally, a series of parametric studies was carried out to investigate effects of tide level, soil parameters, support stiffness and construction sequence on lateral deflection of USSPs. Monitoring results indicate that the maximum deflection during construction occurred near the riverbed. In addition, measured stress of USSPs showed that stability of USSP cofferdam strengthened as construction stages proceeded. Moreover, the numerical back-analysis demonstrated that the USSP cofferdam fulfilled the safety requirements for construction under tidal action. The maximum deflection of USSPs subject to high tide was only 13.57 mm at a depth of -4 m. Sensitivity analyses results showed that the design of USSP cofferdam system must be further improved for construction in cohesionless soils. Furthermore, the 5th strut level before concreting played an indispensable role in controlling lateral deflection of USSPs. It was also observed that pumping out water before concreting base slab could greatly simplify and benefit construction program. On the other hand, the simplification in construction procedures could induce seepage inside the cofferdam, which additionally increased the deflection of USSPs by 10 mm on average.

• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.489-497
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• 2022

In this study, the fluidity, mechanical properties and microstructure of cement pastes with carbon nanotube (CNT) were experimentally investigated. The 6 types of cement paste mixes with different PCE:CNT and w/b had been manufactured, and several tests including flow, compressive strength, absorption and water porosity were performed on cement pastes with or without CNT.Additionally, microstructural observations such as x-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were carried out to examine hydrates formed in cement paste with CNT. As a result, it was found that the performance of cement pastes with CNT was better compared to that of control cement paste (OPC) due to both of hydration acceleration effect and filling effect. Furthermore, the SEM images clearly showed that CNT can bridge cracks formed in cement matrix. Conclusively, it is believed that the CNT, if mixed appropriately, could be an option as nono-materials to improve performance of concrete structures.