• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.39-52
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• 2007

This paper describes an experimental study on structural health monitoring of a 1:3-scaled one-story concrete frame subjected to seismic damage and retrofit. The structure is tested on a shaking table by exerting successively enhanced earthquake excitations until severe damage, and then retrofitted using fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP). The modal properties of the tested structure at trifling, moderate, severe damage and strengthening stages are measured by subjecting it to a small-amplitude white-noise excitation after each earthquake attack. Making use of the measured global modal frequencies and a validated finite element model of the tested structure, a neural network method is developed to quantitatively identify the stiffness reduction due to damage and the stiffness enhancement due to strengthening. The identification results are compared with 'true' damage severities that are defined and determined based on visual inspection and local impact testing. It is shown that by the use of FRP retrofit, the stiffness of the severely damaged structure can be recovered to the level as in the trifling damage stage.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.223-242
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• 2015

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have emerged as a novel solution to many of the challenges of structural health monitoring (SHM) in civil engineering structures. While research projects using WSNs are ongoing worldwide, implementations of WSNs on full-scale structures are limited. In this study, a WSN is deployed on a full-scale 17.3m-long, 11-bay highway sign support structure to investigate the ability to use vibration response data to detect damage induced in the structure. A multi-level damage detection strategy is employed for this structure: the Angle-between-String-and-Horizon (ASH) flexibility-based algorithm as the Level I and the Axial Strain (AS) flexibility-based algorithm as the Level II. For the proposed multi-level damage detection strategy, a coarse resolution Level I damage detection will be conducted first to detect the damaged region(s). Subsequently, a fine resolution Level II damage detection will be conducted in the damaged region(s) to locate the damaged element(s). Several damage cases are created on the full-scale highway sign support structure to validate the multi-level detection strategy. The multi-level damage detection strategy is shown to be successful in detecting damage in the structure in these cases.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.231-244
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• 2013

An efficient method is proposed here to identify multiple damage cases in structural systems using the concepts of flexibility matrix and strain energy of a structure. The flexibility matrix of the structure is accurately estimated from the first few mode shapes and natural frequencies. Then, the change of strain energy of a structural element, due to damage, evaluated by the columnar coefficients of the flexibility matrix is used to construct a damage indicator. This new indicator is named here as flexibility strain energy based index (FSEBI). In order to assess the performance of the proposed method for structural damage detection, two benchmark structures having a number of damage scenarios are considered. Numerical results demonstrate that the method can accurately locate the structural damage induced. It is also revealed that the magnitudes of the FSEBI depend on the damage severity.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1233-1250
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• 2016

Cracks in plate-like structures are some of the main reasons for destruction of the entire structure. In this study, a novel two-stage methodology is proposed for damage detection of flexural plates using an optimized artificial neural network. In the first stage, location of damages in plates is investigated using curvature-moment and curvature-moment derivative concepts. After detecting the damaged areas, the equations for damage severity detection are solved via Bat Algorithm (BA). In the second stage, in order to efficiently reduce the computational cost of model updating during the optimization process of damage severity detection, multiple damage location assurance criterion index based on the frequency change vector of structures are evaluated using properly trained cascade feed-forward neural network (CFNN) as a surrogate model. In order to achieve the most generalized neural network as a surrogate model, its structure is optimized using binary version of BA. To validate this proposed solution method, two examples are presented. The results indicate that after determining the damage location based on curvature-moment derivative concept, the proposed solution method for damage severity detection leads to significant reduction of computational time compared with direct finite element method. Furthermore, integrating BA with the efficient approximation mechanism of finite element model, maintains the acceptable accuracy of damage severity detection.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.955-982
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• 2016

Recent studies integrating vibration control and structural health monitoring (SHM) use control devices and control algorithms to enable system identification and damage detection. In this study real-time SHM is used to enhance structural vibration control and reduce damage. A newly proposed control algorithm, including integrated real-time SHM and semi-active control strategy, is presented to mitigate both damage and seismic response of the main structure under strong seismic ground motion. The semi-active independently variable stiffness (SAIVS) device is used as semi-active control device in this investigation. The proper stiffness of SAIVS device is obtained using a new developed semi-active control algorithm based on real-time damage tracking of structure by damage detection algorithm based on identified system Markov parameters (DDA/ISMP) method. A three bay five story steel braced frame structure, which is equipped with one SAIVS device at each story, is employed to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. The obtained results show that the proposed control algorithm could significantly decrease damage in most parts of the structure. Also, the dynamic response of the structure is effectively reduced by using the proposed control algorithm during four strong earthquakes. In comparison to passive on and off cases, the results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed control algorithm in decreasing both damage and dynamic responses of structure is significantly enhanced than the passive cases. Furthermore, from the energy consumption point of view the maximum and the cumulative control force in the proposed control algorithm is less than the passive-on case, considerably.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.347-361
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• 2016

A two-stage method for damage detection in truss systems is proposed. In the first stage, a modal residual vector based indicator (MRVBI) is introduced to locate the potentially damaged elements and reduce the damage variables of a truss structure. Then, in the second stage, a differential evolution (DE) based optimization method is implemented to find the actual site and extent of damage in the structure. In order to assess the efficiency of the proposed damage detection method, two numerical examples including a 2D-truss and 3D-truss are considered. Simulation results reveal the high performance of the method for accurately identifying the damage location and severity of trusses with considering the measurement noise.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.351-364
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• 2019

Earthquake and fire are both severe disasters for building structures. Since earthquake-induced damage will weaken the structure and reduce its fire endurance, it is important to investigate the behavior of structure subjected to post-earthquake fire. In this paper, steel-concrete composite beam-to-column joints were tested under fire with pre-damage caused by cyclic loads. Beforehand, three control specimens with no pre-damage were tested to capture the static, cyclic and fire-resistant performance of intact joints. Experimental data including strain, deflection and temperature recorded at several points are presented and analyzed to quantify the influence of cyclic damage on fire resistance. It is indicated that the fire endurance of damaged joints decreased with the increase of damage level, mainly due to faster heating-up rate after cyclic damage. However, cracks induced by cyclic loading in concrete are found to mitigate the concrete spalling at elevated temperatures. Moreover, the relationship between fire resistance and damage degree is revealed from experimental results, which can be applied in fire safety design and is worthwhile for further research.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.475-486
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• 2023

Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) is an important task of civil engineering structure monitoring and inspection, but minor damage such as small cracks in local structure is difficult to observe. If cracks continued expansion may cause partial or even overall damage to the structure. Therefore, monitoring and detecting the structure in the early stage of crack propagation is important. The crack detection technology based on machine vision has been widely studied, but there are still some problems such as bad recognition effect for small cracks. In this paper, we proposed a deep learning method based on sweep signals to evaluate concrete surface crack with a width less than 1 mm. Two convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are used to analyze the one-dimensional (1D) frequency sweep signal and the two-dimensional (2D) time-frequency image, respectively, and the probability value of average damage (ADPV) is proposed to evaluate the minor damage of structural. Finally, we use the standard deviation of energy ratio change (ERVSD) and infrared thermography (IRT) to compare with ADPV to verify the effectiveness of the method proposed in this paper. The experiment results show that the method proposed in this paper can effectively predict whether the concrete surface is damaged and the severity of damage.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.459-486
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• 2013

A novel damage classification method based on wavelet packet transform and statistical analysis is developed in this study for structural health monitoring. The response signal of a structure under an impact load is normalized and then decomposed into wavelet packet components. Energies of these wavelet packet components are then calculated to obtain the energy distribution. Statistical similarity comparison based on an F-test is used to classify the structure from changes in the wavelet packet energy distribution. A statistical indicator is developed to describe the damage extent of the structure. This approach is applied to the test results from simply supported reinforced concrete beams in the laboratory. Cases with single and two damages are created from static loading, and accelerations of the structure from under impact loads are analyzed. Results show that the method can be used with no reference baseline measurement and model for the damage monitoring and assessment of the structure with alarms at a specified significance level.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.673-687
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• 2017

A three-dimensional; structural health monitoring; vertical; planar; cross-sample entropy; multiscaleA three-dimensional structural health monitoring (SHM) system based on multiscale entropy (MSE) and multiscale cross-sample entropy (MSCE) is proposed in this paper. The damage condition of a structure is rapidly screened through MSE analysis by measuring the ambient vibration signal on the roof of the structure. Subsequently, the vertical damage location is evaluated by analyzing individual signals on different floors through vertical MSCE analysis. The results are quantified using the vertical damage index (DI). Planar MSCE analysis is applied to detect the damage orientation of damaged floors by analyzing the biaxial signals in four directions on each damaged floor. The results are physically quantified using the planar DI. With progressive vertical and planar analysis methods, the damaged floors and damage locations can be accurately and efficiently diagnosed. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed system, performance evaluation was conducted on a three-dimensional seven-story steel structure. According to the results, the damage condition and elevation were reliably detected. Moreover, the damage location was efficiently quantified by the DI. Average accuracy rates of 93% (vertical) and 91% (planar) were achieved through the proposed DI method. A reference measurement of the current stage can initially launch the SHM system; therefore, structural damage can be reliably detected after major earthquakes.