• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.247-261
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• 2017

In the field of dynamic measurement and structural damage identification, it is generally known that modal frequencies may be measured with higher accuracy than mode shapes. However, the number of natural frequencies within a measurable range is limited. Accessing additional forms of modal frequencies is thus desirable. The present study is concerned about the extraction of artificial boundary condition (ABC) frequencies from modal testing. The ABC frequencies correspond to the natural frequencies of the structure with a perturbed boundary condition, but they can be extracted from processing the frequency response functions (FRF) measured in a specific configuration from the structure in its existing state without the need of actually altering the physical support condition. This paper presents a comprehensive experimental investigation into the measurability of the ABC frequencies from physical experiments. It covers the testing procedure through modal testing, the data processing and data analysis requirements, and the FRF matrix operations leading to the extraction of the ABC frequencies. Specific sources of measurement errors and their effects on the accuracy of the extracted ABC frequencies are scrutinised. The extracted ABC frequencies are subsequently applied in the damage identification in beams by means of finite element model updating. Results demonstrate that it is possible to extract the first few ABC frequencies from the modal testing for a variety of artificial boundary conditions incorporating one or two virtual pin supports, and the inclusion of ABC frequencies enables the identification of structural damages without the need to involve the mode shape information.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.487-502
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• 2007

In recent decades there has been a trend towards improved mechanical characteristics of materials used in footbridge construction. It has enabled engineers to design lighter, slender and more aesthetic structures. As a result of these construction trends, many footbridges have become more susceptible to vibrations when subjected to dynamic loads. In addition to this, some inherit modelling uncertainties related to a lack of information on the as-built structure, such as boundary conditions, material properties, and the effects of non-structural elements make difficult to evaluate modal properties of footbridges, analytically. For these purposes, modal testing of footbridges is used to rectify these problems after construction. This paper describes an arch type steel footbridge, its analytical modelling, modal testing and finite element model calibration. A modern steel footbridge which has arch type structural system and located on the Karadeniz coast road in Trabzon, Turkey is selected as an application. An analytical modal analysis is performed on the developed 3D finite element model of footbridge to provide the analytical frequencies and mode shapes. The field ambient vibration tests on the footbridge deck under natural excitation such as human walking and traffic loads are conducted. The output-only modal parameter identification is carried out by using the peak picking of the average normalized power spectral densities in the frequency domain and stochastic subspace identification in the time domain, and dynamic characteristics such as natural frequencies mode shapes and damping ratios are determined. The finite element model of footbridge is calibrated to minimize the differences between analytically and experimentally estimated modal properties by changing some uncertain modelling parameters such as material properties. At the end of the study, maximum differences in the natural frequencies are reduced from 22% to only %5 and good agreement is found between analytical and experimental dynamic characteristics such as natural frequencies, mode shapes by model calibration.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.20 no.2 s.69
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• pp.1-7
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• 2006

This paper, presents a comparison between numerical analysis and field test on a real offshore platform in Bohai Bay, China. This platform is a steel jacket offshore platform with vertical piles. The field testing under wave-induced force and wind force etc. was conducted, in order to obtain the dynamic parameters of the structure, including the frequencies of the jacket platform, as well as the corresponding damping ratios and mode shapes. The natural excitation technology (NexT) combined with eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA) and the peak picking (PP) method in frequency domain are carried out for modal parameter indentification under operational conditions. The three-dimeansional finite element model (FEM) is constructed by ANSYS and analytical modal analysis is performed to generate modal parameters. The analytical results were compared with experimental results. A good agreement was achieved between the finite element and analysis and field test results. It is further demonstrated that the numerical and experimental modal analysis provide a comprehensive study on the dynamic properties of the jacket platform. According to the analysis results, the modal parameters identification under ambient excitation can calibrate finite element model of the jacket platform structures, or can be used for the structural health monitoring system.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.209-230
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• 2016

The Canton Tower is a high-rise slender structure with a height of 610 m. A structural health monitoring system has been instrumented on the structure, by which data is continuously monitored. This paper presents an investigation on the identified modal properties of the Canton Tower using ambient vibration data collected during a whole day (24 hours). A recently developed Fast Bayesian FFT method is utilized for operational modal analysis on the basis of the measured acceleration data. The approach views modal identification as an inference problem where probability is used as a measure for the relative plausibility of outcomes given a model of the structure and measured data. Focusing on the first several modes, the modal properties of this supertall slender structure are identified on non-overlapping time windows during the whole day under normal wind speed. With the identified modal parameters and the associated posterior uncertainty, the distribution of the modal parameters in the future is predicted and assessed. By defining the modal root-mean-square value in terms of the power spectral density of modal force identified, the identified natural frequencies and damping ratios versus the vibration amplitude are investigated with the associated posterior uncertainty considered. Meanwhile, the correlations between modal parameters and temperature, modal parameters and wind speed are studied. For comparison purpose, the frequency domain decomposition (FDD) method is also utilized to identify the modal parameters. The identified results obtained by the Bayesian method, the FDD method and a finite element model are compared and discussed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.919-935
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• 2015

The Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) consists of empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and Hilbert spectral analysis. EMD has been successfully applied for identification of mode shapes of structures based on input-output approaches. This paper aims to extend application of EMD for output-only identification of mode shapes of linear structures. In this regard, a new simple and efficient method based on band-pass filtering and EMD is proposed. Having rather accurate estimates of modal frequencies from measured responses, the proposed method is capable to extract the corresponding mode shapes. In order to evaluate the accuracy and performance of the proposed identification method, two case studies are considered. In the first case, the performance of the method is validated through the analysis of simulated responses obtained from an analytical structural model with known dynamical properties. The low-amplitude responses recorded from the UCLA Factor Building during the 2004 Parkfield earthquake are used in the second case to identify the first three mode shapes of the building in three different directions. The results demonstrate the remarkable ability of the proposed method in correct estimation of mode shapes of the linear structures based on rather accurate modal frequencies.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.431-444
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• 2016

This paper was written in the context of a benchmark study promoted by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University using data samples collected in an instrumented cable-stayed bridge. The main goal of the benchmark test was to study the identification of the bridge modes of vibration under different wind conditions. In this contribution, the tools developed at ViBest/FEUP for automated data processing of setups collected by dynamic monitoring systems are presented and applied to the data made available in the context of the benchmark study. The applied tools are based on parametric output only modal identification methods combined with clustering algorithms. The obtained results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms succeeded to automatically identify the modes with relevant contribution for the bridge response under different wind conditions.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.443-450
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• 2003

System identification techniques can be used to build a baseline modal model for a flawed structure that has no modal information on its as-built state. The accuracy of a system identification proposed by Stubbs and Kim is analyzed for plate-girder bridges and its impact on the accuracy of damage detection in those structures is also analyzed. A laboratory-scale model plate-girder is experimentally tested and the initial four bending modes are examined for certain damage scenarios. The performance of individual baseline modal models is assessed by detecting damage in the model structure.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.427-442
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• 2009

In this paper, the acceptability of system identification results for health monitoring of instrumented bridges is addressed. This is conducted by comparing the confidence intervals of identified modal parameters for a bridge in California, namely Truckee I80/Truckee river bridge, with the change of these parameters caused by several damage scenarios. A challenge to the accuracy of the identified modal parameters involves consequences regarding the damage detection and health monitoring, as some of the identified modal information is essentially not useable for acquiring a reliable damage diagnosis of the bridge system. Use of strong motion data has limitations that should not be ignored. The results and conclusions underline these limitations while presenting the opportunities offered by system identification using strong motion data for better understanding and monitoring the health of bridge systems.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.237-244
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• 2017

This study proposes a numerical model to explain the closely placed double modes in the vibration of a layered stone pagoda system. The friction surface between the stones is modelled as the Timoshenko finite element while each stone layer is modelled as a rigid body. It is assumed that the irregular asperity on the friction surface enables the stone to be excited. This results in the closely placed modes that are composed of natural modes and self-excited modes. To examine the validity of the proposed model, a set of modal testing and analysis for a layered stone pagoda mock-up model has been conducted and a set of closely placed double modes are extracted. Applying the extended sensitivity-based system identification technique, the various system parameters are identified so that the modal parameters of the proposed numerical model are the same with those of the experimental mock-up. For a horizontal impulse excitation, the simulated acceleration responses are compared with measurements.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.471-489
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• 2016

Modal identification based on ambient vibration data has attracted extensive attention in the past few decades. Since the excitation for ambient vibration tests is mainly from the environmental effects such as wind and traffic loading and no artificial excitation is applied, the signal to noise (s/n) ratio of the data acquired plays an important role in mode identifiability. Under ambient vibration conditions, certain modes may not be identifiable due to a low s/n ratio. This paper presents a study on the mode identifiability of an instrumented cable-stayed bridge with the use of acceleration response data measured by a long-term structural health monitoring system. A recently developed fast Bayesian FFT method is utilized to perform output-only modal identification. In addition to identifying the most probable values (MPVs) of modal parameters, the associated posterior uncertainties can be obtained by this method. Likewise, the power spectral density of modal force can be identified, and thus it is possible to obtain the modal s/n ratio. This provides an efficient way to investigate the mode identifiability. Three groups of data are utilized in this study: the first one is 10 data sets including six collected under normal wind conditions and four collected during typhoons; the second one is three data sets with wind speeds of about 7.5 m/s; and the third one is some blind data. The first two groups of data are used to perform ambient modal identification and help to estimate a critical value of the s/n ratio above which the deficient mode is identifiable, while the third group of data is used to perform verification. A couple of fundamental modes are identified, including the ones in the vertical and transverse directions respectively and coupled in both directions. The uncertainty and s/n ratio of the deficient mode are investigated and discussed. A critical value of the modal s/n ratio is suggested to evaluate the mode identifiability of the deficient mode. The work presented in this paper could provide a base for the vibration-based condition assessment in future.