• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.579-583
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to suggest IDE (Incremental Displacement Estimation) algorithm for the previously proposed visually servoed paired structured light system. The system is composed of two sides facing with each other, each with one or two lasers with a 2-DOF manipulator, a camera, and a screen. The 6-DOF displacement between two sides can be estimated by calculating the positions of the projected laser beams and rotation angles of the manipulators. In the previous study, Newton-Raphson or EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) has been used as an estimation algorithm. Although the various experimental tests have validated the performance of the system and estimation algorithms, the computation time is relatively long since aforementioned algorithms are iterative methods. Therefore, in this paper, a non-iterative incremental displacement estimation algorithm which updates the previously estimated displacement with a difference of the previous and the current observed data is introduced. To verify the performance of the algorithm, experimental tests have been performed. The results show that the proposed non-iterative algorithm estimates the displacement with the same level of accuracy compared to the EKF with multiple iterations with significantly less computation time.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.399-418
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• 2015

Automated damage detection through Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques has become an active area of research in the bridge engineering community but widespread implementation on in-service infrastructure still presents some challenges. In the meantime, visual inspection remains as the most common method for condition assessment even though collected information is highly subjective and certain types of damage can be overlooked by the inspector. In this article, a Frequency Response Functions-based model updating algorithm is evaluated using experimentally collected data from the University of Central Florida (UCF)-Benchmark Structure. A protocol for measurement selection and a regularization technique are presented in this work in order to provide the most well-conditioned model updating scenario for the target structure. The proposed technique is composed of two main stages. First, the initial finite element model (FEM) is calibrated through model updating so that it captures the dynamic signature of the UCF Benchmark Structure in its healthy condition. Second, based upon collected data from the damaged condition, the updating process is repeated on the baseline (healthy) FEM. The difference between the updated parameters from subsequent stages revealed both location and extent of damage in a "blind" scenario, without any previous information about type and location of damage.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.485-500
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• 2023

Machine learning-based structural health monitoring (ML-based SHM) methods are researched extensively in the recent decade due to the availability of advanced information and sensing technology. ML methods are well-known for their pattern recognition capability for complex problems. However, the main obstacle of ML-based SHM is that it often requires pre-collected historical data for model training. In most actual scenarios, damage presence can be detected using the unsupervised learning method through anomaly detection, but to further identify the damage types would require prior knowledge or historical events as references. This creates the cold-start problem, especially for new and unobserved structures. Modal-based methods identify damages based on the changes in the structural global properties but often require dense measurements for accurate results. Therefore, a two-stage hybrid modal-machine learning damage detection scheme is proposed. The first stage detects damage presence using Principal Component Analysis-Frequency Response Function (PCA-FRF) in an unsupervised manner, whereas the second stage further identifies the damage. To solve the cold-start problem, mode shape assessment using the first mode is initiated when no trained model is available yet in the second stage. The damage identified by the modal-based method would be stored for future training. This work highlights the performance of the scheme in alleviating the cold-start issue as it transitions through different phases, starting from zero damage sample available. Results showed that single and multiple damages can be identified at an acceptable accuracy level even when training samples are limited.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.243-262
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• 2015

Optimal sensor placement (OSP) is a critical issue in construction and implementation of a sophisticated structural health monitoring (SHM) system. The uncertainties in the identified structural parameters based on the measured data may dramatically reduce the reliability of the condition evaluation results. In this paper, the information entropy, which provides an uncertainty metric for the identified structural parameters, is adopted as the performance measure for a sensor configuration, and the OSP problem is formulated as the multi-objective optimization problem of extracting the Pareto optimal sensor configurations that simultaneously minimize the appropriately defined information entropy indices. The nondirective movement glowworm swarm optimization (NMGSO) algorithm (based on the basic glowworm swarm optimization (GSO) algorithm) is proposed for identifying the effective Pareto optimal sensor configurations. The one-dimensional binary coding system is introduced to code the glowworms instead of the real vector coding method. The Hamming distance is employed to describe the divergence of different glowworms. The luciferin level of the glowworm is defined as a function of the rank value (RV) and the crowding distance (CD), which are deduced by non-dominated sorting. In addition, nondirective movement is developed to relocate the glowworms. A numerical simulation of a long-span suspension bridge is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the NMGSO algorithm. The results indicate that the NMGSO algorithm is capable of capturing the Pareto optimal sensor configurations with high accuracy and efficiency.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.997-1018
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• 2015

Structural health monitoring along with damage detection and assessment of its severity level in non-accessible reinforced concrete members using piezoelectric materials becomes essential since engineers often face the problem of detecting hidden damage. In this study, the potential of the detection of flexural damage state in the lower part of the mid-span area of a simply supported reinforced concrete beam using piezoelectric sensors is analytically investigated. Two common severity levels of flexural damage are examined: (i) cracking of concrete that extends from the external lower fiber of concrete up to the steel reinforcement and (ii) yielding of reinforcing bars that occurs for higher levels of bending moment and after the flexural cracking. The purpose of this investigation is to apply finite element modeling using admittance based signature data to analyze its accuracy and to check the potential use of this technique to monitor structural damage in real-time. It has been indicated that damage detection capability greatly depends on the frequency selection rather than on the level of the harmonic excitation loading. This way, the excitation loading sequence can have a level low enough that the technique may be considered as applicable and effective for real structures. Further, it is concluded that the closest applied piezoelectric sensor to the flexural damage demonstrates higher overall sensitivity to structural damage in the entire frequency band for both damage states with respect to the other used sensors. However, the observed sensitivity of the other sensors becomes comparatively high in the peak values of the root mean square deviation index.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.393-407
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• 2023

To assess structural condition in a non-destructive manner, computer vision-based structural health monitoring (SHM) has become a focus. Compared to traditional contact-type sensors, the advantages of computer vision-based measurement systems include lower installation costs and broader measurement areas. In this study, we propose a novel computer vision-based vibration measurement and coarse-to-fine damage assessment method for truss bridges. First, a deep learning model FairMOT is introduced to track the regions of interest (ROIs) that include joints to enhance the automation performance compared with traditional target tracking algorithms. To calculate the displacement of the tracked ROIs accurately, a normalized cross-correlation method is adopted to fine-tune the offset, while the Harris corner matching is utilized to correct the vibration displacement errors caused by the non-parallel between the truss plane and the image plane. Then, based on the advantages of the stochastic damage locating vector (SDLV) and Bayesian inference-based stochastic model updating (BI-SMU), they are combined to achieve the coarse-to-fine localization of the truss bridge's damaged elements. Finally, the severity quantification of the damaged components is performed by the BI-SMU. The experiment results show that the proposed method can accurately recognize the vibration displacement and evaluate the structural damage.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.55-71
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• 2013

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is vital for detecting the onset of damage and for preventing catastrophic failure of civil infrastructure systems. In particular, piezoelectric transducers have the ability to excite and actively interrogate structures (e.g., using surface waves) while measuring their response for sensing and damage detection. In fact, piezoelectric transducers such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT) and poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) have been used for various laboratory/field tests and possess significant advantages as compared to visual inspection and vibration-based methods, to name a few. However, PZTs are inherently brittle, and PVDF films do not possess high piezoelectricity, thereby limiting each of these devices to certain specific applications. The objective of this study is to design, characterize, and validate piezoelectric nanocomposites consisting of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles assembled in a PVDF copolymer matrix for sensing and SHM applications. These films provide greater mechanical flexibility as compared to PZTs, yet possess enhanced piezoelectricity as compared to pristine PVDF copolymers. This study started with spin coating dispersed ZnO- and PVDF-TrFE-based solutions to fabricate the piezoelectric nanocomposites. The concentration of ZnO nanoparticles was varied from 0 to 20 wt.% (in 5 % increments) to determine their influence on bulk film piezoelectricity. Second, their electric polarization responses were obtained for quantifying thin film remnant polarization, which is directly correlated to piezoelectricity. Based on these results, the films were poled (at 50 $MV-m^{-1}$) to permanently align their electrical domains and to enhance their bulk film piezoelectricity. Then, a series of hammer impact tests were conducted, and the voltage generated by poled ZnO-based thin films was compared to commercially poled PVDF copolymer thin films. The hammer impact tests showed comparable results between the prototype and commercial samples, and increasing ZnO content provided enhanced piezoelectric performance. Lastly, the films were further validated for sensing using different energy levels of hammer impact, different distances between the impact locations and the film electrodes, and cantilever free vibration testing for dynamic strain sensing.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.237-250
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• 2022

Structural health monitoring (SHM) plays an important role in ensuring the safety and functionality of critical civil infrastructure. In recent years, numerous researchers have conducted studies to develop computer vision and machine learning techniques for SHM purposes, offering the potential to reduce the laborious nature and improve the effectiveness of field inspections. However, high-quality vision data from various types of damaged structures is relatively difficult to obtain, because of the rare occurrence of damaged structures. The lack of data is particularly acute for fatigue crack in steel bridge girder. As a result, the lack of data for training purposes is one of the main issues that hinders wider application of these powerful techniques for SHM. To address this problem, the use of synthetic data is proposed in this article to augment real-world datasets used for training neural networks that can identify fatigue cracks in steel structures. First, random textures representing the surface of steel structures with fatigue cracks are created and mapped onto a 3D graphics model. Subsequently, this model is used to generate synthetic images for various lighting conditions and camera angles. A fully convolutional network is then trained for two cases: (1) using only real-word data, and (2) using both synthetic and real-word data. By employing synthetic data augmentation in the training process, the crack identification performance of the neural network for the test dataset is seen to improve from 35% to 40% and 49% to 62% for intersection over union (IoU) and precision, respectively, demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed approach.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.989-994
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• 2011

This study aims to demonstrate the feasibility of a visual servoing-based paired structured light (SL) robot for estimating structural displacement under various external loads. The former paired SL robot, which was proposed in the previous study, was composed of two screens facing with each other, each with one or two lasers and a camera. It was found that the paired SL robot could estimate the translational and rotational displacement each in 3-DOF with high accuracy and low cost. However, the measurable range is fairly limited due to the limited screen size. In this paper, therefore, a visual servoing-based 2-DOF manipulator which controls the pose of lasers is introduced. By controlling the positions of the projected laser points to be on the screen, the proposed robot can estimate the displacement regardless of the screen size. We performed various simulations and experimental tests to verify the performance of the newly proposed robot. The results show that the proposed system overcomes the range limitation of the former system and it can be utilized to accurately estimate the structural displacement.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.383-392
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• 2023

Post-earthquake building condition assessment is crucial for subsequent rescue and remediation and can be automated by emerging computer vision and deep learning technologies. This study is based on an endeavour for the 2nd International Competition of Structural Health Monitoring (IC-SHM 2021). The task package includes five image segmentation objectives - defects (crack/spall/rebar exposure), structural component, and damage state. The structural component and damage state tasks are identified as the priority that can form actionable decisions. A multi-task Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is proposed to conduct the two major tasks simultaneously. The rest 3 sub-tasks (spall/crack/rebar exposure) were incorporated as auxiliary tasks. By synchronously learning defect information (spall/crack/rebar exposure), the multi-task CNN model outperforms the counterpart single-task models in recognizing structural components and estimating damage states. Particularly, the pixel-level damage state estimation witnesses a mIoU (mean intersection over union) improvement from 0.5855 to 0.6374. For the defect detection tasks, rebar exposure is omitted due to the extremely biased sample distribution. The segmentations of crack and spall are automated by single-task U-Net but with extra efforts to resample the provided data. The segmentation of small objects (spall and crack) benefits from the resampling method, with a substantial IoU increment of nearly 10%.