• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.285-297
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• 2003

Complementing recent advances made in the field of structural health monitoring and damage detection, the concept of a wireless sensing network with distributed computational power is proposed. The fundamental building block of the proposed sensing network is a wireless sensing unit capable of acquiring measurement data, interrogating the data and transmitting the data in real time. The computational core of a prototype wireless sensing unit can potentially be utilized for execution of embedded engineering analyses such as damage detection and system identification. To illustrate the computational capabilities of the proposed wireless sensing unit, the fast Fourier transform and auto-regressive time-series modeling are locally executed by the unit. Fast Fourier transforms and auto-regressive models are two important techniques that have been previously used for the identification of damage in structural systems. Their embedment illustrates the computational capabilities of the prototype wireless sensing unit and suggests strong potential for unit installation in automated structural health monitoring systems.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.51-69
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• 2016

Monitoring the performance and estimating the remaining useful life of aging civil infrastructure in the United States has been identified as a major objective in the civil engineering community. Structural health monitoring has emerged as a central tool to fulfill this objective. This paper presents a review of the major structural monitoring programs that have been recently implemented in the United States, focusing on the integrity and performance assessment of large-scale structural systems. Applications where response data from a monitoring program have been used to detect and correct structural deficiencies are highlighted. These applications include (but are not limited to): i) Post-earthquake damage assessment of buildings and bridges; ii) Monitoring of cables vibration in cable-stayed bridges; iii) Evaluation of the effectiveness of technologies for retrofit and seismic protection, such as base isolation systems; and iv) Structural damage assessment of bridges after impact loads resulting from ship collisions. These and many other applications show that a structural health monitoring program is a powerful tool for structural damage and condition assessment, that can be used as part of a comprehensive decision-making process about possible actions that can be undertaken in a large-scale civil infrastructure system after potentially damaging events.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.719-729
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• 2016

There are great needs of simple but reliable mechanical nonlinear behavior analysis and performance evaluation method for frames constructed by steel and concrete composite beams or columns when the structures subjected extreme loads, such as earthquake loads. This paper describes an approach of simplified macro-modelling for composite frames consisting of steel-concrete composite beams and CFST columns, and presents the performance evaluation procedure based on the pushover nonlinear analysis results. A four-story two-bay composite frame underground is selected as a study case. The establishment of the macro-model of the composite frame is guided by the characterization of nonlinear behaviors of composite structural members. Pushover analysis is conducted to obtain the lateral force versus top displacement curve of the overall structure. The identification method of damage degree of composite frames has been proposed. The damage evolution and development of this composite frame in case study has been analyzed. The failure mode of this composite frame is estimated as that the bottom CFST columns damage substantially resulting in the failure of the bottom story. Finally, the seismic performance of the composite frame with high strength steel is analyzed and compared with the frame with ordinary strength steel, and the result shows that the employment of high strength steel in the steel tube of CFST columns and steel beam of composite beams benefits the lateral resistance and elasticity resuming performance of composite frames.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.107-127
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• 2022

Structural health monitoring (SHM) has been related to damage identification with either operational loads or other environmental loading playing a significant complimentary role in terms of structural safety. In this study, a non-parametric method of time frequency analysis on the measurement is used to address the time-frequency representation for modal parameter estimation and system damage identification of structure. The method employs the wavelet decomposition of dynamic data by using the modified complex Morlet wavelet with variable central frequency (MCMW+VCF). Through detail discussion on the selection of model parameter in wavelet analysis, the method is applied to study the dynamic response of both steel structure and reinforced concrete frame under white noise excitation as well as earthquake excitation from shaking table test. Application of the method to building earthquake response measurement is also examined. It is shown that by using the spectrogram generated from MCMW+VCF method, with suitable selected model parameter, one can clearly identify the time-varying modal frequency of the reinforced concrete structure under earthquake excitation. Discussions on the advantages and disadvantages of the method through field experiments are also presented.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.35-51
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• 2013

Over the last two decades Wavelet Transformation (WT) method has been widely utilized for the damage identification of structures. The main objective of this paper is to discuss and present some of common shortcomings and limitations of mathematical software, as well as other precautionary measures that need to be considered when using them for wavelet analysis applications. Due to popular usage of MATLABMATLAB(R) comparing to other mathematical tools among researchers for data processing of structural responses through WT analysis, this software was chosen for specific study. To the best of the authors' knowledge, these limitations and observations have not been previously identified or discussed in the literature. In this work, a square plate with a severe damage, in form of a crack, parallel to the left edge of the plate is selected for a pilot study. The steady state harmonic response is used for measuring the deflection shape across the line parallel to one edge and perpendicular to the damage. Several criteria and cases such as the smallest size damage that can be detected, correlation between the crack width and the number of sampling points, and the influence of the damage thickness on the accuracy of the result are investigated.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.485-496
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• 2017

In this paper, damage detection has been introduced as an optimization problem and a two-step method has been proposed that can detect the location and severity of damage in truss structures precisely and reduce the volume of computations considerably. In the first step, using the residual force vector concept, the suspected damaged members are detected which will result in a reduction in the number of variables and hence a decrease in the search space dimensions. In the second step, the precise location and severity of damage in the members are identified using the genetic algorithm and the results of the first step. Considering the reduced search space, the algorithm can find the optimal points (i.e. the solution for the damage detection problem) with less computation cost. In this step, the Efficient Correlation Based Index (ECBI), that considers the structure's first few frequencies in both damaged and healthy states, is used as the objective function and some examples have been provided to check the efficiency of the proposed method; results have shown that the method is innovatively capable of detecting damage in truss structures.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.16 no.5 s.72
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• pp.543-553
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• 2004

This paper covered two related subjects: the use of the inverse modal perturbation technique to assess structural damage in existing structures; and the use of a seismic capacity evaluation to assess damaged structures, with the aid of the identified structural damage. The substructural identification and the Tikhonov regularization algorithm were incorporated for efficient damage assessment of complex and large frame structures. The seismic capacity of a damaged structure was evaluated by comparing the structure's seismic responses and seismic damage indices. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been investigated through the numerical simulation study for a twenty-story frame structure with undamaged and damaged cases, and also different earthquake excitations.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.525-540
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• 2016

The CFRP-confined circular concrete-filled steel tubular column is composed of concrete, steel, and CFRP. Its failure mechanics are complex. The most important difficulties are lack of an available method to establish a relationship between a specific damage mechanism and its acoustic emission (AE) characteristic parameter. In this study, AE technique was used to monitor the evolution of damage in CFRP-confined circular concrete-filled steel tubular columns. A fuzzy c-means method was developed to determine the relationship between the AE signal and failure mechanisms. Cluster analysis results indicate that the main AE sources include five types: matrix cracking, debonding, fiber fracture, steel buckling, and concrete crushing. This technology can not only totally separate five types of damage sources, but also make it easier to judge the damage evolution process. Furthermore, typical damage waveforms were analyzed through wavelet analysis based on the cluster results, and the damage modes were determined according to the frequency distribution of AE signals.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.11-20
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• 2017

For structural damage detection of shear buildings, this paper proposes a new concept using structural element mass-stiffness vector (SEMV) based on special mass and stiffness distribution characteristics. A corresponding damage identification method is developed combining the SEMV with the cross-model cross-mode (CMCM) model updating algorithm. For a shear building, a model is assumed at the beginning based on the building's distribution characteristics. The model is updated into two models corresponding to the healthy and damaged conditions, respectively, using the CMCM method according to the modal parameters of actual structure identified from the measured acceleration signals. Subsequently, the structural SEMV for each condition can be calculated from the updated model using the corresponding stiffness and mass correction factors, and then is utilized to form a new feature vector in which each element is calculated by dividing one element of SEMV in health condition by the corresponding element of SEMV in damage condition. Thus this vector can be viewed as a damage detection feature for its ability to identify the mass or stiffness variation between the healthy and damaged conditions. Finally, a numerical simulation and the laboratory experimental data from a test-bed structure at the Los Alamos National Laboratory were analyzed to verify the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed method. Both simulated and experimental results show that the proposed approach is able to detect the presence of structural mass and stiffness variation and to quantify the level of such changes.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.195-213
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• 2020

In this paper an extension to the method for the identification of mechanical parameters of nonlinear systems proposed in Breccolotti and Materazzi (2007) for MDoF systems is presented. It can be used for damage identification purposes when damage modifies the linear characteristics of the investigated structure. It is based on the following two main features: the solution of the Fokker-Planck equation that describes the response probabilistic properties of the system when it is excited by external Gaussian loads; and a model updating technique that minimizes the differences between the response of the actual system and that of a parametric system used to identify the unknown parameters. Numerical analysis, that simulate virtual experimental tests, are used in the paper to show the capabilities of the method and to analyse the conditions required for its application.