• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.60 no.5
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• pp.875-890
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• 2016

A new structural damage index for seismic fragility analysis of reinforced concrete columns is developed based on a local tensile damage variable of the Lee and Fenves plastic-damage model. The proposed damage index is formulated from the nonlinear regression of experimental column test data. In contrast to the response-based damage index, the proposed damage index is well-defined in the form of a single monotonically-increasing function of the volume weighted average of local damage distribution, and provides the necessary computability and objectivity. It is shown that the present damage index can be appropriately zoned to be used in seismic fragility analysis. An application example in the computational seismic fragility evaluation of reinforced concrete columns validates the effectiveness of the proposed damage index.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.315-341
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• 2007

A sudden change of stiffness in a structure, associated with the events such as weld fracture and brace breakage, will cause a discontinuity in acceleration response time histories recorded in the vicinity of damage location at damage time instant. A new damage index is proposed and implemented in this paper to detect the damage time instant, location, and severity of a structure due to a sudden change of structural stiffness. The proposed damage index is suitable for online structural health monitoring applications. It can also be used in conjunction with the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) for damage detection without using the intermittency check. Numerical simulation using a five-story shear building under different types of excitation is executed to assess the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed damage index and damage detection approach for the building at different damage levels. The sensitivity of the damage index to the intensity and frequency range of measurement noise is also examined. The results from this study demonstrate that the damage index and damage detection approach proposed can accurately identify the damage time instant and location in the building due to a sudden loss of stiffness if measurement noise is below a certain level. The relation between the damage severity and the proposed damage index is linear. The wavelet-transform (WT) and the EMD with intermittency check are also applied to the same building for the comparison of detection efficiency between the proposed approach, the WT and the EMD.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.67 no.4
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• pp.327-336
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• 2018

In this study, an efficient damage index is proposed to identify multiple damage cases in structural systems using the concepts of frequency response function (FRF) matrix and strain energy of a structure. The index is defined based on the change of strain energy of an element due to damage. For obtaining the strain energy stored in elements, the columnar coefficients of the FRF matrix is used. The new indicator is named here as frequency response function strain energy based index (FRFSEBI). In order to assess the performance of the proposed index for structural damage detection, some benchmark structures having a number of damage scenarios are considered. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed index even with considering noise can accurately identify the actual location and approximate severity of the damage. In order to demonstrate the high efficiency of the proposed damage index, its performance is also compared with that of the flexibility strain energy based index (FSEBI) provided in the literature.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.581-609
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• 2014

Reinforced concrete (RC) structures are likely to experience damage when subjected to earthquakes. Damage index (DI) has been recognised as an advanced tool of quantitatively expressing the extent of damage in such structures. Last 30 years have seen many concepts for DI proposed in order to calibrate the observed levels of damage. The current research briefly reviews all available concepts and investigates their relative merits and limitations with a view to proposing a new concept based on residual deformation. Currently available DIs are classified into two broad categories - non-cumulative DI and cumulative DI. Non-cumulative DIs do not include the effects of cyclic loading, whilst the cumulative concepts produce more rational indication of the level of damage in case of earthquake excitations. Ideally, a DI should vary within a scale of 0 to 1 with 0 representing the state of elastic response, and 1 referring to the state of total collapse. Some of the available DIs do not satisfy these criteria. A new DI based on energy is proposed herein and its performances, both for static and for cyclic loadings, are compared with those obtained using the most widely accepted DI in literature. The proposed DI demonstrates a rational way to predict the extent of damage for a number of case studies. More research is encouraged to address some identified issues.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.447-455
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• 2021

Research on damage detection methods in structures began a few decades ago with the introduction of methods based on structural vibration frequencies, which, of course, continues to this day. The value of important structures, on the one hand, and the countless maintenance costs on the other hand, have led researchers to always try to identify more accurate methods to diagnose damage to structures in the early stages. Among these, one of the most important and widely used methods in damage detection is the use of time-frequency representations. By using time-frequency representations, it is possible to process signals simultaneously in the time and frequency domains. In this research, the Short-Time Fourier transform, a known time-frequency function, has been used to process signals and identify the system. Besides, a new damage index has been introduced to identify damages in concrete piers of bridges. The proposed method has relatively simple calculations. To evaluate the method, the finite element model of an existing concrete bridge was created using as-built details. Based on the results, the method identifies the damages with high accuracy.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.129-142
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• 2018

The current paper introduces a new approach for development of damage index to obtain the maximum damage in the reinforced concrete frames caused by as-recorded single and consecutive earthquakes. To do so, two sets of strong ground motions are selected based on maximum and approximately maximum peak ground acceleration (PGA) from "PEER" and "USGS" centers. Consecutive earthquakes in the first and second groups, not only occurred in similar directions and same stations, but also their real time gaps between successive shocks are less than 10 minutes and 10 days, respectively. In the following, a suite of six concrete moment resisting frames, including 3, 5, 7, 10, 12 and 15 stories, are designed in OpenSees software and analyzed for more than 850 times under two groups of as-recorded strong ground motion records with/without seismic sequences phenomena. The idealized multilayer artificial neural networks, with the least value of Mean Square Error (MSE) and maximum value of regression (R) between outputs and targets were then employed to generate the empirical charts and several correction equations for design utilization. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed damage index, calibration of the new approach to existing real data (the result of Park-Ang damage index 1985), were conducted. The obtained results show good precision of the developed ANNs-based model in predicting the maximum damage of regular reinforced concrete frames.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.445-466
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• 2008

This paper presents a novel structural damage detection method with a new damage index based on the statistical moments of dynamic responses of a structure under a random excitation. After a brief introduction to statistical moment theory, the principle of the new method is put forward in terms of a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system. The sensitivity of statistical moment to structural damage is discussed for various types of structural responses and different orders of statistical moment. The formulae for statistical moment-based damage detection are derived. The effect of measurement noise on damage detection is ascertained. The new damage index and the proposed statistical moment-based damage detection method are then extended to multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) systems with resort to the leastsquares method. As numerical studies, the proposed method is applied to both single and multi-story shear buildings. Numerical results show that the fourth-order statistical moment of story drifts is a more sensitive indicator to structural stiffness reduction than the natural frequencies, the second order moment of story drift, and the fourth-order moments of velocity and acceleration responses of the shear building. The fourth-order statistical moment of story drifts can be used to accurately identify both location and severity of structural stiffness reduction of the shear building. Furthermore, a significant advantage of the proposed damage detection method lies in that it is insensitive to measurement noise.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.699-709
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• 2018

With increasing traffic volumes and rising vehicle traffic, especially in cities, the number of pedestrian bridges has also increased significantly. Like all other structures, pedestrian bridges also suffer damage. In order to increase the safety of pedestrians, it is necessary to identify existing damage and to repair them to ensure the safety of the bridge structures. Owing to the shortcomings of local methods in identifying damage and in order to enhance the reliability of detection and identification of structural faults, signal methods have seen significant development in recent years. In this research, a new methodology, based on cone-shaped kernel distribution with a new damage index, has been used for damage detection in pedestrian truss bridges. To evaluate the proposed method, the numerical models of the Warren Type steel truss and the Arregar steel footbridge were used. Based on the results, the proposed method and damage index identified the damage and determined its location with a high degree of precision. Given the ease of use, the proposed method can be used to identify faults in pedestrian bridges.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.485-509
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• 2015

This paper presents the experimental results obtained by applying frequency-domain structural health monitoring techniques to assess the damage suffered on a special type of damper called Web Plastifying Damper (WPD). The WPD is a hysteretic type energy dissipator recently developed for the passive control of structures subjected to earthquakes. It consists of several I-section steel segments connected in parallel. The energy is dissipated through plastic deformations of the web of the I-sections, which constitute the dissipative parts of the damper. WPDs were subjected to successive histories of dynamically-imposed cyclic deformations of increasing magnitude with the shaking table of the University of Granada. To assess the damage to the web of the I-section steel segments after each history of loading, a new damage index called Area Index of Damage (AID) was obtained from simple vibration tests. The vibration signals were acquired by means of piezoelectric sensors attached on the I-sections, and non-parametric statistical methods were applied to calculate AID in terms of changes in frequency response functions. The damage index AID was correlated with another energy-based damage index -ID- which past research has proven to accurately characterize the level of mechanical damage. The ID is rooted in the decomposition of the load-displacement curve experienced by the damper into the so-called skeleton and Bauschinger parts. ID predicts the level of damage and the proximity to failure of the damper accurately, but it requires costly instrumentation. The experiments reported in this paper demonstrate a good correlation between AID and ID in a realistic seismic loading scenario consisting of dynamically applied arbitrary cyclic loads. Based on this correlation, it is possible to estimate ID indirectly from the AID, which calls for much simpler and less expensive instrumentation.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.507-517
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• 2020

This study aims to present new frequency-related seismic intensity parameters (SIPs) based on the Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) analysis. The proposed procedure is utilized for the processing of several seismic accelerograms. Thus, the entire evaluated Hilbert Spectrum (HS) of each considered seismic velocity time-history is investigated first, and then, a delimited area of the same HS around a specific frequency is explored, for the proposition of new SIPs. A first application of the suggested new parameters is to reveal the interrelation between them and the structural damage of a reinforced concrete frame structure. The index of Park and Ang describes the structural damage. The fundamental frequency of the structure is considered as the mentioned specific frequency. Two statistical methods, namely correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis, are used to identify the relationship between the considered SIPs and the corresponding structural damage. The results confirm that the new proposed HHT-based parameters are effective descriptors of the seismic damage potential and helpful tools for forecasting the seismic damages on buildings.