• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.9
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• pp.1057-1077
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• 2010

An early detection of structural damages is critical for the decision making of repair and replacement maintenance in order to guarantee a specified structural reliability. Consequently, the structural damage detection, based on vibration data measured from the structural health monitoring (SHM) system, has received considerable attention recently. The traditional time-domain analysis techniques, such as the least square estimation (LSE) method and the extended Kalman filter (EKF) approach, require that all the external excitations (inputs) be available, which may not be the case for some SHM systems. Recently, these two approaches have been extended to cover the general case where some of the external excitations (inputs) are not measured, referred to as the adaptive LSE with unknown inputs (ALSE-UI) and the adaptive EKF with unknown inputs (AEKF-UI). Also, new analysis methods, referred to as the adaptive sequential non-linear least-square estimation with unknown inputs and unknown outputs (ASNLSE-UI-UO) and the adaptive quadratic sum-squares error with unknown inputs (AQSSE-UI), have been proposed for the damage tracking of structures when some of the acceleration responses are not measured and the external excitations are not available. In this paper, these newly proposed analysis methods will be compared in terms of accuracy, convergence and efficiency, for damage identification of structures based on experimental data obtained through a series of laboratory tests using a scaled 3-story building model with white noise excitations. The capability of the ALSE-UI, AEKF-UI, ASNLSE-UI-UO and AQSSE-UI approaches in tracking the structural damages will be demonstrated and compared.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.1183-1210
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• 2016

Viscoelastic sandwich structures (VSSs) are widely used in mechanical equipment, but in the service process, they always suffer from aging which affect the whole performance of equipment. Therefore, aging state recognition of VSSs is significant to monitor structural state and ensure the reliability of equipment. However, non-stationary vibration response signals and weak state change characteristics make this task challenging. This paper proposes a novel method for this task based on adaptive second generation wavelet packet transform (ASGWPT) and multiwavelet support vector machine (MWSVM). For obtaining sensitive feature parameters to different structural aging states, the ASGWPT, its wavelet function can adaptively match the frequency spectrum characteristics of inspected vibration response signal, is developed to process the vibration response signals for energy feature extraction. With the aim to improve the classification performance of SVM, based on the kernel method of SVM and multiwavelet theory, multiwavelet kernel functions are constructed, and then MWSVM is developed to classify the different aging states. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, different aging states of a VSS are created through the hot oxygen accelerated aging of viscoelastic material. The application results show that the proposed method can accurately and automatically recognize the different structural aging states and act as a promising approach to aging state recognition of VSSs. Furthermore, the capability of ASGWPT in processing the vibration response signals for feature extraction is validated by the comparisons with conventional second generation wavelet packet transform, and the performance of MWSVM in classifying the structural aging states is validated by the comparisons with traditional wavelet support vector machine.

• 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.22 no.2
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• pp.151-159
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• 2018

Maintenance activities are regarded as a key part of the repairable deteriorating system because they maintain the equipment in good condition. In practice, many maintenance policies are used in engineering fields to reduce unexpected failures and slow down the deterioration of the system. However, in traditional maintenance policies, maintenance activities have often been assumed to be performed at the same time interval, which may result in higher operational costs and more system failures. Thus, this study presents two non-periodic preventive maintenance (PM) policies for repairable deteriorating systems, employing the failure rate of the system as a conditional variable. In the proposed PM models, the failure rate of the system was restored via the failure rate reduction factors after imperfect PM activities. Operational costs were also considered, which increased along with the operating time of the system and the frequency of PM activities to reflect the deterioration process of the system. A numerical example was provided to illustrate the proposed PM policy. The results showed that PM activities performed at a low failure rate threshold slowed down the degradation of the system and thus extended the system lifetime. Moreover, when the operational cost was considered in the proposed maintenance scheme, the system replacement was more cost-effective than frequent PM activities in the severely degraded system.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.513-521
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• 2017

The purpose of this paper is to study the capabilities of the impulse response method in length and flaw detecting for concrete piles and provide a suggested method to find small-size flaws in piles. In this work, wavelet transform is used to decompose the recorded time domain signal into a series of levels. These levels are narrowband, so the mix of different dominant bandwidths can be avoided. In this study, the impulse response method is used to analyze the signal obtained from the wavelet transform to improve the judgment of the flaw signal so as to detect the flaw location. This study provides a new way of thinking in non-destructive testing detection. The results show that the length of a pile is easy to be detected in the traditional reflection time or frequency domain method. However, the small flaws within pile are difficult to be found using these methods. The proposed approach in this paper is able to greatly improve the results of small-size flaw detection within piles by reducing the effects of any noise and clarifying the signal in the frequency domains.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.379-392
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• 2020

The paper presents a Life-Cycle Cost-based optimization framework for wind-excited tall buildings equipped with Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs). The objective is to minimize the Life-Cycle Cost that comprises initial costs of the structure, the control system and costs related to repair, maintenance and downtime over the building's lifetime. The integrated optimization of structural sections and mass ratio of the TMDs is carried out, leading to a set of Pareto optimal solutions. The main advantage of the proposed methodology is that, differently from the traditional optimal design approach, it allows to perform the unified design of both the structure and the control system in a Life Cycle Cost Analysis framework. The procedure quantifies wind-induced losses, related to structural and nonstructural damage, considering the stochastic nature of the loads (wind velocity and direction), the specificity of the structural modeling (e.g., non-shear-type vibration modes and torsional effects) and the presence of the TMDs. Both serviceability and ultimate limit states related to the structure and the TMDs' damage are adopted for the computation of repair costs. The application to a case study tall building allows to demonstrate the efficiency of the procedure for the integrated design of the structure and the control system.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.867-882
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• 2022

Predicting the compressive strength of concrete (CSoC) is of high significance in civil engineering. The CSoC is a highly dependent and non-linear parameter that requires powerful models for its simulation. In this work, two novel optimization techniques, namely evaporation rate-based water cycle algorithm (ER-WCA) and equilibrium optimizer (EO) are employed for optimally finding the parameters of a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural processor. The efficiency of these techniques is examined by comparing the results of the ensembles to a conventionally trained MLP. It was observed that the ER-WCA and EO optimizers can enhance the training accuracy of the MLP by 11.18 and 3.12% (in terms of reducing the root mean square error), respectively. Also, the correlation of the testing results climbed from 78.80% to 82.59 and 80.71%. From there, it can be deduced that both ER-WCA-MLP and EO-MLP can be promising alternatives to the traditional approaches. Moreover, although the ER-WCA enjoys a larger accuracy, the EO was more efficient in terms of complexity, and consequently, time-effectiveness.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.181-201
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• 2012

The benchmark on the ASCE cable-stayed bridge has gathered since its proposal the interest of many specialists in the field of the structural control and the dynamic response of long span bridges. Starting from the original benchmark statement in the MATLAB framework, a refined version of the bridge model is developed in the ANSYS commercial finite element environment. A passive structural control system is studied through non linear numerical analyses carried out in time domain for several seismic realizations in a multiple support framework. An innovative electro-inductive device is considered. Its positive performance is compared with an alternative version considering traditional metallic dampers.

• Korean Journal of Adult Nursing
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.221-234
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• 2011

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify and describe phenomenological structures of the experiences of dietary life on elderly over 100 years old. Methods: The participants of this research included nine persons over the age of 100 years of age and ten family members who assisted in the dietary regime. Qualitative data were collected by individual in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed using Colaizzi's method of phenomenology. Results: The results of the research provide four categories and nine theme clusters. The categories included a rustic menu consisting of vegetables, grain-oriented traditional food, sensible dining table in harmony with nature, dietary life and emphasis on how to eat. The nine theme clusters were preference for fresh vegetable, preference of cooked potherb, boiled rice and cereal as main staple food, intake of soybeans, preference of native local foods, non-preference of unhealthy foods, select healthy and control food portion sizes for longevity, objection to light eating, and enjoying a meal. Conclusion: The findings of the study offer insight about the nutrition patterns among the people over 100 years of age.

• 한국지구물리탐사학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.464-469
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• 2003

The traditional and still most widely used, test methods for concrete structures are destructive method, such as coring, drilling or otherwise removing part of the structure to permit visual inspection of the interior. While these methods are highly reliable, they are also time consuming and expensive, and the defects they leave behind often become focal point for deterioration. In this study, tomography by theoretical inversion method in case of elastic wave using impact-echo method among concrete non-destruction test method was made. Taken model experiments are theoretical inversion method and time domain and frequency domain test on pier test model at laboratory level. Also experiment concerning frequency domain on 3 kinds of tunnel model with I-dimension form was carried out.