• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.120-129
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• 2023

To evaluate the vertical loads on railway bridges, conventional load tests are typically conducted. However, these tests often entail significant costs and procedural challenges. Railway conditions involve nearly identical load profiles due to standardized rail systems, which may appear straightforward in terms of load conditions. Nevertheless, this study aims to validate load tests conducted under operational train conditions by comparing the results with those obtained from conventional load tests. Additionally, static and dynamic structural behaviors are extracted from the measurement data for evaluation. To ensure the reliability of load testing, this research demonstrates feasibility through comparisons of existing measurement data with sensor attachment locations, train speeds, responses between different rail lines, tendency analysis, selection of impact coefficients, and analysis of natural frequencies. This study applies to the Dongho Railway Bridge and verifies the applicability of the proposed method. Ten operational trains and 44 sensors were deployed on the bridge to measure deformations and deflections during load test intervals, which were then compared with theoretical values. The analysis results indicate good symmetry and overlap of loads, as well as a favorable comparison between static and dynamic load test results. The maximum measured impact coefficient (0.092) was found to be lower than the theoretical impact coefficient (0.327), and the impact influence from live loads was deemed acceptable. The measured natural frequencies approximated the theoretical values, with an average of 2.393Hz compared to the calculated value of 2.415Hz. Based on these results, this paper demonstrates that for evaluating vertical loads, it is possible to measure deformations and deflections of truss railway bridges through load tests under operational train conditions without traffic control, enabling the calculation of response factors for stress adjustments.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.131-154
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• 2012

In this paper, it is aimed to determine the seismic behaviour of highway bridges by nondestructive testing using ambient vibration measurements. Eynel Highway Bridge which has arch type structural system with a total length of 216 m and located in the Ayvaclk county of Samsun, Turkey is selected as an application. The bridge connects the villages which are separated with Suat U$\breve{g}$urlu Dam Lake. A three dimensional finite element model is first established for a highway bridge using project drawings and an analytical modal analysis is then performed to generate natural frequencies and mode shapes in the three orthogonal directions. The ambient vibration measurements are carried out on the bridge deck under natural excitation such as traffic, human walking and wind loads using Operational Modal Analysis. Sensitive seismic accelerometers are used to collect signals obtained from the experimental tests. To obtain experimental dynamic characteristics, two output-only system identification techniques are employed namely, Enhanced Frequency Domain Decomposition technique in the frequency domain and Stochastic Subspace Identification technique in time domain. Analytical and experimental dynamic characteristic are compared with each other and finite element model of the bridge is updated by changing of boundary conditions to reduce the differences between the results. It is demonstrated that the ambient vibration measurements are enough to identify the most significant modes of highway bridges. After finite element model updating, maximum differences between the natural frequencies are reduced averagely from 23% to 3%. The updated finite element model reflects the dynamic characteristics of the bridge better, and it can be used to predict the dynamic response under complex external forces. It is also helpful for further damage identification and health condition monitoring. Analytical model of the bridge before and after model updating is analyzed using 1992 Erzincan earthquake record to determine the seismic behaviour. It can be seen from the analysis results that displacements increase by the height of bridge columns and along to middle point of the deck and main arches. Bending moments have an increasing trend along to first and last 50 m and have a decreasing trend long to the middle of the main arches.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.14-20
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• 2003

Piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers for high temperature contact measurement were developed. These high temperature ultrasonic transducers (HTUT) consisted of bismuth titanate piezoceramic element whose Curie temperature is higher than $600^{\circ}C$, a backing material of the mixture of tungsten powder and inorganic binder, an inner alumina tube, a wear Plate and a housing. The operational frequencies or the HTUT were 1.04 and 2.08 MHz, respectively. Various commercially available couplants for high temperature were evaluated and compared. As a couplant for high temperature ultrasonic testing between HTUT and test specimen, gold epoxy was selected. The peak amplitude of pulse-echo signals from steel test specimen decreased with increasing temperature. The operational temperature of the HTUT reached up to $500^{\circ}C$ at which the continuous contact measurement was possible.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1226-1235
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• 2016

For wearable health monitoring systems, a fundamental problem is the limited space for storing energy, which can be translated into a short operational life. In this paper, a highly efficient active voltage doubling rectifier with a wide input range for micro-piezoelectric energy harvesting systems is proposed. To obtain a higher output voltage, the Dickson charge pump topology is chosen in this design. By replacing the passive diodes with unbalanced-biased comparator-controlled active counterparts, the proposed rectifier minimizes the voltage losses along the conduction path and solves the reverse leakage problem caused by conventional comparator-controlled active diodes. To improve the rectifier input voltage sensitivity and decrease the minimum operational input voltage, two low power common-gate comparators are introduced in the proposed design. To keep the comparator from oscillating, a positive feedback loop formed by the capacitor C is added to it. Based on the SMIC 0.18-μm standard CMOS process, the proposed rectifier is simulated and implemented. The area of the whole chip is 0.91×0.97 mm², while the rectifier core occupies only 13% of this area. The measured results show that the proposed rectifier can operate properly with input amplitudes ranging from 0.2 to 1.0V and with frequencies ranging from 20 to 3000 Hz. The proposed rectifier can achieve a 92.5% power conversion efficiency (PCE) with input amplitudes equal to 0.6 V at 200 Hz. The voltage conversion efficiency (VCE) is around 93% for input amplitudes greater than 0.3 V and load resistances larger than 20kΩ.

• 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.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.35-42
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• 2021

This paper presents an on-line finite element model updating method for in-service structures using measured data. Conventional updating methods, which are based on numerical optimization, are not efficient for on-line updating because they generally require repeated eigenvalue analyses until convergence criteria are met. The proposed method enables fully automated on-line finite element model updating, almost simultaneously with vibration measurement, without any user intervention or off-line procedures. The automated covariance-driven stochastic subspace identification (Cov-SSI) method is utilized to identify modal frequencies and vectors, and the identified modal data is fed to the neural network of the inverse eigenvalue function to produce the updated finite element model parameters. Numerical examples for a wind excited 20-story building structure shows that the proposed method can update the series of finite element model parameters automatically. It is also shown that sudden changes in the structural parameters can be detected and traced successfully.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2012.04a
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• pp.911-916
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• 2012

It is important to identify dynamic characteristics of nuclear fuel components. Since the fuel always exposed to turbulent flow, the dynamic contact between grids and rods is one of the fuel failure modes. The dynamic behavior of grids in nuclear fuels is quite complex, since two pairs of spring support are placed in the limited space. The strap in a cell has single spring and double dimples and this paper focuses on investigation of the grid strap(Test Fuel Strap, TFS) vibration in one cell. To identify the grid strap vibration, modal analysis of the strap is performed using Finite Element Method (FEM). Modal testing on a $5{\times}5$ grid structure without rods is performed. The modal testing results are compared to analytic results. In addition, random test considering rod effect is performed about a $5{\times}5$ grid with rods under real contact condition in the air. Finally, the strap vibration of a $5{\times}5$ fuel bundle in INvestigation of Flow INduced vIbraTion(INFINIT) facility is measured in real fluid velocity condition without heating. It is shown that modal frequencies from the test are almost equal to those peak frequencies in the INFINIT test.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.455-467
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• 2008

The dynamic vehicle running tests were performed to analyze dynamic behavioral characteristics such as displacement, strain history loop and vibration acceleration in arch bridges. Also, the validity of the modeling was verified by comparing the results of the tests and those of the structural analysis modeling. With the resonance revision of verified modeling, when the ratio of excited frequencies to natural frequencies exceeds ${1{\pm}0.04}$, the stability of the bridge is obtained. Also, in the event of resonance by speed parameter, the second mode shape is dominant to the dynamic behaviors of arch bridges. It is found that manipulating the parameters involving arch ribs can increase the second mode natural frequency. It makes critical velocity greater than operational velocities to guarantee the stability of arch bridges.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.421-436
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• 2023

This paper presents a vibration displacement measurement and damage identification method for a space truss structure from its vibration videos. Features from Accelerated Segment Test (FAST) algorithm is combined with adaptive threshold strategy to detect the feature points of high quality within the Region of Interest (ROI), around each node of the truss structure. Then these points are tracked by Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi (KLT) algorithm along the video frame sequences to obtain the vibration displacement time histories. For some cases with the image plane not parallel to the truss structural plane, the scale factors cannot be applied directly. Therefore, these videos are processed with homography transformation. After scale factor adaptation, tracking results are expressed in physical units and compared with ground truth data. The main operational frequencies and the corresponding mode shapes are identified by using Subspace Stochastic Identification (SSI) from the obtained vibration displacement responses and compared with ground truth data. Structural damages are quantified by elemental stiffness reductions. A Bayesian inference-based objective function is constructed based on natural frequencies to identify the damage by model updating. The Success-History based Adaptive Differential Evolution with Linear Population Size Reduction (L-SHADE) is applied to minimise the objective function by tuning the damage parameter of each element. The locations and severities of damage in each case are then identified. The accuracy and effectiveness are verified by comparison of the identified results with the ground truth data.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.165-175
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• 2024

Rotating beams play a crucial role in representing complex mechanical components that are prevalent in vital sectors like energy and transportation industries. These components are susceptible to the initiation and propagation of cracks, posing a substantial risk to their structural integrity. This study presents a two-stage methodology for detecting the location and estimating the size of an open-edge transverse crack in a rotating Euler-Bernoulli beam with a uniform cross-section. Understanding the dynamic behavior of beams is vital for the effective design and evaluation of their operational performance. In this regard, modal parameters such as natural frequencies and eigenmodes are frequently employed to detect and identify damages in mechanical components. In this instance, the Frobenius method has been employed to determine the first two natural frequencies and corresponding eigenmodes associated with flapwise bending vibration. These calculations have been performed by solving the governing differential equation that describes the motion of the beam. Various parameters have been considered, such as rotational speed, beam slenderness, hub radius, and crack size and location. The effect of the crack has been replaced by a rotational spring whose stiffness represents the increase in local flexibility as a result of the damage presence. In the initial phase of the proposed methodology, a damage index utilizing the slope of the beam's eigenmode has been employed to estimate the location of the crack. After detecting the presence of damage, the size of the crack is determined using a Genetic Algorithm optimization technique. The ultimate goal of the proposed methodology is to enable the development of more suitable and reliable maintenance plans.