• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.927-942
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• 2014

Structural displacement is an important indicator for assessing structural safety. For structural displacement monitoring, vision-based displacement measurement systems have been widely developed; however, most systems estimate only 1 or 2-DOF translational displacement. To monitor the 6-DOF structural displacement with high accuracy, a vision-based displacement measurement system with a uniquely designed marker is proposed in this paper. The system is composed of a uniquely designed marker and a camera with a zooming capability, and relative translational and rotational displacement between the marker and the camera is estimated by finding a homography transformation. The novel marker is designed to make the system robust to measurement noise based on a sensitivity analysis of the conventional marker and it has been verified through Monte Carlo simulation results. The performance of the displacement estimation has been verified through two kinds of experimental tests; using a shaking table and a motorized stage. The results show that the system estimates the structural 6-DOF displacement, especially the translational displacement in Z-axis, with high accuracy in real time and is robust to measurement noise.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.315-326
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• 2015

To overcome the drawbacks of the traditional contact-type sensor for structural displacement measurement, the vision-based technology with the aid of the digital image processing algorithm has received increasing concerns from the community of structural health monitoring (SHM). The advanced vision-based system has been widely used to measure the structural displacement of civil engineering structures due to its overwhelming merits of non-contact, long-distance, and high-resolution. However, seldom currently-available vision-based systems are capable of realizing the synchronous structural displacement measurement for multiple points on the investigated structure. In this paper, the method for vision-based multi-point structural displacement measurement is presented. A series of moving loading experiments on a scale arch bridge model are carried out to validate the accuracy and reliability of the vision-based system for multi-point structural displacement measurement. The structural displacements of five points on the bridge deck are measured by the vision-based system and compared with those obtained by the linear variable differential transformer (LVDT). The comparative study demonstrates that the vision-based system is deemed to be an effective and reliable means for multi-point structural displacement measurement.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.556-565
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• 2003

Light losses in optical fibers are investigated by a fiber optic OTDR (Optical Time Domain Reflectometry) sensor system to develop fiber optic probes for structural displacement measurement. The displacement sensitivity was determined by the measurements of fiber-bending loss according to the gage length changes of the displacement sensor. The fiber optic displacement probe was manufactured to verify the feasibility of the structural displacement measurement.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.935-956
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• 2016

With the help of advanced image acquisition and processing technology, the vision-based measurement methods have been broadly applied to implement the structural monitoring and condition identification of civil engineering structures. Many noncontact approaches enabled by different digital image processing algorithms are developed to overcome the problems in conventional structural dynamic displacement measurement. This paper presents three kinds of image processing algorithms for structural dynamic displacement measurement, i.e., the grayscale pattern matching (GPM) algorithm, the color pattern matching (CPM) algorithm, and the mean shift tracking (MST) algorithm. A vision-based system programmed with the three image processing algorithms is developed for multi-point structural dynamic displacement measurement. The dynamic displacement time histories of multiple vision points are simultaneously measured by the vision-based system and the magnetostrictive displacement sensor (MDS) during the laboratory shaking table tests of a three-story steel frame model. The comparative analysis results indicate that the developed vision-based system exhibits excellent performance in structural dynamic displacement measurement by use of the three different image processing algorithms. The field application experiments are also carried out on an arch bridge for the measurement of displacement influence lines during the loading tests to validate the effectiveness of the vision-based system.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.777-782
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• 2007

Displacement amplification factor can be used to estimate inelastic displacement demands from elastic displacement demands, The simple formula for displacement amplification factor considering hysteretic behavior of structural system and earthquake characteristics is proposed. And the effects of several parameters such as displacement ductility, strain hardening ratio, period, characteristics of earthquakes and hysteretic models for the displacement amplification factor are evaluated. Accuracy of the proposed formula is evaluated by comparing the displacement amplification factors estimated by existing and proposed formula with those calculated from inelastic time history analysis. The displacement amplification factors by proposed formulas provide a good agreement with those calculated by inelastic time history analysis.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.631-641
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• 2018

This paper outlines a computational procedure for the effective merging of diverse sensor measurements, displacement and acceleration signals in particular, in order to successfully monitor and simulate the current health condition of civil structures under dynamic loadings. In particular, it investigates a Kalman Filter implementation for the Heterogeneous Data Fusion of displacement and acceleration response signals of a structural system toward dynamic identification purposes. The procedure is perspectively aimed at enhancing extensive remote displacement measurements (commonly affected by high noise), by possibly integrating them with a few standard acceleration measurements (considered instead as noise-free or corrupted by slight noise only). Within the data fusion analysis, a Kalman Filter algorithm is implemented and its effectiveness in improving noise-corrupted displacement measurements is investigated. The performance of the filter is assessed based on the RMS error between the original (noise-free, numerically-determined) displacement signal and the Kalman Filter displacement estimate, and on the structural modal parameters (natural frequencies) that can be extracted from displacement signals, refined through the combined use of displacement and acceleration recordings, through inverse analysis algorithms for output-only modal dynamics identification, based on displacements.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.15-26
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• 2023

It is of great importance to assess the residual displacement demand in the performance-based seismic design. In this paper, a hybrid deep learning model for predicting the residual displacement spectra under near-fault (NF) ground motions is proposed by combining the long short-term memory network (LSTM) and back-propagation (BP) network. The model is featured by its capacity of predicting the residual displacement spectrum under a given NF ground motion while considering the effects of structural parameters. To construct this model, 315 natural and artificial NF ground motions were employed to compute the residual displacement spectra through elastoplastic time history analysis considering different structural parameters. Based on the resulted dataset with a total of 9,450 samples, the proposed model was finally trained and tested. The results show that the proposed model has a satisfactory accuracy as well as a high efficiency in predicting residual displacement spectra under given NF ground motions while considering the impacts of structural parameters.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.111-127
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• 2018

Horizontal displacement of high-rise building is an essential index for assessing the structural performance and safety. In this paper, a novel inclinometer-based method is proposed to address this issue and an algorithm based on three spline interpolation principle is presented to estimate the horizontal displacement of high-rise buildings. In this method, the whole structure is divided into different elements by different measured points. The story drift angle curve of each element is modeled as a three spline curve. The horizontal displacement can be estimated after integration of the story drift angle curve. A numerical example is designed to verify the proposed method and the result shows this method can effectively estimate the horizontal displacement with high accuracy. After that, this method is applied to a practical slender structure - Shanghai Tower. Nature frequencies identification and deformation monitoring are conducted from the signal of inclinometers. It is concluded that inclinometer-based technology can not only be used for spectrum analysis and modal identification, but also for monitoring deformation of the whole structure. This inclinometer-based technology provides a novel method for future structural health monitoring.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.679-694
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• 2017

The complexity, enlargement and irregularity of structures and multi-directional dynamic loads acting on the structures can lead to unexpected structural behavior, such as torsion. Continuous torsion of the structure causes unexpected changes in the structure's stress distribution, reduces the performance of the structural members, and shortens the structure's lifespan. Therefore, a method of monitoring the torsional behavior is required to ensure structural safety. Structural torsion typically occurs accompanied by displacement, but no model has yet been developed to measure this type of structural response. This research proposes a model for measuring dynamic torsional response of structure accompanied by displacement and for identifying the torsional modal parameter using vision-based displacement measurement equipment, a motion capture system (MCS). In the present model, dynamic torsional responses including pure rotation and translation displacements are measured and used to calculate the torsional angle and displacements. To apply the proposed model, vibration tests for a shear-type structure were performed. The torsional responses were obtained from measured dynamic displacements. The torsional angle and displacements obtained by the proposed model using MCS were compared with the torsional response measured using laser displacement sensors (LDSs), which have been widely used for displacement measurement. In addition, torsional modal parameters were obtained using the dynamic torsional angle and displacements obtained from the tests.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.129-150
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• 2018

This paper presents the structural performance monitoring of an urban footbridge located in Hangzhou, China. The structural health monitoring (SHM) system is designed and implemented for the footbridge to monitor the structural responses of the footbridge and to ensure the structural safety during the period of operation. The monitoring data of stress and displacement measured by the fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-based sensors installed at the critical locations are used to analyze and assess the operation performance of the footbridge. A linear regression method is applied to separate the temperature effect from the stress monitoring data measured by the FBG-based strain sensors. In addition, the static vertical displacement of the footbridge measured by the FBG-based hydrostatic level gauges are presented and compared with the dynamic displacement remotely measured by a machine vision-based measurement system. Based on the examination of the monitored stress and displacement data, the structural safety evaluation is executed in combination with the defined condition index.