The reliability of reinforced concrete structures is frequently compromised by the deterioration caused by reinforcement corrosion. Evaluating the effect caused by reinforcement corrosion on structural behaviour of corrosion damaged concrete structures is essential for effective and reliable infrastructure management. In lifecycle management of corrosion affected reinforced concrete structures, it is difficult to correctly assess the lifecycle performance due to the uncertainties associated with structural resistance deterioration. This paper presents a stochastic deterioration modelling approach to evaluate the performance deterioration of corroded concrete structures during their service life. The flexural strength deterioration is analytically predicted on the basis of bond strength evolution caused by reinforcement corrosion, which is examined by the experimental and field data available. An assessment criterion is defined to evaluate the flexural strength deterioration for the time-dependent reliability analysis. The results from the worked examples show that the proposed approach is capable of evaluating the structural reliability of corrosion damaged concrete structures.

This paper proposes using the multi-type sensor vibration measurements, such as from a relative displacement sensors and a traditional accelerometer for the damage detection of shear connectors in composite bridge under moving loads. Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) spectra of these responses will be fused with a data fusion approach i.e., Dempster-Shafer method, to detect the damage of shear connectors. Experimental studies on a composite bridge model in the laboratory are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of using the proposed approach in detecting the damage of shear connectors in composite bridges. Both undamaged and damaged scenarios are considered. The detection results with the data fusion of multi-type sensor measurements show a more reliable and robust performance and accuracy, avoiding the false identifications.

Excessively elevated temperature can lead to cracks in prestressed concrete (PC) continuous bridge with box girder on the pier top at cement hydration age. This paper presents a case study for evaluating the behavior of PC box girder during the early hydration age using a two-stage computational model, in the form of computer program ANSYS, namely, 3-D temperature evaluation and determination of mechanical response in PC box girders. A numerical model considering time-dependent wind speed and ambient temperature in ANSYS for tracing the thermal and mechanical response of box girder is developed. The predicted results were compared to show good agreement with the measured data from the PC box girder of the Zhaoshi Bridge in China. Then, based on the validated numerical model three parameters were incorporated to analyze the evolution of the temperature and stress within box girder caused by cement hydration heat. The results of case study indicate that the wind speed can change the degradation history of temperature and stress and reduce peak value of them. The initial casting temperature of concrete is the most significant parameter which controls cracking of PC box girder on pier top at cement hydration age. Increasing the curing temperature is detrimental to prevent cracking.

Shear walls have high stiffness and strength; however, they lack energy dissipation and repairability. In this study, an innovative slotted shear wall featuring vertical slots and steel energy dissipation connectors was developed. The ductility and energy dissipation of the shear wall were improved, while sufficient bearing capacity and structural stiffness were retained. Furthermore, the slotted shear wall does not support vertical forces, and thus it does not have to be arranged continuously along the height of the structure, leading to a much free arrangement of the shear wall. A frame-slotted shear wall structure that combines the conventional frame structure and the innovative shear wall was developed. To investigate the ductility and hysteretic behavior of the slotted shear wall, finite element models of two walls with different steel connectors were built, and pushover and quasi-static analyses were conducted. Numerical analysis results indicated that the deformability and energy dissipation were guaranteed only if the steel connectors yielded before plastic hinges in the wall limbs were formed. Finally, a modified D-value method was proposed to estimate the bearing capacity and stiffness of the slotted shear wall. In this method, the wall limbs are analogous to columns and the connectors are analogous to beams. Results obtained from the modified D-value method were compared with those obtained from the finite element analysis. It was found that the internal force and stiffness estimated with the modified D-value method agreed well with those obtained from the finite element analysis.

A pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) can be considered as a passive device, which combines the merits of a traditional tuned mass damper (TMD) and a collision damper. A recent analytical study by the authors demonstrated that the PTMD base on the energy dissipation during impact is able to achieve better control effectiveness over the traditional TMD. In this paper, a PTMD prototype is manufactured and applied for seismic response reduction to examine its efficacy. A series of shaking table tests is conducted in a three-story building frame model under single-dimensional and two-dimensional broadband earthquake excitations with different excitation intensities. The ability of the PTMD to reduce the structural responses is experimentally investigated. The results show that the traditional TMD is sensitive to input excitations, while the PTMD mostly has improved control performance over the TMD to remarkably reduce both the peak and root-mean-square (RMS) structural responses under single-dimensional earthquake excitation. Unlike the TMD, the PTMD is found to have the merit of maintaining a stable performance when subjected to different earthquake loadings. In addition, it is also indicated that the performance of the PTMD can be enhanced by adjusting the initial gap value, and the control effectiveness improves with the increasing excitation intensity. Under two-dimensional earthquake inputs, the PTMD controls remain outperform the TMD controls; however, the oscillation of the added mass is observed during the test, which may induce torsional vibration modes of the structure, and hence, result in poor control performance especially after a strong earthquake period.

The accuracy and integrity of stress data acquired by bridge heath monitoring system is of significant importance for bridge safety assessment. However, the missing and abnormal data are inevitably existed in a realistic monitoring system. This paper presents a data reconstruction approach for bridge heath monitoring based on the wavelet multi-resolution analysis and support vector machine (SVM). The proposed method has been applied for data imputation based on the recorded data by the structural health monitoring (SHM) system instrumented on a prestressed concrete cable-stayed bridge. The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed wavelet-based SVM prediction method is examined by comparing with the traditional autoregression moving average (ARMA) method and SVM prediction method without wavelet multi-resolution analysis in accordance with the prediction errors. The data reconstruction analysis based on 5-day and 1-day continuous stress history data with obvious preternatural signals is performed to examine the effect of sample size on the accuracy of data reconstruction. The results indicate that the proposed data reconstruction approach based on wavelet multi-resolution analysis and SVM is an effective tool for missing data imputation or preternatural signal replacement, which can serve as a solid foundation for the purpose of accurately evaluating the safety of bridge structures.

Ordinary reinforced concrete (RC) and prestressed concrete bridges are two popular and typical types of short- and medium-span bridges that accounts for the vast majority of all existing bridges. The cost of maintaining, repairing or replacing degraded existing RC bridges is immense. Detecting the abnormality of RC bridges at an early stage and taking the protective measures in advance are effective ways to improve maintenance practices and reduce the maintenance cost. This study proposes a systematic method from influence line (IL) identification to damage detection with applications to RC bridges. An IL identification method which integrates the cubic B-spline function with Tikhonov regularization is first proposed based on the vehicle information and the corresponding moving vehicle induced bridge response time history. Subsequently, IL change is defined as a damage index for bridge damage detection, and information fusion technique that synthesizes ILs of multiple locations/sensors is used to improve the efficiency and accuracy of damage localization. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed systematic method is verified through experimental tests on a three-span continuous RC beam. The comparison suggests that the identified ILs can well match with the baseline ILs, and it demonstrates that the proposed IL identification method has a high accuracy and a great potential in engineering applications. Results in this case indicate that deflection ILs are superior than strain ILs for damage detection of RC beams, and the performance of damage localization can be significantly improved with the information fusion of multiple ILs.

Chloride-induced cover cracking will aggravate the performance deterioration for RC structures under the chlorideladen environment, which may endanger the safety of structures and occupants. Traditional design method cannot ensure that a definite performance is satisfied. To overcome the defects, a study on the performance-based design method was carried out in this paper. Firstly, the limit state functions were established for the corrosion initiation and cover cracking. Thereafter, the uncertainty analysis was performed to study the effects of random factors on the time-dependent performances. Partial factor formulae were deduced through the first-order reliability method for performance verification. Finally, an illustrative example was presented and the sensitivity of cover depth to other parameters was carried out. It is found that the uncertainties of the random variables have great effects on the required cover depth. It is demonstrated that the performance-based design method can ensure that the target performance can be satisfied and support to formulate a rational maintenance and repair strategy for RC structures under the chloride environment.

Applications of fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites for retrofitting, strengthening and repairing concrete structures have been expanded dramatically in the last decade. FRPs have high specific strength and stiffness compared to conventional construction materials, e.g., steel. Ease of preparation and installation, resistance to corrosion, versatile fabrication and adjustable mechanical properties are other advantages of the FRPs. However, there are major concerns about long-term performance, serviceability and durability of FRP applications in concrete structures. Therefore, structural health monitoring (SHM) and damage detection in FRP-retrofitted concrete structures need to be implemented. This paper presents a study on investigating the application of Rayleigh wave for detecting debonding defect in FRP-retrofitted concrete structures. A time-of-flight (ToF) method is proposed to determine the location of a debonding between the FRP and concrete using Rayleigh wave. A series of numerical case studies are carried out to demonstrate the capability of the proposed debonding detection method. In the numerical case studies, a three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) model is developed to simulate the Rayleigh wave propagation and scattering at the debonding in the FRP-retrofitted concrete structure. Absorbing layers are employed in the 3D FE model to reduce computational cost in simulating the practical size of the FRP-retrofitted structure. Different debonding sizes and locations are considered in the case studies. The results show that the proposed ToF method is able to accurately determine the location of the debonding in the FRP-retrofitted concrete structure.

Piezoceramic transducers have been widely used in the health monitoring of civil structures. However, in most cases, they are used as sensors either to measure strain or receive stress waves. This paper proposes a method of using piezoelectric transducers as strain gauges and acoustic emission (AE) sensors simultaneously. The signals received by piezoceramic transducers are decomposed into different frequency components for various analysis purposes. The low-frequency signals are used to measure strain, whereas the high-frequency signals are used as acoustic emission signal associated with local damage. The b-value theory is used to process the AE signal in piezoceramic transducers. The proposed method was applied in the bending failure experiments of two reinforced concrete beams to verify its feasibility. The results showed that the extracted low-frequency signals from the piezoceramic transducers had good agreement with that from the strain gauge, and the processed high-frequency signal from piezoceramic transducers as AE could indicate the local damage to concrete. The experimental results verified the feasibly of structural health monitoring using piezoceramic transducers as strain gauges and AE sensors simultaneously, which can advance their application in civil engineering.

Concrete filled steel tubular (CFST) composite girder is a new type of structures for bridge constructions. The existing design codes cannot be used to predict the thermal stress in the CFST truss girder structures under solar radiation. This study is to develop the temperature gradient curves for predicting thermal stress of the structure based on field and laboratory monitoring data. An in-field testing had been carried out on Ganhaizi Bridge for over two months. Thermal couples were installed at the cross section of the CFST truss girder and the continuous data was collected every 30 minutes. A typical temperature gradient mode was then extracted by comparing temperature distributions at different times. To further verify the temperature gradient mode and investigate the evolution of temperature fields, an outdoor experiment was conducted on a 1:8 scale bridge model, which was installed with both thermal couples and strain gauges. The main factors including solar radiation and ambient temperature on the different positions were studied. Laboratory results were consistent with that from the in-field data and temperature gradient curves were obtained from the in-field and laboratory data. The relationship between the strain difference at top and bottom surfaces of the concrete deck and its corresponding temperature change was also obtained and a method based on curve fitting was proposed to predict the thermal strain under elevated temperature. The thermal stress model for CFST composite girder was derived. By the proposed model, the thermal stress was obtained from the temperature gradient curves. The results using the proposed model were agreed well with that by finite element modelling.

Prestress force identification (PFI) is crucial to maintain the safety of prestressed concrete bridges. A synergic identification method has been proposed recently by the authors that can determine the prestress force (PF) and the excitation force simultaneously in prestressed concrete beams with good accuracy. In this paper, the ability of this method in the application with prestressed concrete box-girder bridges is demonstrated. A reasonable assumption is made to capture the similarity of the dynamic behavior of the prestressed concrete box-girder bridge and a beam under a certain loading scenario, and the feasibility of this method for application in a prestressed box-girder bridge is affirmed. A comprehensive laboratory test program is conducted, and the effects of PF, excitation, measuring time and uncertainties are studied. Results show that the proposed method can predict the PF and the excitation force in a prestressed concrete box-girder accurately and has a great robustness against uncertainties.