• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• 제5권2호
• /
• pp.139-152
• /
• 2009

Globally, civil infrastructures are deteriorating at an alarming rate caused by overuse, overloading, aging, damage or failure due to natural or man-made hazards. With such a vast network of deteriorating infrastructure, there is a growing interest in continuous monitoring technologies. In order to provide a true distributed sensor and control system for civil structures, we are developing a Structural Nervous System that mimics key attributes of a human nervous system. This nervous system is made up of building blocks that are designed based on mechanoreceptors as a fundamentally new approach for the development of a structural health monitoring and diagnostic system that utilizes the recently developed piezo-fibers capable of sensing and actuation. In particular, our research has been focused on producing a sensory nervous system for civil structures by using piezo-fibers as sensory receptors, nerve fibers, neuronal pools, and spinocervical tract to the nodal and central processing units. This paper presents up to date results of our research, including the design and analysis of the structural nervous system.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• 제6권3호
• /
• pp.225-238
• /
• 2010

We report on the development of a new technology for the fabrication of Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) strain sensors to realize a novel type of crackmeter for health monitoring of ageing civil infrastructures. The fabrication of micromachined silicon MEMS sensors based on a Silicon On Insulator (SOI) technology, designed according to a Double Ended Tuning Fork (DETF) geometry is presented, using a novel process which includes a gap narrowing procedure suitable to fabricate sensors with low motional resistance. In order to employ these sensors for crack monitoring, techniques suited for bonding the MEMS sensors on a steel surface ensuring good strain transfer from steel to silicon and a packaging technique for the bonded sensors are proposed, conceived for realizing a low-power crackmeter for ageing infrastructure monitoring. Moreover, the design of a possible crackmeter geometry suited for detection of crack contraction and expansion with a resolution of $10{\mu}m$ and very low power consumption requirements (potentially suitable for wireless operation) is presented. In these sensors, the small crackmeter range for the first field use is related to long-term observation on existing cracks in underground tunnel test sections.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• 제6권5_6호
• /
• pp.731-748
• /
• 2010

Impact detection and health monitoring are very important tasks for civil infrastructures, such as bridges. Piezoceramic based transducers are widely researched for these tasks due to the piezoceramic material's inherent advantages of dual sensing and actuation ability, which enables the active sensing method for structural health monitoring with a network of piezoceramic transducers. Wireless sensor networks, which are easy for deployment, have great potential in health monitoring systems for large civil infrastructures to identify early-age damages. However, most commercial wireless sensor networks are general purpose and may not be optimized for a network of piezoceramic based transducers. Wireless networks of piezoceramic transducers for active sensing have special requirements, such as relatively high sampling rate (at a few-thousand Hz), incorporation of an amplifier for the piezoceramic element for actuation, and low energy consumption for actuation. In this paper, a wireless network is specially designed for piezoceramic transducers to implement impact detection and active sensing for structural health monitoring. A power efficient embedded system is designed to form the wireless sensor network that is capable of high sampling rate. A 32 bit RISC wireless microcontroller is chosen as the main processor. Detailed design of the hardware system and software system of the wireless sensor network is presented in this paper. To verify the functionality of the wireless sensor network, it is deployed on a two-story concrete frame with embedded piezoceramic transducers, and the active sensing property of piezoceramic material is used to detect the damage in the structure. Experimental results show that the wireless sensor network can effectively implement active sensing and impact detection with high sampling rate while maintaining low power consumption by performing offline data processing and minimizing wireless communication.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
• /
• 제7권2호
• /
• pp.149-166
• /
• 2020

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on a vibration-based damage identification framework for a steel girder type and a truss bridge based on acceleration responses to operational loading. The method relies on sensor clustering-based time-series analysis of the operational acceleration response of the bridge to the passage of a moving vehicle. The results are presented in terms of Damage Features from each sensor, which are obtained by comparing the actual acceleration response from the sensors to the predicted response from the time-series model. The damage in the bridge is detected by observing the change in damage features of the bridge as structural changes occur in the bridge. The relative severity of the damage can also be quantitatively assessed by observing the magnitude of the changes in the damage features. The experimental results show the potential usefulness of the proposed method for future applications on condition assessment of real-life bridge infrastructures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• 제16권1호
• /
• pp.1-21
• /
• 2014

Knee Braced Frame (KBF) is a special form of ductile eccentrically braced frame having a diagonal brace connected to a knee element, as a hysteretic damper, instead of beam-column joint. This paper first presents an experimental investigation on cyclic performance of two knee braced single span one-story frame specimens. The general test arrangement, specimen details, and most relevant results (failure modes and hysteretic curves) are explained. Some indexes to assess the seismic performance of KBFs, including ductility; response reduction factor and energy dissipation capabilities are also subsequently discussed. Experimental results indicate that the maximum equivalent damping ratios achieved by test frames are 21.8 and 23% for the specimens, prior to failure. Finally, a simplified analytical model is derived to predict the bilinear behavior of the KBFs. Acceptable conformity between analytical and experimental results proves the accuracy of the proposed model.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• 제25권1호
• /
• pp.1-17
• /
• 2017

Seismic performance of hybrid steel frames defined as mixture of rigid and semi-rigid connections is investigated in this paper. Three frames with 10, 15 and 20 stories are designed with fully rigid connections and then with 4 patterns for semi-rigid connection placement, some of beam to column rigid connections would turn to semi-rigid. Each semi-rigid connection is considered with 4 different moment capacities and all rigid and semi-rigid frames consisting of 51 models are subjected to 5 selected earthquake records for nonlinear analysis. Maximum story drifts, roof acceleration and base shear are extracted for those 5 earthquake records and average values are obtained for each case. Based on numerical results for the proposed hybrid frames, story drifts remain in allowable range and the reductions in the maximum roof acceleration of 22, 29 and 25% and maximum base shear of 33, 31 and 54% occur in those 10, 15 and 20-story frames, respectively.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• 제82권5호
• /
• pp.587-594
• /
• 2022

Behavior of concrete elements under the effect of high-speed projectiles has gain increasing interest recently. It's necessary to understand how far the concrete can absorb the effect of bullets in order to save the occupants when design security and military infrastructures. This study presents a total of 18 concrete slabs casted and tested under reinforcement ratios, 0%, 0.35% and 0.7%. Parameters interested were slab thickness, (50 mm, 100 mm, and 150 mm) and type of weapon. All specimens tested to investigate their response under the effect of attacking by two common types of weapon. In general, it was found that projectile penetration was controlled by their thickness regardless the steel reinforcement ratio. However, the steel reinforcement controls the damage.

• 국제학술발표논문집
• /
• The 6th International Conference on Construction Engineering and Project Management
• /
• pp.671-672
• /
• 2015

Due to harsh conditions of disaster areas, understanding of current feature of collapsed buildings, terrain, and other infrastructures is critical issue for disaster managers. However, because of difficulties in acquiring the geographical information of the disaster site such as large disaster site and limited capability of rescue workers, comprehensive site investigation of current location of survivors buried under the remains of the building is not an easy task for disaster managers. To overcome these circumstances of disaster site, this study makes use of an unmanned aerial vehicle, commonly known as a drone to effectively acquire current image data from the large disaster areas. The framework of 3D model reconstruction of disaster site using aerial imagery acquired by drones was also presented. The proposed methodology is expected to assist rescue workers and disaster managers in achieving a rapid and accurate identification of survivors under the collapsed building.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• 제30권5호
• /
• pp.501-511
• /
• 2022

Three-dimensional (3D) models have become crucial for improving civil infrastructure analysis, and they can be used for various purposes such as damage detection, risk estimation, resolving potential safety issues, alarm detection, and structural health monitoring. 3D point cloud data is used not only to make visual models but also to analyze the states of structures and to monitor them using semantic data. This study proposes automating the generation of high-quality 3D point cloud data and removing noise using deep learning algorithms. In this study, large-format aerial images of civilian infrastructure, such as cut slopes and dams, which were captured by drones, were used to develop a workflow for automatically generating a 3D point cloud model. Through image cropping, downscaling/upscaling, semantic segmentation, generation of segmentation masks, and implementation of region extraction algorithms, the generation of the point cloud was automated. Compared with the method wherein the point cloud model is generated from raw images, our method could effectively improve the quality of the model, remove noise, and reduce the processing time. The results showed that the size of the 3D point cloud model created using the proposed method was significantly reduced; the number of points was reduced by 20-50%, and distant points were recognized as noise. This method can be applied to the automatic generation of high-quality 3D point cloud models of civil infrastructures using aerial imagery.

• 한국지진공학회논문집
• /
• 제10권6호
• /
• pp.137-145
• /
• 2006

최근 건설기술이 발달함에 따라 점차적으로 더욱 높은 정확성과 신뢰성을 바탕으로 구조물의 상태를 파악 또는 예측 할 수 있는 기술적인 체제가 요구되고 있는 시점에서, 광섬유센서는 내구성과 높은 분해능, 전자기파 노이즈 저항성, 절대값의 측정, 다중화 등의 가지고 있는 여러 장점 때문에 미국 등 선진국의 경우 교량, 터널 그리고 건물 등에 변위와 변형률 측정에 많은 설치가 진행되어 왔고, 광섬유 센서를 이용한 시스템이 구조물의 안정성과 잔존수명을 판단하는 기준으로 중요한 역할을 할 것으로 기대되고 있다. 본 논문에서는 이러한 광섬유센서 중에서 일반적으로 가장 많이 사용하고 있는 광섬유격자 센서의 응용의 폭을 확대하기 위하여 여러 가지 응용분야에 적용하고자 하였으며, 특히 전단응력이 많이 걸려 foil형 스트레인 게이지를 사용하기 어려운 보 기둥 접합부에 적용하여 광섬유격자 센서가 일반적으로 사용되는 전자식 변위 센서들과 정밀도가 대단히 차이가 나고 있음을 보여주고 있고, 복합재료와 콘크리트 접합 구조물에 적용하여 흔히 발생하는 결함인 delamination을 측정하는데 광섬유격자 센서가 유효적절함을 보여주고 있으며, 원자력발전소 격납구조물과 같은 대형구조물에 적용하여 변위를 측정함에 있어서 광섬유격자 센서가 시공도 용이하고 데이터도 양호함을 보여 주고 있어, 기존의 어떤 구조물도 광섬유센서를 적용하여 쉽게 광섬유 스마트구조물화 할 수 있음을 보여준다.