• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.5
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• pp.599-610
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• 2021

Early detection of small concrete crack or reinforcement corrosion is necessary for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). Global vibration based methods are advantageous over local methods because of simple equipment installation and cost efficiency. Among vibration based techniques, FRF based methods are preferred over modal based methods. In this study, a new coupled method using frequency response function (FRF) and proper orthogonal modes (POM) is proposed by using the dynamic characteristic of a damaged beam. For the numerical simulation, wave finite element (WFE), coupled with traditional finite element (FE) method is used for effectively incorporating the damage related information and faster computation. As reported in literature, hybrid combination of wave function based wave finite element method and shape function based finite element method can addresses the mid frequency modelling difficulty as it utilises the advantages of both the methods. It also reduces the dynamic matrix dimension. The algorithms are implemented on a three-dimensional reinforced concrete beam. Damage is modelled and studied for two scenarios, i.e., crack in concrete and rebar corrosion. Single and multiple damage locations with different damage length are also considered. The proposed methodology is found to be very sensitive to both single- and multiple- damage while being computationally efficient at the same time. It is observed that the detection of damage due to corrosion is more challenging than that of concrete crack. The similarity index obtained from the damage parameters shows that it can be a very effective indicator for appropriately indicating initiation of damage in concrete structure in the form of spread corrosion or invisible crack.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.479-495
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• 2019

Periodic cellular core structures included in sandwich panels possess good stiffness while saving weight and only lately their potential to act as passive vibration filters is increasingly being studied. Classical homogeneous honeycombs show poor vibracoustic performance and only by varying certain geometrical features, a shift and/or variation in bandgap frequency range occurs. This work aims to investigate the vibration filtering properties of the AUXHEX "hybrid" core, which is a cellular structure containing cells of different shapes. Numerical simulations are carried out using two different approaches. The first technique used is the harmonic analysis with commercially available software, and the second one, which has been proved to be computationally more efficient, consists in the Wave Finite Element Method (WFEM), which still makes use of finite elements (FEM) packages, but instead of working with large models, it exploits the periodicity of the structure by analysing only the unit cell, thanks to the Floquet-Bloch theorem. Both techniques allow to produce graphs such as frequency response plots (FRF's) and dispersion curves, which are powerful tools used to identify the spectral bandgap signature of the considered structure. The hybrid cellular core pattern AUXHEX is analysed and results are discussed, focusing the investigation on the possible spectral bandgap signature heritage that a hybrid core experiences from their "parents" homogeneous cell cores.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.399-418
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• 2015

Automated damage detection through Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques has become an active area of research in the bridge engineering community but widespread implementation on in-service infrastructure still presents some challenges. In the meantime, visual inspection remains as the most common method for condition assessment even though collected information is highly subjective and certain types of damage can be overlooked by the inspector. In this article, a Frequency Response Functions-based model updating algorithm is evaluated using experimentally collected data from the University of Central Florida (UCF)-Benchmark Structure. A protocol for measurement selection and a regularization technique are presented in this work in order to provide the most well-conditioned model updating scenario for the target structure. The proposed technique is composed of two main stages. First, the initial finite element model (FEM) is calibrated through model updating so that it captures the dynamic signature of the UCF Benchmark Structure in its healthy condition. Second, based upon collected data from the damaged condition, the updating process is repeated on the baseline (healthy) FEM. The difference between the updated parameters from subsequent stages revealed both location and extent of damage in a "blind" scenario, without any previous information about type and location of damage.