• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.195-208
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• 2008

This paper summarizes the experimental vibration-based structural health monitoring study on a historical monument in Jordan. In this work, and within the framework of the European Commission funded project "wide-Range Non-Intrusive Devices Toward Conservation of Historical Monuments in the Mediterranean Area", a seven and a half century old minaret located in Ajloun (73 km north of the capital Amman) is studied. Because of their cultural value, touristic importance and the desire to preserve them for the future, only non-destructive tests were allowed for the experimental investigation of such heritage structures. Therefore, after dimensional measurements and determination of the current state of damage in the selected monument, ambient vibration tests are conducted to measure the accelerations at strategic locations of the system. Output-only modal identification technique is applied to extract the modal parameters such as natural frequencies and mode shapes. A Non-linear version of SAP 2000 computer program is used to develop a three-dimensional finite element model of the minaret. The developed numerical model is then updated according to the modal parameters obtained experimentally by the ambient-vibration test-results and the measured characteristics of old stone and deteriorated mortar. Moreover, a parametric identification method using the N4Sid state space model is employed to model the dynamic behavior of the minaret and to build up a robust, immune and noise tolerant model.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.77-84
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• 2018

The identification of damping ratios in buildings is a well-known problem and appears to be of important and crucial interest in the safety and serviceability design. When compared to an estimation of the stiffness, i.e. natural frequency, and mass, the damping ratio is the most difficult quantity to determine. Many previous studies have examined the characteristics of damping ratios from ambient vibration, but the measurement time is roughly within 2 hours. In this paper, characteristics of damping ratios and natural frequencies of 4 story RC building were investigated using long-term ambient vibration. Free vibrations were obtained using random decrement technique, and damping ratios were evaluated by the envelop function, continuous wavelet transform, and logarithmic decrement. It was found that although the natural frequencies show little variations with time, the damping ratios show some variations with time and the largest variations found in the damping ratios obtained from the continuous wavelet transform. The damping ratios from the envelop function showed the smallest mean and standard deviation. And the probability distribution of damping ratios seems to follow the logarithmic normal distribution.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.649-657
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• 2019

Recently, an advanced video deflectometer based on the principle of off-axis digital image correlation was presented and advocated for remote and real-time deflection monitoring of large engineering structures. In engineering practice, measurement accuracy is one of the most important technical indicators of the video deflectometer. However, it has been observed in many outdoor experiments that data drift often presents in the measured deflection-time curves, which is caused by the instability of imaging system and the unavoidable influences of ambient interferences (e.g., ambient light changes, ambient temperature variations as well as ambient vibrations) in non-laboratory conditions. The non-ideal unstable imaging conditions seriously deteriorate the measurement accuracy of the video deflectometer. In this work, to perform high-accuracy deflection monitoring, potential sources for the drift error are analyzed, and a drift error model is established by considering these error sources. Based on this model, a simple, easy-to-implement yet effective reference point compensation method is proposed for real-time removal of the drift error in measured deflections. The practicality and effectiveness of the proposed method are demonstrated by in-situ deflection monitoring of railway and highway bridges.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.281-286
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• 2011

Station structures, one of important infrastructures, which have been being operated since the 1970s, are especially vulnerable to even the medium-level earthquake and they could be damaged by long-term internal or external vibrations such as ambient vibrations. Recently, much attention has been paid to real-time monitoring of the fatal defect or long-term deterioration of civil infrastructures to ensure their safety and adequate performance throughout their life span. In this study, a structural health monitoring methodology using acceleration responses is proposed to evaluate the health-state of the station structures and to detect initial damage-stage. A damage index is developed using the acceleration data and it is applied to outlier analysis, one of unsupervised learning based pattern recognition methods. A threshold value for the outlier analysis is determined based on confidence level of the probabilistic distribution of the acceleration data. The probabilistic distribution is selected according to the feature of the collected data.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.335-347
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• 2018

The fast-growing number of mobile and wearable applications has driven several innovations in small-scale electret-based energy harvesting due to the compatibility with standard microfabrication processes and the ability to generate electrical energy from ambient vibrations. However, the current modeling methods used to design these small scale transducers or microgenerators are applicable only for constant-speed rotations and small sinusoidal translations, while in practice, large amplitude sinusoidal vibrations can happen. Therefore, in this paper, we formulate an analytical model for electret-based microgenerators under general sinusoidal excitations. The proposed model is validated using finite element modeling combined with numerical simulation approaches presented in the literature. The new model demonstrates a good agreement in estimating both the output voltage and power of the microgenerator. This new model provides useful insights into the microgenerator operating mechanism and design trade-offs, and therefore, can be utilized in the design and performance optimization of these small structures.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.360-368
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• 2007

This paper is concerned with the development of piezoelectric energy harvesting device. Literature survey was carried out to investigate the state-of-art technology regarding piezoelectric energy harvesting method. It shows that the piezoelectric energy harvesting system has been researched as the needs for the auxiliary power system grow for ubiquitous sensor node. In this study, the piezoelectric energy harvesting system was constructed and the corresponding electric circuit was also built to investigate the power characteristics. Experimental results show that it can charge the small battery with ambient vibrations but still needs an effective mechanism to collect ambient energies.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.191-197
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• 1998

This paper described the dynamic characteristics of 20-story apartment buildings from the results of full-scale measurements and analysis. The natural frequencies and mode shapes are quantified by measuring and analyzing ambient vibrations of the structure and compared with the results from dynamic analysis. Comparison with computed mode shapes and frequencies shows good agreement with the experimental results. It proved that it is important to estimate coupling beam and soil parameters through a comparison of the measured results with calculated results.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.556-562
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• 2007

This paper presents the use of a novel fiber optic accelerometer system to monitor ambient vibration (both wind-induced one and vehicle-induced) of a real bridge structure. This sensor system integrates the $Moir\'{e}$ fringe phenomenon with fiber optics to achieve accurate and reliable measurements. A low-cost signal processing unit implements unique algorithms to further enhance the resolution and increase the dynamic bandwidth of the sensors. The fiber optic accelerometer has two major benefits in using this fiber optic accelerometer system for monitoring civil engineering structures. One is its immunity to electromagnetic (EM) interference making it suitable for difficult applications in such environments involving strong EM fields, electrical spark-induced explosion risks, and cabling problems, prohibiting the use of conventional electromagnetic accelerometers. The other is its ability to measure both low- and high-amplitude vibrations with a constantly high resolution without pre-setting a gain level, as usually required in a conventional accelerometer. The second benefit makes the sensor system particularly useful for real-time measurement of both ambient vibration (that is often used for structural health monitoring) and strong motion such as earthquake. Especially, the semi-strong motion and the small ambient one are successfully simulated and measured by using the new fiber optic accelerometer in the experiment of the structural health monitoring of a real bridge.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.397-407
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• 2021

This paper investigates the optimal sensor placements and capabilities of this procedure for dynamic characteristics identification of arch dams. For this purpose, a prototype arch dam is constructed in laboratory conditions. Berke arch dam located on the Ceyhan River in city of Osmaniye is one of the highest arch dam constructed in Turkey is selected for field verification. The ambient vibration tests are conducted using initial candidate sensor locations at the beginning of the study. Enhanced Frequency Domain Decomposition and Stochastic Subspace Identification methods are used to extract experimental dynamic characteristics. Then, measurements are repeated according to optimal sensor locations of the dams. These locations are specified using the Effective Independence Method. To determine the optimal sensor locations, the target mode shape matrices which are obtained from ambient vibration tests of the selected dam with a large number of accelerometers are used. The dynamic characteristics obtained from each ambient vibrations tests are compared with each other. It is concluded that the dynamic characteristics obtained from initial measurements and those obtained from a limited number of sensors are compatible with each other. This situation indicates that optimal sensor placements determined by the Effective Independence Method are useful for dynamic characteristics identification of arch dams.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.60-68
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• 2012

This study describes an analytical and experimental investigation of the pedestrian steel-deck truss bridge in the City of Rochester, New York, U.S.A. This investigation was undertaken to provide assurance that this important bridge continues to be functional for this use. An ambient vibration experiment on full-scale structures is a way of assessing the reliability of the various assumptions employed in the mathematical models used in analysis. It is also the most reliable way of determining the structural parameters of major importance in structural dynamics, such as the mode shapes and the associated natural frequencies. Pedestrian-induced vibrations have been measured on the bridge to determine the displacement and the vertical and transverse dynamic characteristics of the steel deck truss. In the analytical modeling, three-dimensional finite element analysis was developed and validated against the ambient tests.