• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제10권4_5호
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• pp.375-391
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• 2012

This paper reports the structural health monitoring benchmark study results for the Canton Tower using Bayesian methods. In this study, output-only modal identification and finite element model updating are considered using a given set of structural acceleration measurements and the corresponding ambient conditions of 24 hours. In the first stage, the Bayesian spectral density approach is used for output-only modal identification with the acceleration time histories as the excitation to the tower is unknown. The modal parameters and the associated uncertainty can be estimated through Bayesian inference. Uncertainty quantification is important for determination of statistically significant change of the modal parameters and for weighting assignment in the subsequent stage of model updating. In the second stage, a Bayesian model updating approach is utilized to update the finite element model of the tower. The uncertain stiffness parameters can be obtained by minimizing an objective function that is a weighted sum of the square of the differences (residuals) between the identified modal parameters and the corresponding values of the model. The weightings distinguish the contribution of different residuals with different uncertain levels. They are obtained using the Bayesian spectral density approach in the first stage. Again, uncertainty of the stiffness parameters can be quantified with Bayesian inference. Finally, this Bayesian framework is applied to the 24-hour field measurements to investigate the variation of the modal and stiffness parameters under changing ambient conditions. Results show that the Bayesian framework successfully achieves the goal of the first task of this benchmark study.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제10권4_5호
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• pp.485-499
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• 2012

Mode shape expansion is useful in structural dynamic studies such as vibration based structural health monitoring; however most existing expansion methods can not consider the modelling errors in the finite element model and the measurement uncertainty in the modal properties identified from vibration data. This paper presents a reliable approach for expanding mode shapes with consideration of both the errors in analytical model and noise in measured modal data. The proposed approach takes the perturbed force as an unknown vector that contains the discrepancies in structural parameters between the analytical model and tested structure. A regularisation algorithm based on the Tikhonov solution incorporating the L-curve criterion is adopted to reduce the influence of measurement uncertainties and to produce smooth and optimised expansion estimates in the least squares sense. The Canton Tower benchmark problem established by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is then utilised to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed expansion approach to the actual structure. The results from the benchmark problem studies show that the proposed approach can provide reliable predictions of mode shape expansion using only limited information on the operational modal data identified from the recorded ambient vibration measurements.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제10권4_5호
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• pp.427-442
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• 2012

An effective approach for updating finite element model is presented which can provide reliable estimates for structural updating parameters from identified operational modal data. On the basis of the dynamic perturbation method, an exact relationship between the perturbation of structural parameters such as stiffness change and the modal properties of the tested structure is developed. An iterative solution procedure is then provided to solve for the structural updating parameters that characterise the modifications of structural parameters at element level, giving optimised solutions in the least squares sense without requiring an optimisation method. A regularization algorithm based on the Tikhonov solution incorporating the generalised cross-validation method is employed to reduce the influence of measurement errors in vibration modal data and then to produce stable and reasonable solutions for the structural updating parameters. The Canton Tower benchmark problem established by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is employed to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed model updating technique. The results from the benchmark problem studies show that the proposed technique can successfully adjust the reduced finite element model of the structure using only limited number of frequencies identified from the recorded ambient vibration measurements.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제25권1호
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• pp.81-96
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• 2020

Wind measurements were made on the Canton Tower at a height of 461 m above ground during the Typhoon Vincente, the wind-induced accelerations and displacements of the tower were recorded as well. Comparisons of measured wind parameters at upper level of atmospheric boundary layer with those adopted in wind tunnel testing were presented. The measured turbulence intensity can be smaller than the design value, indicating that the wind tunnel testing may underestimate the crosswind structural responses for certain lock-in velocity range of vortex shedding. Analyses of peak factors and power spectral density for acceleration response shows that the crosswind responses are a combination of gust-induced buffeting and vortex-induced vibrations in the certain range of wind directions. The identified modal frequencies and mode shapes from acceleration data are found to be in good agreement with existing experimental results and the prediction from the finite element model. The damping ratios increase with amplitude of vibration or equivalently wind velocity which may be attributed to aerodynamic damping. In addition, the natural frequencies determined from the measured displacement are very close to those determined from the acceleration data for the first two modes. Finally, the relation between displacement responses and wind speed/direction was investigated.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제13권2호
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• pp.281-303
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• 2014

In order to suppress the wind-induced vibrations of the Canton Tower, a pair of active mass driver (AMD) systems has been installed on the top of the main structure. The structural principal directions in which the bending modes of the structure are uncoupled are proposed and verified based on the orthogonal projection approach. For the vibration control design in the principal X direction, the simplified model of the structure is developed based on the finite element model and modified according to the field measurements under wind excitations. The AMD system driven by permanent magnet synchronous linear motors are adopted. The dynamical models of the AMD subsystems are determined according to the open-loop test results by using nonlinear least square fitting method. The continuous variable gain feedback (VGF) control strategy is adopted to make the AMD system adaptive to the variation in the intensity of wind excitations. Finally, the field tests of free vibration control are carried out. The field test results of AMD control show that the damping ratio of the first vibration mode increases up to 11 times of the original value without control.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제25권1호
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• pp.111-122
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• 2020

Researchers up to date have introduced several Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques with varying advantages and drawbacks for each. Satellite positioning systems (GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO) based techniques proved to be promising, especially for high natural period structures. Particularly, the GPS has proved sufficient performance and reasonable accuracy in tracking real time dynamic displacements of flexible structures independent of atmospheric conditions, temperature variations and visibility of the monitored object. Tall structures are particularly sensitive to oscillations produced by different sources of dynamic actions; such as typhoons. Wind forces induce in the structure both longitudinal and perpendicular displacements with respect to the wind direction, resulting in torsional effects, which are usually more complex to be detected. To efficiently track the horizontal rotations of the in-plane sections of such flexible structures, two main issues have to be considered: a suitable sensor topology (i.e., location, installation, and combination of sensors), and the methodology used to process the data recorded by sensors. This paper reports the contributions of the measurements recorded from dual frequency GPS receivers and uni-axial accelerometers in a full-scale experimental campaign. The Canton tower in Guangzhou-China is the case study of this research, which is instrumented with a long-term structural health monitoring system deploying both accelerometers and GPS receivers. The elaboration of combining the obtained rather long records provided by these two types of sensors in detecting the torsional behavior of the tower under ambient vibration condition and during strong wind events is discussed in this paper. Results confirmed the reliability of GPS receivers in obtaining the dynamic characteristics of the system, and its ability to capture the torsional response of the tower when used alone or when they are combined with accelerometers integrated data.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제10권4_5호
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• pp.331-351
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• 2012

In this study an output-only system identification technique for civil structures under ambient vibrations is carried out, mainly focused on using the Stochastic Subspace Identification (SSI) based algorithms. A newly developed signal processing technique, called Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA), capable to smooth a noisy signal, is adopted for preprocessing the measurement data. An SSA-based SSI algorithm with the aim of finding accurate and true modal parameters is developed through stabilization diagram which is constructed by plotting the identified system poles with increasing the size of data matrix. First, comparative study between different approaches, with and without using SSA to pre-process the data, on determining the model order and selecting the true system poles is examined in this study through numerical simulation. Finally, application of the proposed system identification task to the real large scale structure: Canton Tower, a benchmark problem for structural health monitoring of high-rise slender structures, using SSA-based SSI algorithm is carried out to extract the dynamic characteristics of the tower from output-only measurements.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제11권6호
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• pp.1123-1141
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• 2016

To explore the application of traditional tuned mass dampers (TMDs) to the earthquake induced vibration control problem, a pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) is proposed by adding a viscoelastic limitation to the traditional TMD. In the proposed PTMD, the vibration energy can be further dissipated through the impact between the attached mass and the viscoelastic layer. More energy dissipation modes can guarantee better control effectiveness under a suite of excitations. To further reduce mass ratio and enhance the implementation of the PTMD control, multiple PTMDs (MPTMD) control is then presented. After the experimental validation of the proposed improved Hertz based pounding model, the basic equations of the MPTMD controlled system are obtained. Numerical simulation is conducted on the benchmark model of the Canton Tower. The control effectiveness of the PTMD and the MPTMD is analyzed and compared under different earthquake inputs. The sensitivity and the optimization of the design parameters are also investigated. It is demonstrated that PTMDs have better control efficiency over the traditional TMDs, especially under more severe excitation. The control performance can be further improved with MPTMD control. The robustness can be enhanced while the attached mass for each PTMD can be greatly reduced. It is also demonstrated through the simulation that a non-uniformly distributed MPTMD has better control performance than the uniformly distributed one. Parameter study is carried out for both the PTMD and the MPTMD systems. Finally, the optimization of the design parameters, including mass ratio, initial gap value, and number of PTMD in the MPTMD system, is performed for control improvement.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제14권1호
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• pp.1-16
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• 2014

In this work, we address the so-called sensor reachback problem for Wireless Sensor Networks, which consists in collecting the measurements acquired by a large number of sensor nodes into a sink node which has major computational and power capabilities. Focused on applications such as Structural Health Monitoring, we propose a cooperative communication protocol that exploits the spatio-temporal correlations of the sensor measurements in order to save energy when transmitting the information to the sink node in a non-stationary environment. In addition to cooperative communications, the protocol is based on two well-studied adaptive filtering techniques, Least Mean Squares and Recursive Least Squares, which trade off computational complexity and reduction in the number of transmissions to the sink node. Finally, experiments with real acceleration measurements, obtained from the Canton Tower in China, are included to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제24권6호
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• pp.769-781
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• 2019

Dynamic displacement response of civil structures is an important index for in-construction and in-service structural condition assessment. However, accurately measuring the displacement of large-scale civil structures such as high-rise buildings still remains as a challenging task. In order to cope with this problem, a vision-based system with the use of industrial digital camera and image processing has been developed for long-distance, remote, and real-time monitoring of dynamic displacement of supertall structures. Instead of acquiring image signals, the proposed system traces only the coordinates of the target points, therefore enabling real-time monitoring and display of displacement responses in a relatively high sampling rate. This study addresses the in-situ experimental verification of the developed vision-based system on the Canton Tower of 600 m high. To facilitate the verification, a GPS system is used to calibrate/verify the structural displacement responses measured by the vision-based system. Meanwhile, an accelerometer deployed in the vicinity of the target point also provides frequency-domain information for comparison. Special attention has been given on understanding the influence of the surrounding light on the monitoring results. For this purpose, the experimental tests are conducted in daytime and nighttime through placing the vision-based system outside the tower (in a brilliant environment) and inside the tower (in a dark environment), respectively. The results indicate that the displacement response time histories monitored by the vision-based system not only match well with those acquired by the GPS receiver, but also have higher fidelity and are less noise-corrupted. In addition, the low-order modal frequencies of the building identified with use of the data obtained from the vision-based system are all in good agreement with those obtained from the accelerometer, the GPS receiver and an elaborate finite element model. Especially, the vision-based system placed at the bottom of the enclosed elevator shaft offers better monitoring data compared with the system placed outside the tower. Based on a wavelet filtering technique, the displacement response time histories obtained by the vision-based system are easily decomposed into two parts: a quasi-static ingredient primarily resulting from temperature variation and a dynamic component mainly caused by fluctuating wind load.