• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.381-395
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• 2009

The paper presents a case study in which the structural condition assessment of the East Bay bridge in Gibsonton, Florida is evaluated with the help of remote health monitoring techniques. The bridge is a four-span, continuous, deck-type reinforced concrete structure supported on prestressed pile bents, and is instrumented with smart Fiber Optic Sensors. The sensors used for remote health monitoring are the newly emerged Fabry-Perot (FP), and are both surface-mounted and embedded in the deck. The sensing system can be accessed remotely through fast Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), which permits the evaluation of the bridge behavior under live traffic loads. The bridge was open to traffic since March 2005, and the collected structural data have been continuously analyzed since. The data revealed an increase in strain readings, which suggests a progression in damage. Recent visual observations also indicated the presence of longitudinal cracks along the bridge length. After the formation of these cracks, the sensors readings were analyzed and used to extrapolate the values of the maximum stresses at the crack location. The data obtained were also compared to initial design values of the bridge under factored gravity and live loads. The study showed that the proposed structural health monitoring technique proved to provide an efficient mean for condition assessment of bridge structures providing it is implemented and analyzed with care.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.07a
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• pp.1972-1973
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• 2007

A field-oriented UHF system for on-line PD monitoring of transformers is designed, which has been installed inside the oil tank of a transformer. This system has successfully captured long intermittent discharge signals that hadn't been detected through conventional techniques, and solved the problem successfully. The results demonstrate that UHF technique has great advantages for on-line PD monitoring of transformers. By adopting the peak detection technique, it becomes easy and effective for the transplantation of the phase-resolved pattern recognition technique from conventional method to UHF method, and then to realize continuous on-line monitoring, source characterization and trending analysis.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.135-142
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• 2004

Two-step identification approach for effective bridge health monitoring is proposed to alleviate the issues associated with many unknown parameters faced in the real structures and to improve the accuracy in the estimate results. It is suitable for on-line monitoring scheme, since the damage assessment is not always needed to be carried out whereas the alarming for damages is to be continuously monitored. In the first step for screening potential damaged members, damage indicator method based on modal strain energy, probabilistic neural networks and the conventional neural networks using grouping technique are used and then the conventional neural network technique is utilized for damage assessment on the screened members in the second step. The proposed methods are verified through a field test on the northern-most span of old Hannam Grand Bridge.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.185-197
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• 2013

We developed a simultaneous strain measurement and damage detection technique using a pair of surface-mounted piezoelectric transducers and a fiber connecting them. This is a novel sensor configuration of the fiber acoustic wave (FAW) piezoelectric transducer. In this study, lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) transducers are installed conventionally on a plate's surface, which is a technique used in many structural health monitoring studies. However, our PZTs are also connected with an optical fiber. A FAW and Lamb wave are simultaneously guided in the optical fiber and the structure, respectively. The dependency of the time-of-flight of the FAW on the applied strain is quantified for strain sensing. In our experimental results, the FAW exhibited excellent linear behavior and no hysteresis with respect to the change in strain. On the other hand, the well-known damage detection function of the surface-mounted PZT transducers was still available by monitoring the waveform change in the conventional Lamb wave ultrasonic path.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.63-86
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• 2023

Structural health monitoring and damage detection are essential for assessing, maintaining, and rehabilitating structures. Most of the existing damage detection approaches compare the current state structural response with the undamaged vibrational structural response, which is unsuitable for old and existing structures where undamaged vibrational responses are absent. One of the approaches for existing structures, numerical model updating/inverse modelling, available in the literature, is limited to numerical studies with high-end software. In this study, an attempt is made to study the effectiveness of the model updating technique, simplify modelling complexity, and economize its usability. The optimization-based detection problem is addressed by using programmable open-sourced code, OpenSees^® and a derivative-free optimization code, NOMAD^®. Modal analysis is used for damage identification of beam-like structures with several damage scenarios. The performance of the proposed methodology is validated both numerically and experimentally. The proposed method performs satisfactorily in identifying both locations and intensity of damage in structures.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.265-271
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• 2018

This paper presents a method for detecting damage to a structure at low cost using its impedance. The impedance technique is a typical method to detect local damage for structural health monitoring. This is a common technique for estimating damage by monitoring the electro-mechanical admittance signal of the structure. To apply this technique, an expensive impedance analyzer is generally used. On the other hand, it is necessary to develop a low-cost variant to effectively disseminate the technique. In this study, a method based on the transfer impedance using a function generator and digital multimeter, which are generally used in the laboratory instead of an impedance analyzer, was developed. That is, this technique estimates the damage by comparing the damage index using the amplitude ratio of the output voltage measured in the healthy and damaged state. A transfer impedance test was carried out on a steel specimen. By comparing the damage index, the presence of damage could be assessed reasonably. This study is a basic investigation of an impedance-based low-cost damage detection method that can be used effectively for structural health monitoring if supplemented with future research to estimate the damage location and severity.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.241-247
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• 2015

Deflection and deformation occur easily in structures with long length, such as bridges and pipelines. Shape monitoring is required for ensuring their structural health. A fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor can be used for monitoring a large-scale structure because of its advantage of multiplexing. In this study, FBG sensors were used for monitoring a composite beam structure, and its strains were measured at multiple points. Thereafter, a shape estimation technique based on the strains was studied. Particularly, a three-dimensional shape estimation technique was proposed for accurate structural health monitoring. A simple experiment was conducted to verify the performance of the shape estimation technique. The result revealed that the estimated shape of the composite beam structure was in agreement with the actual shape obtained after the deformation of the specimen. Additionally, the deflection at a specific point was verified by comparing the estimated and actual deformations measured using a micrometer.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.737-744
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• 2021

In this study, structural health monitoring (SHM) methods of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) were investigated using electrical resistance. The developed sensing technique monitored electrical resistance in accordance with the impact damage of a CFRP. The changes in electrical resistances with multiple electrode sets enabled SHM without extra sensors so that this technique can be called self-sensing. Moreover, this study proposed electrodes only at peripheral side of a structure to minimize the number of electrodes compared to those in an array which has square number of sensors as the sensing area increases. For the intensive investigation, electromechanical sensitivity in terms of electrode distance was analyzed and optimized under drop weight impact testing. Then, SHM methods with electrodes in an array and electrodes in peripheral edges were comparatively investigated. The developed methods successfully localized impact damages into 2D coordinates. Furthermore, damage severity can be shown with a damage map by calculating electrical resistance change ratio. Therefore, structural health self-sensing system using electrical resistance was successfully developed with the minimum number of electrodes.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.387-392
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• 2019

A technique was researched to detect bolt looseness using a transfer impedance technique (the dual piezoelectric material technique) for monitoring the structural health of a bolt joint. In order to use the single piezoelectric material technique, an expensive impedance analyzer should be used. However, in the transfer impedance technique, low-cost fault detection can be performed using a general function generator and a digital multimeter. A steel plate frame test specimen composed of bolt joints was fabricated, and the tightening torques of the bolts were loosened step by step. By using the transfer impedance method, the damage index was obtained. It was found that the presence of faults could be reasonably estimated using the damage index, which increased with the degree of bolt looseness. An experiment was performed on the same specimen using the single piezoelectric material technique, and the results showed a similar tendency. It could be possible to estimate the damage of a bolt joint at low cost by eliminating the expensive impedance analyzer. This method could be used effectively for structural health monitoring after carrying out a study to estimate the fault location and severity.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.21-31
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• 2010

In this study, a technique that uses wireless impedance sensor nodes is proposed to monitor tensile force of structural cable. To achieve this goal, the following approaches were implemented. First, a wireless impedance sensor node was designed for automated and cost-efficient prestress-loss monitoring. Second, an impedance-based algorithm was embedded in the wireless impedance sensor node for autonomous structural health monitoring of structural cables. Third, a tensile force monitoring technique that uses an interface plate for structural cables was proposed to overcome the limitations of the wireless impedance sensor node such as its narrow-band measurable frequency ranges. Finally, the applicability of the wireless impedance sensor node and the technique that uses the interface washer were evaluated in a lab-scaled prestressed concrete (PSC) girder model with internal and external tendons for which several prestress-loss scenarios were experimentally monitored with the wireless impedance sensor nodes.