• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.135-146
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• 2010

This paper presents the perspective of the Structural Mechanics program of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) on the damage assessment of structures for the period 2006-2009 when the author was serving as Program Manager at AFOSR. It is found that damage assessment of structures plays a very important role in assuring the safety and operational readiness of US Air Force fleet. The current fleet has many aging aircraft, which poses a considerable challenge for the operators and maintainers. The nondestructive evaluation technology is rather mature and able to detect damage with considerable reliability during the periodic maintenance inspections. The emerging structural health monitoring methodology has great potential, because it will use on-board damage detection sensors and systems, will be able to offer on-demand structural health bulletins. Considerable fundamental and applied research is still needed to enable the development, implementation, and dissemination of structural health monitoring technology.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.539-558
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• 2012

The diagnosis of bridge serviceability is carried out by a combination of in-situ visual inspection, static and dynamic loading tests and analyses. Structural health monitoring (SHM) using information technology and sensors is increasingly being used for providing a better estimate of structural performance characteristics rather than above traditional methods. Because the mechanical behavior of bridges with various kinds of damage can not be made clear, it is very difficult to estimate both the damage mode and degree of damage of existing bridges. In this paper, the sensitivity of both static and dynamic behaviors of bridges are studied as a measure of damage assessment through experiments on model bridges induced with some specified artificial damages. And, a method of damage assessment of bridges based on those behaviors is discussed in detail. Finally, based on the results, a possible application for structural health monitoring systems for existing bridges is also discussed.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.04a
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• pp.131-138
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• 1998

Structural damage is used to be modeled through reductions in the stiffness of structural elements for the purpose of damage estimation of structural system. In this study, the concept of joint damage is employed for more realistic damage assessment of a steel structure. The joint damage is estimated damage based on the mode shape informations using neural networks. The beam-to-column connection in a steel frame structure is represented by a rotational spring at the fixed end of a beam element. The severity of joint damage is defined as the reduction ratio of the connection stiffness with respect to the value of the intact joint. The concept of the substructural identification is used for the localized damage assessment in a large structure. The feasibility of the proposed method is examined using an example with simulated data. It has been found that the joint damages can be reasonably estimated for the case with the measurements of the mode vectors subjected to noise.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.51-69
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• 2016

Monitoring the performance and estimating the remaining useful life of aging civil infrastructure in the United States has been identified as a major objective in the civil engineering community. Structural health monitoring has emerged as a central tool to fulfill this objective. This paper presents a review of the major structural monitoring programs that have been recently implemented in the United States, focusing on the integrity and performance assessment of large-scale structural systems. Applications where response data from a monitoring program have been used to detect and correct structural deficiencies are highlighted. These applications include (but are not limited to): i) Post-earthquake damage assessment of buildings and bridges; ii) Monitoring of cables vibration in cable-stayed bridges; iii) Evaluation of the effectiveness of technologies for retrofit and seismic protection, such as base isolation systems; and iv) Structural damage assessment of bridges after impact loads resulting from ship collisions. These and many other applications show that a structural health monitoring program is a powerful tool for structural damage and condition assessment, that can be used as part of a comprehensive decision-making process about possible actions that can be undertaken in a large-scale civil infrastructure system after potentially damaging events.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.301-320
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• 2009

Damage assessment for buried structures against an internal blast is conducted by considering the soil-structure interaction. The structural element under analysis is assumed to be rigid-plastic and simply-supported at both ends. Shear failure, bending failure and combined failure modes are included based on five possible transverse velocity profiles. The maximum deflections with respect to shear and bending failure are derived respectively by employing proper failure criteria of the structural element. Pressure-Impulse diagrams to assess damage of the buried structures are subsequently developed. Comparisons have been done to evaluate the influences of the soil-structure interaction and the shear-to-bending strength ratio of the structural element. A case study for a buried reinforced concrete structure has been conducted to show the applicability of the proposed damage assessment method.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.87-97
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• 2018

Stone pagoda structures have continued to be aged due to the combination of various damage factors. However, some studies on nonstructural damage have been carried out, but assessment studies on structural damage have not been done in various ways. Therefore, in this study, structural and nonstructural influencing factors according to the damage types are classified and the damage assessment according to the structural influencing factors affecting the behavior of the stone pagoda structure is performed. In addition, the damage rating classification criteria for each type of structural damages or damage locations are presented, and the damage index is calculated by providing the criteria for the classification of damage according to the degree of damage to which the damage is caused. Therefore, this study can evaluate quantitatively the damage status of stone pagoda structures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.283-294
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• 2001

In the present work a constitutive model is developed which permits the assessment of the structural performance through a criterion based on cumulative damage. For it, a damage index is defined and is evaluated through the application of the Miner's rule in low-cycle fatigue. However, the damage index is not considered as a posteriori variable since is incorporated explicitly as an internal variable in the constitutive equations which produces a direct coupling between the damage and the structural mechanical behaviour allowing the possibility of considering as a whole different coupled phenomena. For the elaboration of this damage model, the concepts of the mechanics of continuum medium are applied on lumped dissipative models in order to obtain a coupled simplified model. As a result an elastoplastic model coupled with damage and fatigue damage is obtained.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.121-128
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• 2018

Severe earthquakes can cause damage to society both socially and economically. An appropriate initial response can alleviate damage from severe earthquakes. In order to formulate an appropriate initial response, it is necessary to identify damage situations in societies; however, it is difficult to grasp this information immediately after an earthquake event. In this study, an earthquake damage assessment methodology for buildings is proposed for estimating damage situations immediately after severe earthquakes. A response spectrum database is constructed to provide response spectra at arbitrary locations from earthquake measurements immediately after the event. The fragility curves are used to estimate the damage of the buildings. Earthquake damage assessment is performed from the response spectrum database at the building scale to provide enhanced damage condition information. Earthquake damage assessment for Gyeongju city and Pohang city were conducted using the proposed methodology, when an earthquake occurred on September 12, 2016, and November 15, 2017. Results confirm that the proposed earthquake damage assessment effectively represented the earthquake damage situation in the city to decide on an appropriate initial response by providing detailed information at the building scale.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.129-137
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• 1999

Assessment of structural damage is a complex subject imbued with uncertainty and vagueness. This complexity arises from the use of subjective opinion and imprecise numerical data. Recently several active researches have been performed using new methods such as neural network approach or on-line damage detection. In this paper, Damage assessment (diagnosis) of the concrete bridges is studied by a new approach utilizing a neural fuzzy system that combined a neural network and a fuzzy logic. By applying this system to actual in-service bridges, it has been verified that the neural fuzzy method is effective for the bridge diagnosis.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.303-313
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• 1997

Though many techniques for the damage assessment of structures have been studied recently, most of them can be only applied to simple structures. Therefore, practical damage assessment techniques that evaluate the damage location and the damage state for large structures need to be developed. In this study, a damage assessment technique using a neural network is developed, in which the bilevel damage assessment procedure is proposed to evaluate the damage of a large structure from the limited monitoring data. The procedure is as follows ; first, for the rational selection of damage critical members, the members that affect the probability of failure or unusual structural behavior are selected by sensitivity analysis. Secondly, the monitoring points and the number of sensors that are sensitive to the damage severity of the selected members are also selected through the sensitivity analysis with a proposed sensitivity measurement format. The validity and applicability of the developed technique are demonstrated by various examples, and it has been shown that the practical information on the damage state of the selected critical members can be assessed even though the limited monitoring data have been used.