• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.333-347
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• 2009

Due to structural complicacy, structural health monitoring for civil engineering needs more accurate and effectual methods of damage identification. This study aims to import multi-source information fusion (MSIF) into structural damage diagnosis to improve the validity of damage detection. Firstly, the essential theory and applied mathematic methods of MSIF are introduced. And then, the structural damage identification method based on multi-mode information fusion is put forward. Later, on the basis of a numerical simulation of a concrete continuous box beam bridge, it is obviously indicated that the improved modal strain energy method based on multi-mode information fusion has nicer sensitivity to structural initial damage and favorable robusticity to noise. Compared with the classical modal strain energy method, this damage identification method needs much less modal information to detect structural initial damage. When the noise intensity is less than or equal to 10%, this method can identify structural initial damage well and truly. In a word, this structural damage identification method based on multi-mode information fusion has better effects of structural damage identification and good practicability to actual structures.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.71 no.4
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• pp.391-405
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• 2019

Compared to the ambient vibration test mainly identifying the structural modal parameters, such as frequency, damping and mode shapes, the impact testing, which benefits from measuring both impacting forces and structural responses, has the merit to identify not only the structural modal parameters but also more detailed structural parameters, in particular flexibility. However, in traditional impact tests, an impacting hammer or artificial excitation device is employed, which restricts the efficiency of tests on various bridge structures. To resolve this problem, we propose a new method whereby a moving vehicle is taken as a continuous exciter and develop a corresponding flexibility identification theory, in which the continuous wheel forces induced by the moving vehicle is considered as structural input and the acceleration response of the bridge as the output, thus a structural flexibility matrix can be identified and then structural deflections of the bridge under arbitrary static loads can be predicted. The proposed method is more convenient, time-saving and cost-effective compared with traditional impact tests. However, because the proposed test produces a spatially continuous force while classical impact forces are spatially discrete, a new flexibility identification theory is required, and a novel structural identification method involving with equivalent load distribution, the enhanced Frequency Response Function (eFRFs) construction and modal scaling factor identification is proposed to make use of the continuous excitation force to identify the basic modal parameters as well as the structural flexibility. Laboratory and numerical examples are given, which validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Furthermore, parametric analysis including road roughness, vehicle speed, vehicle weight, vehicle's stiffness and damping are conducted and the results obtained demonstrate that the developed method has strong robustness except that the relative error increases with the increase of measurement noise.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.331-338
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• 2004

In this paper, stiffness and damping matrices are experimentally constructed using structural modal information on frequencies, damping ratios and modal vectors, which are obtained by shaking table tests. The acceleration of the shaking table is used as the input signal, and the resulting acceleration of each floor is measured as output signal. The characteristic and limitation of modal information from shaking table test are obtained by Common Based-normalized System Identification(CBSI) technique which is based on time domain information.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.184-194
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• 2016

In existing identification methods for on-orbit spacecraft, such as eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA) and subspace method identification (SMI), singular value decomposition (SVD) is used frequently to estimate the modal parameters. However, these identification methods are often used to process the linear time-invariant system, and there is a lower computation efficiency using the SVD when the system order of spacecraft is high. In this study, to improve the computational efficiency in identifying time-varying modal parameters of large spacecraft, a faster recursive algorithm called fast approximated power iteration (FAPI) is employed. This approach avoids the SVD and can be provided as an alternative spacecraft identification method, and the latest modal parameters obtained can be applied for updating the controller parameters timely (e.g. the self-adaptive control problem). In numerical simulations, two large flexible spacecraft models, the Engineering Test Satellite-VIII (ETS-VIII) and Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) satellite, are established. The identification results show that this recursive algorithm can obtain the time-varying modal parameters, and the computation time is reduced significantly.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.133-152
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• 2011

System identification is a fundamental step towards the application of structural health monitoring and damage detection techniques. On this respect, the development of evolved identification strategies is a priority for obtaining reliable and repeatable baseline modal parameters of an undamaged structure to be adopted as references for future structural health assessments. The paper presents the identification of the modal parameters of the Guangzhou New Television Tower, China, using a data-driven stochastic subspace identification (SSI-data) approach complemented with an appropriate automatic mode selection strategy which proved to be successful in previous literature studies. This well-known approach is based on a clustering technique which is adopted to discriminate structural modes from spurious noise ones. The method is applied to the acceleration measurements made available within the task I of the ANCRiSST benchmark problem, which cover 24 hours of continuous monitoring of the structural response under ambient excitation. These records are then subdivided into a convenient number of data sets and the variability of modal parameter estimates with ambient temperature and mean wind velocity are pointed out. Both 10 minutes and 1 hour long records are considered for this purpose. A comparison with finite element model predictions is finally carried out, using the structural matrices provided within the benchmark, in order to check that all the structural modes contained in the considered frequency interval are effectively identified via SSI-data.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.17 no.3_4
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• pp.445-466
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• 2004

In this paper, several modal identification techniques for output-only structural systems are extensively investigated. The methods considered are the power spectral method, the frequency domain decomposition method, the Ibrahim time domain method, the eigensystem realization algorithm, and the stochastic subspace identification method. Generally, the power spectral method is most widely used in practical area, however, the other methods may give better estimates particularly for the cases with closed modes and/or with large measurement noise. Example analyses were carried out on typical structural systems under three different loading cases, and the identification performances were examined throught the comparisons between the estimates by various methods.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.77-93
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• 2015

The idea of using measured dynamic characteristics for damage detection is attractive because it allows for a global evaluation of the structural health and condition. However, vibration-based damage detection for complex structures such as long-span cable-supported bridges still remains a challenge. As a suspension or cable-stayed bridge involves in general thousands of structural components, the conventional damage detection methods based on model updating and/or parameter identification might result in ill-conditioning and non-uniqueness in the solution of inverse problems. Alternatively, methods that utilize, to the utmost extent, information from forward problems and avoid direct solution to inverse problems would be more suitable for vibration-based damage detection of long-span cable-supported bridges. The auto-associative neural network (ANN) technique and the probabilistic neural network (PNN) technique, that both eschew inverse problems, have been proposed for identifying and locating damage in suspension and cable-stayed bridges. Without the help of a structural model, ANNs with appropriate configuration can be trained using only the measured modal frequencies from healthy structure under varying environmental conditions, and a new set of modal frequency data acquired from an unknown state of the structure is then fed into the trained ANNs for damage presence identification. With the help of a structural model, PNNs can be configured using the relative changes of modal frequencies before and after damage by assuming damage at different locations, and then the measured modal frequencies from the structure can be presented to locate the damage. However, such formulated ANNs and PNNs may still be incompetent to identify damage occurring at the deck members of a cable-supported bridge because of very low modal sensitivity to the damage. The present study endeavors to enhance the damage identification capability of ANNs and PNNs when being applied for identification of damage incurred at deck members. Effort is first made to construct combined modal parameters which are synthesized from measured modal frequencies and modal shape components to train ANNs for damage alarming. With the purpose of improving identification accuracy, effort is then made to configure PNNs for damage localization by adapting the smoothing parameter in the Bayesian classifier to different values for different pattern classes. The performance of the ANNs with their input being modal frequencies and the combined modal parameters respectively and the PNNs with constant and adaptive smoothing parameters respectively is evaluated through simulation studies of identifying damage inflicted on different deck members of the double-deck suspension Tsing Ma Bridge.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1998.04a
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• pp.291-300
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• 1998

This paper demonstrates how ambient vibration measurements at a limited number of locations can be effectively utilized to estimate parameters of a finite element model of a large-scale structural system involving a large number of elements. System identification using ambient vibration measurements presents a challenge requiring the use of special identification techniques, which ran deal with very small magnitudes of ambient vibration contaminated by noise without the knowledge of input farces. In the present study, the modal parameters such as natural frequencies, damping ratios, and mode shapes of the structural system were estimated by means of appropriate system identification techniques including the random decrement method. Moreover, estimation of parameters such as the stiffness matrix of the finite element model from the system response measured by a limited number of sensors is another challenge. In this study, the system stiffness matrix was estimated by using the quadratic optimization involving the computed and measured modal strain energy of the system, with the aid of a sensitivity relationship between each element stiffness and the modal parameters established by the second order inverse modal perturbation theory. The finite element models thus identified represent the actual structural system very well, as their calculated dynamic characteristics satisfactorily matched the observed ones from the ambient vibration test performed on a large-scale structural system subjected primarily to ambient wind excitations. The dynamic models identified by this study will be used for design of an active mass damper system to be installed on this structure fer suppressing its wind vibration.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.527-544
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• 2009

In this study, the periodic seismic performance evaluation scheme is proposed using a structural health monitoring system in terms of seismic fragility. An instrumented highway bridge is used to demonstrate the evaluation procedure involving (1) measuring ambient vibration of a bridge under general vehicle loadings, (2) identifying modal parameters from the measured acceleration data by applying output-only modal identification method, (3) updating a preliminary finite element model (obtained from structural design drawings) with the identified modal parameters using real-coded genetic algorithm, (4) analyzing nonlinear response time histories of the structure under earthquake excitations, and finally (5) developing fragility curves represented by a log-normal distribution function using maximum likelihood estimation. It is found that the seismic fragility of a highway bridge can be updated using extracted modal parameters and can also be monitored further by utilizing the instrumented structural health monitoring system.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.16 no.2 s.107
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• pp.115-123
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• 2006

A feasibility of using the topology optimization method for structural damage identification is investigated for the first time. The frequency response functions (FRFs) are assumed to be constructed by the finite element models of damaged and undamaged structures. In addition to commonly used resonances, antiresonances are employed as the damage identifying modal parameters. For the topology optimization formulation, the modal parameters of the undamaged structure are made to approach those of the damaged structure by means of the constraint equations, while the objective function is an explicit penalty function requiring clear black-and-white images. The developed formulation is especially suitable for damage identification problems dealing with many modal parameters. Although relatively simple numerical problems were considered in this investigation, the possibility of using the topology optimization method for structural damage identification is suggested through this research.