• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.199-215
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• 2013

During the service life of a structure, design complications and unexpected events may induce unforeseen vibrations. These vibrations can be generated by malfunctioning machinery or machines that are modified or placed without considering the original structural design because of a change in the intended use of the structure. Significant vibrations occurred at a natural gas plant cooling structure during its operation due to cavitation effect within the hydraulic system. This study presents findings obtained from the in-situ vibration measurements and following finite-element analyses of the cooling structure. Comments are made on the updated performance level and damage state of the structure using the results of these measurements and corresponding numerical analyses. An attempt was also made to assess the applicability of traditional displacement-based vulnerability estimation methods in the health monitoring of structures under vibrations with a character different from those due to seismic excitations.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.589-604
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• 2013

Identification of damage has become an evolving area of research over the last few decades with increasing the need of online health monitoring of the large structures. The visual damage detection can be impractical, expensive and ineffective in case of large structures, e.g., offshore platforms, offshore pipelines, multi-storied buildings and bridges. Damage in a system causes a change in the dynamic properties of the system. The structural damage is typically a local phenomenon, which tends to be captured by higher frequency signals. Most of vibration-based damage detection methods require modal properties that are obtained from measured signals through the system identification techniques. However, the modal properties such as natural frequencies and mode shapes are not such good sensitive indication of structural damage. Identification of damaged jacket type offshore platform members, based on wavelet packet transform is presented in this paper. The jacket platform is excited by simple wave load. Response of actual jacket needs to be measured. Dynamic signals are measured by finite element analysis result. It is assumed that this is actual response of the platform measured in the field. The dynamic signals first decomposed into wavelet packet components. Then eliminating some of the component signals (eliminate approximation component of wavelet packet decomposition), component energies of remained signal (detail components) are calculated and used for damage assessment. This method is called Detail Signal Energy Rate Index (DSERI). The results show that reduced wavelet packet component energies are good candidate indices which are sensitive to structural damage. These component energies can be used for damage assessment including identifying damage occurrence and are applicable for finding damages' location.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.257-289
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• 2015

Shear connectors are generally used to link the slab and girders together in slab-on-girder bridge structures. Damage of shear connectors in such structures will result in shear slippage between the slab and girders, which significantly reduces the load-carrying capacity of the bridge. Because shear connectors are buried inside the structure, routine visual inspection is not able to detect conditions of shear connectors. A few methods have been proposed in the literature to detect the condition of shear connectors based on vibration measurements. This paper proposes a different dynamic condition assessment approach to identify the damage of shear connectors in slab-on-girder bridge structures based on power spectral density transmissibility (PSDT). PSDT formulates the relationship between the auto-spectral densities of two responses in the frequency domain. It can be used to identify shear connector conditions with or without reference data of the undamaged structure (or the baseline). Measured impact force and acceleration responses from hammer tests are analyzed to obtain the frequency response functions at sensor locations by experimental modal analysis. PSDT from the slab response to the girder response is derived with the obtained frequency response functions. PSDT vectors in the undamaged and damaged states can be compared to identify the damage of shear connectors. When the baseline is not available, as in most practical cases, PSDT vectors from the measured response at a reference sensor to those of the slab and girder in the damaged state can be used to detect the damage of shear connectors. Numerical and experimental studies on a concrete slab supported by two steel girders are conducted to investigate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed approach. Identification results demonstrate that damages of shear connectors are identified accurately and efficiently with and without the baseline. The proposed method is also used to evaluate the conditions of shear connectors in a real composite bridge with in-field testing data.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.319-338
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• 2023

The study presents a new hybrid data-driven method by combining radial basis functions neural networks (RBF-NN) with the Jaya algorithm (JA) to provide effective structural health monitoring of arch dams. The novelty of this approach lies in that only one user-defined parameter is required and thus can increase its effectiveness and efficiency, as compared to other machine learning techniques that often require processing a large amount of training and testing model parameters and hyper-parameters, with high time-consuming. This approach seeks rapid damage detection in arch dams under dynamic conditions, to prevent potential disasters, by utilizing the RBF-NNN to seamlessly integrate the dynamic elastic modulus (DEM) and modal parameters (such as natural frequency and mode shape) as damage indicators. To determine the dynamic characteristics of the arch dam, the JA sequentially optimizes an objective function rooted in vibration-based data sets. Two case studies of hyperbolic concrete arch dams were carefully designed using finite element simulation to demonstrate the effectiveness of the RBF-NN model, in conjunction with the Jaya algorithm. The testing results demonstrated that the proposed methods could exhibit significant computational time-savings, while effectively detecting damage in arch dam structures with complex nonlinearities. Furthermore, despite training data contaminated with a high level of noise, the RBF-NN and JA fusion remained the robustness, with high accuracy.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.1955-1962
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• 2017

Induction motors are a workhorse for the industry. The condition monitoring and fault analysis are the main concern for the engineers. The bearing is one of the vital segment of the induction machine and the condition of the whole machine is decided based on the condition of the bearing. In the present paper, the vibration signal of the bearing has been used for the analysis. The first line of action is to perform a statistical analysis of the vibration signal which gives trends in signal. To get the location of a fault in the bearing the second action is to develop an index based on Wavelet Packet Transform node energy named as Bearing Damage Index (BDI). Further, Teager-Kaiser Energy Operator (TKEO) has been calculated from higher index value to get the envelope and finally Power Spectral Density (PSD) has been applied to identify the fault frequencies. A performance index has also been developed to compare the usefulness of the proposed method with other existing methods. The result shows that the strong amplitude of fault characteristics and its side bands help to decide the type of fault present in the recorded signal obtained from the bearing.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.51-60
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• 2012

Concrete sleepers are essential components of the conventional railway. As support elements, sleepers are always subjective to a variety of time-dependent loads attributable to the train operations, either wheel or rail abnormalities. It has been observed that the sleepers may deteriorate due to these loads, inducing the formation of hairline cracks. There are two areas along the sleepers that are more prone to crack: the central and the rail seat sections. Several non-destructive methods have been developed to identify failures in structures. Health monitoring techniques are based on vibration responses measurements, which help engineers to identify the vibration-based damage or remotely monitor the sleeper health. In the present paper, the dynamic effects of the cracks in the vibration signatures of the railway pre-stressed concrete sleepers are investigated. The experimental modal analysis has been used to evaluate the modal bending changes in the vibration characteristics of the sleepers, differentiating between the central and the rail seat locations of the cracks. Modal parameters changes of the 'healthy' and cracked sleepers have been highlighted in terms of natural frequencies and modal damping. The paper concludes with a discussion of the most suitable failure indicator and it defines the vibration signatures of intact, central cracked and rail seat cracked sleepers.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.199-219
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• 2015

This paper presents the non-destructive evaluation of a high-speed railway bridge using train-induced strain responses. Based on the train-track-bridge interaction analysis, the strain responses of a high-speed railway bridge under moving trains with different operation status could be calculated. The train induced strain responses could be divided into two parts: the force vibration stage and the free vibration stage. The strain-displacement relationship is analysed and used for deriving critical displacements from theoretical stain measurements at a forced vibration stage. The derived displacements would be suitable for the condition assessment of the bridge through design specifications defined indexes and would show certain limits to the practical application. Thus, the damage identification of high-speed railways, such as the stiffness degradation location, needs to be done by comparing the measured strain response under moving trains in different states because the vehicle types of high-speed railway are relatively clear and definite. The monitored strain responses at the free vibration stage, after trains pass through the bridge, would be used for identifying the strain modes. The relationship between and the degradation degree and the strain mode shapes shows certain rules for the widely used simply supported beam bridges. The numerical simulation proves simple and effective for the proposed method to locate and quantify the stiffness degradation.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.741-749
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• 2018

Structural health monitoring (SHM) systems are necessary to achieve smart predictive maintenance and repair planning as well as they lead to a safe operation of mechanical structures. In the context of vibration-based SHM the measured structural responses are employed to draw conclusions about the structural integrity. This usually leads to a mathematically illposed inverse problem which needs regularization. The restriction of the solution set of this inverse problem by using prior information about the damage properties is advisable to obtain meaningful solutions. Compared to the undamaged state typically only a few local stiffness changes occur while the other areas remain unchanged. This change can be described by a sparse damage parameter vector. Such a sparse vector can be identified by employing $L_1$-regularization techniques. This paper presents a novel framework for damage parameter identification by combining sparse solution techniques with an Extended Kalman Filter. In order to ensure sparsity of the damage parameter vector the measurement equation is expanded by an additional nonlinear $L_1$-minimizing observation. This fictive measurement equation accomplishes stability of the Extended Kalman Filter and leads to a sparse estimation. For verification, a proof-of-concept example on a quadratic aluminum plate is presented.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.859-880
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• 2016

This study aims to establish an effective methodology for the detection of instant damages occurred in cable-stayed bridges with the measurements of cable vibration and structural temperatures. A transfer coefficient for the daily temperature variation and another for the long-term temperature variation are firstly determined to eliminate the environmental temperature effects from the cable force variation. Several thresholds corresponding to different levels of exceedance probability are then obtained to decide four upper criteria and four lower criteria for damage detection. With these criteria, the monitoring data for three stay cables of Ai-Lan Bridge are analyzed and compared to verify the proposed damage detection methodology. The simulated results to consider various damage scenarios unambiguously indicate that the damages with cable force changes larger than ${\pm}1%$ can be confidently detected. As for the required time to detect damage, it is found that the cases with ${\pm}2%$ of cable force change can be discovered in no more than 6 hours and those with ${\pm}1.5%$ of cable force change can be identified in at most 9 hours. This methodology is also investigated for more lightly monitored cases where only the air temperature measurement is available. Under such circumstances, the damages with cable force changes larger than ${\pm}1.5%$ can be detected within 12 hours. Even though not exhaustively reflecting the environmental temperature effects on the cable force variation, both the effective temperature and the air temperature can be considered as valid indices to eliminate these effects at high and low monitoring costs.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.71 no.1
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• pp.57-63
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• 2019

During the last two decades, much joint research regarding vibration based methods has been done, leading to developing various algorithms and techniques. These algorithms and techniques can be divided into modal methods and signal methods. Although modal methods have been widely used for health monitoring and damage detection, signal methods due to higher efficiency have received considerable attention in various fields, including aerospace, mechanical and civil engineering. Signal-based methods are derived directly from the recorded responses through signal processing algorithms to detect damage. According to different signal processing techniques, signal-based methods can be divided into three categories including time domain methods, frequency domain methods, and time-frequency domain methods. The frequency domain methods are well-known and interest in using them has increased in recent years. To determine dynamic behaviours, to identify systems and to detect damages of bridges, different methods and algorithms have been proposed by researchers. In this study, a new algorithm to detect seismic damage in the bridge's piers is suggested. To evaluate the algorithm, an analytical model of a bridge with simple spans is used. Based on the algorithm, before and after damage, the bridge is excited by a sine force, and the piers' responses are measured. The dynamic specifications of the bridge are extracted by Power Spectral Density function. In addition, the Least Square Method is used to detect damage in the bridge's piers. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm can identify the seismic damage effectively. The algorithm is output-only method and measuring the excitation force is not needed. Moreover, the proposed approach does not need numerical models.