• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.607-616
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• 2019

The video deflectometer based on digital image correlation is a non-contacting optical measurement method which has become a useful tool for characterization of the vertical deflections of large structures. In this study, a novel imaging model has been established which considers the variations of pitch angles in the full image. The new model allows deflection measurement at a wide working distance with high accuracy. A monocular video deflectometer has been accordingly developed with an inclination sensor, which facilitates dynamic determination of the orientations and rotation of the optical axis of the camera. This layout has advantages over the video deflectometers based on theodolites with respect to convenience. Experiments have been presented to show the accuracy of the new imaging model and the performance of the monocular video deflectometer in outdoor applications. Finally, this equipment has been applied to the measurement of the vertical deflection of Yingwuzhou Yangtze River Bridge in real time at a distance of hundreds of meters. The results show good agreement with the embedded GPS outputs.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.649-657
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• 2019

Recently, an advanced video deflectometer based on the principle of off-axis digital image correlation was presented and advocated for remote and real-time deflection monitoring of large engineering structures. In engineering practice, measurement accuracy is one of the most important technical indicators of the video deflectometer. However, it has been observed in many outdoor experiments that data drift often presents in the measured deflection-time curves, which is caused by the instability of imaging system and the unavoidable influences of ambient interferences (e.g., ambient light changes, ambient temperature variations as well as ambient vibrations) in non-laboratory conditions. The non-ideal unstable imaging conditions seriously deteriorate the measurement accuracy of the video deflectometer. In this work, to perform high-accuracy deflection monitoring, potential sources for the drift error are analyzed, and a drift error model is established by considering these error sources. Based on this model, a simple, easy-to-implement yet effective reference point compensation method is proposed for real-time removal of the drift error in measured deflections. The practicality and effectiveness of the proposed method are demonstrated by in-situ deflection monitoring of railway and highway bridges.