Vibration testing is a well-known practice for damage identification of civil engineering structures. The real modal parameters of a structure can be determined from the data obtained by tests using system identification methods. By comparing these measured modal parameters with the modal parameters of a numerical model of the same structure in undamaged condition, damage detection, localization, and quantification is possible. This paper presents a real-life application of this technique to assess the structural health of the 50-year old bridge of Tilff, a prestressed three-cell box-girder concrete bridge with variable height. A complete ambient vibration survey comprising both vertical accelerations and axial strains has been carried out. The in situ use of optical fiber strain sensors for the direct measurement of modal strains is an original contribution of this work. It is a big step forward in the exploration of modal curvatures for damage identification because the accuracy in calculating the modal curvatures is substantially improved by directly measuring modal strains rather than deriving the modal curvatures from acceleration measurements. From the ambient vibrations, natural frequencies, damping factors, modal displacements and modal curvatures are extracted by the stochastic subspace identification method. These modal parameters are used for damage identification which is performed by the updating of a finite element model of the intact structure. The obtained results are then compared to the inspections performed on the bridge.
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Vibration-based damage identification of existing infrastructure suffers from a low sensitivity of natural frequencies to certain types of damage while the sensitivity to environmental influences may be sufficiently high to completely mask the effect of severe damage. Modal strains are much more sensitive to local damage, but their direct monitoring is not possible with current measurement techniques due to the very small strain levels occurring during ambient, or operational excitation. The present work explores a novel optical signal processing technique that enables to obtain sub-microstrain accuracy with Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) strain sensors. The novel technique is validated in an experimental modal analysis test on a steel beam. The quality of the raw strain data and the strain mode shapes as obtained by using the novel optical processing technique and a conventional one are compared. The obtained modal characteristics are also compared with results of an experimental modal analysis in which accelerometers are used as sensors.
No abstract is provided for this article.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Vibration monitoring from strain data is a promising alternative to the more conventional acceleration-based monitoring because a dense measurement grid can be achieved at a relatively low cost and because strain mode shapes are more sensitive to local stiffness changes than displacement mode shapes. However, the feasibility of monitoring strain mode shapes of full-scale civil structures, where the operational dynamic strain levels are of very low amplitude and temperature changes can influence the modal characteristics, has remained an open question. The present work provides a proof of concept in which the deck of a steel tied arch railway bridge is instrumented with eighty Fiber-optic Bragg Grating strain sensors, multiplexed in four fibers, that are interrogated with a technique that achieves high accuracy and precision. For more than a year, the natural frequencies and strain mode shapes of ten modes have been automatically identified from operational strain time histories, with typical root-mean-square values of 0.01 microstrain, on an hourly basis. Furthermore, using these modal data, the influence of temperature fluctuations and that of a retrofitting of the hangers connecting the bridge deck and the arches, which took place during the monitoring period, are extensively investigated. Both have an influence on the overall stiffness of the bridge and therefore they result in clear changes in the natural frequencies. They do not have an influence on the local stiffness and therefore they do not influence the strain mode shapes, except when the retrofitting induces an interaction between previously well-separated modes.
This paper aims at assessing the influence of environmental parameters on the modal characteristics of age–old masonry constructions. The results of a long–term ambient vibration monitoring of the San Frediano bell tower in Lucca (Italy) are reported. The tower, dating back to the 11th century, has been fitted along its height with four triaxial seismometric stations, which were left active for about one year. Data from the monitoring system have been processed via the Stochastic Subspace Identification Method in order to identify the tower’s modal characteristics and their variations over the year. The dependence of the tower’s frequencies on the ambient temperature was first studied and simulated via simple auto–regressive models. Then, some output–only models based on the principal component analysis (PCA) were applied, under the hypotheses of both linear and nonlinear (Kernel PCA) dependence of the natural frequencies on the unknown environmental parameters. The results indicate PCA to be an effective tool for detecting changes in the dynamic characteristics of masonry constructions.
No abstract is provided for this article.
No abstract is provided for this article.
