Damage detection in bridges under moving loads based on subspace projection residuals

This paper proposes a data-driven method using subspace projection residual of the responses to identify the damage locations in bridges subjected to moving loads. In this method, a moving window with a certain length determined by the sampling frequency and the fundamental frequency of the measured responses is used to cut out the acceleration responses of the bridge subjected to a moving vehicle. The characteristic subspaces of the windowed signals are subsequently extracted to calculate the local damage index using the subspace projection residual. When the window moves to the damage location, the orthogonality between the active subspace of the damaged state and the null subspace of the healthy state is invalid, which leads to a relatively large projection residual that can be used to localize the damage. To improve the reliability of the proposed approach, a one-side upper confidence limit is introduced. A simply supported beam bridge subjected to a moving mass is simulated to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Numerical results indicate that the proposed approach can accurately localize the single and multiple damages, even when the responses are smeared with a significant noise. Experimental tests conducted on a steel beam bridge model also demonstrate the performance and accuracy of the proposed approach. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can localize the damage even with a small number of sensors, indicating the method has a good and promising performance for practical engineering applications.