No abstract

This study aims to develop a real time structural health monitoring method by ultrasonic tests combined with advanced six component (6C) translation and rotation measurements. Conventionally, the investigation of the velocity and acceleration response in the translation direction is used to obtain the eigenfrequencies of structures. Recently the measurement of rotation has been considered to fully characterize the dynamic behavior of structures. This research undertakes the evaluation of a novel 6C sensor (IMU50-iXblue) with components originally developed for navigation for the purpose of bridge monitoring. However, as for all vibration recordings, there is a certain influence of environmental conditions (mainly temperature) which may affect evaluation and the results of structural assessment. We propose applying the cross-correlation function to the 6C ambient vibration signals to reconstruct wave propagation and using coda wave interferometry (CWI) to obtain internal velocity variation from waveforms. A field experiment on a large-scale prestressed concrete bridge model is presented. To verify that we are able to identify the pre-stress loss even in presence of temperature effects, we perform measurements in two different scales: the ultrasonic and output-only, vibration measurements. The change in the structural properties due to the pre-stress loss should be detected by the pulse velocity change. The results reveal both the performance and advantages of ultrasonic techniques and the capabilities of 6C sensors. To conclude, the application of CWI to wave signals contributes to a comprehensive assessment for bridge monitoring.

The aim of this work is to improve the current structural health monitoring (SHM) methods for civil structures. A field experiment was carried out on a two-span bridge with a built-in unbonded prestressing system. The bridge is a 24-metre long concrete beam resting on three bearings. Cracks were formed subsequently when a prestressing force of 350 kN was changed to 200 kN, so that different structural states could be demonstrated. The structural assessment of this reference bridge was accomplished by the non-destructive testing using ultrasonic devices and vibration measurements. The ultrasonic velocity variations were investigated by using the coda wave interferometry method. The seismic interferometry technique was applied to the vibration recordings to reconstruct the wave propagation field in the bridge. This investigation shows that the wave velocity is sensitive to the current structural state and can be considered as the damage indicator. Overall, the implementation of coda cave interferometry and seismic interferometry technique facilitates structural health monitoring (SHM) in civil engineering.

The measurements and subsequent system identification of the cables play extremely important roles in health monitoring of the whole cable-stayed bridge. The technique of ambient vibration measurement where only the output signal is available has been commonly adopted to measure the cable-stayed bridges. In this case, it is most popular in the literature to combine the random decrement method together with the Ibrahim time domain method for system identification. To apply the above two methods for cable identification, however, the problem of imperfect random decrement signatures and the difficulty of conducting well-distributed measurements at various stations of a single cable have to be overcome. The crucial time shifting parameter is first explored in this study to extend the applicability of the Ibrahim time domain method. In addition, with the mode separation technique and a novel multiple random decrement method recently proposed, an effective method to identify the parameters of several cable modes merely based on the measurement of a single station is developed and demonstrated by applying it to the velocity record of a cable of the Chi-Lu cable-stayed bridge. The validation of this method is also provided in this paper.

<p>Observing motion within a building in six degrees of freedom (three components of translational motion plus three components of rotational motion) opens completely new approaches to structural health monitoring. Inspired by inertial navigation, we can monitor the absolute motion of a building or parts of it without the need for an external reference. Rotational motion sensors can directly measure harmful torsional modes of a building, which has always been challenging and prone to errors when using translation sensors only. Currently, we are developing methodologies including rotational motion observations for monitoring of material parameters in order to locate and characterize structural damage. Within the framework of the GIOTTO project (funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, BMBF) we explore these approaches.</p> <p>Here, we introduce a newly developed 6C sensor network for structural health monitoring. It consists of 14 inertial measurement units (IMU50 from exail, former iXblue, France) that were adapted to the needs of seismology and structural health monitoring. We performed experiments at the BLEIB test structure of the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), a 24 m long concrete beam serving as a large scale bridge model. We present results on detecting changes in material properties (seismic wave speed) of the beam with varying pre-stress and load, as derived from a novel approach by comparing amplitudes of translational to rotational motions at a single measurement point. We compare our findings to results obtained with coda wave interferometry using rotational as well as translational motions.</p>