A Strain based Load Identification for the Safety Monitoring of the Steel Structure

Abstract

This study proposes a load identification for the safety monitoring of the steel structure based on measured strain data. Instead of parameterizing the stiffness of structure in the existing system identification researches, the loads on a structure and a matrix (the unit strain matrix) defined by the relationship between strain and load on structure are parameterized in this study. The error function is defined by the difference between measured strain and strain estimated by parameters. In order to minimize this error function, the genetic algorithm which is one of the optimization algorithm is applied and the parameters are found. The loads on the structure can be identified through the founded parameters and measured strain data. When the loads are changed, the unmeasured strains are estimated based on founded parameters and measured strains on changed state of structure. To verify the load identification algorithm in this paper, the static experimental test for 3 dimensional steel frame structure was implemented and the loads were exactly identified through the measured strain data. In case of loading changes, the unmeasured strains which are monitoring targets on the structure were estimated in acceptable error range (0.17~3.13%). It is expected that the identification method in this study is applied to the safety monitoring of steel structures more practically.