Moving-Principal-Component-Analysis-Based Structural Damage Detection for Highway Bridges in Operational Environments

Abstract

With the deterioration of bridge performance and ever-increasing amounts of traffic, bridge safety is becoming a concern for the engineering community. A method that can assess a bridge’s condition in real time is urgently needed. The main factors that hinder bridge condition assessment are the uncertain operational environments. A new moving principal component analysis (MPCA)-based method is developed for structural damage detection in bridges in operational environments in this paper. Two main operational environmental factors, the environmental temperature and traffic loads, are studied in the assessment process to verify the robustness and practicality of the proposed method. The numerical and experimental results show that the proposed method is effective and accurate in assessing the bridge’s condition in operational environments.