< Back to previous page

Project

Population-based damage detection for civil engineering structures

Damage-sensitive features used in vibration-based structural health monitoring (SHM), such as strains or natural frequencies, are often influenced by operational and environmental conditions, for example temperature. This complicates damage detection. Although several techniques have been proposed in the literature to differentiate between damage and operational and environmental conditions, this remains a challenge. This proposal investigates the potential of a population-based damage detection approach to enable detecting damage in an early stage. In this approach, multiple structures of a similar type are monitored simultaneously. A distinction is made between homogeneous populations, which consist of structures that are nominally the same, and heterogeneous populations, which consist of structures that have similarities but are not entirely identical. First, a methodology is developed and verified using numerical simulations. Next, a validation is performed using data obtained from simultaneous in situ monitoring on four railway bridges with a similar design. The set of four bridges contains different subsets of both homogeneous and heterogeneous populations. Although the main focus in the project is on the application to railway bridges, the presented methodology also applies to other civil engineering structures, such as antenna masts and onshore or offshore wind turbines.

Date:1 Oct 2020 →  30 Sep 2023
Keywords:Structural health monitoring, Vibration measurements, Structural dynamics
Disciplines:Construction mechanics, Structural optimisation, Building physics