Damage Assessment of a Building Subjected to a Terrorist Attack

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (11) ◽  
pp. 1693-1704 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.L. Eskew ◽  
S. Jang

An increasing threat of global terrorism has led to concerns about bombings of buildings, which could cause minor to severe structural damage. After such an event, it is important to rapidly assess the damage to the building to ensure safe and efficient emergency response. Current methods of visual inspection and non-destructive testing are expensive, subjective, and time consuming for emergency responders' usage immediately after an attack. On the other hand, vibration-based damage detection methods with wireless smart sensors could provide rapid assessment of structural characteristics with low cost. For blast analysis, structural response is usually determined using a simplified SDOF version of the undamaged structure, such as used in a Pressure-Impulse (P-I) Diagram, or using more complex FEM (finite element method) models. However, the simplified models cannot take into account damage caused by blast focus at a specific location or on a specific element, which may induce local failure leading to potential progressive collapse, and the more complex FEM models take too long to derive applicable results to be effective for a rapid structural assessment. In this paper, a new method to incorporate vibration-based damage detection methods to calculate the multi degree of freedom structural stiffness for determining structural condition is provided to create a framework for the rapid structural condition assessment of buildings after a terrorist attack. The stiffness parameters are generated from the modal analysis of the measured vibration on the building, which are then used in a numerical simulation to determine its structural response from the blast. The calculated structural response is then compared to limit conditions that have been developed from ASCE blast design codes to determine the damage assessment. A laboratory-scale building frame has been employed to validate the developed use of experimentally determined stiffness by comparing the P-I diagram using the experimental stiffness with that from numerical models. The reasonable match between the P-I diagrams from the numerical models and the experiments shows the positive potential of the method. The framework and examples of how to develop a rapid condition assessment are presented.

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (06) ◽  
pp. 1450083 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Liu ◽  
Siu-Seong Law ◽  
Xin-Qun Zhu

Revisited herein is the response sensitivity method for structural condition assessment. The performance of a sensitivity enhancement technique for structural damage identification is discussed with reference to cases with noisy excitation or with only output. An extended study on the structural condition assessment is conducted based on a newly developed force identification technique and the response sensitivity enhancement method. Numerical simulations with a planar truss structure show that the adverse effect of noise in excitation cannot be ignored in damage detection. A two-step method including the sensitivity enhancement technique for damage detection could improve the identification accuracy with less influence from the identified excitations. The improved structural condition assessment with sensitivity enhancement technique out-performs the conventional sensitivity approach with more accurate results from the truss structure studied even with a 10% noise in the measured responses.


Author(s):  
Chin-Hsiung Loh ◽  
Min-Hsuan Tseng ◽  
Shu-Hsien Chao

One of the important issues to conduct the damage detection of a structure using vibration-based damage detection (VBDD) is not only to detect the damage but also to locate and quantify the damage. In this paper a systematic way of damage assessment, including identification of damage location and damage quantification, is proposed by using output-only measurement. Four level of damage identification algorithms are proposed. First, to identify the damage occurrence, null-space and subspace damage index are used. The eigenvalue difference ratio is also discussed for detecting the damage. Second, to locate the damage, the change of mode shape slope ratio and the prediction error from response using singular spectrum analysis are used. Finally, to quantify the damage the RSSI-COV algorithm is used to identify the change of dynamic characteristics together with the model updating technique, the loss of stiffness can be identified. Experimental data collected from the bridge foundation scouring in hydraulic lab was used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methods. The computation efficiency of each method is also discussed so as to accommodate the online damage detection.


Author(s):  
N. Kerle ◽  
F. Nex ◽  
D. Duarte ◽  
A. Vetrivel

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Structural disaster damage detection and characterisation is one of the oldest remote sensing challenges, and the utility of virtually every type of active and passive sensor deployed on various air- and spaceborne platforms has been assessed. The proliferation and growing sophistication of UAV in recent years has opened up many new opportunities for damage mapping, due to the high spatial resolution, the resulting stereo images and derivatives, and the flexibility of the platform. We have addressed the problem in the context of two European research projects, RECONASS and INACHUS. In this paper we synthesize and evaluate the progress of 6 years of research focused on advanced image analysis that was driven by progress in computer vision, photogrammetry and machine learning, but also by constraints imposed by the needs of first responder and other civil protection end users. The projects focused on damage to individual buildings caused by seismic activity but also explosions, and our work centred on the processing of 3D point cloud information acquired from stereo imagery. Initially focusing on the development of both supervised and unsupervised damage detection methods built on advanced texture features and basic classifiers such as Support Vector Machine and Random Forest, the work moved on to the use of deep learning. In particular the coupling of image-derived features and 3D point cloud information in a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) proved successful in detecting also subtle damage features. In addition to the detection of standard rubble and debris, CNN-based methods were developed to detect typical façade damage indicators, such as cracks and spalling, including with a focus on multi-temporal and multi-scale feature fusion. We further developed a processing pipeline and mobile app to facilitate near-real time damage mapping. The solutions were tested in a number of pilot experiments and evaluated by a variety of stakeholders.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Luis S. Vaca Oyola ◽  
Mónica R. Jaime Fonseca ◽  
Ramsés Rodríguez Rocha

This study presents the damaged flexibility matrix method (DFM) to identify and determine the magnitude of damage in structural elements of plane frame buildings. Damage is expressed as the increment in flexibility along the damaged structural element. This method uses a new approach to assemble the flexibility matrix of the structure through an iterative process, and it adjusts the eigenvalues of the damaged flexibility matrices of each system element. The DFM was calibrated using numerical models of plane frames of buildings studied by other authors. The advantage of the DFM, with respect to other flexibility-based methods, is that DFM minimizes the adverse effect of modal truncation. The DFM demonstrated excellent accuracy with complete modal information, even when it was applied to a more realistic scenario, considering frequencies and modal shapes measured from the recorded accelerations of buildings stories. The DFM also presents a new approach to simulate the effects of noise by perturbing matrices of flexibilities. This approach can be useful for research on realistic damage detection. The combined effects of incomplete modal information and noise were studied in a ten-story four-bay building model taken from the literature. The ability of the DFM to assess structural damage was corroborated. Application of the proposed method to a ten-story four-bay building model demonstrates its efficiency to identify the flexibility increment in damaged structural elements.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
W. R. Li ◽  
Y. F. Du ◽  
S. Y. Tang ◽  
L. J. Zhao

On the basis of the thought that the minimum system realization plays the role as a coagulator of structural information and contains abundant information on the structure, this paper proposes a new method, which combines minimum system realization and sensitivity analysis, for structural damage detection. The structural damage detection procedure consists of three steps: (1) identifying the minimum system realization matrixes A, B, and R using the structural response data; (2) defining the mode vector, which is based on minimum system realization matrix, by introducing the concept of the measurement; (3) identifying the location and severity of the damage step by step by continuously rotating the mode vector. The proposed method was verified through a five-floor frame model. As demonstrated by numerical simulation, the proposed method based on the combination of the minimum realization system and sensitivity analysis is effective for the damage detection of frame structure. This method not only can detect the damage and quantify the damage severity, but also is not sensitive to the noise.


Author(s):  
Zhang Limei ◽  
Du Shoujun ◽  
Fan Meng

Because of different types of load, material properties deviation and construction errors, structures have initial defects inevitably. Therefore structural damages emerge easily and have strong randomness. At the same time, the ideal design model often has difference with structure in service. To most structures, the initial testing dates cannot be obtained, while this initial model is very important to structural damage detection. So the ideal model needs to revise. In this paper, elastic modulus, Poisson ratio and link section area are given as initial random defects and these defects obey normal distribution which can be constructed by Monte Carlo probabilistic design method. Firstly, the sensitivity parameters to structural response will be received by PDS technology from Ansys. Next, the square pyramid space grid models with random defects were obtained. Finally, given link element damage, using the method combined curvature mode difference with wavelet transform, the link element damage can be determined. Through analysis, the effects about the initial defects to damage detection will be obtained.


2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 217-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.R.O. Santos ◽  
V.S. Pereira ◽  
J.R.F. Arruda ◽  
J.M.C. Dos Santos

The presence of a crack in a structure modifies the energy dissipation pattern. As a consequence, damaged structures can present high localized damping. Experimental tests have revealed that crack nucleation and growth increase structural damping which makes this phenomenon useful as a damage locator. This paper examines the energy flow patterns caused by localized damping in rods, beams and plates using the Energy Finite Element Method (EFEM), the Spectral Element Method (SEM) and the Energy Spectral Element Method (ESEM) in order to detect and locate damage. The analyses are performed at high frequencies, where any localized structural change has a strong influence in the structural response. Simulated results for damage detection in rods, beams, and their couplings calculated by each method and using the element loss factor variation to model the damage, are presented and compared. Results for a simple thin plate calculated with EFEM are also discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-544
Author(s):  
Sheng-En Fang ◽  
Bao Zhang

A damage assessment problem can be stated as a constraint satisfaction problem utilizing the translational and rotational displacements of a structure as measurements. By this means, usual numerical models are no longer required for a damage assessment, which considerably simplifies the solution process. In order to avoid the use of rotational displacements that are difficult to measure in practice, an improved analytical redundancy reduction method has been developed in which rotational displacements are replaced by translational ones. Moreover, some constraint equation positions in the decomposition of a static equilibrium matrix are exchanged according to their association with pre-assumed damaged elements. Then damage is located according to the changes in the relevant constraints of specific elements or substructures. Besides, the deviation increments of improved analytical redundancy reduction can embody the stiffness changes of the damaged elements. The proposed improved analytical redundancy reduction method was validated using both numerical and experimental steel box beams under static loads. The damage assessment results demonstrate the superiority of the improved analytical redundancy reduction method over the constraint satisfaction problem and analytical redundancy reduction methods.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Q. W. Yang ◽  
J. K. Liu ◽  
C.H. Li ◽  
C.F. Liang

Structural damage detection using measured response data has emerged as a new research area in civil, mechanical, and aerospace engineering communities in recent years. In this paper, a universal fast algorithm is presented for sensitivity-based structural damage detection, which can quickly improve the calculation accuracy of the existing sensitivity-based technique without any high-order sensitivity analysis or multi-iterations. The key formula of the universal fast algorithm is derived from the stiffness and flexibility matrix spectral decomposition theory. With the introduction of the key formula, the proposed method is able to quickly achieve more accurate results than that obtained by the original sensitivity-based methods, regardless of whether the damage is small or large. Three examples are used to demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of the proposed method. It has been shown that the universal fast algorithm is simple to implement and quickly gains higher accuracy over the existing sensitivity-based damage detection methods.


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