Impact of Groundwater Level Change on Natural Frequencies of RC Buildings

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 265
Author(s):  
Lasma Ratnika ◽  
Liga Gaile ◽  
Nikolai Ivanovich Vatin

Structural health monitoring (SHM) provides an opportunity to assess and predict changes in the technical condition of structures during the operation of a building. Structural damage, as well as several operational and environmental conditions, causes changes in modal parameters. Temperature is the most popular environmental condition which is used for research. However, to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first investigation that highlights the effect of groundwater level change on the natural frequencies of the buildings and the impact of possible damage detection features. Groundwater level change can influence structural health monitoring measurements and cause faulty structural damage identification using vibration-based methods. This paper aims to analyse the impact of the groundwater level changes on the modal parameters of mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings. The modal parameters of mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings are determined using finite element (FE) models. Three different FE models of structural system types of nine-storey reinforced concrete (RC) buildings with shallow foundations are used to determine the impact of groundwater level fluctuation on the values of the buildings’ natural frequencies. Changes in the groundwater level have an impact on the natural frequencies of the mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings. This research proposes a new environmental condition that has to be considered to identify the structural damage using the vibration-based method. It is found that groundwater level rise causes a decrease in the natural frequency value. In this research, it is established that the influence of the groundwater level on the natural frequencies of the buildings can change abruptly, and there is a non-linear correlation between groundwater level change and natural frequencies of the buildings. The natural frequencies of the buildings can change under varying environmental conditions as well as in the case of structural damage. To identify structural damage in the long-term structural health monitoring measurements, it is recommended to select features which are sensitive to structural damage but are not affected by groundwater level change. Data normalisation and elimination using linear correlation methods can be used for short-term SHM under varying seasonal groundwater level change.

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (19) ◽  
pp. 4304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang ◽  
Chang ◽  
Wu

Image analysis techniques have been applied to measure the displacements, strain field, and crack distribution of structures in the laboratory environment, and present strong potential for use in structural health monitoring applications. Compared with accelerometers, image analysis is good at monitoring area-based responses, such as crack patterns at critical regions of reinforced concrete (RC) structures. While the quantitative relationship between cracks and structural damage depends on many factors, cracks need to be detected and quantified in an automatic manner for further investigation into structural health monitoring. This work proposes a damage-indexing method by integrating an image-based crack measurement method and a crack quantification method. The image-based crack measurement method identifies cracks locations, opening widths, and orientations. Fractal dimension analysis gives the flexural cracks and shear cracks an overall damage index ranging between 0 and 1. According to the orientations of the cracks analyzed by image analysis, the cracks can be classified as either shear or flexural, and the overall damage index can be separated into shear and flexural damage indices. These damage indices not only quantify the damage of an RC structure, but also the contents of shear and flexural failures. While the engineering significance of the damage indices is structure dependent, when the damage indexing method is used for structural health monitoring, the damage indices safety thresholds can further be defined based on the structure type under consideration. Finally, this paper demonstrates this method by using the results of two experiments on RC tubular containment vessel structures.


Author(s):  
Liga Gaile ◽  
Ivars Radins

The automated monitoring of a building’s structural health during its exploitation is a way to extend its design life without compromising structural safety.  In turn, it helps increase the rate of building renovation works compared to demolition works, which reduces future construction and demolition waste levels.This research explores the vibration-based global monitoring method application to structurally stiff medium-rise reinforced concrete buildings by analysing predicted building vibration amplitudes and spectrum under regular city traffic excitation. These predictions are based on the results obtained from finite element calculations of building models with variated structural stiffness and inertial mass of the building.Regular traffic-generated ground frequency spectrum differs from the first natural frequencies of medium-rise reinforced concrete buildings, and the vibration energy is low. Nevertheless, it is found that the structural identification of such building dynamic parameters is still possible, particularly natural frequencies. It was found that the ratio between fundamental frequency for the fixed base model of the building and elastic spring foundation model is the decisive parameter for selecting the building part to be monitored. Structural health monitoring vibration-based methods are also a promising technology for medium-rise mass house buildings when tailored according to some damage sensitive feature.  


Electronics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Long Zhao ◽  
Xinbo Huang ◽  
Ye Zhang ◽  
Yi Tian ◽  
Yu Zhao

In this paper, we present a vibration-based transmission tower structural health monitoring system consisting of two parts that identifies structural changes in towers. An accelerometer group realizes vibration response acquisition at different positions and reduces the risk of data loss by data compression technology. A solar cell provides the power supply. An analyser receives the data from the acceleration sensor group and calculates the transmission tower natural frequencies, and the change in the structure is determined based on natural frequencies. Then, the data are sent to the monitoring center. Furthermore, analysis of the vibration signal and the calculation method of natural frequencies are proposed. The response and natural frequencies of vibration at different wind speeds are analysed by time-domain signal, power spectral density (PSD), root mean square (RMS) and short-time Fouier transform (STFT). The natural frequency identification of the overall structure by the stochastic subspace identification (SSI) method reveals that the number of natural frequencies that can be calculated at different wind speeds is different, but the 2nd, 3rd and 4th natural frequencies can be excited. Finally, the system was tested on a 110 kV experimental transmission line. After 18 h of experimentation, the natural frequency of the overall structure of the transmission tower was determined before and after the tower leg was lifted. The results show that before and after the tower leg is lifted, the natural frequencies of each order exhibit obvious changes, and the differences in the average values can be used as the basis for judging the structural changes of the tower.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Smyl ◽  
Sven Bossuyt ◽  
Waqas Ahmad ◽  
Anton Vavilov ◽  
Dong Liu

The ability to reliably detect damage and intercept deleterious processes, such as cracking, corrosion, and plasticity are central themes in structural health monitoring. The importance of detecting such processes early on lies in the realization that delays may decrease safety, increase long-term repair/retrofit costs, and degrade the overall user experience of civil infrastructure. Since real structures exist in more than one dimension, the detection of distributed damage processes also generally requires input data from more than one dimension. Often, however, interpretation of distributed data—alone—offers insufficient information. For this reason, engineers and researchers have become interested in stationary inverse methods, for example, utilizing distributed data from stationary or quasi-stationary measurements for tomographic imaging structures. Presently, however, there are barriers in implementing stationary inverse methods at the scale of built civil structures. Of these barriers, a lack of available straightforward inverse algorithms is at the forefront. To address this, we provide 38 least-squares frameworks encompassing single-state, two-state, and joint tomographic imaging of structural damage. These regimes are then applied to two emerging structural health monitoring imaging modalities: Electrical Resistance Tomography and Quasi-Static Elasticity Imaging. The feasibility of the regimes are then demonstrated using simulated and experimental data.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136943322110384
Author(s):  
Xingyu Fan ◽  
Jun Li ◽  
Hong Hao

Vibration based structural health monitoring methods are usually dependent on the first several orders of modal information, such as natural frequencies, mode shapes and the related derived features. These information are usually in a low frequency range. These global vibration characteristics may not be sufficiently sensitive to minor structural damage. The alternative non-destructive testing method using piezoelectric transducers, called as electromechanical impedance (EMI) technique, has been developed for more than two decades. Numerous studies on the EMI based structural health monitoring have been carried out based on representing impedance signatures in frequency domain by statistical indicators, which can be used for damage detection. On the other hand, damage quantification and localization remain a great challenge for EMI based methods. Physics-based EMI methods have been developed for quantifying the structural damage, by using the impedance responses and an accurate numerical model. This article provides a comprehensive review of the exciting researches and sorts out these approaches into two categories: data-driven based and physics-based EMI techniques. The merits and limitations of these methods are discussed. In addition, practical issues and research gaps for EMI based structural health monitoring methods are summarized.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huaqiang Zhong ◽  
Limin Sun ◽  
José Turmo ◽  
Ye Xia

<p>In recent years, the safety and comfort problems of bridges are not uncommon, and the operating conditions of in-service bridges have received widespread attention. Many large-span key bridges have installed structural health monitoring systems and collected massive amounts of data. Monitoring data is the basis of structural damage identification and performance evaluation, and it is of great significance to analyze and evaluate its quality. This paper takes the acceleration monitoring data of the main girder and arch rib of a long-span arch bridge as the research object, analyzes and summarizes the statistical characteristics of the data, summarizes 6 abnormal data conditions, and proposes a data quality evaluation method of convolutional neural network. This paper conducts frequency statistics on the acceleration vibration amplitude of the bridge in December 2018 in hours. In order to highlight the end effect of frequency statistics, the whole is amplified and used as network input for training and data quality evaluation. The results are good. It provides another new method for structural monitoring data quality evaluation and abnormal data elimination.</p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 564 ◽  
pp. 176-181
Author(s):  
S.T. Cheng ◽  
Nawal Aswan Abdul Jalil ◽  
Zamir A. Zulkefli

Vibration based technique have so far been focused on the identification of structural damage. However, not many studies have been conducted on the corrosion identification on pipes. The objective of this paper is to identify corrosion on pipes from vibration measurements. A hollow pipe, 500 mm in length with 63.5 mm in diameter was subjected to impact loading using an impact hammer to identify the natural frequency of the tube in two conditions i) without any corrosion and ii) with an induced localized 40 mm by 40 mm corrosion at the middle of the pipe. The shift of natural frequencies of the structures under free boundary conditions was examined for each node of excitation. The results showed that there is a shift in natural frequency of the pipe, between 3 and 4 Hz near to the corrosion area. It can suggested that that the impact vibration is capable of identifying of localized corrosion on a hollow tube.


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