Miter gate gap detection using principal component analysis

Abstract

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) operates and maintains 236 lock chambers at 191 lock sites on 41 waterways throughout the contiguous United States. Waterway navigational locks are important parts of the nation's infrastructure. Locks enable the flow of billions of dollars of commerce and support efforts for flood control. Proper maintenance of the locks and early detection of damage is crucial; however, due to shrinking budgets, adequate funding to apply traditional scheduled maintenance and visual inspection is not available. Structural health monitoring (SHM) systems have been considered to assist in establishing more efficient maintenance, repair, and replacement priorities for navigational locks. This work was undertaken to develop and implement a real-time methodology that provides lock operators with a robust, accurate warning system of gap(s) at the gate-to-wall interface. This initial effort, which focused on horizontally framed miter gates and on damage that is assumed to take the form of a gap at the gate/wall interface (quoin), developed a methodology to identify the occurrence of damage in miter gate structures using data from strain and water level gages that is collected continuously from the SHM system deployed by USACE. DISCLAIMER: The contents of this report are not to be used for advertising, publication, or promotional purposes. Citation of trade names does not constitute an official endorsement or approval of the use of such commercial products. All product names and trademarks cited are the property of their respective owners. The findings of this report are not to be construed as an official Department of the Army position unless so designated by other authorized documents.

autoboot: a generator of bootstrap equations with global symmetry

“…Currently we support small finite groups G in the SmallGrp library [91] of the computer algebra system GAP For classical groups, these data can in principle be generated automatically, but at present we implement by hand only a few representations we actually support.…”

“…Let us go through the example line by line:1. g=getGroup[8,3] sets the group D 8 to g. This line illustrates the ability of autoboot to obtain the group theory data from the SmallGrp library[91] of the computer algebra system GAP[92], which contains the necessary data of finite groups of order less than 2000 and many others.The pair (8, 3)is a way to specify a finite group in SmallGrp. It simply says that D 8 is the third group in their list of groups of order 8.…”

Automated damage detection in miter gates of navigation locks

“…The results of this study revealed that the 98% variance case is a better candidate for damage detection; therefore, the 92% variance case is not explored further in this paper. For the results of all damage and variance cases, refer to Eick et al [20] The two damage scenarios presented here will be a sudden-small and sudden-large gap, with simulated dimensions as listed in Table 5. To test the damage detection sensitivity, the changes in strain caused from the gap were superimposed on the measured data.…”

Blind prediction of FRP repairs for multiaxial fatigue cracks on Hydraulic Steel Structures

“…The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) operates and maintains 236 lock chambers at 191 lock sites on 41 waterways throughout the United States. Locks enable the flow of billions of dollars of commerce and support efforts for flood control [1]. Commercial barges lashed together as tows, with each barge capable of holding1400-1800 tons of cargo, utilize the U.S.'s extensive waterway network.…”

“…Proper maintenance of the locks and early detection of damage is crucial in maintaining the integrity and continuous operation of the waterways. However, due to shrinking budgets, adequate funding often not available to apply traditional scheduled maintenance and visual inspection [1]. To maintain the waterways at their current operational level and keep delays from growing beyond their current state a large investment is required [3].…”