Passive Tap‐scan damage detection method for beam structures

Abstract

Summary Efficient damage detection technologies are highly demanded in the maintenance of bridge structures. For this purpose, the authors have developed the active Tap‐scan damage detection method, which can extract bridge damage from the acceleration of a passing vehicle mounted with a shaker. Although this method can be efficiently implemented in a noisy environment with normal traffic, the damage detection accuracy could be deteriorated by the fluctuation of vehicle velocity, and the portability of the vehicle is impeded by the cumbersome shaker system. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a passive Tap‐scan damage detection method, which uses an automatic driving vehicle with specially designed tire treads to scan the bridge. Instead of using the shaker, the tapping force is passively generated by coordinating the vehicle velocity with the periodic pattern of the tire tread. The theoretical basis of this method is firstly established on the analysis of the interaction between a simply supported beam and a passing vehicle with tapping contact forces, as well as the analytical solution of the deflection of a damaged beam subjected to a unit point force. Then, in‐house experimental damage detection results of a simply supported aluminium box beam are reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Vehicle Scanning Method for Bridges Enhanced by Dual Amplifiers

“…Primarily, the dynamic responses of the moving test vehicles were used for scanning the bridge frequencies [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Te technique was then extended to identifcation of other properties of the bridge, such as the mode shapes [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], damping ratios [29,30], and damage [31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Over the years, the merits of the VSM for scanning bridge modal properties have been verifed by experimental and feld tests [9,14,18,20].…”

Damage Detection in Different Types of 3D Asymmetric Buildings Using Vibration Characteristics

“…Generally, the performance of a damage indicator or a damage identification technique is decided by structural type [6]. Structures that received the greatest research interest include beams [7,8], plate elements [9][10][11], trusses [12][13][14], steel frames [15,16], offshore platforms [17][18][19], and bridges [20][21][22].…”