Abstract
Load tests are a popular way to diagnose the structural condition of bridges, however, such tests usually interrupt traffic for many hours. To address this issue, a Kalman filter-based method is proposed to diagnose the structural condition of medium- and small-span beam bridges by using the acceleration responses obtained from the bridge during a brief traffic interruption. First, a condition diagnosis feature based on the Kalman filter innovation (i.e., the optimal difference between the filter predictions and measured responses) is presented. Second, a condition diagnosis index, which is the energy ratio between the innovation and the measured acceleration, is generated by calculating the null space of the Hankel matrix consisting of condition diagnosis features. Then, on the basis of the novel detection, a method is used to diagnose the structural condition of a bridge during a brief traffic interruption. Finally, the validity and dependability of the proposed method is demonstrated through experimental tests with a model bridge and field tests on an actual bridge. Using the proposed method, the long-time interruption of traffic flow and the reliance on finite element model are effective avoided during the process of condition diagnosis of bridges.
Highlights
The structural responses of bridges during operation can be used for condition diagnosis, wherein the main tasks are evaluating the safety status of bridges and identifying potential damage
Using a similar method as that used for the model bridge, all the acceleration responses obtained from the first case are implemented to generate the Kalman filter of the original condition of the actual bridge
A Kalman filter-based method is proposed to diagnose the condition of mediumand small-span beam bridges during a brief interruption in traffic flow
Summary
The structural responses of bridges during operation can be used for condition diagnosis, wherein the main tasks are evaluating the safety status of bridges and identifying potential damage. Structural health monitoring is a technique that continuously provides large amounts of reliable structural response data [6,7,8,9,10,11], this technique is an effective way to assess the condition of bridges. To accurately diagnose the bridge technical condition, there are two categories of load tests, including the diagnostic load test and the proof load test [14,15,16,17,18]. For the former, a multi-grade load is implemented to a bridge until the predetermined safe load is attained. A lower magnitude load is usually adopted, and the measured responses of bridge are used to assess the Sensors 2020, 20, 4130; doi:10.3390/s20154130 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
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