A new damage indicator based on homogeneity and wireless accelerometers for evaluating the structural condition of a cable-stayed bridge

Abstract

Structural health monitoring is crucial to avoid devastating human and economic losses, mainly for large and high-demanding structures as the case of vehicular bridges. In this regard, a methodology to identify a cable loss in a cable-stayed bridge from the analysis of vibration signals, which are provided by a set of wireless accelerometers installed on the bridge, is here presented. Regarding the method, the damage detection is carried out by a new proposed damage indicator, which is calculated from the homogeneity values of the vibration signals. The homogeneity values are also employed as inputs in a multilayer perceptron neural network to determine the damage location when a damage condition is identified. The usefulness of the proposal is tested on the vibrational responses obtained in experimental manner from the Rio Papaloapan Bridge located in Veracruz, Mexico, resulting in 93.33% of effectiveness to detect and locate the cable loss.