An Improved Wavelet Threshold Denoising Method for Health Monitoring Data: A Case Study of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Immersed Tunnel

Abstract

Tunnels generally operate underground or underwater in a complex environment. As a result, the health monitoring system is inevitably affected by various environmental factors, which introduces noise to the system. However, the noise contained in the monitoring sequence may disrupt structural damage identification and health state assessment as the real structural response may be overwhelmed by the noise. To properly eliminate the noise in an objective way, this study proposed an improved wavelet threshold denoising method. Firstly, it adopts a quantitative factor, namely the Sparse Index, to assist the selection of the best wavelet basis in numerous wavelet packages. Then, the decomposition layer and threshold are optimized by a comprehensive evaluation based on a variation coefficient method. At last, the application of the concrete strain health monitoring data of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge immersed tunnel verified the effectiveness of the proposed method. It is found that the combination of sym12 and five decomposition layers can obtain the best denoising results within the selected wavelet families and decomposition levels. Moreover, the proposed method achieves good denoising results under different fluctuation levels. Thus, the proposed method is reliable, can solve the problem of optimal parameter selection such as decomposition level and wavelet basis in wavelet denoising, and can be applied in the structural health monitoring of critical infrastructures.