Cross-correlation-guided operational modal identification of bridge considering asynchronous signals

Abstract

The accurate identification of modal parameters is crucial for bridge health monitoring. In practical scenarios, there is often an asynchronization in the multi-channel vibration signals obtained from wireless sensors or offline measurements without temporal data. This asynchronization can lead to significant bias in the mode shapes when using the classical operational modal identification method. To address this issue, a new cross-correlation (CC) coefficient-based time lag detection is proposed. This technique aims to determine whether the multi-channel signals are synchronous and to prepare the reliably synchronous signals for modal identification. Because this detection technique specifically focuses on detecting the time lag between single degree-of-freedom (DOF) asynchronous signals, a multivariate variational mode decomposition (VMD) technique is developed to handle the multiple DOF signals of a bridge. To ensure that the decomposed components are not distorted or mixed, the penalty parameter in the multivariate VMD is optimized by minimizing the proposed similarity index. The proposed time lag detection process is validated using numerical and actual bridge examples. The results demonstrate that the new CC coefficient-based method is more effective than the classical CC coefficient or phase-based method, regardless of the employed mode or the amount of time lag present.