Abstract
Advances in the telecommunication and broadcasting sectors have increased the need for networking equipment of communication towers. Slender structures, such as towers, are sensitive to dynamic loads, such as vibration forces. Therefore, the stability and reliability performance of towers can be maintained effectively through the prompt detection, localization, and quantification of structural damages by obtaining the dynamic frequency response of towers. However, frequency analysis for damaged structures requires long computational procedures and is difficult to perform because of the damages in real structures, particularly in towers. Therefore, this study proposed a correlation factor that can identify the relationship between frequenciesunderhealthy and damaged conditions of ultra high performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) communication towers using particle swarm optimization. The finite element method was implemented to simulate three UHPFRC communication towers, and an experimental test was conducted to validate and verify the developed correlation factor
Highlights
Damages caused by various factors may occur in structures during their intended lifespan
The results indicated that the maximum variation obtained in the frequencies from finite element methods (FEMs) and the experimental results was 5.6% for the ultra high performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) communication tower
The difference in variation was less than 20% for all the results of the full-scale tower, there by proving that ABAQUS software is an appropriate tool for predicting the behavior of UHPFRC communication towers
Summary
Damages caused by various factors may occur in structures during their intended lifespan. Ren and De Roeck (2002) proposed a method for predicting the location and severity of a damage by using changes in frequencies, mode shapes, and finite element methods (FEMs) Their method, which was validated using simulated and real measurement data, yielded satisfactory results. Begambre and Laier (2009) reported that improved results were obtained in identifying structural damage when data frequency and FE analyses were performed on a 10bar truss and crack-free beam, which effectively determined damage location using the PSO-simplex algorithm. Nhamage, Lopez, and Miguel (2016) proposed a hybrid stochastic/deterministic optimization algorithm for detecting damage in a cantilever beam due to changes in vibrational frequencies. This study proposed a dynamic frequency correlation factor for identifying the relationship between frequenciesunderhealthy and damaged conditions for ultrahigh performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) communication towers using PSO
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