Enhancing the Efficiency of Structural Condition Assessment by Integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM) Into Vibration- Based Damage Identification (VBDI)

Abstract

The essentiality of Vibration-Based Damage Identification (VBDI) in monitoring the health of civil engineering structures has been highly emphasized by a considerable amount of studies. The more precise a VBDI method would become, the more efficient the data management system would be essential to be devoted to it. However, due to neglecting the essential constitution of data management system, collecting accurate and reliable condition assessment information would be always a challenge, moreover; loss of data, misinterpretation or even corruption might be occurred. In this study in order to enhance the efficiency of structural condition assessment derived by VBDI process, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been utilized to demonstrate the full potential of structural condition visualization thorough a graphical BIM user interface developed in Autodesk Revit software. According to the authors' knowledge, no comprehensive work was dedicated to vibration-based structural health monitoring through automated graphical BIM user interface. However, a lot of studies have been carried out on BIM integration and strain-based structural monitoring. In order to investigate the viability of the present study, a three story steel scaled structure adopted and studied at both pristine and damaged states. Initially, the captured sensor data was utilized in experimental modal analysis (System Identification) to obtain modal properties of the structure. After, applying a vibration-based damage detection technique to identify and localize the probable damages in the structure, Dynamo Studio, a visual programming tool, would be the link conveyor of the derived structural properties and Autodesk Revit to visualize the current conditions of the structural elements based on a predefined color-coding scheme. In conclusion, it can be expected that, utilizing BIM as a visual data management system could be essential to alert engineers and decision makers, the probable damage locations from the changes of vibration characteristics in civil engineering structures.