Global and Local Damage Detection in Continuous Bridge Decks Using Instantaneous Amplitude Energy and Cross-Correlation Function Methods

Abstract

This paper attempts to detect damage in the length of continuous deck bridges by providing new methods based on acceleration responses and their Instantaneous Amplitudes (IAs). The DD in this paper has two steps: firstly, determining the vicinity of damage in global damage detection; secondly, determining the location of damage in local damage detection. Then by acceleration signals, the IA values of healthy and damaged structural responses extracted using Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT). Further, with the impression of the IA energy damage index (EDA), damage location is detected. Moreover, for the accurate evaluation of the proposed method, damage locations are determined using the cross-correlation damage index (CCDI). To assess the feasibility and reliability of the proposed methods, several analytical models of concrete bridges of one to three-spans, as well as experimental models of a simply supported steel beam, slab-on-girder composite bridge, and the UFC benchmark bridge are investigated. To consider noise pollution during data acquisition, a certain amount of noise is added to the response. The comparison of the obtained analytical results with the experimental ones showed that the proposed methods can determine the damage locations with appropriate accuracy for different damage scenarios. Also, the results of the CCDI index concluded to the acceptable exact results associated with a rapid estimation.