Abstract
In this study, infrared thermography is used for vibration-based structural health monitoring (SHM). Heat sources are employed as sensors. An acrylic frame structure was experimentally investigated using the heat sources as structural marker points to record the vibration response. The effectiveness of the infrared thermography measurement system was verified by comparing the results obtained using an infrared thermal imager with those obtained using accelerometers. The average error in natural frequency was between only 0.64% and 3.84%. To guarantee the applicability of the system, this study employed the mode shape curvature method to locate damage on a structure under harsh environments, for instance, in dark, hindered, and hazy conditions. Moreover, we propose the mode shape recombination method (MSRM) to realize large-scale structural measurement. The partial mode shapes of the 3D frame structure are combined using the MSRM to obtain the entire mode shape with a satisfactory model assurance criterion. Experimental results confirmed the feasibility of using heat sources as sensors and indicated that the proposed methods are suitable for overcoming the numerous inherent limitations associated with SHM in harsh or remote environments as well as the limitations associated with the SHM of large-scale structures.
Highlights
Traditional sensors [1,2,3,4], including accelerometers, strain gauges, capacitance sensors, fiber Bragg grating sensors and so on, are used for structural health monitoring (SHM); these sensors are expensive, take a long time to install, and tend to wear out
To verify the results obtained using the thermal imager, we quantify the difference between the mode shape determined through the thermal imaging device and the mode shape determined through accelerometers by using the modal assurance criterion (MAC)
An infrared thermography measurement system was proposed for SHM
Summary
Traditional sensors [1,2,3,4], including accelerometers, strain gauges, capacitance sensors, fiber Bragg grating sensors and so on, are used for structural health monitoring (SHM); these sensors are expensive, take a long time to install, and tend to wear out These sensors may damage or get entangled between transmission lines [5]; in addition, their accuracy depends on the humidity [6], and they require light of a sufficient amplitude to function [7]. Contact sensors require transmission lines to transmit signals to the data calculation system, and these lines may cause difficulties in repair and affect the structure itself To overcome these problems, some scholars have proposed SHM methods using image-based measurement techniques [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17].
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