Structural damage detection from dynamic responses of the bridge deck under a moving load using discrete wavelet transform

Abstract

Early detection of structural damages and making necessary interventions to repair them are one of the main challenges in structural health monitoring. The wavelet transform is one of the common methods for this purpose, and its efficiency is proven by many researchers. In the present study, this approach is used to assess the performance of Sani-khani bridge with single and multiple-damage scenarios. For this purpose, the displacement response difference between the intact and damaged bridge decks under a moving load is analyzed by discrete wavelet transform (DWT). In the present study, 10 sensors and one-time sampling are used, In fact, the proposition of a method that uses the minimum number of required sensors for practical damage detection. To verify the reliability of the suggested method, not only different damage locations were considered, but also 5% noise is considered for the input signals. The attained results proved that even in the presence of the noise, the proposed approach can detect the damage locations with acceptable accuracy. The accuracy of the method for middle and side damages is higher than corner damages.