Use of vibration measurements in health monitoring of reinforced concrete buildings

Abstract

PurposeIn developing countries such as India, it is common practice to use low‐quality building materials, the strength of such materials reduce with time, which affects the lifespan of buildings. The wind, rain, seepage, and surface runoff are other key factors responsible for building damage and exterior degradation. The increasing industrial growth in and around urban areas is responsible for increasing industrial and anthropogenic emissions that are found to accelerate degradation of the buildings that affects their physical appearance. In an area prone to natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, subsidence, floods, lightning, tornados, and cyclone/hurricanes, huge amounts of damage throughout the globe has been experienced. For the purpose of assuring safety due to natural hazards, it is necessary to monitor the damage for its existence, its location and extent. Undetected damage may potentially lead to risk of vulnerability caused by natural hazards and eventually to catastrophic failure. Hence, rapid structural damage detection is essential and important to save human life due to failure of structures or buildings. Most of the time, human loss occurs due to damage to the buildings. This paper aims to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachIn the present study, numerous experiments have been carried out on two reinforced concrete building test specimens and on seven existing reinforced cement concrete structures.FindingsThe results presented here in this study show that the vibration measurements can be used to monitor the health of framed reinforced cement concrete buildings.Originality/valueThe present study is part of doctoral thesis of Varinder S. Kanwar, an original research work.