Jaime H. García-Palacios

Wireless Measurement System for Structural Health Monitoring With High Time-Synchronization Accuracy

Structural health monitoring (SHM) systems have excellent potential to improve the regular operation and maintenance of structures. Wireless networks (WNs) have been used to avoid the high cost of traditional generic wired systems. The most important limitation of SHM wireless systems is time-synchronization accuracy, scalability, and reliability. A complete wireless system for structural identification under environmental load is designed, implemented, deployed, and tested on three different real bridges. Our contribution ranges from the hardware to the graphical front end. System goal is to avoid the main limitations of WNs for SHM particularly in regard to reliability, scalability, and synchronization. We reduce spatial jitter to 125 ns, far below the 120 μs required for high-precision acquisition systems and much better than the 10-μs current solutions, without adding complexity. The system is scalable to a large number of nodes to allow for dense sensor coverage of real-world structures, only limited by a compromise between measurement length and mandatory time to obtain the final result. The system addresses a myriad of problems encountered in a real deployment under difficult conditions, rather than a simulation or laboratory test bed.

Vibration Monitoring of a Steel-Plated Stress-Ribbon Footbridge: Uncertainties in the Modal Estimation

AbstractA low-cost vibration-monitoring system was developed and installed on an urban steel-plated stress-ribbon footbridge. The system continuously measures the acceleration [using 18 triaxial microelectromechanical system (MEMS) accelerometers distributed along the structure), the ambient temperature, and the wind velocity and direction. Automated output-only modal parameter estimation based on the stochastic subspace identification (SSI) was carried out to extract the modal parameters (i.e., the natural frequencies, damping ratios, and modal shapes). Thus, this study analyzed the time evolution of the modal parameters over data monitoring for 1 year. First, for similar environmental/operational factors, the uncertainties associated with the SSI-based techniques used and to the acceleration records used were studied and quantified. Second, a methodology for tracking the vibration modes was established, because several of them with closely spaced natural frequencies were identified. Third, the modal par...

Ambient modal testing of a double-arch dam: the experimental campaign and model updating

A finite element model updating of a double-curvature-arch dam (La Tajera, Spain) is carried out hereof using the modal parameters obtained from an operational modal analysis. That is, the system modal dampings, natural frequencies and mode shapes have been identified using output-only identification techniques under environmental loads (wind, vehicles). A finite element model of the dam-reservoir-foundation system was initially created. Then, a testing campaing was then carried out from the most significant test points using high-sensitivity accelerometers wirelessly synchronized. Afterwards, the model updating of the initial model was done using a Monte Carlo based approach in order to match it to the recorded dynamic behaviour. The updated model may be used within a structural health monitoring system for damage detection or, for instance, for the analysis of the seismic response of the arch dam- reservoir-foundation coupled system.

Analysis of the railway track as a spatially periodic structure

This article presents a new and computationally efficient method of analysis of a railway track modelled as a continuous beam of 2N spans supported by elastic vertical springs. The main feature of this method is its important reduction in computational effort with respect to standard matrix methods of structural analysis. In this article, the whole structure is considered to be a repetition of a single one. The analysis presented is applied to a simple railway track model, i.e. to a repetitive beam supported on vertical springs (sleepers). The proposed method of analysis is based on the general theory of spatially periodic structures. The main feature of this theory is the possibility to apply Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) in order to reduce a large system of q(2N + 1) linear stiffness equilibrium equations to a set of 2N + 1 uncoupled systems of q equations each. In this way, a dramatic reduction of the computational effort of solving the large system of equations is achieved. This fact is particularly important in the analysis of railway track structures, in which N is a very large number (around several thousands), and q = 2, the vertical displacement and rotation, is very small. The proposed method allows us to easily obtain the exact solution given by Samartín [1], i.e. the continuous beam railway track response. The comparison between the proposed method and other methods of analysis of railway tracks, such as Lorente de Nó and Zimmermann-Timoshenko, clearly shows the accuracy of the obtained results for the proposed method, even for low values of N. In addition, identical results between the proposed and the Lorente methods have been found, although the proposed method seems to be of simpler application and computationally more efficient than the Lorente one. Small but significative differences occur between these two methods and the one developed by Zimmermann-Timoshenko. This article also presents a detailed sensitivity analysis of the vertical displacement of the sleepers. Although standard matrix methods of structural analysis can handle this railway model, one of the objectives of this article is to show the efficiency of DFT method with respect to standard matrix structural analysis. A comparative analysis between standard matrix structural analysis and the proposed method (DFT), in terms of computational time, input, output and also software programming, will be carried out. Finally, a URL link to a MatLab computer program list, based on the proposed method, is given

Exploring vibration control strategies for a footbridge with time-varying modal parameters

This paper explores different vibration control strategies for the cancellation of human-induced vibration of a structure with time-varying modal parameters. The motivation of this study is an urban stress-ribbon footbridge (Pedro Gomez Bosque, Valladolid, Spain) that, after a whole-year monitoring, it has been obtained that the natural frequency of a vibration mode at approximately 1.8 Hz (within the normal range of walking) changes up to 20%, mainly due to temperature variations. Thus, this paper takes the annual modal parameter estimates (aprox. 14000 estimations) of this mode and designs three control strategies: a) a tuned mass damper (TMD) tuned to the aforementioned mode using its most-repeated modal properties, b) a semi-active TMD with an on-off control law for the TMD damping, and c) an active mass damper designed using the well-known velocity feedback control strategy with a saturation nonlinearity. Illustrative results have been reported from this preliminary study.