Search

This article presents a hybrid method of structural modal parameter identification, based on improved empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and autoregressive and moving average (ARMA). Special attention is given to some implementation issues, such as the modal mixing, false modes, the judgment of the real intrinsic mode function (IMF) of classical EMD, and the difficulty of fixing the order of ARMA. To resolve the existing defects of EMD, an improved EMD (IEMD) that combines frequency band filtering and cluster analysis is proposed in this paper, where frequency band filtering divides the signal into several narrowband signals before the EMD process, and cluster analysis is used to determine the real IMFs. Euclidean distance is used to cluster the decomposition results, with no need to adjust any indexes or thresholds, and only by means of using the nearest distance to efficiently determine the real IMF. Moreover, IEMD is used as a pre-processing tool for ARMA, to resolve the difficulty of fixing its order. The capabilities of the proposed method were compared and assessed using a numerical simulation and an experimental model. The numerical simulation and experimental results showed that the improved method could resolve the modal mixing and false modal problems in the classical EMD process and could automatically identified the real IMFs, while the proposed IEMD was combined with ARMA to successfully identify the frequency and mode shape of the structure. Additionally, since each IMF is a single component signal, it is easy to determine the order of the ARMA model.

Circular steel tube members with the absence of anticorrosive protection or coating failure are prone to uniform corrosion, which threatens the reliability and safety of members in the atmospheric environment. To fully study the mechanical behavior of uniformly corroded circular steel tubes, compression test and theoretical analysis were conducted, and two methods considering section reduction and material degradation, respectively, were adopted for the calculation of ultimate load carrying capacities of specimens. The results indicate that uniform corrosion did not change the failure modes of specimens, and all of them belonged to global buckling failure. The load carrying capacities and stiffness of specimens decreased with the increase of corrosion ratio, and the degree of reduction was greater than that of material degradation, showing a linear relationship with the corrosion rate. Under the same corrosion ratio, the specimens with larger eccentricity represented more obvious load carrying capacity and stiffness degradation. The load carrying capacities predicted by both methods were in good agreement with the test results and had a certain safety margin. The conservative degree of calculation results from three specifications followed a descending order of ANSI/AISC 360-16, GB 50017-2017, and EN 1993-1-1. Under the same corrosion ratio, the load carrying capacity variation of specimens between one-sided corrosion and two-sided corrosion was less than 3%.

Due to the long-term service, Chinese ancient timber buildings show varying degrees of wear. Thus, structural health monitoring (SHM) for these cultural and historical treasures is desperately needed to evaluate the service status. Although there are some FBG sensing-based SHM systems, they are not suitable for Chinese ancient timber buildings due to the differences in architectural types, structural loads, materials, and environment. Besides, a technical gap in Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensing-based column inclination monitoring exists. To overcome these weaknesses, this paper develops an FBG sensing-based structural health monitoring system for Chinese ancient Chuan-dou-type timber buildings that aims at monitoring structural deformation, i.e., beam deflection and column inclination, temperature, humidity, and fire around the building. An in-situ test and simulation analyses were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the developed SHM system. To validate the long-term-operation of the developed SHM system, monitoring data within 15 months were analyzed. The results show good agreement between the developed SHM system in this paper and other methods. In addition, the SHM system operated well in the first year after its deployment. This implies that the developed SHM system is applicable and effective in the health state monitoring of Chinese ancient Chuan-dou-type timber buildings, laying a foundation for damage prognosis of such types of timber buildings.

This paper reports the numerical simulation of earthquake-damaged circular columns repaired with the combination of near-surface-mounted (NSM) basalt fiber reinforced polymer (BFRP) bars with external BFRP sheets jacketing at quasi-static loading. The numerical modeling was carried out with the nonlinear OpenSees software platform by using the BeamWithHinges element. In the simulations, the effect of the previous earthquake damage on the behavior of the repaired columns was taken into account, and a simple and effective material damage-accumulation model is proposed to modify the constitutive of materials in the unrepaired regions of the repaired columns. The developed numerical models were validated by comparing their quasi-static findings with those obtained from a previous experimental program, and a good agreement can be observed. Furthermore, the efficiency of the repair technique used in tests is evaluated via the developed numerical model.

Anti-washout underwater concrete (AWC) is widely used in nondrainage strengthening; however, there still exist some problems with it, such as high strength loss and poor interfacial bond in practical engineering application. Based on the study of self-stressed concrete (SSC), a research on the mix ratio for the C30 self-stressed anti-washout underwater concrete (SSAWC) was carried out in this paper in hope of solving the above problems, specifically, by adding an expansive agent to the AWC. The parameters, such as strength, fluidity, anti-dispersity, and expansibility, were picked as target indices in determination of the mix ratio. The orthogonal test design and range analysis were used to determine the reasonable mix ratio and study the influence of various parameters on the performance of SSAWC. The experimental program conducted includes a series of strength, fluidity, anti-dispersity, and expansibility tests on 18 groups of specimens. The results show that C30 SSAWC has an excellent performance using the optimal mix ratio. Compared with AWC, the expansibility and self-stress of the SSAWC can be easily observed, and the compressive strength ratio of the SSAWC casted in water to that casted in air is much bigger. This implies that SSAWC is applicable to the nondrainage strengthening.

In a steel-concrete composite beam (hereafter referred to as a composite beam), partial interaction between the concrete slab and the steel beam results in an appreciable increase in the beam deflections relative to full interaction behavior. Moreover, the distribution type of the shear connectors has a great impact on the degree of the composite action between the two components of the beam. To reveal the effect of shear connector layout in the performance of composite beams, on the basis of a developed one-dimensional composite beam element validated by the closed-form precision solutions and experimental results, this paper optimizes the layout of shear connectors in composite beams with partial interaction by adopting a stepwise uniform distribution of shear connectors to approximate the triangular distribution of the shear connector density without increasing the total number of shear connectors. Based on a comparison of all the different types of stepped rectangles distribution, this paper finally suggests the 3-stepped rectangles distribution of shear connectors as a reasonable and applicable optimal method.

Distributed deformation based on fiber Bragg grating sensors or other kinds of strain sensors can be used to monitor bridges during operation. However, most research on distributed deformation monitoring has focused on solid rectangular beams rather than box girders—a kind of typical hollow beam widely employed in actual bridges. The deformation of a single-cell box girder contains bending deflection and also two additional deformations respectively caused by shear lag and shearing action. This paper revises the improved conjugated beam method (ICBM) based on the long-gage fiber Bragg grating (LFBG) sensors to satisfy the requirements for monitoring the two additional deformations in a single-cell box girder. This paper also proposes a suitable LFBG sensor placement in a box girder to overcome the influence of strain fluctuation on the flange caused by the shear lag effect. Results from numerical simulations show that the theoretical monitoring errors of the revised ICBM are typically 0.3–1.5%, and the maximum error is 2.4%. A loading experiment for a single-cell box gilder monitored by LFBG sensors shows that most of the practical monitoring errors are 6–8% and the maximum error is 11%.

The Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensing technique is suitable for a wide variety of measurements, including temperature, pressure, acceleration, liquid level, etc., and has been applied to many bridges and buildings in the past two decades. The fact that the FBG technique can only monitor and measure strain data for most cases when it is used for deformation measurements impedes application of the FBG sensing technique in civil infrastructures. This paper proposes FBG sensing-based deformation monitoring methods that are applicable to monitoring beam deflection, column inclination angle and mortise-tenon joint dislocation for Chinese traditional timber structures. On the basis of improved conjugated beam theory and geometrical trigonometric function relationship, the relationships between the FBG sensing strain values and the deflection of beam, inclination angle of column, as well as the amount of dislocation of mortise-tenon joint are deducted for Chinese traditional buildings. A series of experiments were conducted to verify the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed deformation monitoring methods. The results show that a good agreement is obtained between the values given by the methods proposed in this paper and other methods. This implies that the proposed deformation monitoring methods are applicable and effective in the health monitoring of Chinese traditional timber structures.