Finite-Element Based Damage Identification and Tracking of Civil Structures

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

The objective of this project is to develop an effective and innovative almost on-line damage detection technique, based on the finite-element formulation and its condensation for large complex structures. Emphasis will be placed on the damage detection of nonlinear civil structures, including nonlinear hysteretic RC frames and base-isolated structures. The research will significantly advance the current state-of-the-technology in structural health monitoring and make practical applications for the local damage detection of complex structures a reality. The developed finite-element based methodology will have the following capabilities being: (1) capable of tracking the local structural damages using only a limited number of acceleration sensors, (2) capable of detecting local damages at element level, and (3) applicable to the health monitoring of complex nonlinear RC structures. In addition to the theoretical/numerical development, experimental tests on small-scale and large-scale linear and nonlinear structures, including large-scale hysteretic RC frames and scaled rubber-bearing isolated building model, will be conducted to verify the proposed damage detection technique. This is a collaborative research among the University of California at Irvine (UCI), the Nangjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), and the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE), Taiwan.