Gage‐Free Stress Estimation of a Beam‐like Structure Based on Terrestrial Laser Scanning

Abstract: Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is a technique that remotely obtains the three‐dimensional (3D) coordinates of an object using laser pulses. It is advantageous when used to obtain the 3D coordinates of the overall shape as well as any particular area or point of a target object. In addition, using TLS for the stress monitoring of structures will not require the installation of a sensor on the target structure whose structural response will be assessed. Thus, TLS can resolve the limitations of conventional sensors based on strain monitoring. This article presents a computational model for the automatic estimation of the stresses of beam structures using TLS in association with a finite element method. The method is experimentally applied to the stress estimation of a simply supported steel beam subjected to a concentrated load. In this experimentation, the maximum and minimum errors between the estimated stresses using TLS and directly measured stresses from electrical strain gages are found to be 7.2% and 2.2%, respectively.     

Structural Displacement Measurement Using an Unmanned Aerial System

Vibration‐based Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is one of the most popular solutions to assess the safety of civil infrastructure. SHM applications all begin with measuring the dynamic response of structures, but displacement measurement has been limited by the difficulty in requiring a fixed reference point, high cost, and/or low accuracy. Recently, researchers have conducted studies on vision‐based structural health monitoring, which provides noncontact and efficient measurement. However, these approaches have been limited to stationary cameras, which have the challenge of finding a location to deploy the cameras with appropriate line‐of‐sight, especially to monitor critical civil infrastructures such as bridges. The Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) can potentially overcome the limitation of finding optimal locations to deploy the camera, but existing vision‐based displacement measurement methods rely on the assumption that the camera is stationary. The displacements obtained by such methods will be a relative displacement of a structure to the camera motion, not an absolute displacement. Therefore, this article presents a framework to achieve absolute displacement of a structure from a video taken from an UAS using the following phased approach. First, a target‐free method is implemented to extract the relative structural displacement from the video. Next, the 6 degree‐of‐freedom camera motion (three translations and three rotations) is estimated by tracking the background feature points. Finally, the absolute structural displacement is recovered by combining the relative structural displacement and the camera motion. The performance of the proposed system has been validated in the laboratory using a commercial UAS. Displacement of a pinned‐connected railroad truss bridge in Rockford, IL subjected to revenue‐service traffic loading was reproduced on a hydraulic simulator, while the UAS was flown from a distance of 4.6 m (simulating the track clearance required by the Federal Railroad Administration), resulting in estimated displacements with an RMS error of 2.14 mm.     

Application of GPS to monitoring of wind‐induced responses of high‐rise buildings

A new monitoring system using GPS is introduced to measure wind‐induced responses of high‐rise buildings. In this paper, wind‐induced responses of a long‐period structure include relative lateral displacements, acceleration records, and torsional displacements at the top of a building. After comparing responses of a test model measured by GPS with responses obtained by the most commonly used laser displacement meters and accelerometers, the wind‐induced responses of a 66‐story high‐rise building subject to the yellow dust storm were measured by the GPS‐based monitoring system. Based on the field measurement, it is concluded that the complete motion history of a high‐rise building can be monitored by GPS. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于HSS模型的上海地铁深基坑开挖变形分析

为研究上海软土地区地铁深基坑开挖的变形性状,选取上海地区一典型软土地铁深基坑,基于土体小应变硬化模型(HSS模型)和相应的模型参数,采用PLAXIS 3D软件对该基坑的开挖过程进行了三维有限元数值模拟,并结合现场监测的数据对基坑围护结构的侧移和坑外地表沉降进行了对比。结果表明:使用HSS模型和合适的模型参数可以有效地模拟基坑开挖过程中的变形性状,实测结果与有限元分析结果相吻合,具有很好的工程实用价值; 该上海地铁深基坑的最大地表沉降与围护结构最大侧移间的关系符合上海地区最大地表沉降与围护结构最大侧移间的统计关系; 围护结构的最大侧移深度发生在基坑的开挖面处; 长窄型地铁深基坑仍存在较明显的空间效应,基坑长边中部的变形大于基坑角部,在长窄型基坑的设计和施工中应采取针对性措施。     

Effect of digital elevation models on monitoring slope displacements in open-pit mine by differential interferometry synthetic aperture radar

Displacement monitoring in open-pit mines is one of the important tasks for safe management of mining processes. Differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DInSAR), mounted on an artificial satellite, has the potential to be a cost-effective method for monitoring surface displacements over extensive areas, such as open-pit mines. DInSAR requires the ground surface elevation data in the process of its analysis as a digital elevation model (DEM). However, since the topography of the ground surface in open-pit mines changes largely due to excavations, measurement errors can occur due to insufficient information on the elevation of mining areas. In this paper, effect of different elevation models on the accuracy of the displacement monitoring results by DInSAR is investigated at a limestone quarry. In addition, validity of the DInSAR results using an appropriate DEM is examined by comparing them with the results obtained by global positioning system (GPS) monitoring conducted for three years at the same limestone quarry. It is found that the uncertainty of DEMs induces large errors in the displacement monitoring results if the baseline length of the satellites between the master and the slave data is longer than a few hundred meters. Comparing the monitoring results of DInSAR and GPS, the root mean square error (RMSE) of the discrepancy between the two sets of results is less than 10 mm if an appropriate DEM, considering the excavation processes, is used. It is proven that DInSAR can be applied for monitoring the displacements of mine slopes with centimeter-level accuracy.     

Experimental Assessment of the Accuracy of GPS and RTS for the Determination of the Parameters of Oscillation of Major Structures

Abstract:   Based on experimental evidence we explore the possibility of using GPS and robotic total stations (RTS) for measurements of oscillations of relatively rigid structures (modal frequencies up to 3–4 Hz). Our strategy was to compare uni-axial oscillations of known characteristics with simultaneous recordings of both GPS and RTS, and analyze obtained time series to determine amplitude and frequency of oscillations. The conclusion of this study is that GPS can record oscillations up to 4 Hz with a minimum amplitude of 5–10 mm with an accuracy of a few millimeters, and that RTS can record peaks of oscillations with submillimeters to a few millimeters accuracy, but at high frequencies some cycles were lost. Based on recordings of both the instruments frequencies of oscillations were also accurately determined, though noise seems to increase with increasing frequency. Spectral analysis was based on the least-square-based software which permits one to analyze discontinuous, short, and non-equispaced time series. The latter derive either from GPS signal outages/imperfections and hardware/software imperfections, or from a non-constant rate of sampling for RTS. The overall conclusion is that the adopted computational approaches permit us to overcome some main disadvantages of these instruments and to use conventional GPS and RTS instrumentation for a wide range of cases of structural monitoring, especially if displacements relative to an independent coordinate system are required.     

明挖法地铁车站围护结构变形模拟与预测研究

 以采用明挖法施工的一地铁车站为工程实例,对工程区的地质勘察报告进行详细分析,在考虑车站主体结构、初始地应力、施工过程以及地层的物理力学参数等诸多因素的基础上,采用FLAC3D有限差分程序对地层及围护结构的稳定性进行模拟研究。研究结果表明,相应的围护结构及内支撑支护体系能保证施工期车站基坑的围岩稳定,并对其施工过程提出了几条改进性建议,预测了施工期围护结构监测位移的稳定值。通过后期施工过程中车站基坑的位移监测,实测出围护结构上8个测点的位移稳定值,通过对变化趋势和位移量值的分析,得出围护结构的监测稳定值略小于数值计算的位移预测值,但是两者的变形趋势完全符合的结论,证明了有限差分法及FLAC3D在模拟基坑开挖、评价围岩稳定性和预测位移方面的有效性,从而为后续相似工程的位移预测提供了一种有效可靠的计算方法。     

能力曲线折线简化方法对比研究

将结构的能力曲线简化为二折线是确定结构的恢复力骨架曲线特征点（屈服点和屈服后刚度）、计算结构延性和等效阻尼比的关键。文中介绍了三种曾经建议的由结构能力曲线确定等效屈服点和屈服后刚度的方法,对三个框架结构算例采用上述建议方法计算的等效屈服力和屈服位移进行了对比分析,并以此屈服点和屈服后刚度作为等效单质点体系的恢复力骨架曲线,采用非线性动力时程分析法计算了等效单质点体系在罕遇地震下的最大弹塑性位移,通过与杆系模型非线性动力分析法计算的顶点位移对比,从而得到关于能力曲线简化方法的建议。     

DRIFT CONTROL OF HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS WITH UNIT LOAD METHOD

The use of displacement participation factors obtained by the unit load method provides an effective drift control tool for high-rise buildings. Structural sensitivity coefficients and displacement participation factors for members in a structure with respect to the lateral displacement to be controlled are computed and used for identifying active members and their corresponding displacement components. The drift control method using the displacement participation factors with a variable linking strategy is formulated into an optimization problem to determine the amount of material to be modified. Using the drift control method, a structural design model for a high-rise building is proposed and applied to one verifying example and two moment resisting frames. Time consuming trial-and-error processes related to the structural design of a high-rise building is avoided by the proposed structural design model. As demonstrated in the examples, the maximum lateral displacements of the examples are reduced by 57·05, 40·0 and 16·36% without changing the total weights of the structures. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

3D vision-based out-of-plane displacement quantification for steel plate structures using structure-from-motion,deep learning,and point-cloud processing

In this paper, a novel accurate and economical 3D computer vision-based framework is proposed to quantify out-of-plane displacements of steel plate structures. First, a sequence of image frames of the steel plate structures of interest is collected. Second, using image association, structure-from-motion, and multi-view stereo algorithms, a 3D point cloud of the steel plate structures and their surroundings is created. Third, an efficient 3D object detection method based on convolutional neural networks is developed and implemented to identify the steel plate structures in the 3D point cloud. Last, the out-of-plane displacements of the steel plate structures are quantified using point cloud postprocessing algorithms. The proposed framework has been implemented on a steel plate damper and a full-scale steel corrugated plate wall panel, which are commonly used in structural and earthquake engineering applications. The results indicate the developed framework can successfully localize the steel plate components in the 3D scene and accurately quantify the out-of-plane structural displacements with an average accuracy of ∼1 mm. The implementation shows the proposed framework can accurately and efficiently quantify the out-of-plane displacements of steel plate structures in realistic engineering applications.     

Displacement measurement techniques and numerical verification in 3D geomechanical model tests of an underground cavern group

In this paper, the stability of an underground cavern group is investigated on the basis of large-scale 3D geomechanical model tests and numerical simulations. Multiple measurement techniques are developed to measure the convergence of deformation in the cavern, displacements at key points in the side walls and the damage pattern during the excavation simulation process. The digital photogrammetric technique and fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based displacement sensing bars are applied to measure displacements in the surrounding rock masses. Mini multi-point extensometers with high-precision grating scales are developed as transducers for displacement monitoring. Afterward, a nodal-based Discontinuous Deformation Analysis (NDDA) method is applied to simulate the whole process of the physical model tests and to compare with experimental results. The variation process and law curves of the displacements in the surrounding rock and at key points in the side walls are obtained at excavation stages. The study shows that the application of the displacement measurement methods used in the surrounding rock masses for large-scale model tests of cavern group under true 3-D stress state have achieved satisfactory results.     

Measurement of the dynamic displacements and of the modal frequencies of a short-span pedestrian bridge using GPS and an accelerometer

Signal analysis techniques (supervised-type learning filter in combination with a Chebyshev filter) constrained and tested by independent accelerometer data were used to process noisy GPS measurements of oscillations of 40 m long steel footbridge excited by coordinated jumps of a group of people. This approach permitted to de-noise the geodetic displacement record and reconstruct a minimum bias waveform for the dynamic displacement of this stiff bridge (4.3 Hz modal frequency, ∼6 mm oscillation amplitude). This result indicates that properly processed high-frequency satellite geodetic data may be used to measure dynamic displacements not only of high-rise buildings, cable-stayed bridges and other flexible structures, but of stiff civil engineering structures as well and may be useful for the Structural Health Monitoring, analysis and design of a large range of engineering structures. It was also found that although currently used 10 Hz sampling rate GPS receivers may underestimate certain high-frequency peak displacements, this will not be a problem for the recently introduced 50-100 Hz receivers.     

杆件初始缺陷对单层凯威特球面网壳地震响应影响研究

为研究杆件初始缺陷对单层凯威特球面网壳地震响应的影响,利用OpenSEES有限元程序,采用多段梁法模拟杆件初始缺陷,给出了OpenSEES模拟空间网格结构圆管杆件滞回的多段梁法建模参数合理取值,基于GB 50017—2003《钢结构设计规范》中压杆稳定系数拟合了圆管等效偏心率和正则化长细比的关系式。考虑杆件初弯曲方向随机分布,建立了不同参数单层凯威特球面网壳模型,对网壳增量动力分析的最大位移进行了比较。结果表明：当网壳处于弹性状态时,杆件缺陷对其地震响应的影响可以忽略;当网壳进入塑性状态后,杆件缺陷对其地震响应的影响不可忽略,不同杆件初弯曲方向的网壳地震响应离散程度随地震动强度提高基本呈增大趋势;地震动强度较大时,考虑杆件缺陷和结构整体缺陷的单层网壳地震响应和仅考虑整体缺陷的单层网壳地震响应差异较大,两者最大位移的相对大小并无规律性,其关键影响因素为地震作用下塑性杆件分布的离散程度。     

Image analyses for video-based remote structure vibration monitoring system

Video-based vibration measurement is a cost-effective way for remote monitoring the health conditions of transportation and other civil structures, especially for situations where accessibility is restricted and does not allow installation of conventional monitoring devices. Besides, video-based system is global measurement. The technical basis of video-based remote vibration measurement system is digital image analysis. Comparison of the images allow the field of motion to be accurately delineated. Such information is important to understand the structure behaviors including the motion and strain distribution. This paper presents system and analyses to monitor the vibration velocity and displacement field. The performance is demonstrated on a testbed of model building. Three different methods (i.e., frame difference method, particle image velocimetry, and optical Flow Method) are utilized to analyze the image sequences to extract the feature of motion. The Performance is validated using accelerometer data. The results indicate that all three methods can estimate the velocity field of the model building, although the results can be affected by factors such as background noise and environmental interference. Optical flow method achieved the best performance among these three methods studied. With further refinement of system hardware and image processing software, it will be developed into a remote video based monitoring system for structural health monitoring of transportation infrastructure to assist the diagnoses of its health conditions.     

高速铁路无砟轨道基础结构垂向位移分布特性分析

建立高速铁路无砟轨道-路基结构动力有限元模型,系统分析高速列车荷载作用下轨道和路基垂向位移在时间和空间上的分布规律,比较轨道不平顺和断面位置对位移分布的影响规律。数值分析结果表明,轨道不平顺和横断面位置对轨道和路基垂向位移分布的影响可以忽略不计;高速列车荷载作用下钢轨和轨道板垂向位移的最大值分别为0.79mm和0.238mm,结果都在京津铁路现场试验实测数据的范围之内;轨道板和底座的垂向位移沿横向衰减非常缓慢,仅分别降低了3.6%和6.5%,沿深度基本没有变化;路基各层面垂向位移在轨道宽度范围内沿横向仅衰减10%左右,轨道宽度范围外位移按指数函数快速衰减,在距离线路中心线3m和4m附近,基床表层和基床底层的垂向位移已衰减一半以上,路基位移沿深度线性衰减,在距钢轨底面4m附近,垂向位移衰减50%左右,到基床底面处位移衰减70%以上。     

空间网架结构损伤识别模型试验研究

制作了大比例的空间网架结构试验模型,并设计了包括构件损伤及支座沉降在内的6种损伤工况,通过对试验模型在损伤前后的节点位移、杆件应变和一阶频率进行对比分析,总结了大跨度空间网架结构在各种损伤状态前后结构静力响应及频率变化规律,为实际工程结构的损伤识别及健康监测提供借鉴.     

基于虚拟变形方法的结构有限元模型修正

虚拟变形方法是一种快速精确的结构重分析方法。基于静力虚拟变形理论的结构有限元模型修正方法,推导了梁单元影响矩阵和基于虚拟变形的结构位移灵敏度。利用初始结构的静力响应和影响矩阵,就可根据需要对感兴趣的结点响应进行重分析,实现有限元模型的修正,无需修改结构的刚度矩阵;计算位移灵敏度时也与传统算法不同,不需要对整体刚度矩阵求逆,根据虚拟变形方法就可求出相应结点的静力位移灵敏度,提高了模型修正过程中的计算效率。最后分别利用数值仿真和荷载试验数据对一平面框架结构进行了模型修正。     

基于有限测点信息的大型空间网架结构智能工作状态评估技术研究

针对大型空间网架结构的特点,建立基于有限测点信息的智能工作状态评估技术。该技术是首先通过测量少数网架结构杆件的响应信息,获得结构响应的峰因子;再通过安置在网架结构上的风压力传感器获得结构的荷载信息,采用BP神经网络法和加权荷载本征模态分解法分别精确识别作用在网架结构上的平均风荷载和脉动风荷载;并通过安置在网架结构上的加速度传感器获得结构在环境激励下的加速度响应信息,对结构进行有限元模型修正;然后采用正向演绎的方法,得到整个网架结构的工作状态,根据预先设定的安全级别就能对其进行工作状态的评估。最后,通过该技术成功地应用于深圳市民中心屋顶网架结构的智能健康监测系统中,说明该技术的可行性和有效性。     

基础隔震结构直接基于位移设计的一体化抗震设计方法

为更加合理地进行基础隔震结构的抗震设计,以使用铅芯橡胶隔震支座(LRB)的基础隔震结构作为研究对象,提出了基础隔震结构直接基于位移设计(DDBD)的一体化抗震设计方法.对于给定地震水准下预先设定的性能目标(即LRB隔震系统最大水平变形和上部结构最大层间位移角),通过所提出的一体化抗震设计方法可以确定LRB隔震系统的力学...     

Autonomous UAVs for Structural Health Monitoring Using Deep Learning and an Ultrasonic Beacon System with Geo‐Tagging

Visual inspection has traditionally been used for structural health monitoring. However, assessments conducted by trained inspectors or using contact sensors on structures for monitoring are costly and inefficient because of the number of inspectors and sensors required. To date, data acquisition using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with cameras has become popular, but UAVs require skilled pilots or a global positioning system (GPS) for autonomous flight. Unfortunately, GPS cannot be used by a UAV for autonomous flight near some parts of certain structures (e.g., beneath a bridge), but these are the critical locations that should be inspected to monitor and maintain structural health. To address this difficulty, this article proposes an autonomous UAV method using ultrasonic beacons to replace the role of GPS, a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) for damage detection, and a geo‐tagging method for the localization of damage. Concrete cracks, as an example of structural damage, were successfully detected with 97.7% specificity and 91.9% sensitivity, by processing video data collected from an autonomous UAV.