Damage Identification and Optimal Sensor Placement for Structures under Unknown Traffic-Induced Vibrations

AbstractThis paper proposes a damage-identification and optimal sensor-placement approach for structures under unknown traffic-induced vibrations. Response reconstruction is performed for structures under traffic-induced vibrations to formulate the relationship between different sets of time-domain responses. Measured acceleration responses from a structure under traffic-induced ground motions are used for damage identification with a sensitivity-based iterative model updating method. Numerical simulations on a seven-story planar frame structure are conducted to verify the performance of the proposed approach. Damage identification is conducted based on the initial finite-element model of the structure and the measured responses from the damaged state under traffic-induced vibrations. Structural elemental stiffness factors are iteratively updated until the reconstructed responses match the measured ones as closely as possible. A two-phase optimal sensor-placement scheme is proposed for better response rec...