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Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is a helpful tool for engineers in order to control and verify the structural behaviour. SHM also guides the engineers and owners of structures in decision making concerning the maintenance, economy and safety of structures. Sweden has not a very sever tradition in monitoring, as countries with strong seismic and/or aerodynamic activities. Anyway, several large scale monitoring projects have taken place in recent years and SHM is slowly making entrance as an essential implement in managing structures by engineers as well as owners. This licentiate thesis presents a state-of-the art-review of health monitoring activities and over sensory technologies for monitoring infrastructure constructions like bridges, dams, off-shore platforms, historical monuments etc. related to civil engineering. The fibre optic equipment is presented with special consideration. The permanent monitoring system of the New Årsta Bridge consists of 40 fibre optic sensors, 20 strain transducers, 9 thermocouples, 6 accelerometers and one LVDT. The aims of the static study are: to control the maximal strains and stresses; to detect cracking in the structure; to report strain changes under construction, testing period and in the coming 10 years; and to compare conventional system with fibre optic system. The system installation started in January 2003 and was completed October 2003. The measurements took place from the very beginning and are suppose to continue for at least 10 years of operation. At the construction phase the measurements were performed manually and later on automatically through broad band connection between the office and central data acquisition systems located inside the bridge. The monitoring project of the New Årsta Railway Bridge is described from the construction phase to the testing phase of the finished bridge. Results of the recorded statistical data, crack detection and loading test are presented and a comparison between traditional techniques like strain transducers and fibre optic sensors is done. Various subjects around monitoring and sensor technologies that were found under the project are brought up in order to give the reader a good understanding, as well of the topics, techniques and of the bridge. Example of few applications is given with the aim of a deeper insight into monitoring related issues. / QC 20101112

This research reviews and extends the impedance-based structural health monitoring technique in order to detect and identify structural damage on various complex structures. The basic principle behind this technique is to apply high frequency structural excitations (typically higher than 30 kHz) through the surface-bonded piezoelectric transducers, and measure the impedance of structures by monitoring the current and voltage applied to the transducers. Changes in impedance indicate changes in the structure, which in turn can indicate that damage has occurred. Several case studies, including a pipeline structure, a composite reinforced aluminum plate, a precision part (gear), a quarter-scale bridge section, and a steel pipe header, demonstrate how this technique can be used to detect damage in real-time. A method to process impedance measurements to prevent significant temperature and boundary condition changes registering as damage has been developed and implemented. Furthermore, the feasibility of using the technique for high temperature structures and for condition monitoring of critical facilities subjected to a severe natural disaster has been investigated. While the impedance-based structural health monitoring technique indicates qualitatively that damage has occurred, more information on the nature of damage is necessary for remote structures. In this research, two different damage identification schemes have been combined with the impedance method in order to quantitatively assess the state of structures. One is based on a wave propagation modeling, and the other is the use of artificial neural networks. A newly developed wave propagation model has been developed and combined with the impedance method in order to estimate the severity of damage. Numerical and experimental investigations on 1-dimensional structures were presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the combined approach. Furthermore, to avoid the complexity introduced by conventional computational methods in high frequency ranges, multiple sets of artificial neural networks were integrated with the impedance-based health monitoring technique. By incorporating neural network features, the technique is able to detect damage in its early stage and to determine the severity of damage without prior knowledge of the model of structures. The dissertation concludes with experimental examples, investigations on a quarter-scale steel bridge section and a space truss structure, in order to verify the performance of the proposed methodology. / Ph. D.

The focus of this dissertation is aimed at advancing autonomous structural health monitoring. All the research is based on developing the impedance method for monitoring structural health. The impedance technique utilizes piezoelectric patches to interrogate structures of interested with high frequency excitations. These patches are bonded directly to the structure, so information about the health of the structure can be seen in the electrical impedance of the piezoelectric patch. However, traditional impedance techniques require the use of a bulky and expensive impedance analyzer. Research presented here describes efforts to miniaturize the hardware necessary for damage detection. A prototype impedance-based structural health monitoring system, incorporating wireless based communications, is fabricated and validated with experimental testing. The first steps towards a completely autonomous structural health monitoring sensor are also presented. Power harvesting from ambient energy allows a prototype to be operable from a rechargeable power source. Aerospace vehicles are equipped with thermal protection systems to isolate internal components from harsh reentry conditions. While the thermal protection systems are critical to the safety of the vehicle, finding damage in these structures presents a unique challenge. Impedance techniques will be used to detect the standard damage mechanism for one type of thermal protection system. The sensitivity of the impedance method at elevated temperatures is also investigated. Sensors are often affixed to structures as a means of identifying structural defects. However, these sensors are susceptible to damage themselves. Sensor diagnostics is a field of study directed at identifying faulty sensors. The influence of temperature on these techniques is largely unstudied. In this dissertation, a model is generated to identify damaged sensors at any temperature. A sensor diagnostics method is also adapted for use in developed hardware. The prototype used is completely digital, so standard sensor diagnostics techniques are inapplicable. A new method is developed to work with the digital hardware. / Ph. D.

A promising structural health monitoring (SHM) method for implementation on real world structures is impedance-based health monitoring. An in-service system is envisioned to include on board processing and perhaps wireless transfer of data. Ideally, a system could be produced as a slap-on or automatically installed addition to a structure. The research presented in this dissertation addresses issues that will help make such a system a reality. Although impedance-based SHM does not typically use an analytical model for basic damage identification, a model is necessary for more advanced features of SHM, such as damage prognosis, and to evaluate system parameters when installing on various structures. A model was developed based on circuit analysis of the previously proposed low-cost circuit for impedance-based SHM in combination with spectral elements. When a three-layer spectral element representing a piezoceramic bonded to a base beam is used, the model can predict the large peaks in the impedance response due to resonances of the bonded active sensor. Parallel and series connections of distributed sensor systems are investigated both experimentally and with the developed model. Additionally, the distribution of baseline damage metrics is determined to assess how the large quantities of data produced by a monitoring system can be handled statistically. A modification of the RMSD damage metric has also been proposed that is essentially the squared sum of the Z-statistic for each frequency point. Preferred excitation frequencies for macro-fiber composite (MFC) active sensors are statistically determined for a long composite boom under development for use in rigidizable inflatable space structures. / Ph. D.

The understanding of how structural components endure loads, in particular variable loads, is that these components gradually, over some period of time depending on the nature of the loading and the material, develop a microcrack. After some additional time and loading, the microcrack grows to a size that might be detected. Beyond that point, the microcrack propagates in a manner that can be reliably predicted by computer analysis codes. Consequently, one can define different stages for the life of a structural component. These are: 1) the period prior to the formation of a microcrack, 2) the period of microcrack growth, and finally 3) the period of crack growth. To date, structural health monitoring approaches that seek to detect cracks offer no insight into the extent of deterioration occurring in the initial stage that is a precursor to the formation of the microcrack or its growth. However, an approach that would facilitate monitoring the extent of the deterioration that takes place during this stage promises to improve life prediction capabilities of structural components. The challenge, thus, is to develop quantitative assessment of damage accumulation from the earliest stages of the fatigue process and to provide a structure's signature that is dependent of the damage stage. One such signature is the structure's response to forced excitation. The realization of such a goal would help in advancing structural health monitoring procedures using interrogative system identification techniques and determine sensitivities of physical parameters to damage. Additionally, vibration-based spectral quantities are related to physical properties of the structure under test. In this thesis, nonlinear response to parametric excitation is exploited for nonlinear system identification of metallic and composite beam-mass systems before damage initiation through intermediate states of damage progression to failure. Parametric identification procedure combines linear and higher order spectral analysis of vibration measurements and perturbation techniques for the derivation of the approximate solution of the system nonlinear governing differential equation. The possibility of using optical Fiber Bragg Grating sensors technology for damage localization is also assessed. Spectral moments and quantities obtained from fiber optic strain measurements are evaluated near and away from cracks to assess the relation between these moments and cracks. Variations in parameters representing natural frequency, damping and effective nonlinearities for different levels of progressive damage in a beam-mass system have been determined. Their percentage variations have been quantified to establish their sensitivities to damage initiation. The results show that damping and effective nonlinearity parameters are more sensitive to damage conditions than the natural frequency of the first mode. Crack localization is assessed by means of optical fiber technology for a composite beam-mass system. The results show that noise levels in fiber optic signals are high in comparison to strain gage signals. Of particular interest, however, is the observation that the nonlinear response is more pronounced near the cracks than away from them. / Ph. D.