A Test Method for Damage Diagnosis of Suspension Bridge Suspender Cables. (9th June 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: An, Yonghui; Spencer, B.F.; Ou, Jinping
• Is Part Of: Computer-aided civil and infrastructure engineering. Volume 30:Number 10(2015:Oct.)
• Page Start: 771
• Page End: 784
• Publication Date: 2015-06-09
• Subjects: Civil engineering -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Computer-aided engineering -- Periodicals; 624.0285
• DOI: 10.1111/mice.12144
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1093-9687

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>Suspender cables are one of the most vulnerable components of a suspension bridge; therefore, development of effective methods for damage detection is imperative. Many previous damage detection methods require an accurate finite element model, which is often difficult to obtain. This article proposes a model‐free test method for damage diagnosis of suspender cables that avoids this problem. The method includes two procedures: the mean normalized curvature difference procedure and the curvature difference probability procedure. Numerical results for single and multiple damage cases indicate that: (1) both procedures can be effective for damage diagnosis of suspender cables; (2) small damage can be more easily diagnosed in long suspender cables than short ones, for example, 5% stiffness reduction in long suspender cables can be diagnosed; and (3) noise is generally not a problem, because the signal‐to‐noise ratio can be improved by increasing the pulse excitation magnitude for a suspender cable. The proposed test method does not eliminate the need for manual inspection, but changes it from observation to a more quantified method. All of these points increase the potential of the proposed method for practical applications.</p> </abstract>