Vibration-based Damage Detection of Bridge Superstructures

This book addresses the experimental and numerical study of vibration-based damage detection (VBDD) techniques in structural health monitoring (SHM) of bridge superstructures. VBDD techniques are global non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques. The advantage of VBDD techniques over local NDE techniques is that VBDD techniques can assess the condition of an entire structure at once and are not limited to accessible components. The experiments on a half-scale, simply supported steel-free bridge deck and two full-scale, simply supported prestressed concrete girders demonstrated that small scale damage at different locations can be reliably detected and located by VBDD techniques using a relatively small number of sensors (accelerometers or strain gauges). Both experimental and numerical studies demonstrate that VBDD techniques are a promising tool for structural health moni­toring of bridges. This book should be useful to professionals in structural health monitoring, non-destructive evaluation techniques, and dynamic test and analysis, or anyone else who is interested in the VBDD techniques or dynamic test and analysis.