Dissertation
Design, development, and validation of a rapid modal testing system for the efficient structural identification of highway bridges
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Dec 2015
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/etd-6602
Abstract
A rapid modal testing system for highway bridges was designed, developed, and validated. The motivation for the work stemmed from the lack of quantitative, experimental evaluations in current highway bridge condition assessment practice. Modern applications of St-Id can provide an accurate assessment of the load carrying capacity of a highway bridge but are too costly for widespread application. The developed system aims to supplement perform modal impact tests on common highway bridges in a rapid, low-cost, and repeatable manner. The experimental approach utilizes a mobile driving point (input/output source) that is equipped with a local array of accelerometers and a reduced set of stationary sensors. The stationary sensors are installed out of the way of traffic and are used as a modal scaling and phase reference. This allows independent subsets of local single-input-multiple-output (SIMO) measurements to be sequentially integrated into a full multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) data set. The result is a mobile, adaptable testing system that can quickly and efficiently obtain reliable FRF measurements of a structure. As part of this research, the physical prototype of the test system was developed using a systems engineering approach. Through a series of numerical examples, laboratory benchmarks, and field tests, the prototype system and general experimental and analytical methodology is developed. The system performance is evaluated by comparisons between two field tests on a typical highway bridge: a multi-reference impact test (MRIT) and a static truck load test. The research concluded that the prototype system is capable of performing a modal impact test that is equivalent to a traditional MRIT but with reductions in both time and cost of the evaluation. The research also found good agreement between displacement predictions made by a finite element (FE) model that was calibrated with the dynamic results from the prototype system and the "ground truth" displacement measurements obtained by truck load testing.
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Details
- Title
- Design, development, and validation of a rapid modal testing system for the efficient structural identification of highway bridges
- Creators
- John Louis DeVitis - DU
- Contributors
- Franklin L. Moon (Advisor) - Drexel University (1970-)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- xxvi, 229 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Civil/Architectural/Environmental Engineering (1970-2026); College of Engineering (1970-2026); Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 6602; 991014632161004721