Date of Completion

8-18-2017

Embargo Period

8-17-2017

Keywords

Structural Health Monitoring; Pressure-Impulse Diagrams; Alternate Path Method; Incomplete Measurements; Optimal Sensor Placement; Model Updating; Genetic Algorithm;

Major Advisor

Shinae Jang

Associate Advisor

Michael Accorsi

Associate Advisor

Richard Christenson

Associate Advisor

Jeongho Kim

Associate Advisor

Wei Zhang

Field of Study

Civil Engineering

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Open Access

Open Access

Abstract

Due to unstable political climates across the world, the potential for terrorist attacks against civil infrastructure has become a serious concern. The increasing threat of explosions has fueled the need for research into methods to rapidly, and safely, assess the condition and safety of a structure from a blast. The ability to assess the structures safety from a potential blast with cumulative structural damage can be used to update security operations or retro-fit elements to improve resilience. In this work, structural health monitoring is used to determine the safety of structures before and the condition after a blast event, incorporating the actual structure with the real-world damage. As the methodology utilizes vibrational measurements, the gathered information is critical to the condition assessment. However, the number of monitoring sensors is usually significantly less than the number of potential monitoring degrees-of-freedom (DOF), and there is a significant potential for malfunctioning sensors due to the blast event. To quantify damage in a structure with damaged sensors, a two phase remaining stiffness localization and quantification method for limited measurements is presented. Two optimal sensor placement (OSP) methods are used to demonstrate the proposed two phase parameter localization and quantification method ability to quantify changes in a structure using a limited number of sensors. After an explosion has occurred, one of the key structural failures is a progressive collapse of the structure. To assess a structures probability of failure after an explosion, a method is developed which uses structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques to update a numerical model with vibration measurements to represent the damaged condition of a structure after a blast, and to assess probability of failure using the alternate path method. The included work can be utilized to assess structures safety from explosions, determining appropriate security procedures, and guiding safe emergency operations after the blast event.

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