Proof of concept of the structural health monitoring of framed structures by a novel combined experimental and theoretical approach

One of the most important issues in engineering is the detection of structural damages. During its life cycle, a building, besides the exposure to operational and environmental forces, can be subjected to earthquakes or to other non-ordinary loads. These events may have a deep impact on the building safety, and thus, a continuous monitoring of the structure health conditions becomes desirable or even necessary in many cases. In this context, the usage of vibration-based structural health monitoring (SHM) systems is spreading from big infrastructures applications, like bridges, dams or skyscrapers, to the historical heritage and to public or residential buildings. The aim of this work is to propose a combined experimental and numerical methodology to perform the SHM of structures of the civil engineering lying in seismic hazard zones. A relatively low cost SHM prototype system based on this approach is developed. The data acquired by the system are provided to a finite element method (FEM) numerical model to detect the appearing, the rise and the distribution of local damages and to estimate a global damage level. The system has been tested and calibrated on a three-storey prototype model. The procedure for the estimation of the damage level is calibrated by comparing the experimental quantities measured during cyclic failure tests with the FEM model predictions.