Title: Structural health monitoring of a masonry arch bridge: modal identification and model updating

Authors: Giacomo Zini; Michele Betti; Gianni Bartoli; Salvatore Giacomo Morano; Paolo Spinelli

Addresses: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Florence, Via di S. Marta 3, I-50139 Florence, Italy ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Florence, Via di S. Marta 3, I-50139 Florence, Italy ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Florence, Via di S. Marta 3, I-50139 Florence, Italy ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Florence, Via di S. Marta 3, I-50139 Florence, Italy ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Florence, Via di S. Marta 3, I-50139 Florence, Italy

Abstract: Historic masonry arch bridges are widespread across the European countries and the assessment of their current safety under operative conditions is a hard task. The dynamic loads due to the vehicular traffic and the degradation of the materials often speeded up by harsh environmental conditions and scarce maintenance, which may lead to critical situations. As a consequence, the scientific community is working in order to develop and propose reliable methodologies of analysis and non-invasive technologies of investigation to assess their current state of conservation. In this respect, this paper discusses an experimental activity performed in a two-span historic masonry arch bridge. Output-only modal identification was carried out both in time and frequency domains using the stochastic subspace iteration (SSI) and the frequency domain decomposition (FDD), respectively. The results provided by the two procedures are first compared, and subsequently employed for FE modal updating. To calibrate the FE model an optimisation approach based on genetic algorithms (GAs) was employed.

Keywords: historic bridge SHM; FE modelling; output-only identification; model updating.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMRI.2024.135244

International Journal of Masonry Research and Innovation, 2024 Vol.9 No.1/2, pp.42 - 53

Received: 18 Jun 2022
Accepted: 10 Oct 2022
Published online: 03 Dec 2023 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article