About the paper:
The presented paper investigates the influence of changing environmental conditions (ECs) on the structure of interest. This is a significant matter in the field of structural health monitoring (SHM) as it can be challenging to differentiate between structural changes caused by damage and those caused by modified ECs. Thus, a physics-based Gaussian Process (GP) is proposed to forecast a lattice tower structure's modal parameters for identifying damage. Here, one idea is to filter the effects of different ECs rather than to classify them. For this aim, ECs in the form of wind speed and temperature are applied as inputs for a GP to determine the modal characteristics of the structure. The difference between the measured data and the calculated results, along with the related confidence intervals, is then used as damage indicators, and criteria for subsequent damage detection are established. The model uses basic functions to consider related input parameters and achieve a grey-box model that encompasses the known dependencies between the input parameters. Results were checked using the Leibniz University Test Structure for Monitoring (LUMO), an outdoor lattice tower. From the LUMO data, it can be shown that the presented approach can be used for the detection of artificially induced damage and has applicability for the detection of small changes in the underlying structure. Also, only a small amount of training data is required to achieve satisfactory results.
Möller, S., Jonscher, C., Grießmann, T., Rolfes, R.: Investigations Towards Physics-Informed Gaussian Process Regression for the Estimation of Modal Parameters of a Lattice Tower Under Environmental Conditions. Experimental Vibration Analysis for Civil Engineering Structures. EVACES 2023. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering 433. Springer, 401-410, 2023, (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39117-0_41)
The 10th international Conference on Experimental Vibration Analysis for Civil Engineering Structures (EVACES) was held from 30.08.–01.09.2023 in Milan. The conference is a forum where engineers, scientists, researchers, and practitioners will have the opportunity to disseminate and discuss the latest research, developments and applications in all major aspects of vibration-based monitoring and testing of civil engineering structures.