Damage location detection in continuous deck bridges using the cross-correlation function statistical method

The damage detection (DD) of the bridge has always been a major concern for engineers. This paper attempts to detect damage in the continuous deck bridges by providing a new method based on acceleration responses and their instantaneous amplitudes. The DD in this paper has two steps: firstly, determining the vicinity of damage in global DD. Secondly, determining the location of damage in local DD. Then by acceleration signals, the instantaneous amplitude values of healthy and damaged structural responses are extracted via HHT. Further, for the accurate evaluation of the proposed method, damage locations are determined by the cross-correlation damage index (DICC). To assess the feasibility and reliability of proposed methods, several analytical models of concrete bridges of one to three spans, as well as as experimental model of a simply supported steel beam, have been used. In order to consider noise pollution during data acquisition, a certain amount of noise is added to the response. The results in the analytical and experimental models showed that the proposed methods can determine the damage locations with appropriate accuracy for different damage scenarios and it could provide more exact results with a rapid estimation.