A bio-inspired structural health monitoring system based on ambient vibration

A structural health monitoring (SHM) system based on naive Bayesian (NB) damage classification and DNA-like expression data was developed in this research. Adapted from the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) array concept in molecular biology, the proposed structural health monitoring system is constructed utilizing a double-tier regression process to extract the expression array from the structural time history recorded during external excitations. The extracted array is symbolized as the various genes of the structure from the viewpoint of molecular biology and reflects the possible damage conditions prevalent in the structure. A scaled down, six-story steel building mounted on the shaking table of the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE) was used as the benchmark. The structural response at different damage levels and locations under ambient vibration was collected to support the database for the proposed SHM system. To improve the precision of detection in practical applications, the system was enhanced by an optimization process using the likelihood selection method. The obtained array representing the DNA array of the health condition of the structure was first evaluated and ranked. A total of 12 groups of expression arrays were regenerated from a combination of four damage conditions. To keep the length of the array unchanged, the best 16 coefficients from every expression array were selected to form the optimized SHM system. Test results from the ambient vibrations showed that the detection accuracy of the structural damage could be greatly enhanced by the optimized expression array, when compared to the original system. Practical verification also demonstrated that a rapid and reliable result could be given by the final system within 1 min. The proposed system implements the idea of transplanting the DNA array concept from molecular biology into the field of SHM.