Localization of damaged cable in a tied‐arch bridge using Arias intensity of seismic acceleration response

Abstract

It is well-known that a bridge may end up with severe damage under aftershocks, even if it resisted the main shock. As such, a quick assessment seems necessary when a bridge experiences an earthquake event. In this paper, an output-only energy-based method was developed to locate damaged cables in an tied-arch bridge under seismic excitation. For this purpose, seismic acceleration response signals were first subjected to simple band-pass filtering. Then, the energy levels, in terms of Arias intensity, were calculated and normalized to locate the damaged cables. The proposed method was validated through a realistic 3-D numerical model of a tied-arch bridge under 16 different ground motions. It was shown that the proposed method can accurately detect the damaged cables under the earthquakes. Moreover, the damage detection procedure is proved to be insensitive to noise and adequately robust against near- and far-field parameters of the earthquake.