Damage identification of supporting structures with a moving sensory system

An innovative approach to identify local anomalies in a structural beam bridge with an instrumented vehicle moving as a sensory system across the bridge. Accelerations at both the axle and vehicle body are measured from which vehicle-bridge interaction force on the structure is determined. Local anomalies of the structure are estimated from this interaction force with the Newton's iterative method basing on the homotopy continuation method. Numerical results with the vehicle moving over simply supported or continuous beams show that the acceleration responses from the vehicle or the bridge structure are less sensitive to the local damages than the interaction force between the wheel and the structure. Effects of different movement patterns and moving speed of the vehicle are investigated, and the effect of measurement noise on the identified results is discussed. A heavier or slower vehicle has been shown to be less sensitive to measurement noise giving more accurate results.