Structural damage analysis for SHM system design of bridge

Structural damage can be generalized to the degeneration of working condition, performance degradation, or damage in general sense. In the designing of the structure or its SHM system, it is significant to forecast the structure damage under various mechanical and physical conditions and the mechanical behaviors of structure with damage. That is the mission of structural damage analysis (abbr. as SDA). Aimed at the conceptual design of bridge SHM system, the objectives of SDA are: First, to find the locations of possible damage for locating the sensors on structure in the process of SHM system design. Secondly, to grasp the changes of structural properties, so as to offer guidance for structure modal parameters identification and damage identification. Finally, to build the relationship between damage and monitoring quantities, in order to find suitable monitoring information processing method and structure state evaluation method. The general arts of bridge SDA and some representative analysis items under various loading condition are studied in this paper. In the end of this paper, two example of SDA is carried out, one is a segment of continuous girder bridge in Donghai bridge, which is forecasted to be suffering with uneven settlement of piers, and another is a seismic loading pushover analysis case.