Extension of indirect displacement estimation method using acceleration and strain to various types of beam structures

Abstract

The indirect displacement estimation using acceleration and strain (IDEAS) method is extended to various types of beam structures beyond the previous validation on the prismatic or near-prismatic beams. By fusing different types of responses, the IDEAS method is able to estimate displacements containing pseudo-static components with high frequency noise to be significantly reduced. However, the concerns to the IDEAS method come from possible disagreement of the assumed sinusoidal mode shapes to the actual mode shapes, which allows the IDEAS method to be valid only for simply-supported prismatic beams and limits its applicability to real world problems. In this paper, the extension of the IDEAS method to the general types of beams is investigated by the mathematical formulation of the modal mapping matrix only for the monitored substructure, so-called monitoring span. The formulation particularly considers continuous and wide beams to extend the IDEAS method to general beam structures that reflect many real bridges. Numerical simulations using four types of beams with various irregularities are presented to show the effectiveness and accuracy of the IDEAS method in estimating displacements.