Abstract
A recent development which is poised to disrupt current structural
engineering practice is the use of data obtained from physical structures such
as bridges, viaducts and buildings. These data can represent how the structure
responds to various stimuli over time when in operation, providing engineers
with a unique insight into how their designs are performing. With the advent of
advanced sensing technologies and the Internet of Things, the efficient
interpretation of structural health monitoring data has become a big data
challenge. Many models have been proposed in literature to represent such data,
such as linear statistical models. Based upon these models, the health of the
structure is reasoned about, e.g. through damage indices, changes in likelihood
and statistical parameter estimates. On the other hand, physics-based models
are typically used when designing structures to predict how the structure will
respond to operational stimuli. What remains unclear in the literature is how
to combine the observed data with information from the idealised physics-based
model into a model that describes the responses of the operational structure.
This paper introduces a new approach which fuses together observed data from a
physical structure during operation and information from a mathematical model.
The observed data are combined with data simulated from the physics-based model
using a multi-output Gaussian process formulation. The novelty of this method
is how the information from observed data and the physics-based model is
balanced to obtain a representative model of the structures response to
stimuli. We present our method using data obtained from a fibre-optic sensor
network installed on experimental railway sleepers. We discuss how this
approach can be used to reason about changes in the structures behaviour over
time using simulations and experimental data.
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