bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Long‐term Resistivity Monitoring of a Lock – Valuable Data for different Durability Issues
Authors: Spörel Frank 
Published: September 2023

AbstractA better knowledge on the exposure conditions of structures can help to evaluate the transferability of lab tests results to practical application or to generate a basis for modeling of different durability aspects. About 20 years and 10 years ago, a monitoring system was installed in two locks to get information on the temperature exposure and the degree of saturation of the concrete cover zone by means of continuous resistivity measurements with the Multi‐Ring‐Electrodes (MRE) and Multitemperature Probes (MTP) at different distances to the concrete surface. Due to the fact that resistivity is influenced by many more parameters than just the degree of saturation it is very complex to determine the degree of saturation. Uncertainties remain as concrete properties develop over the years and the cover zone which is of mayor interest for durability is additionally affected by casting and curing and later on by the exposure conditions. A deficiency of the Arrhenius equation to compensate for temperature effects on resistivity under certain conditions finally helps to overcome that difficulty. A data evaluation concerning freeze‐thaw attack gives examples and indicates possible further applications like carbonation.
Automatic Multi‐label Classification of Bridge Components and Defects Based on Inspection Photographs
Authors: Pâques Matthieu , Law‐Hine Didier , Hamedane Otmane Alami , Magnaval Gauthier , Allezard Nicolas 
Published: September 2023

AbstractWhen performing visual inspections of bridges, experts collect photographs of defects to assess the overall condition of the structure and schedule maintenance plans. Such inspections are labor‐intensive, and computer vision‐based systems are being investigated as automated tools to assist the experts in their inspections. An important aspect however remains to ensure the representativeness of the data accounting for the sheer size, complexity and variety of the bridge components and defects being reported. Here, we perform a multi‐label classification on a dataset (SOFIA dataset) that consists of 139,455 images of types of bridge components and defects among which 53,805 are labeled (13 classes for each type). The dataset containing class imbalance and noisy labeling is processed using visual embedding computed from unsupervised deep learning methods. A combination of class‐balancing techniques is investigated on the state‐of‐the‐art Vision Transformer model. Interclass relations, which determine whether a class of defect should be part of a class of bridge component, are implemented with an additional filtering step. The whole method is also deployed on the CODEBRIM benchmark dataset resulting in an improved accuracy score.
Text Recognition for 2D Bridge Plans Using OCR‐Algorithms
Authors: Peng Mengyan , Kang Chongjie , Marx Steffen 
Published: September 2023

AbstractThe 2D bridge plans play an essential role in renovations or new replacements of transport infrastructures. As an indispensable component of plans, text serves as dimension labels, descriptions of materials, etc. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can convert text in image into machine‐encoded format, and has high potential and invaluable practical worth for analyzing, managing, and extracting textual information from plans. First, the selection of OCR‐algorithms and the sampling of textual fragments from 2D bridge plans, including historic plans with handwritten text and digital plans with printed text, was carried out. Subsequently, the performances of different open‐source OCR‐algorithms on different textual fragments from 2D bridge plans are compared. In this process, the accuracy at character level and word level are chosen as two main factors to evaluate their performances. Finally, the most potential OCR‐algorithms for the text recognition on 2D bridge plans are proposed.
Optical sensors for the durability assessment of cement‐based infrastructure
Authors: Grengg Cyrill , Müller Bernhard , Zögl Iris , Sakopanig Marlene , Mittermayr Florian , Mayr Torsten , Sterz Karl Leonhard , Juhart Joachim , Galan Isabel 
Published: September 2023

AbstractThe corrosion‐related damages on concrete infrastructure account globally for several billion US dollars annually. Up to 38 % of these costs could be saved by the application of optimized materials and/or more efficient monitoring technologies. In this contribution a novel sensor technology is presented, based on luminescent pH sensitive dyes, to quantitatively determine the pH distribution in cement‐based construction materials. Different sensor platforms were explored resulting in high‐resolution imaging techniques, as well as in miniaturized sensor probes for field application and in situ monitoring. To this point, pH sensors were successfully applied for cementitious materials to (i) quantitatively characterize the carbonation state in the lab, (ii) gain further understanding on phase assemblages and internal pH evolution related to carbonation, (iii) reveal that the actual pH at the inflection point of phenolphthalein may strongly vary depending on physicochemical material properties, (iv) monitor the pH evolution during the early hydration of different cementitious materials, and (v) measure carbonation depths using miniaturized sensor probes adopted for field applications.
Laminated glass slabs design challenges: dynamic identification of a fractured pedestrian walkway
Authors: Rosso Marco Martino , Aloisio Angelo , Bedon Chiara , Marano Giuseppe Carlo 
Published: September 2023

AbstractDesign codes provide requirements for traditional slabs to ensure both safety levels and in‐service functionality criteria. However, for existing structures, an initial diagnostic knowledge phase is essential to characterize the actual health state, e.g. based on structural health monitoring (SHM) with operational modal analysis (OMA) techniques. Considering recent advancements in glass as a structural material, laminated glass (LG) slabs are increasingly used in constructions and are mostly designed to account for the intrinsic brittleness and limited tensile resistance of glass. The latest pre‐code CEN/TS 19100:2021 is paving the road for an imminent future Eurocode 10 dedicated to providing new standards for the innovative use of structural glass. In the current study, a brief review of the design challenges of working with structural glass is presented. After that, the authors provided a simple experimental dynamic identification example of an LG pedestrian walkway located in the Basilica of Aquileia, Trieste (Italy). Specifically, the fundamental mode was compared to a healthy and a partially fractured LG slab. Functionality aspects related to comfort standards with respect to in‐service vibration issues are also detailed.
Economic assessment of corrosion prevention measures in new structures
Authors: Hernandez Juan Daniel Cassiani , Valcarcel Juan Mauricio Lozano , Kränkel Thomas , Gehlen Christoph , Keβler Sylvia 
Published: September 2023

AbstractChloride‐induced corrosion is a main cause of deterioration in reinforced concrete (RC). The premature deterioration of RC leads to unplanned repairs, hence elevating the direct and indirect costs of the RC infrastructure. The current prescriptive durability design approach has proven to be insufficient in assuring the durability of the RC exposed to chlorides. The objective of this study is an economical evaluation of several prevention measures for chloride‐induced corrosion following the performance‐based approach. A case study is inspired by a real set of RC columns, which suffered from chloride‐induced corrosion damage after 14 years in service. The considered prevention measures are the use of different binder systems, variation of the water/binder ratio, and changes in the concrete cover. To compare the obtained results, a reference design is set with a concrete mix and a cover thickness according to the requirements of the prescriptive approach described in the European standards. The results show that a balance between the binder type, concrete cover and water/binder ratio is necessary in order to optimize the costs while assuring the durability of the RC element.
External Confinement with Basalt Fiber Ropes in Existing Reinforced Concrete Structures
Authors: Rousakis Theodoros , Macha Makrini 
Published: September 2023

AbstractExisting reinforced concrete structures designed according to previous generation seismic codes, often suffer from premature, abrupt and detrimental failures in cases of intense earthquakes. In this study the seismic response of an existing building is analytically investigated while taking into account the influence of different detailing of brick wall infills. The assessment is performed with 3D static inelastic (Pushover) or with incremental Dynamic time‐history analyses (IDA) with the SeismoStruct Software. Buildings with inadequate performance receive continuous transverse pre‐tensioned Basalt Fiber Ropes (BFR) as external shear and confining strengthening reinforcement. The inelastic analyses conclude that buildings with short columns suffer from early collapses at low top displacements due to detrimental local shear failure of the above‐mentioned members. Both shear and crush confined concrete related failures of the critical columns are eliminated and overall base shear strength is increased. BFR external wrapping increases the ultimate top building displacements as well. IDA are thoroughly elaborated to assess the collapse mechanism of the structures and conclude ultimate base shear and top displacement values for the critical cases of buildings under investigation.
Performance Prediction of Anchors in SFRC using Minimally Invasive and Non‐Destructive Techniques
Authors: Mellios Nikolaos , Kruschwitz Sabine , Spyrdis Panagiotis 
Published: September 2023

AbstractFastenings are crucial for the upgrade of existing structures, by either enhancing structural components or modernising and expanding structures and structural systems. Whilst concrete is prevailing in the existing building stock, new types of concrete composites are increasingly used to improve the sustainability and overall structural performance of built assets. The addition of short dispersed fibres is a material technology with several applications. This paper addresses the synergy of fastening elements, introducing localised loads in concrete substrates, and of fibres, particularly in terms of the fibre orientation and density in the load application area, which is a significant quality aspect. The possibility to forecast this synergy based on non‐destructive or minimally invasive testing methods is an efficient tool to increase confidence in the design load‐bearing performance of the anchorages. Initially, previous literature and own investigations on such techniques are presented. Furthermore, a methodology is presented on associating such information to predict a single anchor's resistance on the basis of sophisticated non‐linear analyses and testing with engineered fibres alignments.
Strain‐based autoregressive modelling for system identification of railway bridges
Authors: Anastasia Stefano , Marcías Enrique García , Ubertini Filippo , Gattulli Vincenzo , Martìnez Pedro Poveda , Gorriz Benjamín Torres , Chorro Salvador Ivorra 
Published: September 2023

AbstractVehicular traffic represents the most influential loads on the structural integrity of railway bridges, therefore the design on dynamic criteria. This work explores the use of strain dynamic measurements to characterize the health condition of railway bridges under moving train loads. Specifically, the approach proposed in this work exploits the implementation of auto‐regressive (AR) time series analysis for continuous damage detection. In this light, continuously extracted AR coefficients are used as damage‐sensitive features. To automate the definition of the order of the AR model, the methodology implements a model selection approach based on the Bayesian information criterion (BIC), Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Mean Squared Error (MSE). In this exploratory investigation, the suitability and effectiveness of strain measurements against acceleration‐based systems are appraised through a case study of a simply supported Euler‐Bernoulli beam under moving loads. The moving loads problem in terms of vertical accelerations and normal strains is solved through modal decomposition in closed form. The presented numerical results and discussion evidence the effectiveness of the proposed approach, laying the basis for its implementation to real‐world instrumented bridges.
Nonlinear analysis procedures for safety assessment of existing RC bridges under traffic loads
Authors: De Matteis Gianfranco , Carbonari Sandro , Chisari Corrado , D'Amato Michele , Mattei Francesca , Zizi Mattia , Braga Franco , Caprili Silvia , Dall'Asta Andrea , Gara Fabrizio , Salvatore Walter 
Published: September 2023

AbstractThe Italian infrastructural asset, mainly consisting of RC bridges, is affected by significant obsolescence: many bridges overpassed their theoretical nominal life and did not experience any maintenance intervention. Such a critical scenario is even worse if it is additionally considered the increase of vehicular traffic that occurred in the last decades. From a management point of view, many structures needed restrictions on use due to their inadequacy to withstand the traffic load provided by the current codes. This is a direct consequence of accurate safety assessments of such structures. In this paper, the opportunity to adopt nonlinear analyses for the safety assessment of existing RC bridges is discussed. The safety‐format proposed in EuroCode 2 for designing new RC bridges and based on nonlinear analysis methodology is critically reviewed to consider its possible application to existing bridges. Then, the estimation of modelling uncertainty is proposed to define some acceptance criteria for the specific numerical solution strategy to be used, following the most recent international research outputs. Finally, a case study is addressed with the aim to compare linear and nonlinear results, the latter based on a calibration and verification of the adopted modelling strategy.
Operational modal analysis for supporting the retrofit design of bridges
Authors: Nicoletti Vanni , Martini Riccardo , Amico Lorenzo , Carbonari Sandro , Gara Fabrizio 
Published: September 2023

AbstractAmbient vibration tests and operational modal analysis are commonly adopted worldwide to identify the dynamic behaviour of structures because they offer several advantages such as the use of portable light equipment, the possibility to be performed without interruptions of the structure serviceability, and the use of ambient noise to globally excite the construction. Ambient vibration tests are also usually adopted in structural health monitoring systems to control changes in the dynamic behaviour of structures over the time. In this paper the dynamic identification of two multi‐span simply supported prestressed RC deck bridges in Central Italy is presented. The modal parameters of the structures are identified adopting operational modal analyses based on in‐situ ambient vibration measurements. The experimentally identified dynamics is adopted to assess the bridges' seismic retrofitting works and to investigate their dynamic behaviour in the retrofitted state.
Long‐term validation of virtual sensing of a railway bridge with ballasted superstructure
Authors: Lorenzen Steven Robert , Berthold Hagen , Fritzsche Max Johannes Alois , Rupp Maximilian Michael , Riedel Henrik , Apostolidi Eftychia , Schneider Jens 
Published: September 2023

AbstractRailway bridges have a long lifespan, which is challenged by the constant development of vehicles leading to increased loads that they were not originally designed for. To ensure the longest possible use of existing structures, a sensor‐based structural health monitoring system can make a significant contribution. However, due to economic reasons and the inaccessibility of many points of interest, sensors cannot be installed everywhere. Therefore, in most cases, only a few sensors are available at a few points of interest, and methods that aim to reconstruct structural responses at unmeasured points from these measurements are referred to as virtual sensing. In this paper, we have analyzed 19,075 passages recorded on a steel trough bridge with a ballast superstructure and a span of 16.4 m, together with weather data. Our findings show that the influence of train type and speed has a significantly higher impact on the results than environmental factors. The investigation revealed that the model‐based analysis produced similar results to the data‐driven analysis concerning acceleration signals. However, when analyzing strain signals, the two approaches yielded distinctly different results.
A proposal for low cost condition assessment method for existing RC bridges
Authors: Stochino Flavio , Mistretta Fausto , Sassu Mauro , Zucca Marco , Puppio Mario Lucio 
Published: September 2023

AbstractAging infrastructures require huge budgets to preserve their functionality and the lack of effective maintenance leads to increasing deterioration and therefore higher repair costs. For these reasons, assessing the condition of infrastructures becomes mandatory, with particular attention to the ones still in service even when their life limit has been exceeded. In particular, this problem is really important in Countries, like Italy, in which there are several operating bridges at the end of their service life. In this framework, many companies responsible for the management of road networks have turned their interest towards Bridge Management Systems (BMS). This paper presents a fast and low‐cost method for condition rating of reinforced concrete bridges. The proposal is based on visual inspection and non‐destructive testing. A specific parameter is designed to take into account the mechanical degradation of materials and the damage location at the structural sub‐component level. Some benchmark case studies have been discussed in order to compare the proposed method with other approaches available in literature.
A framework for management of transportation infrastructure based on key performance indicators
Authors: Tanasić Nikola , Blumenfeld Tim , Hajdin Rade , Schiffmann Frank 
Published: September 2023

AbstractTo facilitate decision‐making on optimal maintenance strategies for ageing traffic networks, a novel quantitative framework is presented. The framework comprises evaluation of the four KPI: reliability, safety for users and third parties, availability, and sustainability. The evolution of KPIs over time is subject to damaging processes and maintenance interventions. To characterize the impact of damaging processes and maintenance interventions, relevant performance indicators (PI) are selected that are used to estimate the key performance indicators (KPI). The native units of each KPI are normalized to a scale from 1‐5. Normalized KPI values are plotted on spider diagram for each time instance, rendering a 3D body with the volume which represents the network's quality over time, for considered maintenance strategies. The framework is aimed for medium to long‐term maintenance planning and can be further upgraded to account for risk & resilience analyses. The framework is implemented in a web‐based prototype to demonstrate its utilization in practice and future management systems.
On the use of domain adaptation techniques for bridge damage detection in a changing environment
Authors: Giglioni Valentina , Poole Jack , Venanzi Ilaria , Ubertini Filippo , Worden Keith 
Published: September 2023

AbstractStructural Health Monitoring of civil infrastructures often suffers from the limited availability of damage labelled data. The work here seeks to overcome this issue by using Transfer Learning approaches, in the form of Domain Adaptation, for leveraging information from a source structure with determined health‐state labels to make inferences on an unlabeled monitored structure. The idea is to exploit source data to train a Machine Learning algorithm and achieve improved early‐stage damage detection capabilities across a population of bridges. To account for differences in the underlying distributions of each structure, Transfer Learning is seen as a strategy enabling population‐level bridge SHM. In this paper, the natural frequencies obtained from multiple vibration measurements are extracted to characterise different domains during pristine and abnormal conditions. Such damage‐sensitive features are aligned via Domain Adaptation and used to train a standard classifier within a shared feature space. The methodology is validated on the heterogeneous population composed of the Z24 and S101 bridges. The results prove the effectiveness to successfully exchange damage labels, thus increasing available information for health‐state inference for SHM applications with sparce datasets.
Barriers and opportunities towards monitoring and asset management of EU transport infrastructure
Authors: Scibilia Elena , Hoff Inge , De Urquia Miguel A. , Vliet Agnieszka Bigaj‐van 
Published: September 2023

AbstractRecent technological developments have clear potential to support paradigm shift from corrective maintenance towards risk‐based/predictive maintenance through data‐informed decision‐making. The most promising developments are already taken up by local communities. Acknowledging that successful development, rollout and implementation of standardisation is only possible with thorough understanding of the full context, the H2020 CSA IM‐SAFE project evaluated the main barriers and opportunities that need to be overcome to enable well‐functioning monitoring and maintenance of transport infrastructure. As the European countries have different political, economic and social situations, the analyses have been performed on the national level, and the outcomes have been aggregated to identify main barriers at EU level. This paper presents the outcomes of the analysis of PEST barriers and SWOT analyses and discusses the connection between the barriers and the limitations in the existing EU monitoring standards and opportunities for the national implementation. Finally, the article highlights the importance to consider different scenarios and their potential environmental constraints in order to ensure that the exploitation opportunities are successful and sustainable in the long‐term.
MT‐InSAR monitoring for tunnel induced settlements in urban area
Authors: Della Ragione Gianluigi , Rocca Alfredo , Perissin Daniele , Bilotta Emilio 
Published: September 2023

AbstractSatellite Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is an accredited technology used in many fields in the last decades, but represents a relatively new technology for civil infrastructures monitoring. It allows to measure displacement along the line of sight (LOS) of the sensor with a millimetric precision. This study was conducted to show the potential of SAR sensors, mounted on satellite platforms, in detecting displacements induced by the excavations of tunnels in urban areas. Advances in remote sensing, such as the development of Multi‐Temporal InSAR algorithms, have overcome the limit of InSAR due to spatial‐temporal decorrelation of the phase measurement, thus improving the precision of the outcomes. Here the COSMO‐SkyMed satellite constellation acquired data over a small area in the city of Naples, affected by the excavation of twin tunnels. Data were processed with the SARPROZ software, while tunnel induced settlement were predicted with empirical methods. To allow comparison, displacements along LOS were projected in the vertical plane. Results indicate a good agreement between the monitored data and the predicted profile of settlement, further confirming the potential of MT‐InSAR in detecting displacements induced by tunneling excavation in urbanized area.