A Crack Identification Method for Bridge Type Structures under Vehicular Load Using Wavelet Transform and Particle Swarm Optimization

In this work a crack identification method is proposed for bridge type structures carrying moving vehicle. The bridge is modeled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam, and open cracks exist on several points of the beam. Half-car model is adopted for the vehicle. Coupled equations of the beam-vehicle system are solved using Newmark-Beta method, and the dynamic responses of the beam are obtained. Using these and the reference displacements, an objective function is derived. Crack locations and depths are determined by solving the optimization problem. To this end, a robust evolutionary algorithm, that is, the particle swarm optimization (PSO), is employed. To enhance the performance of the method, the measured displacements are denoised using multiresolution property of the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). It is observed that by the proposed method it is possible to determine small cracks with depth ratio 0.1 in spite of 5% noise interference.