ABSTRACT
Being an indispensable part of transportation systems, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of bridges has been increasingly studied. Various SHM techniques not only enhance reliability and safety but also reduce maintenance costs. Various bridge deteriorations change the structural properties, such as flexibility and stiffness. Therefore, damage assessment can be achieved by monitoring the structural matrices of bridges and tracking the deviations from the healthy-state or reference data. This paper focuses on damage detection of a prestressed concrete beam from a demolished bridge based on the flexibility matrix. The dynamic and static flexibility matrices are calculated numerically and experimentally when the beam is undamaged. The simulated and measured static flexibility matrices differ by only about 5 %. Additionally, the numerical dynamic flexibility matrix is strongly correlated with static results. The findings of this study can be employed as a basis for future damage detection applications when artificial damage is introduced.
