Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing

ISSN: 1079-8587 (Print) 2326-005X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tasj20

PCA Based Bridge Health Model Identification

Zhangli Lan , Lina Xiang & Jianqiu Cao

To cite this article: Zhangli Lan , Lina Xiang & Jianqiu Cao (2010) PCA Based Bridge Health
Model Identification, Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing, 16:5, 729-735, DOI:
10.1080/10798587.2010.10643115

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10798587.2010.10643115

Published online: 01 Mar 2013.

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 Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing, Vol. 16, No. 5, pp. 729-735, 2010
Copyright 2010, TSI Press
Printed in the USA. All rights reserved

PCA BASED BRIDGE HEALTH MODEL IDENTIFICATION

ZHANGLI LAN, LINA XIANG AND JIANQIU CAO

Chongqing Jiaotong University
Chongqing 400074
China
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ABSTRACTStructure safety assessment is one of the fundamental objectives for bridge

health monitoring. In order to identify whether a bridge is safe, a bridge health model
identification method based on Principle Component Analysis (PCA) is presented in this
paper. A matrix made up of various measurement data of a bridge is constituted, the
method of determine the similarity of bridges using the eigenvalue distance between data
matrixes of bridges is addressed, and some issues related to the collection of the
measurement data and the establishments of data model are also discussed.

Keywords: Bridge; Health Monitoring; PCA; health model

1. INTRODUCTION
Bridges are key elements in the transportation system, but aging bridges which are normally
designed to have long life span are facing a severe crisis. It is an important issue how to monitor
these widely used bridges in order to prevent potential catastrophic events. Continuous health
monitoring or regular condition assessment of important bridges is necessary so that early
identification and localization of any potential damage can be made.
Health status assessment is to evaluate the safety of a bridge by analyzing the monitoring data.
Methods currently in use are:
Appearance-based survey: This method evaluates a bridge according the appearance survey. It
is mainly used by experienced engineers and experts. A series detailed inspections need to be done
before a result is made. This method can only give a qualitative assessment of the structure, the
exact degree of injury usually can not be given, and there are many human factors in this method.
Expertise experience assessment: According to problem-solving approach, this method can be
divided into expert systems and expert opinion survey. The former is to use computer software
simulating an experienced expert in the decision-making mechanism of the bridge to conduct a
comprehensive assessment of the damage. Many theories about decision-making mechanism have
been proposed. Bridge health assessment methods used in the theory are: reliability theory [1], AHP
(analytic hierarchy process) [2], fuzzy theory [3], neural networks [4-8], wavelet analysis [9-12], expert
system [13,14]. Time series-based damage detection[15] and so on. The latter is to collect, analyze and
summarize experts opinions, and then evaluate safety performance of a bridge.
As the bridge structures are extremely complicate, their performances are impacted by their
environment and a variety of other factors, so the evaluation of structural safety is very complex and
difficult. Despite the current methods of evaluation bridge safety are many, but for various reasons,
these evaluation methods have their own inherent flaws, and have not yet achieved satisfactory
results in the actual application.

729
 730 Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing

With the continuous study of bridge health monitoring and application of a variety of
measurement systems, model experiments and the actual measurement data of bridge become richer
and richer. These data include data of normal bridges and non-health bridges. So it becomes a
valuable research area that how to use these existing data to evaluate the health status of a bridge
effectively.
In this paper, principal component analysis method (PCA) is proposed to judge a bridge
whether similar to a non-health one. In this method, all measured data of a bridge constitutes a
matrix, using the eigenvalue distance between two bridges data matrix to determine the similarity of
these two bridges. Thus, in theory, if there are measurement data matrices of healthy bridge and
non-healthy bridge, it can be the basis to determine the health status of other bridges.

2. PCA ALGORITHM
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PAC is an algorithm used to image recognition originally. When an image is recognized by

PCA, the image should be set as a random vector firstly, so KL transform can be used to get an
orthogonal basis, and the corresponding basis with larger eigenvalue has the shape similar to a
certain image. PCA algorithm uses the linear combination of the basis to descript images, express
images and close to the image to be recognized, so, it can be used in image recognition. The
recognition processing is to mapping the image to be recognized into a subspace, and then compare
it to the subspace of images in a database. It can reveal the inherent rules and similarity between the
matrix to be recognized and the sample matrix [16-18].
When PCA is used to recognize an image, its main procedure is to process matrixes composed
by image data, and the image should be seen as a vector in the processing. So, Reference to the
procedure of image processing, the measurement data of bridge also can be seen as a vector, and
then a measurement data matrix of bridge can be established according to a certain rules. Then use
the eigenvalue distance between two data matrix of the bridge to be recognized and the known
bridge to determine their similarity. So the safety situation of the bridge to be recognized could be
known by the similarity and the situation of the known bridge.

3. DESCRIPTION OF RECOGNITION PROCESSING OF BRIDGE STATUS

BASED ON PCA

3.1 Calculating the Eigenbridge

Suppose the measurement data of a bridge can be arranged to a two-dimensional N N matrix
of real numbers with some rules, so the N dimension vector can indicates the measurement data
2

of a bridge. Then the training set of the bridge data is {i i = 1, " , M } , there, M is the number of
the matrixes in the training set. So, the average value of the M vectors is:
1 M
=
M
i
i =1 (1)
The difference vector of i every measurement data vector i and average measurement
vector is:
i =i ;i =1,", M
(2)
The covariance matrix of the training data can be expressed as:

C = AA (3)
 PCA Based Bridge Health Model Identification 731

There, A=[1,",M ] .
Because C is a N2N2 real symmetric matrix, there will always be N2 Orthogonal eigenvectors.
The eigenbridge is composed of orthogonal eigenvectors of the covariance matrix. When the
dimension of the bridge data matrix is N N , the scale of the covariance matrix is N 2 N 2 , so, it is
difficult to calculate the eigenvalue and eigenvector of the matrix. Instead, M M ( M < N ) smaller
matrixes could be calculated.
To get eigenvectors of matrix C, the first step is to calculate the eigenvector v l (l = 1, " , M ) of
the matrix L with M M dimensions.
Where,
L = AT A (4)
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The eigenvector ul (l = 1, " , M ) of matrix C is composed of the linear combination of

difference vector i (i = 1, " , M ) and vl (l = 1, " , M ) .
So,
U = [u1,", uM ] = [ 1,"M ][ v1,", vM ] = AV
(5)
where, V = [ v1 , " , v M ]
In fact, m ( m < M ) data of eigenbridge are enough to recognize the character of a bridge, so,
only m eigenvectors with largest eigenvalue in L should be chosen to calculate eigenbridge, and m is
determined by a threshold :

r M

J = min r / i j >
r
i =1 j =1 (6)

3.2 Bridge Status Recognition Based on Eigenbridge

The recognition process of bridge status based on eigenbridge consists of two phases: training
phase and identification phase.
Training phase
Every vector k of known bridge is mapped to the subspace of eigenbridge, and then a m
dimensional vector k is gotten:

k = UT ( k ) ; k =1,", Nc
(7)
There, NC is the number of all bridge stored in database.
The distance threshold C is defined as:

c =
1
m ax
2 j ,k
{ j k } ; j , k = 1, " , N c
(8)
Identification phase
The vector of the bridge to be identified is mapped to the subspace of eigenbridge Firstly, so
a vector is gotten:
= U T ( ) (9)
 732 Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing

Secondly, the distance between and every k of known bridge can be defined as:
2
k 2 = k ; k = 1, " , N c
(10)
Then, according to the distance between bridge to be identified and all known bridges, a result
can be obtained:
k , k c . Then the bridge to be identified is not similar as any known bridges;
k , satisfies k < c . Then the bridge to be identified is similar to the known bridge k. if there
are more then one k satisfied k < c , then the bridge with smallest k is the most similar one.
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4. SELECTING OF TYPICAL BRIDGES AND ESTABLISHMENT OF DATA

MATRIX
If there are complete data of eigenbridge of typical bridges, it is an easy and clear processing to
recognize a bridge to be identified. So, it needs to be studied thoroughly that how to choose typical
bridges, how to choose the measurement data of a bridge, and how to create a N N real matrix to
build an eigenbridge database.

4.1 Type Selecting of Typical Bridges

As the type of bridge is many, and the structural difference between different bridges is very
large, the measurement data of a type of bridge can not be compared and referenced to another type
of bridge. For example, the rigidity of continuous rigid frame bridge is very large, and its deflection
is often small, so the proportion of the maximum deflection and the length of the bridge is very
small, too. On the other hand, the suspension bridge is relatively soft, its deflection values are much
larger than other type of bridges, and its deflection can not apply the same standards with others
obviously. So, bridges should be classified into several types firstly.
The most basic type of the bridge should be divided into four types at least:
Girder bridge
The main load-bearing component of girder bridge is its main beam. According to the character
of its main beam, girder bridge can be divided into real-bellied beam and truss beam.
Arch bridge
Arch bridge is that bridge which main load-bearing component is its arch with axial pressure.
According to the form of its main arch, arch bridge can be divided into panels arch, rib arch,
hyperbolic arch, box arch, truss arch and so on.
Cable-stayed bridge
Cable-stayed bridge composed of main beam, tension cable cord inclined to the main beam,
tower supporting the cable and other components. Cables of cable-stayed bridge are stretched to be
a linear shape, and the whole bridge structure is a geometric invariable body. The stiffness of
cable-stayed bridge is bigger than the suspension bridge, and its performance of main beam is
similar to the elastic supported continuous beam.
Suspension bridge
Suspension bridge, which main load-bearing component is stretched ropes or cables, is
composed of cable, tower, anchorages, suspender, bridge deck system and some other components.
The main cable, which bears tension, is made of high tensile strength steel (steel wire, steel strand,
steel cable, etc.).
In accordance with the stiffness of the bridge deck system, suspension bridge can be divided
into flexible suspension bridge and rigid suspension bridge. Flexible suspension bridge deck system
is generally not based on stiffening beams, and therefore its stiffness is low. Under vehicle loading,
 PCA Based Bridge Health Model Identification 733

the bridge deck will be in S-shaped deformation with the changing of cables. Rigid suspension
bridge is strengthened by stiffening girder, so it has greater stiffness.
There are some new types of composite bridges. If the difference between two kinds of bridges
is big, a new database of the typical bridge would be established.

4.2 Individual Selecting of Typical Bridge

Using the measured data of a bridge to determine the health status of it, the most conclusion
need to be done is that the bridge is healthy or unhealthy, is safe to operate or unsafe. Based on PCA
method, we can determine whether the bridge similar to a known one. If the bridge is similar to a
reference bridge and the latter is in safe, we can say that the bridge is also healthy.
Therefore, when selecting typical individual bridge, those bridges, which are healthy, basically
healthy, could operate but requires maintenance, and can not operate, should be chosen to establish
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typical bridge database.

With the selecting of every typical bridge, we can establish eigenvalue matrix for every type
bridge, then map all matrix to the subspace of eigenbridge by using PCA method. So an m
dimensional vector can be gotten and as the basis of recognition.

4.3 Establishment of the Bridge Data Matrix

It is a problem to decide which data need to be stored to establish the eigenvalue matrix of
bridges. As the matrix is N N dimensional, the easiest method is that chooses N kinds of
measurement data and selects N points for each measurement data.
The traditional measurement data of bridges normally include: Temperature, strain, deflection,
acceleration, vibration frequency, displacement and cable tension.
For each measurement, the measurement data can be obtained at some typical place of the
bridge. For example, the measurement place of deflection can be 1/2 span, 1/4 span, 1/8 span, 1/16
span and so on. Then the ratio of deflection and bridge length can be gotten, so the each value of
ratio can be an element of the data matrix.
As the difference of different measurement data is big, and some values are much larger than
the others, then it is necessary to transform some values to another appropriate form.
With the complete of measurement and transformation of all data, the data matrix of bridge can
be established. Then, we can use the PCA method to identify the similar of any bridge. If a bridge is
similar to another bridge, and the latter is safe, we can draw a conclusion that the former is safe. On
the contrary, if the latter is unsafe, the former is not safe, too.

5. CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents the method of use of PCA to judge the health of a bridge, and established
the identification processing that use PCA to determine the similarity of two bridges. The
classification of typical bridges, selection of typical individual bridge and building of measurement
data matrix are also discussed in this paper. Although the research of this method is limited due to
research time, the study is not enough, and the method is not used in the actual work of health
monitoring, the put forward of theory enriched the theory of bridge damage estimate. The authors
think that it is a method worthwhile to discuss and research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (50608072 and 50878219),
Natural Science Foundation Project of CQ CSTC (2008AC6099, 2008BA6038, and
CSTS2009BA6070), and The Ministry of Education for New Century Excellent Talent Support
Program, Youth Teachers Foundation of Chongqing Jiaotong University.
 734 Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing

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 PCA Based Bridge Health Model Identification 735

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Z. Lan, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Chongqing Jiaotong University. Obtained a

doctorate at the Chongqing University in 2008. His main research interests
include structural health monitoring, digital image processing and pattern
recognition
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L. Xiang, obtained a bachelor degree in 2009 from Chongqing Jiaotong

University. Now studying at Chongqing Jiaotong University for master degree.
Her main research direction is machine vision, digital image processing and
pattern recognition.

J. Cao received the M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering at Southwest Jiaotong

University, Chendu, China in 2007. Mr. Caos research interests include digital
image processing, computer control technology etc.