Identification for a Model Frame Structure Using Vibration

Measurements from FBG Displacement Sensors

B. Xu, M. ASCE
Key Laboratory of Building Safety and Energy Efficiency, Ministry of Education,
Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, P.R.China
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston, TX 77204-4006, USA
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binxu@hnu.cn

L.L. Zhang
College of Civil Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, P.R.China
lilijamit@163.com

G. B. Song, M. ASCE
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston, TX 77204-4006, USA
gsong@uh.edu

Abstract

In this study, a neural networks-based structural parameters identification methodology without any
mode shapes and frequency extraction is proposed and validated using vibration-induced displacement
measurement from a Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensor. The theoretical base of the proposed method is
explained based on the discrete solution of structural dynamic response. To facilitate the parametric
identification process, a reference structure is assumed firstly and its dynamic response is determined
by numerical simulation. A displacement-based neural network (DNN) is constructed and trained using
the simulated response to forecast the vibration displacement of the reference structure. With the
support of the trained DNN and associated structures, a parametric evaluation neural network (PENN)
is constructed to describe the mapping between an evaluation index and structural parameters. A
two-story model frame structure on a shaking table is employed as an illustrative structure to validate
the proposed approach using vibration displacement response measurement from a FBG sensor, which
measure the relative displacement response of the middle point of the column of the first floor.
Parametric identification results by the proposed methodology are compared with them from traditional
frequencies extraction and show that the proposed methodology can identify the inter-storey stiffness of
the whole frame structure within acceptable accuracy even only the displacement measurement at one
point of the model structure is known. The proposed algorithm may be an applicable method in practice
for and damage detection and structural model updating.

Introduction

Structural Identification has become an increasingly important research topic for

health monitoring, damage detection, model updating, performance assessment and
safety evaluation of infrastructures. In the last two decades, some vibration-based
structural parameters identification algorithms have been proposed (Doebling et al.,
1998; Wu et al., 2003). However, it is well known that eigenvalues and/or mode
shapes extracted from dynamic measurements from traditional sensors may be too
noise-corrupted to identify low to intermediate level of local damage (Alampalli,
1997). On the other hand, structural lower frequencies extracted from field
measurement are usually insensitive to local damage initiation or development or
parameter variation.

With the advantages of electromagnetic noise immunity and high sensitivity, and

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 multiplexing capability, fiber optical sensing technique has been recognized as a
reliable way for static and dynamic response measurement of engineering structures
(Ansari, 1998; Chang, 2001; Wu et al., 2003; 2006). Moreover, with the ability to
approximate arbitrary continuous function and its parallel computation character,
artificial neural networks (ANN) provide an efficient soft computing strategy for
inverse analysis (Nakamura et al., 1998; Xu et al., 2004; Xu et al., 2005). In the work
by Xu et al. (2003; 2007), vibration-induced strain measurements were employed to
identify beam and truss structures. For lager-scale and complex structures, Wu et al.
(2002) proposed a decentralized identification methodology using dynamic response
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measurements with neural networks and validated with numerical simulation.

In this study, a neural networks-based parametric identification strategy by the direct

use of dynamic displacement response measurement from a Fiber Bragg Grating
(FBG) sensor is proposed and validated using experimental measurement of a model
frame structure on a shaking table. The inter-storey stiffness of the object structure
under base excitation is identified and the accuracy of the proposed methodology is
compared with them determined from frequencies extracted from the acceleration
measurements. Results show that the proposed methodology can identify the
inter-storey stiffness of the frame structure within acceptable accuracy even using
limited measurement.

General Identification Methodology

The motion of a linear structure system with n degrees of freedom (DOFs) under base
excitation can be characterized by the following equation,

M&x& + Cx& + Kx = f (1)

f = − MI&x&g (2)

where the matrices M , C and K ∈ R n×n , are the structure mass, damping, and
stiffness matrices, respectively; &x& , x& and x ∈ R n , are the acceleration, velocity,
and displacement vectors, respectively; I ∈ R n is a unitary vector, &x&g represents the
excitation acceleration.

Equation (1) can be rewritten in state space as the following first-order vector
differential equation,

Z& = AZ + Bf (3)

where the state vector Z and the system matrix A and B are defined as

⎧ x& ⎫ ⎡− M −1C − M −1 K ⎤ , and ⎡ M −1 ⎤

Z = ⎨ ⎬, A = ⎢ ⎥ B=⎢ ⎥. (4-6)
⎩ x⎭ ⎣ I 0 ⎦ ⎣ 0 ⎦

If the time interval t-t0 in equation (3) is denoted by kT with T being time interval, the
discrete time solution of the state equation can be written as,

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 Z k = e AT Z k − 1 + f k − 1 ∫ e A τ B d τ , (k = 1,L, K )
T
(7)
0

where Zk and Zk-1 are the state variables at time instants, kT and (k-1)T, respectively.
From the discrete time state space solution of Equation (1), it is clear that the
displacement response at time step k is fully determined by them at time steps k-2 and
k-1, and the excitation acceleration at time step k-1.
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The full procedure for parametric identification by the direct use of displacement
response from FBG sensors under a certain excitation with two neural networks can
be carried out in three steps as described in Figure 1.

In step 1, a reference structure which has the same degrees of freedom and topology
with the object structure is assumed. Using the displacement response of the reference
structure from numerical integration, a displacement-based neural network (DNN) can
be constructed and trained to forecast the displacement response step by step for the
reference structure as described in the following equation,

x kf = DNN ( x k −2 , x k −1 , &x&g ,k −1 ) , for ( k = 2, K , N ) (8)

Step 1: Construction and Training of DNN Step 2: Construction and Training of PENN
Construction of associated
Construction of reference structure structure m, (m=1,…,M)
Structural parameters
of the m-th associated
Displacement response of the reference Displacement response of the m-th
structure under the same initial structure, (m=1,…,M)
associated structure under the same initial
condition and excitation as the object condition and excitation as the object
structure by numerical integration structure by numerical integration
Evaluation index
RMSPDVm
Generation of training patterns for Trained DNN (m=1,…,M)
DNN Base excitation
Base excitation
Forecasted displacement
Construction and training of DNN response of the m-th
Reference Structure Associated Structure Construction and
associated structure
training of PENN
Trained DNN

Trained PENN

Step 3: Parametric Evaluation for Object Structure

Displacement response of the object

structure under the excitation

Trained DNN Evaluation index Structural parameters of

Trained PENN the object structure
RMSPDV
Forecasted displacement response
of the object structure

Base excitation

Object Structure

Figure 1. Displacement-based parametric identification strategy with neural networks.

In step 2, M associated structures with different structural parameters from the

reference structure are considered. The dynamic displacement responses of the m-th
associated structure under the same initial conditions and excitations can be
determined by numerical integration. If the trained DNN is used to forecast the
displacement response of the m-th associated structure, the dynamic displacement
response determined with numerical simulation will not correspond any more to the
output of the DNN. Corresponding to the m-th associated structure, an evaluation
index EIm called the root mean square of the prediction difference vector (RMSPDV),

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 which should be a function of structural matrices as described in Equation (9), is
defined.

EI m = f ( M m , K m , C m ) (9)

Because the mass matrix is usually considered as a known constant, the evaluation
index is then completely determined by stiffness and damping coefficients. A
parametric evaluation neural network (PENN) is constructed and trained to describe
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the mapping between the evaluation index and structural parameters as described in
the following equation,

( K m , C m ) = PENN( EI m ) . (10)

In step 3, after finishing the training of the PENN, the object structural parameters can
be forecast by inputting RMSPDV to the PENN with the help of the DNN constructed
and trained in step 1.

Experimental Validation

Description of the shaking table test

A shaking table test for a two-storey steel frame structure which is selected as the
object structure was conducted in the Smart Materials and Smart Structures
Laboratory at the University of Houston. The inter-storey height of the frame structure
as shown in Figure 2 is 490mm. The structure can be modeled as a 2 DOFs
mass-spring-dashpot system as shown in Figure 3. The mass of the first and the
second floor are 1.16 kg, 1.38 kg, respectively. The base acceleration measurement is
acquired by accelerometer which is mounted on the model with the sampling rate of
1,000Hz. One end of a FBG displacement sensor with sampling rate of 250Hz is
attached to the midpoint of the columns of the first storey and other end is fixed to
stiff supporter mounted on the shaking table. Therefore, the FBG sensor can monitor
the relative displacement response of the middle point of the column of the first story.
For comparison, a laser displacement sensor is also employed to measure the
displacement at the same point.

FBG Sensor
m2

k2 ,c2
FBG Disp.
Sensor
m1

k1, c1

Shaking
table
Figure 2. Shaking table test. Figure 3. Computational
model.

Architecture and training of DNN

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 Consider a reference structure, whose inter-storey stiffness parameters for the first and
second floor are assumed to be 300N/m and 300N/m, respectively. The damping of
the structure is assumed to be Rayleigh damping. For the model frame structure
studied in this paper, assume the modal damping ratio of each mode is a constant of
4%. The frame structure is excited by sine wave with a frequency of 4.24Hz and the
displacement response of the reference structure under the measured base excitation is
determined by Newmark- β integration method. The integration time step is 0.004
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second.

As described above, the structural displacement response at time step k can be

completely determined by the displacement response at time step k-2 and k-1, and the
base excitation acceleration at time step k-1. So, a typical three-layer DNN is
constructed and trained for displacement forecasting of the reference structure as
shown in Figure 4. The number of neurons in the input and output layers of the DNN
is set to be 3 and 1, respectively. While for the hidden layer, it is 10 determined by
trial-and-error. The training data sets are 749 patterns of input and output data taken
from 3 seconds of displacement response from time 7.0s to 10.0s. The whole off-line
training process takes 30,000 epochs. After training, the DNN can be used to forecast
the displacement response of the reference structure.

Displacement
response at
time step displacement
k-2,k-1 response at
time step k
Excitation
acceleration at
time step k-1

Figure 4. Architecture of the DNN.

RMS error (mm) Relative RMS error (%)

1.3433×10-5 2.2911×10-3

Table 1. Prediction error of DNN.

6
Simulated Forecasted

4
Displacement(mm)

-2

-4

-6
7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10
Time(s)

Figure 5. Comparisons between the displacement responses determined by Newmark- β method

and those forecast by the trained DNN.

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 Figure 5 gives the comparison between the displacement responses determined by the
Newmark- β method and those predicted by the trained DNN. The root mean square
(RMS) of the difference between the two curves and the relative RMS error are given
in Table 1. The relative RMS error means the ratio of the RMS value between the
difference and the displacement response determined by integration. It can be seen
that the maximum relative RMS error can reach a very small value. It indicates that
the trained DNN is able to forecast the displacement response with high accuracy.
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Architecture and training of PENN

Because it is direct to identify the inter-storey stiffness of the model frame structure
instead of the stiffness matrix, Equation (10) can be rewritten in the following form,

(k1 , L , k n , L , k N )m = PENN (EI m ) (11)

Where kn is the inter-storey stiffness of the n-th storey of associated structure m.

To generate training patterns, a number of associated structures with different

structural properties are considered. Let k1 and k2 take the values of 225N/m, 240N/m,
255N/m, 270N/m, 285N/m, 300N/m, 315N/m, 330N/m, 345N/m, 360N/m, 375N/m,
respectively. Totally 121 associated structures are constructed. If the trained DNN for
the reference structure is used to forecast the displacement response from time 7.0s to
10.0s of those 121 assumed structures, 121 RMSPDV can be obtained. Then, 101 data
patterns are randomly selected from them to train the PENN.

Inter-storey
RMSPDV stiffness of
each floor

Figure 6. Architecture of the PENN.

The proposed PENN is organized as shown in Figure 6. It is constructed of four layers.

The neuron in the input layer means the RMSPDV, and the two neurons in the output
layer represent the stiffness of the structure. The numbers in the two hidden layers are
both select to be 10 that determined by trial-and-error. The entire off-line training
process for the PENN takes 50,000 epochs.

Relative RMS error (%)

1st inter-storey stiffness 2.197
2nd inter-storey stiffness 3.730

Table 3. Relative error of the trained PENN.

After training, it can be seen from Table 3 that the maximum relative RMS error
corresponding to each inter-story stiffness is less than 5%. The trained PENN can be

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 able to identify the parameters of the object structure directly from displacement time
series efficiently.

Identification for the object structure

The displacement measurement from the FBG sensor of the object structure under
base excitation is band-pass filtered with 1.0-10.0Hz. Using 3 seconds of the
displacement measurement from time 7.00s to 10.00s as input to the trained DNN, the
corresponding RMSPDV is calculated. Then, inputting the RMSPDV to the trained
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PENN, stiffness parameters of the object structure are identified. Table 4 shows the
identified inter-storey stiffness of the model frame structure. The corresponding
natural frequencies can be determined to be 1.427Hz and 4.240 Hz, respectively, by
solving the eigenvalue problem.

1st floor 253.7 (N/m)

2nd floor 360.1 (N/m)

Table 4. Inter-storey stiffness identification results of the object structure identified by PENN

Assessment of results

The model structure was also excited by swept excitation. From frequency spectrum
of acceleration measurement of the object structure shown in Figure 7, the two natural
frequencies are 1.427Hz and 4.231Hz. It is clear that the difference of the frequencies
between the identification results and that from the Fourier spectrum through test is
very small.

6 3
X: 4.231 Simulated Measured
Y: 5.919

5 2
Fourier Amplitude(m/s2 )

4
Displacement(mm)

3 0
X: 1.427
Y: 1.979
2
-1

1
-2

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 -3
Frequency(Hz) 0 2 4 6 8 10
Time(s)

Figure7. Frequency spectrum of the object Figure 8. Comparisons between the displacement
structure. responses determined by integration and
measurement.

With the help of the known mass and natural frequencies from frequency spectrum of
the object structure, the inter-storey stiffness of the first storey and second storey are
254.0N/m and 358.1N/m. Then, compared with the identification results shown in
Table 4, the relative error between the stiffness identification results by the proposed
method and eigenvalues based method are 0.12% and 0.57%, respectively.

Comparisons between the displacement responses reconstructed with the Newmark- β

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 method using the identified stiffness parameters and those measured and filtered from
the test is shown in Figure 8. The two curves match well, which demonstrates that
identification can be carried out with enough accuracy.

Conclusions

In this paper, a direct parametric identification methodology using displacement

measurement from FBG sensors with neural networks is proposed. The rationality and
the implementation of the methodology are explained and the theory basis for the
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construction of DNN and PENN are described. The performance of the proposed
strategy is evaluated using displacement measurement from a FBG sensor for a model
frame structure on a shaking table. Structural inter-storey stiffness identification
results are compared with that from eigenvalues extraction. Results show that the
proposed methodology can identify the inter-storey stiffness of the frame structure
within an acceptable accuracy when displacement response time series from only one
FBG sensor are employed. The strategy does not require the extraction of structural
dynamic characteristics such as frequencies and mode shapes from measurement and
can be an applicable method in practice for near real-time structure model updating
and damage detection.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided through the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant No. 50608031 and by Program for Changjiang Scholars and
Innovative Research Team in University (IRT0619) in conducting this research. Partial support from
the Hunan Provincial National Natural Science Foundation under grant No. 06JJ4067 and the national
“985 project” is also greatly appreciated.

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