Monitoring physical and dynamic properties of reinforced concrete structures during seismic excitations

This study investigates the feasibility of tracking the structural/dynamic properties of reinforced concrete (RC) structures while subjected to damaging earthquake loads. The methodology proposed implements an unscented Kalman filter scheme that updates the properties of a simplified non-parametric model of the structure. Calibration and validation of the methodology is accomplished using experimental and simulated data from a full-scale RC column test performed at the NEES Large High Performance Outdoor Shake Table. The results obtained show that peak displacement, stiffness, frequency, shear force and damping ratio are well monitored by the proposed approach at all performance levels. However, residual displacements are not captured due to the non-hysteretic nature of the model. Despite its simplicity, the proposed approach seems suitable for identification and damage assessment of highly nonlinear structures exhibiting nonstationary responses, as is the case of RC structures subjected to severe earthquake loads. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.