QUT Digital Repository:

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Wang, Liang and Chan, Tommy H.T. (2009) Review of vibration-based damage detection and
condition assessment of bridge structures using structural health monitoring. In: The Second
Infrastructure Theme Postgraduate Conference : Rethinking Sustainable Development: Planning,
Engineering, Design and Managing Urban Infrastructure, 26 March 2009, Queensland University

Copyright 2009 Queensland University of Technology

Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of

Bridge Structures using Structural Health Monitoring
Liang WANG1, T.H.T. CHAN2

Abstract
As a part of vital infrastructure and transportation networks, bridge structures must function safely at all
times. However, due to heavier and faster moving vehicular loads and function adjustment, such as
Busway accommodation, many bridges are now operating at an overload beyond their design capacity.
Additionally, the huge renovation and replacement costs always make the infrastructure owners
difficult to undertake. Structural health monitoring (SHM) is set to assess condition and foresee
probable failures of designated bridge(s), so as to monitor the structural health of the bridges. The
SHM systems proposed recently are incorporated with Vibration-Based Damage Detection (VBDD)
techniques, Statistical Methods and Signal processing techniques and have been regarded as efficient
and economical ways to solve the problem. The recent development in damage detection and
condition assessment techniques based on VBDD and statistical methods are reviewed. The VBDD
methods based on changes in natural frequencies, curvature/strain modes, modal strain energy (MSE)
dynamic flexibility, artificial neural networks (ANN) before and after damage and other signal
processing methods like Wavelet techniques and empirical mode decomposition (EMD) / Hilbert
spectrum methods are discussed here.

Keywords: structural health monitoring (SHM); vibration-based damage detection (VBDD); dynamic
analysis; condition assessment, bridge structures

Introduction
Owing to the global roaring economy and fast urban sprawling over last decades,
bridge structures are regarded as very important portions of transportation networks.
They are taking more obligations of life care than ever before. In other words any
damages or even collapse of bridges resulting from the poor performance might
disrupt the transportation system and directly result in tragedies of life and property
loss. (Rantucci & Seismology, 1994; Sohn, 2003)
Many bridges in Australia built in several decades ago are now subjected to heavier
and faster moving loads than when it was designed and still suffering deterioration
with age. Some bridges being refunctioned in a transportation manner might conduct
load pattern changes, e.g. Victoria Bridge in Brisbane, Queensland has been
redesigned as accommodation of bus lanes on one single side (Fig.1) (Todd &
1

PhD Candidate, School of Urban Development, Queensland University of Technology

Associate Professor, School of Urban Development, Queensland University of Technology

Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

Rodney, 2005) and from general knowledge this will lead to asymmetrical load to the
bridge structure. Therefore, these factors will probably result in localised distress and,
if not paid attention to, bridge failure with adverse consequences disruption to
normal life and costly renovation. The retrofit and reconstruction of bridges is always
costly to the infrastructure owners. On the other hand, every civil structure, no matter
what materials used, has limited life and cannot be well-determined under the
uncurtain variation of environment or bridge functions. Health Monitoring is
considerably a cost-efficient way to maintain the infrastructures and diagnose
damage at early stage. Consequently it is imperative to guarantee safety and
efficiency of bridge structures throughout their life spans or beyond by monitoring the
health condition and accordingly adopt appropriate maintenance.
To solve the problem, a comprehensive research program is currently underway to
develop an innovative structural health monitoring (SHM) system to monitor the
structural health of the bridge(s) and attend to any distress under all operating
conditions. Besides, the new SHM technique employing innovative sensors, damage
detection models, health status assessment and dynamic computer simulation
techniques is based on the principle that the structural health of a bridge can be
assessed through observing the changes of its vibration properties. This will be the
most cost effective means of preventing bridge failure and ensuring their safe and
efficient performance.

Figure 1 Asymmetrical Vehicle Loads on Victoria Bridge Busway Accommodation

(Courtesy of Suart Hill)

Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

Traditional Damage Detection

The traditional damage detection strategies consist of visual inspection and localised
non-destructive evaluation such as radio X-ray, radiographic, eddy current and
ultrasonic techniques. All these methods, based on the foreseen damage locations
and requiring that the vicinity of the damage is known a priori and the portion of the
structure being inspected is readily accessible (S. W. Doebling et al., 1998), can
hardly detect the in-depth damages or other inaccessible components. Besides, the
previous approaches are only validated through a simple beam or plate type
structures and rarely real structures which are more complicated. On the other hand,
the damages are normally modelled by structural parameter reduction (like Youngs
modulus) other than establishing the damage (crack) scheme. To extend SHM to
larger and more complex structures such as truss-girder bridges, the global damage
detection methods which examine changes in the global characteristics of structures
are needed (S. W. Doebling et al., 1998).
Structural Health Monitoring Techniques
The basic thought as to what SHM should attempt to achieve goes with Balageas et
al. (2006)s definition: to give, at every moment during the life of the structure, a
diagnosis of the state of the constituent materials, of the different parts, and of the
full assembly of these parts constituting the structure as a whole.
The core of global damage detection methods assumes that the structural modal
parameters are functions of the physical parameters, such as mass, stiffness and
damping matrices, which means changes in these physical parameters such as
global stiffness resulting from invisible cracks, consequently cause changes in modal
parameters. Thus, tracing these variations is much helpful to inspect the
occurrence, location and severity of structural damages. Although had a slow start,
SHM of bridges has been under way for decades and the developing computation
performance of computers has made the overall data collecting process quicker and
easier (Olund & DeWolf, 2007). Worden et al., (2007) proposed that researchers
have mutually agreed upon five general realisations through the years with respect to
SHM and the process leading up to it: (1) Damage assessment needs to be made by
comparison of two structural health states; (2) A trade-off exists between sensor
precision (sensitivity) and its disturbance of a changing environment and general
noise. (3) The size or amount of damage detected is inversely proportional to the
frequency being measured. The other two require more explanation and can be found
in the noted reference (Worden et al., 2007).
According to the amount of information provided regarding the damage state, the
damage identification can be classified into four levels (Rytter, 1993) to identify: Level
1 - Damage Existence; Level 2 Level 1+Damage Location; Level 3 Level
2+Damage Severity and Level 4 Level 3+Structural Health Condition/Remaining
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Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

Life Prediction. However, the existing investigation regarding the long-term SHM
approaches are limited and most falling into the level 1 to level 3 (Park et al., 1997; N.
Stubbs et al., 2000; Xia, Brownjohn, 2003; Yao & Natke, 1994). Some of them, Maeck,
De Roeck, (1999) applied a direct stiffness approach to damage detection,
localization, and quantification for the Z24 prestressed concrete bridge in Switzerland
and noted that curvatures were rather small for the side spans and cause numerical
difficulties in calculating bending stiffness in these spans. Peeters & De Roeck, (2000)
compared a classical sensitivity-based updating technique with a direct stiffness
calculation approach using data from a prestressed, 60m long concrete bridge with
three-span. Macdonald & Daniell, (2005) monitored a cable-stayed bridge during its
construction period and the modal parameters of many modes were identified from
ambient vibration measurements. VanZwol et al., (2008) investigated the long-term
structural health monitoring of steel-free deck bridges and made the
recommendations on bridge health maintenance. Yang et al., (2008) investigated an
existing PC box girder bridge with distributed HCFRP sensors in a destructive test. A.
E. Aktan et al., (1996); A. E. Aktan et al., (2001) had mentioned monitoring and
managing the health of infrastructure systems which could be regarded as part of
level 4 in a, however, management or integrity manner other than information
collected through level 1 to level 3.
Procedure for damage detection and condition assessment
A typical procedure for damage detection of civil structures based on vibration
measurement is depicted as below:

Figure 2 Typical Procedures for Damage Detection

First, a structure model is set up in the FE environment according to the as-built

drawings. Then, the baseline FE model can be established where we can get the
required dynamic parameters at the same time. Then, required modal parameters
can be calculated from the analytical model. The experimental detection will be
followed after this step to update the numeric model by comparing the extracted
modal properties with experimental results. However, the accomplishment of this step
needs the integration of experimental technologies and analytical arts which has been
4

Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

widely addressed in literature (A. E. Aktan et al., 1997). Next, from the updated FE
model the damage detection results and the safe condition of the structure will be
summarised. Finally, the reliability or the remaining load-carrying capacity will be
analysed to help authorities to choose maintenance strategies. However, for some
structures which might hardly support the baseline data, we should specifically
consider the damage detection methods that dont require a comparison of the intact
and damaged state of the bridge (Cruz & Salgado, 2008). For instance, try the
methods using curvature, wavelet techniques.
Damage Detection Methods

Methods using Natural Frequencies

There are two types of frequency analysis, the forward identification and the inverse
identification that can be used for damage identification (Arvid, 2004). Both methods
use the hypothesis that natural frequencies of a structure shifts when the physical
properties change. However, Doebling et al., (1996) pointed out that the frequency
shifts had significant practical limits for civil structures due to its insensitivity to
damage unless when there was a severe damage or accurate measurement applied.
Mares et al., (1999) proposed a damage identification procedure based on rigid body
constraints. They simulated a crack in a two-dimensional finite element model of a
cantilevered beam and found that when the external load was applied at the
damaged element, there was no difference in the frequency response functions (FRF)
between the damaged and undamaged state of the cantilever beam, but if the load
was applied to the other undamaged elements, there was a change in the FRF.
Crema & Mastroddi, (1998) correlated measured FRF with mass, stiffness, and
viscous and hysteretic damping matrices. They claimed that it was possible to identify
structural properties directly from the measured FRF data and to detect possible local
stiffness or mass variations. The structural parameters were estimated by
constructing inverse problems at different frequencies and input-output pairs. The
authors performed numerical simulations on truss and beam structures such as
airplane wings to validate the approach. As always, they found that noise could
corrupt the resolution. Agneni, (2000) used the measured FRF for model updating
and damage detection. The mass and stiffness matrices were estimated from the
FRF and they investigated the truncation effect on FRF when the time signal was
truncated at the end of the time and transferred into the frequency domain via Fast
Fourier Transform (FFT). They concluded that the truncation could cause a significant
change in FRFs even when no damage there and concealed the effects caused by
damage. Besides, the truncation effects depended not only on the time window size
used in the FFT calculation but also the decaying rate of various modes. Therefore,
consideration must be given to these facts when using FRFs in damage detection
applications.

Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

Methods using Mode Shapes

West, (1984) and Wolff & Richardson, (1989) suggested the use of the modal
assurance criterion (MAC) to detect the existence and the location of structural faults.
The MAC was defined as

MAC (i, j ) =

{ A} { B }
T
i

({ } { } ) ({ } { } )
A

T
i

T
i

{ }

Where A is the modal vector of the intact structures ith mode whilst { B } is the jth
i

modal vector of the structure after damage. MAC is a scale quantity ranging from 0 to
1.0, representing that the degree of correlation between two sets of modal vectors is
uncorrelated at all or perfectly correlated respectively. The method is based on the
assumption that changes in modal vectors at the degrees of freedom near the
damage are relatively larger than others located far from the damage. Fox & C. H. J.,
(1992) showed that MAC was insensitive to mode shape changes due to damage,
however a MAC based on measurement point close to node points for a particular
mode was sensitive to mode shape changes due to damage.
As the MAC only uses one pair of modes for damage localisation, the problem of how
to choose appropriate modes for MAC calculation induces the similar COMAC
methods for damage localisation, which stands for Coordinate Modal Assurance
Criterion (Lieven & Ewins, 1988) and is defined as:
2

m i i
ArBr

2
COMAC (i ) = m r =1
m

i
i
i
i
Ar Ar BrBr
r =1
r =1

i
i
Where Ar
and Br
are modal component of the rth mode shape at location i for the
two paired mode shapes respectively and m is the number of the measured modes.
The location where a COMAC value is close to zero is the possible damage location.
Besides, Ko et al., (1994) presented a method using a combination of MAC, COMAC
and sensitivity to detect damage in steel-framed structures. Salawu & Williams, (1995)
conducted modal tests of a full-scale bridge before and after rehabilitation and
concluded that the natural frequencies of the bridge did not change much as a result
of structural repairs whilst both MAC and COMAC performed good to indicate the
location of the repairs.

Methods using Curvature/Strain Modes

An alternative to using mode shapes to obtain the spatial location of damage is to

utilize the mode shape derivatives, such as curvatures. There is a direct relationship
between curvature and bending strain. Pandey et al., (1991) demonstrated that mode
shape curvature could be a useful indicator to damage detection of beam structures.
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Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

Chance et al., (1994) investigated the measured strain mode shape and found it was
much feasible for damage localisation. Wang et al., (2000) presented a numerical
study of damage detection of Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong SAR by utilising the
changes of the mode shape curvatures.

Methods using Modal Strain Energy

N. Stubbs et al., (1992) presented the pioneer work on using Modal Strain Energy
(MSE) for damage localisation. The general definition of MSE of a structure on the rth
mode could be demonstrated as

1
MSEr = Tr K r
2

where K is the stiffness matrix of a structure. N Stubbs & Kim, (1996) and Zhang et al.,
(1998) improved the method by using modal strain energy to localise the damage and
estimated the damage size without baseline modal properties. They defined the
contribution of element j to the rth MSE as
Crj =

Tr k
r

j
Tr K r

Tr k
r

r2

where r is the rth mass normalized mode shape. Carrasco et al., (1997) discussed
using changes in modal strain energy to locate and quantify damage within a space
truss model and claimed that the magnitude of the changes could be used as an
indicator of the overall magnitude of the damage. Results of the test showed that this
method did very well at localising damaged elements within the truss structure.

Methods using Dynamic Flexibility

Based on that higher modes contribute more to the system stiffness matrix than lower
modes (Berman & Flannelly, 1971), to obtain good stiffness matrix estimation or its
changes need a large number of dynamic modes, especially the higher modes to be
measured. However, measuring the higher frequency response is very difficult due to
practical limitations. To avoid the problem, a method using dynamically measured
flexibility matrix is proposed to estimate the changes in structural stiffness. By
extracting the first m mode shapes and modal frequencies, they proposed the index
written as
m

F = 1T =
i =1

2
i

i Ti

where i is the ith frequency, i the ith mode shape. Reich & Park, (2000) focused
on the use of localized flexibility properties for structural damage detection. The
strain-based substructural flexibility matrices measured from before/after a damage
7

Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

event were compared to identify the location and relative degree of damage. Bernal,
(2000) set up a numerical example of a 39-DOF truss and obtained the accurate
results of identifying the modes. He concluded that changes in the flexibility matrix
were desirable to monitor than the changes in stiffness matrix. By tracing the changes
in modal flexibility matrices before/after the structural damage occurred, Pandey &
Biswas, (1994, 1995) presented a damage localisation algorithm and showed that
only first several modes correlated the damage localisation. Wang et al., (2000)
defined the normalised changes in modal flexibility for achieving more reliable
damage detection. Gao & Spencer, (2006) discussed the issues relating to the
synthesis of modal flexibility matrix from ambient and forced vibration data and
implemented damage locating vector (DLV) method for online damage localisation.
The experimental validation of various damage index methods had also been
conducted by researchers through field testing. Farrar & Jauregui, (1998) conducted
experimental and numerical comparison of five index methods using the simulated
and experimental data from I-40 Bridge. Park et al., (2001) compared the result of
damage index methods with visual inspection results by using the periodical
measurement data from a concrete box-girder bridge and found the environmental
factors might affect the accuracy of damage index methods. Huth et al., (2005)
mentioned that it was difficult to localise the damage at the earlier stage even using
the modal flexibility matrix.

Artificial Neural Network (ANN)

Many damage detection schemes utilize neural networks to detect, localise, and
quantify damage in structures. Ritter A & Kirkegaard, (1997) evaluated two neural
networks for damage assessment, namely the multilayer perceptron (MLP) network
with back propagation and the radial basis function (RBF) network and concluded that
the MLP network demonstrates might be used in connection with vibration-based
inspection whereas the RBF network completely failed. The authors also cautioned
that the performance of the RBF network was highly dependent on an appropriate
selection of damage cases used in the training. Huang & Loh, (2001) observed that a
nonlinear neural network could be regarded as a general type of nonlinear
auto-regressive moving-average (NARMA) model and discovered that the nonlinear
model was able to predict the structures behaviour during earthquakes if the network
was trained using past earthquakes with equivalent peak amplitudes. Choi & Kwon,
(2000) developed a damage detection method for a steel-truss bridge based on
neural network analysis. Chang et al., (2000) used an iterative neural network for
structural health monitoring. The network was first updated using initial training data
sets consisting of assumed structural parameters as target outputs and their
corresponding dynamic characteristics as inputs.

Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

Feature Extraction
Feature extraction is the process of identifying damage-sensitive properties, derived
from the measured dynamic response, which allows one to distinguish between the
undamaged and damaged structures and normally it performs some form of data
compression and data fusion (Sohn, 2003).
Table 1 Summary of Main Damage Detection Methods
Approaches

Limitations

Virtues

The forward methods are mature

Only sensitive in the case that the

measurement point is close to node
points for a particular mode

The combination of MAC and

COMAC work sensitively in
damage detection

New sensor technology must be applied

to register the strain field over the whole
structure due to the strain is a local entity

Feasible for damage

localisation

Higher derivatives of mode

shapes are more sensitive to
damage

Cannot detect damage in a structure

when the damage is located in an
element not sensitive to modal
parameter changes

Feasible by localising damaged

elements within the truss
structure

More precise than the flexibility

method

Require a sufficient number

well distributed sensors

Only first few modes are

needed

If damages are too small, it could

masked by numerical errors

Better to detect damage

severity

Large training sample is needed for

accurate detection

Do not need knowing the

physical relationships between
the structural properties and
damage occurrence

Limited physical meanings

Fast computation algorithms are needed

Can be applied to nonlinear and

non-stationary time series

Insensitive unless severe damage

happened or accurate measurement
applied.

the inverse method is still only being

investigated theoretically

Mode Shapes

Curvature/Strain

Frequencies
Response
Function

Modes

Modal

Strain
Energy

Dynamic
Flexibility

Artificial
Neural Network

of
be

(ANN)
EMD & Hilbert spectrum

In cases of either abrupt or accumulative damages, occurrence of damage and the

moment when the damage occurs can be clearly determined by data decomposition.
Due to the length of the paper, we hereby just introduce the feature extraction
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Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

methods based on Wavelet technique and empirical mode decomposition (EMD)

incorporated Hilbert spectrum method

Wavelet technique

Wavelets can decompose any signal and some when transferred by Wavelets
method can be shown to be more sensitive to local changes in structural properties. It
also can be viewed as an extension of the traditional Fourier transform with
adjustable window location and size. Over the past 10 years, wavelet theory has
become one of the emerging and fast-evolving mathematical and signal processing
tools (Wong & Chen, 2001) because of its many distinct merits.
Using a selected analysing or mother wavelet function (t ) , the continuous wavelet
transform of a signal f (t ) is defined as (Chui & Jian Zhong, 1992; Daubechies,
1992).

(Wf )(a, b) =

1
a

t b
f (t )
dt
a

where a and b = dilation and translation parameters, respectively. Both are real
numbers and a must be positive. The bar over (t ) indicates its complex conjugate.
The mother wavelet should satisfy an admissibility condition to ensure existence of
the inverse wavelet transform such as
+

F ( )

C =

d <

where F ( ) denotes the Fourier transform of (t ) . The signal f (t ) may be

recovered or reconstructed by an inverse wavelet transform of (Wf )(a, b) as defined
by

1
f (t ) =
C

+ +

t b 1
da db
a a2

(Wf )(a, b)

A wavelet family associated with the mother wavelet (t ) is generated by two

operations: dilation and translation. The translation parameter, b, indicates the
location of the moving wavelet window in the wavelet transform. Shifting the wavelet
window along the time axis implies examining the signal in the neighbourhood of the
current window location. Therefore, information in the time domain will still remain, in
contrast to the Fourier transform, where the time domain information becomes almost
invisible after the integration over the entire time domain. The dilation parameter, a,
indicates the width of the wavelet window. A smaller value of a implies a
higher-resolution filter, e.g., the signal is examined through a narrower wavelet
window in a smaller scale.
By selecting different dyadic scales, a signal can be broken down into many
low-resolution components, referred to as the wavelet decomposition tree. The
wavelet tree structure with details and approximations at various levels may reveal
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Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

valuable information of the signal characteristics that may not be clearly seen in the
original data or the results from other approaches. The analysis may be modified to
the wavelet packet analysis for the purpose of multi-resolution analysis, which
provides an alternative tree structure for the original data. Higher dimensional
versions can also be easily extended (Chui & Jian Zhong, 1992).
Different from the Gabor transform, the wavelet transform can be used for multi-scale
analysis of a signal through translation, such that the time-frequency features of a
signal can be extracted effectively. It is then used in a sensitivity-based inverse
problem for structural damage detection with sinusoidal or impulsive excitation and
acceleration and strain measurements. The wavelet coefficient is shown more
sensitive than the other responses and however it is further found that not sensitive to
different errors in the initial modelling including the support stiffness, mass density,
flexural rigidity, damping ratio and excitation force.

EMD and Hilbert spectrum method

Recently, the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) incorporated the Hilbert spectrum
method has been proposed to identify the dynamic characteristics of linear structures.
EMD is a time series analysis method that extracts a custom set of basis sets to
describe the vibratory response of a system. In conjunction with the Hilbert Transform,
EMD method provides some unique information about the nature of the vibratory
response. Some simulation results also indicated that the Hilbert phase is
proportional to mass and stiffness properties between two successive degrees of
freedom (Salvino et al., 2003). Hence, the Hilbert phase can be used to infer, locate
and possibly quantify the amount of damage in a structure.
Model Updating Methods
With the use of system identification concepts, the measured modal properties can be
used to set up or modify the analytical structural model as precisely as possible to
diagnose damages. There are two categories of structural system identification, one
is to establish an analytical model, so-called direct system identification; The other
one is to modify an existing analytical model or so-called indirect system identification
(Natke, 1988a). The purpose of model improvement is to achieve an analytical model
which is dynamically equivalent to the tested structure and damage detection aims to
identify the changes in structural physical parameters due to damage rather than
modelling errors. Research falls on model updating has been carrying on for 30 years.
Among them, (Gorl & Link, 2001; Hart & Yao, 1977; Liu & Yao, 1978; Natke, 1988b;
Zimmerman et al., 1992) are worthwhile of attention. The model updating methods for
damage detection shall be classified into four categories: 1) Optimal Matrix Updating
Methods; 2) Eigenstructure Assignment Methods; 3) Sensitivity-Based Updating
Methods; 4) Stochastic Model Updating Methods.
Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures
Condition assessment is defined as measuring and evaluating the state properties of
a constructed facility and relating these to the performance parameters (A. E. Aktan
et al., 1996). It includes identification of any defects, deterioration and damage.
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Review of Vibration-Based Damage Detection and Condition Assessment of Bridge Structures using Structural
Health Monitoring

Condition assessment should first focus on the evaluation of the global state of health,
and then on regional or local damage. Some of the critical steps in condition
assessment related to damage diagnostics may be summarized as (1) setting up the
parameters limits which categorises the condition status; (2) diagnosing the damage
existence; (3) localising the damage; (4) defining the damage severity; (5) assessing
the effects of damage on structural reliability. These condition assessment steps are,
in other words, exactly consistent with structural health monitoring Levels mentioned
previously. Therefore SHM should be considered within the realm and the most
important portions of condition assessment.
Conclusion
This paper briefly discusses the vibration-based damage detection methodologies
used in structural health monitoring of bridge structures. For the bridge structures in
the real-world, no single method or technique can be utilised for either global or
localised health monitoring due to their different limitations. Therefore, the
investigation of comprehensive methods is needed in future to keep SHM system
feasible under more damage patterns and to be more practical. Besides, new signal
processing methods proposed recently allow the VBDD methods distinguish the
damage localisation/ patterns in a clear manner and more efficiently. From the review,
it can be concluded that although damage detection, from Level 1 to Level 3, is a vital
part of the condition assessment of bridge structures and has been investigated by a
number of peers, few papers mention the SHM systems that have fallen into the
structural condition assessment (Level 4) based on the interface supported by Level 1
to Level 3. Therefore, these all prompt an urgent need to build comprehensive
damage detection approaches and a technical condition assessment system for a
practical and efficient SHM system.
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