Study on damage identification for reinforced concrete frame structure based on wavelet transform

Reinforced concrete structures are prone to damage during their service lifetime due to such factors as the effect of overload, earthquake motions, and other actions. Undetected damage may lead to structural failures. Early detection of damage and timely repairs can prevent catastrophic failure and ensure regular service of structures. As a result, on the basis of the multi-resolution characteristic of wavelet transform (WT), the application of signal singularity testing technique in the damage diagnosis of the reinforced concrete structures is researched, and a so-called delamination wavelet-transform search method is presented in this paper for on-line damage identification of reinforced concrete structures. One possible advantage of this method is that the damage temporal and spatial location can be detected rapidly and efficiently. Further research is carried out with numerical simulation of a structure test model in a vibration table to study the storied damage detection and localization of reinforced concrete frame structures under seismic actions. The analyzing result is compared with that observed in a simulated earthquake vibration table test. The good agreement is obtained and it verifies the effectiveness and validity of the method proposed in this paper, which can establish a theoretical foundation for reliability identification and repair strengthening of similar structures.