Damage Detection of Arch Structure by Using Deflection Influence Line

Abstract

This paper proposes a method which uses the deflection influence line (DIL) to identify the damage in arch rib, it can locate the structural damage positions accurately by observing the difference of the second derivative of the DIL, and the values of the difference of the second derivative of the DIL enable to reflect the degree of damage. To verify the correctness and feasibility of this method, numerical and experimental studies have been conducted. Both the numerical and experimental results show that the difference of the second derivative of the DIL can identify both the positions and degrees of the structural damage effectively. It only need to measure one point when measuring the DIL, which is easy to operate in practical engineering.