Study of Time-Domain Techniques for Modal Parameter Identification of a Long Suspension Bridge with Dense Sensor Arrays

While numerous studies have been published concerning the application of a variety of system identification techniques in conjunction with vibration measurements from civil infrastructure systems, there is a paucity of publications addressing the influence of algorithm-specific control parameters that impact the correct and efficient application of the selected identification scheme. Furthermore, as dense sensor arrays become widely accessible in civil infrastructure applications, voluminous amounts of multichannel data streams are becoming available for processing, thus imposing new demands on identification procedures regarding high-dimensionality (in both the spatial as well as the temporal domains) requirements that may render some methods inapplicable if careful attention is not paid to practical implementation issues. This paper provides a comprehensive study of three time-domain identification algorithms applied in conjunction with the Natural Excitation Technique in order to extract the modal parameters of a newly constructed long-span bridge that was monitored, in its virgin state, over a relatively long period of time with a state-of-the-art dense sensor array. The three methods used are: the eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA), the ERA with data correlations, and the least squares algorithm. One of the critical issues in the mentioned algorithms, is selection of the reference degree-of-freedom (DOF). Previous experiences have shown that one cannot rely on a single reference DOF for identification of all modes. Consequently, the aforementioned identification formulations were modified to include multiple reference DOF, simultaneously, or one at a time. An autonomous algorithm was presented to distinguish the genuine structural modes from spurious noise or computational modes. Based on some parameter studies, some useful guidelines for the selection of critical user-selectable parameters are presented.