Evaluation of the effect of operational modal analysis algorithms on identified modal parameters of railway bridges

Abstract

<p>The accuracy of modal parameters identified by Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) algorithms is of vital importance in vibration-based health monitoring. This paper reports the effects of using different OMA algorithms on identified modal parameters of railway bridges. For this purpose, comparison and application of three different OMA methods including FDD, ARX, SSI-COV are discussed. The vibration measurements are conducted on two railway bridges in Northern Norway for using five triaxial accelerometers. The first bridge is a single-span bridge with the length of 50 m, while the second is a two-span bridge with a total length of 85m. OMA has been conducted on the free vibration responses after passage of different types of trains including light-weight railway vehicles and heavily loaded iron ore trains to evaluate the variation of the identified modal parameters with the chosen algorithm and the vibration source on the OMA results.</p>