Influence of Excitation on Dynamic System Identification for a Multi-Span Reinforced Concrete Bridge

In vibration-based damage detection, changes to structural modal properties are tracked over time in order to infer the current state of damage or deterioration. As such, the ability to obtain reliable estimates of modal parameters, particularly natural frequencies and mode shapes, is of critical importance. In the present study, the influence of the dynamic excitation source on the accuracy and statistical uncertainty of modal property estimates for a three span reinforced concrete bridge was investigated experimentally and numerically. Comparisons were made between the dynamic responses due to vehicle loading, harmonic and random forcing, impact, and environmental excitation. It was demonstrated that natural frequencies and mode shapes extracted from the free vibration response following vehicle and random loading events were of higher quality than corresponding values determined during the forcing phase of those events. Harmonic excitation at resonant frequencies and impact were also found to produce statistically reliable results