In prestressed concrete (PSC) which is adopted in a wide variety of civil engineering structures, including bridges and nuclear power plants bridges, structural damage such as concrete cracks is related to the shift of the neutral axis due to the loss of tendon forces. As such, monitoring the tendon force is important to maintain PSC bridges and prolong its remaining life. However, measuring the tendon force of PSC bridges in service is challenging. The direct measurement using load cells is often impractical for in-service PSC bridges; indirect estimation approaches using vibration responses are developed as alternatives to the direct measurement. The vibration-based approaches typically use modal properties such as natural frequencies; however, the fact that the frequency change due to the prestress force is generally insignificant compared to temperature effects has degraded the applicability of the vibration-based methods to the real world problems. This study proposes a multimetric data fusion algorithm using acceleration and strain measurements to monitor the prestress force change. Laboratory-scale testing using a 6 meter simply supported prestressed concrete beam is conducted to verify the efficacy of the proposed approach using the data fusion.

In prestressed concrete (PSC) bridges, structural damage such as concrete cracks is related to the shift of the neutral axis due to the reduction in tendon forces. As such, monitoring the tendon force is important to maintain PSC bridges and prolong its remaining life. However, measuring the tendon force of PSC bridges in service is challenging. This study proposes a data fusion-based tendon force monitoring method using acceleration and strain responses. The proposed approach is validated using a PSC bridge model in the Pukyung National University.

A strain compatibility method is based on the strain compatibility approach proposed by AISC (American Institute of Steel Construction, Inc.). The strain compatibility method assumes a linear strain of all the members. After that, set up the equilibrium equations of the state of stress in each component for calculating the location of the neutral axis of the cross-section in the presence. In this study, the reinforced concrete simple beam is analyzed by strain compatibility method for calculating the neutral axis and the bending moment. And then, a variation of neutral axis of the reinforced concrete simple beam is measured.