Journal of Scientific & Industrial Research

Vol. 77, June 2018, pp. 337-341

Damage Identification of Reinforced Concrete Beam Using Modal

Curvature Approach
A Chaurasia, S K Panigrahi* and S S Patel
CSIR-Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee-247667, India

Received 03 April 2017; revised 22 December 2017; accepted 16 January 2018

Reinforced concrete (RC) beams are one of the main load bearing structural elements in buildings. These elements suffer
from distress, primarily cracks, due to many reasons resulting into degradation of stiffness and strength. The modal
curvature approach is a very good technique in damage identification in steel and RC beams. This study provides a critical
review on the different approaches for damage prediction. The current state of the knowledge is presented and the different
models which have been proposed in the past for damage identification on structural systems are discussed. In this paper, a
technique for damage identification and assessment of RC beams is proposed which makes use of vibration data to compute
the Curvature Damage Factor (CDF). To detect damage progression, simply-supported RC beams were subjected to an
incrementally increasing static four point loading in steps till ultimate failure. After each load step, vibration measurements
were performed using wireless sensors mounted at critical locations. The experimental crack pattern and results of modal
curvature were compared. The results show that this approach is efficient for damage identification of reinforced concrete
beams which exhibit high non-linear behavior.

Keywords: RC Beam, Modal Curvature, Frequency, Crack Pattern, CDF Value, Vibration Measurement, Damage
Identification

Introduction proposed a method for identifying damage in a multi

The performance of a structure is affected due to
permanent unfavorable change in its physical
properties, which is referred as damage. The causes of
damage may be due to excessive vibration, harsh
environment, ageing, overloading, fatigue, corrosion
of reinforcing bars in concrete etc. Consequently, it is
important to know damage progression for estimation
of residual service life. Structural Health Monitoring
is the implementation of damage identification
process, classified into four levels: Level 1: Damage
detection, Level 2: Damage location, Level 3:
Damage quantification and Level 4: Remaining life
prediction. Structural damage is a local perturbation
of its physical characteristics, i.e. its stiffness, mass
and/or damping, which produces change in the
vibration characteristics of the structure. This forms
the basis for vibration based structural health
monitoring techniques. Extensive efforts have been
made to detect and ascertain the cause of damage in
global scenario. Fan & Qiao1 presented a
comprehensive review on vibration based approaches
for structural damage identification. Panigrahi et al.2
——————
*Author for Correspondence
E-mail: skpanigrahi@cbri.res.in
storeyed shear building using minimum number of
modal parameters of the structure. The proposed
methodology requires experimentally determined
sparse modal data of any particular mode as input to
detect the location and extent of damage in the
structure. Patel et al.3 used acceleration-time histories
from reinforced concrete building to detect the change
in physical properties of the building. Frequency
spectra have been widely used for fault identification
in mechanical and civil structures4. An alternative
approach, based on modal curvature was
demonstrated to enhance the sensitivity of damage
identification5. Further, Wahab6 studied the use of
modal curvature for damage identification. Based on
measurements of Eigen vector curvatures and Eigen
frequencies. Ciambella et al.7 proposed a technique
for damage detection and assessment. The proposed
technique was illustrated with reference to a
cantilever Euler beam endowed with a set of
piezoelectric transducers. The result shows that the
modal curvature difference method is an effective
damage detection technique for 1D beams but not
very effective for 2D structures. Therefore, Zhang8
improved this method by introducing coordinate
transformation technique so as to settle the calculation
338 J SCI IND RES VOL 77 JUNE 2018
difficulty of modal curvature methods. Bai et al.9
presented another method for damage identification
of a plane grid structure similar to 2D plate bending
by computing modal curvature changes in two
directions of the damaged structure. Modal Curvature
based damage identification methods along with
filtering procedure were studied extensively10-11.
Srinivasa et al.12 studied modal characteristics of
reinforced concrete structures under various test
conditions. Different methods have been proposed by
researchers for damage identification in building
structures using experimental/simulated modal
information to detect possible damages13-15.
The present paper aims to provide a method for
determination of the location of damage in RC beams
due to load-induced cracks through modal curvature
approach by computing CDF values. CDF values
were computed from the modal curvatures and
compared with the obtained crack patterns in each
case on the beam. The current study provided an
overview of the identified behavior of damaged RC
beams with different loaded conditions using modal
curvature approach, thereby verifying the relation
between CDF values and the location of damage and
extent of crack.
Mathematical model
Pandey et al.5 demonstrated that absolute changes
in modal curvature are highly sensitive to damage and
can be used as a good indicator of damage. The
curvature (k) is often calculated from the measured
displacement mode shapes using central difference
approximation,
k = (ui+1 – 2ui + ui-1) / l2 … (1)
where i is the node number, l is the distance
between the two successive measured locations and ui
is the deflection of the beam at the cross-section
considered. As a consequence, curvature mode shape
may be obtained from displacement mode shape, and
curvature of the jth mode shape may be derived from
the vertical displacement of the same mode shape.
Wahab and Roeck6 introduced curvature damage
factor (CDF), in which the difference in modal
curvature is averaged over all modes. When the
structure contains several damage locations, the CDF
gives a clear indication of these locations. The
curvature damage factor is given by
CDF= (1/N) Σ Iu’’0i – u’’diI , i= 1 to N … (2)
where N is the total no of modes considered, u’’0i is
the curvature mode shape of the undamaged structure
and u’’di is that of damaged structure. To the
knowledge of authors, no work has yet been reported
in literature to identify the extent of damage using
modal curvature approach in reinforced concrete
structures. The approach is illustrated by considering
several extent of damage states, thereby establishing
the relation between CDF and damage percentage.
Experimental set-up and analysis
Description of beam specimens
The experiment was carried out on RC beam
having sectional dimension of 100×150 mm, length
1800 mm, casted with M30 grade of concrete and
HYSD reinforcement (Fe 415). Three different types
of beams of varying reinforcement details with two
samples of each beam were considered for the test.
The beams were designed as per IS: 456-2000 code.
The beam under consideration had a balanced section
with reinforcement percentage of 1.88%. Other beams
were designed as under-reinforced beams.
Experimental methodology and instrumentation
The experimental methodology and instrumentation
for all the RC beam specimens were identical. The
subsequent section describes the details for balanced
section specimen only, followed by the analyzed
results. For vibration measurement of beam, four tri-
axial MEMS accelerometers were mounted at
different locations on one side of beam as depicted in
Figure 1a. The data acquisition system used in this
experimentation consists of 4 on-board tri-axial MEMs
Fig. 1—Placement of accelerometers and crack pattern developed
at different load stages a) Placement of wireless tri-axial
accelerometer on RC beam (dimensions in mm), b)Crack at first
significangt crack instant (15kN), c)crack at maximum load
(52kN) and d) crack at ultimate failure (44kN)
 PANIGRAHI et al.: DAMAGE IDENTIFICATION OF REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAM USING CURVATURE 339

accelerometer with range of ±2 g to ±10 g and domain data for various damage scenarios of
resolution of 1.5 mg RMS (±2 g), 9 mg RMS (±10 g). considered beam, the frequencies and corresponding
The accelerometers were synchronized with sampling mode shapes are computed. SigView platform was
rate of 1 Hz-512 Hz and range for bi-directional used to convert time spectrum data to frequency
RF-Link from 70 meters to 2 kilometers. The data from spectrum data. The modal frequencies for different
the wireless sensors was acquired using a compatible states of beam under test are given in Table 1. It is
base station (WSDA®-Base) at a sampling rate of 256 observed that with increase in load from zero to 52
Hz. The aim of the system is to sample the data in kN, the damage increases leading to decrease in
synchronized manner from various nodes placed at frequency. On attaining maximum load of 52 kN,
different positions on the beam. The sensors were there is substantial reduction in load on further
synchronized such that the data analysis algorithm displacement loading with a 44 kN load at ultimate
provides the consistent results. To induce cracks on a failure for RC beam specimen. As a result of increase
simple supported RC beam, specimens were subjected in load, substantial increase in cracks were noticed
to four point loading using servo-hydraulic actuator of leading to reduced frequency. Figure 2 shows the
100 kN capacity. High Eigen frequency may cause
weakness of supports which leads to vertical
displacement resulting changes in dynamic
characteristics, such as degradation in frequency values
due to simple support condition. To restrict vertical
displacement, the specimens were mounted between
backing roller at bottom and top. The rollers were placed
on the steel plate which was fixed to the supports. This
eliminates the monitoring error resulting from support
vibration. The beam specimens were subjected to
incremental increase in monotonic four point loading
and vibration responses were recorded at each stage.
The dynamic analysis was performed on the captured
data i.e. on intact beam as well as over progressively
damaged beam. The vibration characteristics and the
damage pattern of the beam were measured in 37 load
steps. For damage identification of a particular RC beam
under consideration, the analysis of vibration signature
was performed at different damage state viz. undamaged
state, at first significant crack at loading-15 kN, at
maximum loading-52 kN and at ultimate failure-44 kN.
The crack pattern on the Beam at different damage
state is shown in Figure 1b, Figure 1c and
Figure 1d corresponding to the above mentioned
damage states respectively.
Health monitoring of RC beam
The recorded acceleration-time histories were
analyzed for determination of dynamic properties of
undamaged and at different damage states of the beam
Fig. 2—Mode shapes at intact and damaged states under various
specimens. From the obtained experimental time- loadings
Table 1—Experimentally obtained frequencies of RC Beam at different damage states
Damage states of beam Load(kN) 1st Frequency (Hz) 2nd Frequency (Hz) 3rd Frequency (Hz)
Undamaged 0 3.39 7.18 11.7
At first crack 15 3.375 7.1406 11.547
At Max loading 52 3.1406 7.1094 11.422
At ultimate failure 44 3.0625 7.0625 11.156
340 J SCI IND RES VOL 77 JUNE 2018
Fig. 3—Curvature Damage Factor (CDF) vs position for Beam at different load cases
mode shapes for undamaged and damaged RC Beam
specimen respectively. The mode shapes obtained in
damaged state shows some variation as compared to
the undamaged state. In the case of 1st mode shape
there is a significant variation in mode shape for
52 kN and 44 kN loaded conditions. For the case of
15 kN, there is significant damage, with a slight
variation in the graph. From lower mode towards
higher mode side, locating any change between
the mode shapes is difficult. From the mode shape
values, modal curvatures are computed for the first
three modes using Eq. (1) and curvature damage
factors (CDF) using first three modes are derived
using Eq. (2). Figure 3 shows the CDF values
at various positions of the beam at 15 kN, 52 kN and
44 kN respectively.
Results and Discussion
Figure 3 shows that at 15 kN load the CDF value at
1st element is small as compared to that near 4th
element. However, as load increases the CDF values
near 1st element keeps on increasing and at maximum
loading it becomes significant in comparison to CDF
values at 4th element. At failure, the CDF values
obtained are greater than that of 4th element. The CDF
value shows two peaks at element no. 1 and 4 after
subjected to a load of 15 kN, which indicates the
crack position near to Element no.1 and 4 (Figure 3).
After applying maximum load of 52 kN and at failure
the crack position remains unchanged i.e. cracks near
1st and 4th element. CDF value at element no. 1 further
increases in comparison to that element no. 4. The
cracks identified from CDF plots match with the real
dense crack zone developed in the beam during the
experimentation (Figure1d). The variation in crack
pattern observed during experiment are comparable to
the variation observed in CDF values. After failure
the crack density near 1st element is observed to be
more than that near 4th element which is also observed
in failure pattern of RC beam specimens. For the load
case corresponding to ultimate failure of beam, the
ratio of CDF values for position of 1st element to
4th element is 1.46. Practically, the crack developed
at 1st element is approximately 1.46 times the cracks
developed near 4th element. Similarly, other two
beams with different reinforcement detailing were
tested and analyzed, showing analogous behavior
between CDF values vis-à-vis crack pattern.
Conclusions
Past studies undertaken by several researchers for
damage identification on structures have been
presented in brief. However, the current paper focuses
mainly on the system identification procedure using
modal curvatures to detect damage zones of a simply
supported RC beam subjected to incrementally
increasing load. The vibration measurement and its
analysis using Modal Curvature Method for damage
identification of a RC beam for different load
condition and damage states was carried out. The
results indicate that the adopted methodology is
effective in identifying the damage location on RC
beams. The results obtained in this study show that
the increase in load on RC beam resulted into increase
in damage (i.e. cracks) which is in proportion to the
CDF values, leads to the hypothesis that the use of
this technique is viable in predicting the extent of
damage and in-turn remaining service life of the
structure. However, further research is needed to
achieve better agreement with the experimental data
possibly taking into account the different material and
geometrical configuration of structural component
and system.
Acknowledgement
The work is conducted as a part of Mission
Mode research project under 12th five year plan at
CSIR-Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee,
 PANIGRAHI et al.: DAMAGE IDENTIFICATION OF REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAM USING CURVATURE
India. The authors are thankful to the Director,
CSIR-CBRI Roorkee for his support. The team
acknowledges Ms Pankhuri, Project Fellow, for
assistance in experimental work.
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