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Abstract: The paper presents the dynamic structural health monitoring activities on Saint Torcato church, in Guimarães, Portugal, which has significant structural problems due to soil settlements. Cracks can be observed on the main and the lateral façades, the bell-towers are leaning, and the arches in the nave exhibit a failure mechanism with cracks and vertical deformations. These phenomena are progressing and a structural intervention is planned. A monitoring system has been installed to control the current condition and to assess the success of the future intervention. The paper shows the monitoring results with an emphasis in the dynamic analysis carried out before the structural strengthening, namely with respect to: experimental tests with output-only techniques for frequencies, damping and mode shapes estimation, FE model updating analysis and dynamic monitoring. The automatic system identification process uses ambient vibration signatures in combination with cluster analysis and rule-based approach for the interpretation of the results of the Stochastic Subspace Identification method. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In order to evaluate the usefulness of approaches based on modal parameters tracking for structural health monitoring of bridges, in September of 2007, a dynamic monitoring system was installed in a concrete arch bridge at the city of Porto, in Portugal. The implementation of algorithms to perform the continuous on-line identification of modal parameters based on structural responses to ambient excitation (automated Operational Modal Analysis) has permitted to create a very complete database with the time evolution of the bridge modal characteristics during more than 2 years. This paper describes the strategy that was followed to minimize the effects of environmental and operational factors on the bridge natural frequencies, enabling, in a subsequent stage, the identification of structural anomalies. Alternative static and dynamic regression models are tested and complemented by a Principal Components Analysis. Afterwards, the identification of damages is tried with control charts. At the end, it is demonstrated that the adopted processing methodology permits the detection of realistic damage scenarios, associated with frequency shifts around 0.2%, which were simulated with a numerical model. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]