Structural Reliability Estimation with Participatory Sensing and Mobile Cyber-Physical Structural Health Monitoring Systems

With the help of community participants, smartphones can become useful wireless sensor network (WSN) components, form a self-governing structural health monitoring (SHM) system, and merge structural mechanics with participatory sensing and server computing. This paper presents a methodology and framework of such a cyber-physical system (CPS) that generates a bridge finite element model (FEM) integrated with vibration measurements from smartphone WSNs and centralized/distributed computational facilities, then assesses structural reliability based on updated FEMs. Structural vibration data obtained from smartphones are processed on a server to identify modal frequencies of an existing bridge. Without design drawings and supportive documentation but field measurements and observations, FEM of the bridge is drafted with uncertainties in the structural mass, stiffness, and boundary conditions (BCs). Then, 2700 FEMs are autonomously generated, and the baseline FEM is updated by minimizing the error between the crowdsourcing-based modal identification results and the FEM analysis. Furthermore, using 151 strong ground motion records from databases, the bridge response time history simulations are conducted to obtain displacement demand distribution. Finally, based on reference performance criteria, structural reliability of the bridge is estimated. Integrating the cyber (FEM analysis) and the physical (the bridge structure and measured vibration characteristics) worlds, this crowdsourcing-based CPS can provide a powerful tool for supporting rapid, remote, autonomous, and objective infrastructure-related decision-making. This study presents a new example of the emerging fourth industrial revolution from structural engineering and SHM perspective.