Performance Evaluation of Truss Structure via Cloud Matter Element Fusion

Abstract

The performance evaluation of truss bridges is very difficult owing to their complex structure and numerous components. This paper develops an evaluation framework for truss structures using the internet of things (IOT) technique and proposes a novel methodology to increase evaluation accuracy based on cloud matter element fusion (CMEF). An experiment was carried out on a laboratory truss that was equipped with monitoring devices. Then the monitoring system, data storage module, and loading equipment were connected by IOT and then transmitted to the data processing module to carry out real-time evaluation. Furthermore, in the data processing module, the cloud matter element can effectively integrate multiple evaluation features into a global evaluation system, and the randomness contained in the monitoring data and the fuzziness inherent in the evaluation process can be considered synthetically by the cloud models established in this study. Then these evaluation features with their respective weights are fused by evidence fusion, so as to obtain the final performance of the experimental truss. The results have indicated that the evaluation accuracy can be obviously increased from 46.1% to 99.5% by the proposed methodology. The proposed method in this study provides an illustration of an effective evaluation for the truss structure.