Structural Identification and Damage Characterization of a Masonry Infill Wall in a Full-Scale Building Subjected to Internal Blast Load

Abstract

Structural identification continues to develop an expanding role within performance-based civil engineering by offering a means to construct high-fidelity analytical models of in-service structures calibrated to experimental field measurements. Although continued advances and case studies are needed to foster the transition of this technique from exploration to practice, potential applications are diverse and range from design validation, construction quality control, assessment of retrofit effectiveness, damage detection, and lifecycle assessment for long-term performance evaluation and structural health monitoring systems. Existing case studies have been primarily focused on large civil structures, specifically bridges, large buildings, and towers, and the limited studies exploring application to damaged structures have been primarily associated with seismic events or other conventional hazards. The current paper produces the first experimental application of structural identification to a component of a full-scale building structure with structural deterioration resulting from an internal blast load. Experimental modal analysis, nondestructive testing, and visual documentation of the structure was performed both prior to and after the internal blast, while a suite of blast overpressure transducers and shock accelerometers captured applied loads and structural response during the blast event. This paper presents an overview of the field testing and observed structural response followed by extensive treatment of the experimental characterization of structural damage in a masonry infill wall. Combined stochastic-deterministic system identification is applied to the acquired input-output data from the vibration testing to estimate the modal parameters of the infill wall for both the in-service state and in the postblast condition with damage characterized by interfacial cracking and permanent set deformation. Structural identification by global optimization of a modal parameter-based objective function using genetic algorithm is employed over two stages to produce calibrated finite-element models of the wall in the preblast and postblast conditions. Damage characterization is explored through changes in the structural properties of the calibrated models. Plausibility of the results are supported by observed cracking and spall documented in the experimental program and further reinforced through nonlinear applied element simulation of the response of the wall.