Phd in STRUCTURAL AND GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING

Thesis title: BIM and FEA Integration for Model Updating of Structures using Dynamic Measurements

Integration of various aspects such as cost, safety, sustainability, and life-cycling management of infrastructures and existing buildings is a crucial task for engineers. In this respect, this study contains an effort to take into account monitoring and model updating within a BIM environment. Stochastic Subspace Identification (SSI) and PolyMAX as techniques for dynamic identification are used. Model updating is pursued by minimizing the errors between the response predicted by numerical models and measurements. Using BIM data to model the structures produces several advantages but also brings some challenges regarding the transferring data to produce a structural model with the different possibilities in choosing the type of elements. Here, 1D, 2D, and 3D elements are used for model updating. Finding an optimized algorithm for automated model updating is the final part of the work. Because the model updating can be considered an optimization problem, for solving the problem in this study, particle swarm optimization (PSO) has been used. The PSO is a population-based approach with important advantages like being easy to perform, fast, and efficient for searching the global solutions. To minimize the objective function formed by errors in modal parameters, here, the stiffness and mass matrices of each element are modified by correction factors for finding the solution associated with a minimum error. The case study of the Annibaldi bridge, which is a simply supported steel footbridge, has been used to demonstrate the proposed approach. Vibration measurement has been acquired by six sensors in three different setups. The data have been analyzed by the SSI and PolyMAX methods to calculate the dynamic parameters. BIM data has been used for the initial finite element model. Model updating has been done manually performed for three different types of elements and by PSO and random elements. the updated model has been used to modify the data describing the material of the structural component in the BIM model.