Health Monitoring of RCC Buildings using Vibration Measurements

The need for structural health monitoring systems is continuously growing to maintain existing civil infrastructure. The trend in the development of new technology is accelerated after the recent earthquakes that posed the problems of rapid assessment of condition of structures. Bridges, dams, nuclear plants and important multistoried buildings are the important infrastructures; their continued safe performance is vital to human and economic activities.Health monitoring of structures using vibration measurement of dynamic properties (natural frequency, mode shape and damping) is one of the most effective and widely used method because vibration response itself can be used to examine the performance of structures and integrity of the structure. Thus, the Structural Health Monitoring can be defined as the use of in-situ, non-destructive sensing and analysis of system characteristics, including the structural response, for detecting changes that may indicate distress or degradation. The study presented here has yielded significant results about predicting the health of framed RCC building with the help of vibration measurements.