Damage Detection in ALC Exterior Walls in Steel Structural Frames Subjected to Earthquakes Using Acceleration Sensors

ABSTRACT

To establish a practical method to detect damage to autoclaved lightweight concrete (ALC) exterior walls subjected to earthquakes, a cyclic loading test of steel structural frames equipped with ALC exterior walls was performed. In the test, several compact and cost-effective MEMS accelerometers were placed on the ALC panels and steel structural frames to evaluate their effectiveness in damage assessment. The results showed that the MEMS acceleration sensors could measure the residual in-plane and out-of-plane rotation angle of each element including ALC panels with sufficient accuracy and was concluded to be the most promising instrument for application to damage detection.

KEYWORDS:

• ALC exterior wall
• health monitoring
• acceleration sensor
• rotation measurement
• vibration measurement
• full-scale experiment

Acknowledgments

Part of this research was supported by JST Program on Open Innovation Platform with Enterprises, Research Institute and Academia (headed by Satoshi Yamada (at the time)). Furthermore, the authors would like to express their gratitude to ALC Association for providing the ALC exterior wall material and Composite Slab Industrial Association for providing deck plates. The authors would also like to express their gratitude to Nobuhiko Tatsumi, Keita Kohtaki, and Tenderan Randy of Tokyo Institute of Technology (at the time), and Tomohiro Fukuda of University of Tokyo (at the time) for helping in conducting the test.

Disclosure Statement

I certify that all my affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or financial conflict with the subject matter discussed in the manuscript are completely disclosed in the acknowledgement section of the manuscript.