Temperature-induced variations of measured modal frequencies of steel box girder for a long-span suspension bridge

This paper addresses the temperature-induced variations of measured modal frequencies of steel box girder for a suspension bridge using long-tem monitoring data. The output-only modal frequency identification of the bridge is effectively carried out using the Iterative Windowed Curve-fitting Method (IWCM) in the frequency-domain. The daily and seasonal correlations of frequency-temperature are investigated in detail and the analysis results reveal that: (i) the identified modal frequencies using IWCM provide an effective indication for changes of the bridge due to the ambient temperature variations; (ii) temperature is the critical source causing modal variability, and there is an overall decrease in modal frequency with temperature for all the identified modes; (iii) the random variations in measured modal frequencies mainly arise from the identification algorithm due to the nonstationary loadings, which can be effectively eliminated using multi-sample averaging technique; (iv) the daily averaged modal frequencies of vibration modes have remarkable seasonal correlations with the daily averaged temperature and the seasonal correlation models of frequency-temperature are suitable for structural damage warning if future seasonal correlation models deviate from these normal models.