Real-Time Damage Identification of Abnormal Changes in Structural Behaviour Using Digital Twin and IoT Technologies

Internet of Things (IoT) and Digital Twin (DT) are new technologies used recently in civil engineering field for real-time structural damage identification. DTs is defined as the digital representation of living and non-living physical assets. By connecting the physical and virtual assets, data are transmitted smoothly, allowing the virtual asset to fully represent the physical asset. IoT is a network connecting various objects to the internet using specific protocols and information sensing equipment. It enables information exchange and communication for smart recognition, positioning, tracing, monitoring, and administration. Limited information exists on the effectiveness of DT models in real-time monitoring and identifying small unexpected changes in structural behaviour. This limitation is mainly due to the substantial computational requirements for analysis and the large volume of sensor data. Recently, IoT is used in the context of DT for increasing the accuracy of established DT model for real-time damage identification. Due to this, the main aim of this ongoing study is to use the IoT technology for real time communication between the physical structure and the previously developed virtual model for establishment of an accurate DT model reflecting the current behaviour of the structure and able to identify small severity damage once it appear in the structure. The real-time communication is achieved by connecting the PCB board to MATLAB software through USB cable using the developed Arduino Explorer toolbox in MATLAB. In addition, the recorded data is sent to a cloud server during online monitoring for further analysis. The developed DT model is established by optimizing and incorporating advanced modelling techniques such as Reduced Basis Model Order Reduction (RB-MOR) technique with controllable accuracy in construction of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) for establishment of a high accuracy DT model capable to detect small severity damage once it appears in the structure during the online monitoring. An Acrylic 2D truss is used to test the validity of the proposed method.