Developments in the Built Environment 14 (2023) 100166

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Developments in the Built Environment

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A new damage indicator based on homogeneity and wireless

accelerometers for evaluating the structural condition of a
cable-stayed bridge
Martin Valtierra-Rodriguez a, Jose M. Machorro-Lopez b, Juan P. Amezquita-Sanchez a, *,
Aurelio Dominguez-Gonzalez c, Shaila Alvarez-Junco c, Hector M. Gasca-Zamora d
a
ENAP-RG, CA Sistemas Dinámicos y Control, Facultad de Ingeniería, Departamento de Electromecánica, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Campus San Juan del
Río, 76807, San Juan del Río, Querétaro, Mexico
b
Investigador CONACYT - Instituto Mexicano del Transporte, km 12 Carretera Estatal No. 431 “El Colorado-Galindo” San Fandila, 76703, Pedro Escobedo, Querétaro,
Mexico
c
Facultad de Ingeniería, Departamento de Electromecánica. Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Campus San Juan del Río, 76807, San Juan del Río, Querétaro,
Mexico
d
Instituto Mexicano del Transporte, km 12 Carretera Estatal No. 431 “El Colorado-Galindo” San Fandila, 76703, Pedro Escobedo, Querétaro, Mexico

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Structural health monitoring is crucial to avoid devastating human and economic losses, mainly for large and
Cable-stayed bridge high-demanding structures as the case of vehicular bridges. In this regard, a methodology to identify a cable loss
Homogeneity index in a cable-stayed bridge from the analysis of vibration signals, which are provided by a set of wireless accel­
Multilayer perceptron neural network
erometers installed on the bridge, is here presented. Regarding the method, the damage detection is carried out
Structural health monitoring
Vibration signals
by a new proposed damage indicator, which is calculated from the homogeneity values of the vibration signals.
Wireless accelerometers The homogeneity values are also employed as inputs in a multilayer perceptron neural network to determine the
damage location when a damage condition is identified. The usefulness of the proposal is tested on the vibra­
tional responses obtained in experimental manner from the Rio Papaloapan Bridge located in Veracruz, Mexico,
resulting in 93.33% of effectiveness to detect and locate the cable loss.

1. Introduction
Damage identification in bridges has been a major interest research
topic in civil engineering over the years (Lee et al., 2022; Cheng and Ni,
2018; Farrar and Worden, 2007; Glišić and Inaudi, 2007). Collapses of
this kind of structures cause huge economic losses and human fatalities,
as it has happened in many countries throughout history (Lee et al.,
2022; Cheng and Ni, 2018; Farrar and Worden, 2007; Glišić and Inaudi,
2007; Reimann, 2017; Swenson and Ingraffea, 1991; Davey and Wald,
2007; A.F.P, 2018). Two recent examples of the tragic consequences of
not detecting damage in bridges early enough are the collapses of the
Bridge 9340 in 2007 and the Morandi Bridge in 2018, which took place
in Minnesota, USA and in Genoa, Italy, respectively. The Bridge 9340
collapsed into the Mississippi River, where unfortunately 13 people died
and 145 were injured (Davey and Wald, 2007). On the other hand, as for
the Morandi Bridge, one of its longest sections (210 m) collapsed, falling
down along with 38 vehicles from a height of 45 m, killing 43 people and
injuring 16. The main causes of the collapse were the corrosion of one of
the cables, which led to its rupture, as well as the significant decrease of
the bridge useful life due to the increase of traffic volume (A.F.P, 2018).
Therefore, the development of reliable and low-cost methods to identify
non-visible damage in bridges is crucial to avoid catastrophic collapses
and safeguard the structural integrity of these civil constructions. Thus,
structural health monitoring (SHM) methods based on the analysis of the
dynamic responses of bridges have been considered as the most
adequate options to identify damages in this type of constructions in an
efficient way (Farrar and Worden, 2007; Farrar and Lieven, 2007).
Vibration-based methods for identifying damage in civil infrastruc­
ture can be classified in two methods: parametric and non-parametric
(Yañez-Borjas et al., 2021). Parametric methods operate with data in
the modal domain (Cheng and Ni, 2018; Fan and Qiao, 2010; Kullaa
et al., 2010; Limongelli and Zingoni, 2019), while non-parametric

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jamezquita@uaq.mx (J.P. Amezquita-Sanchez).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dibe.2023.100166
Received 26 December 2022; Received in revised form 21 April 2023; Accepted 23 April 2023
Available online 29 April 2023
2666-1659/© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
M. Valtierra-Rodriguez et al.
methods use data in either time domain or frequency domain (Chen,
2009; Barbosh et al., 2020; Civera and Surace, 2021; Bueno-Lopez et al.,
2019; Machorro-Lopez et al., 2021; Kankanamge et al., 2020; Liew and
Wang, 1998; Jiang and Adeli, 2007; Amezquita-Sanchez et al., 2013;
Perez-Ramirez et al., 2020; Tee, 2018; Carden and Brownjohn, 2008;
Gul and Catbas, 2009; Gao et al., 2021). Hence, the parametric methods
utilize the modal parameters of structures (e.g., mode shapes, natural
frequencies, and damping ratios), as well as their corresponding de­
rivatives, to determine their health states (Cheng and Ni, 2018; Fan and
Qiao, 2010; Kullaa et al., 2010; Limongelli and Zingoni, 2019). Some
examples of parametric methods used to detect damage in
cable-supported bridges are the ones presented in (Ni et al., 2008;
Quintana-Rodriguez et al., 2014; An et al., 2016). In the first work (Ni
et al., 2008), a finite element method (FEM) model was developed in
order to obtain the corresponding modal flexibility matrices of a bridge
and, then, a damage index was established from the change of the
relative flexibility. On the other hand, in the second research (Quinta­
na-Rodriguez et al., 2014), a FEM model of a real-life bridge was ob­
tained and calibrated from the experimental monitoring and, then, an
algorithm was developed in order to correlate the experimental and
numerical signals and identify damage from changes of the structural
parameters of the FEM model. Finally, in (An et al., 2016), a simple
change of the natural frequency of the cables of a cable-stayed bridge
was used to detect damage in these elements but, with the particularity,
that a steel bar must be installed in order to amplify the frequency
change due to the damage. Regardless that these techniques have pro­
vided interesting results to detect damage in bridges, they are signifi­
cantly affected by the environmental conditions and, even more,
generally require a detailed numerical model of the civil structure for
predicting its dynamic behavior under different damage scenarios to be
compared with the healthy case (baseline), which is a task that involves
a substantial computing time (Kullaa et al., 2010; Limongelli and Zin­
goni, 2019).
The non-parametric methods have reduced some limitations of the
parametric methods and have been applied for assessing the health state
of civil constructions, such as the bridges. Among these methods, stand
out the ones based on the empirical mode decomposition (EMD),
wavelet transform (WT), multiple signal classification (MUSIC), and
time series models (TSM), which have been studied in detail in recent
years (Chen, 2009; Barbosh et al., 2020; Civera and Surace, 2021;
Bueno-Lopez et al., 2019; Machorro-Lopez et al., 2021; Kankanamge
et al., 2020; Liew and Wang, 1998; Jiang and Adeli, 2007; Amezqui­
ta-Sanchez et al., 2013; Perez-Ramirez et al., 2020; Tee, 2018; Carden
and Brownjohn, 2008; Gul and Catbas, 2009; Gao et al., 2021). The
methods based on EMD decompose the analyzed time signal into its
principal components; and then, damage spikes, generated by abrupt
structural stiffness changes from the acquired data, are extracted (Chen,
2009; Barbosh et al., 2020; Civera and Surace, 2021). Despite the ben­
efits of these methods, they present some drawbacks for determining the
integrity condition of structures, being the main ones the significant
computing time according to the technique used and the problem of
mode mixing which is due to closely spaced frequency components of
the signal, complicating the evaluation of the structure (Civera and
Surace, 2021; Bueno-Lopez et al., 2019). An example of how the
EMD-based methods is used to identify damage in bridges can be found
in (Meng et al., 2018), where the measured signals of a laboratory sus­
pension bridge were decomposing by using EMD; then, useful features
were extracted by means of the Hilbert transform; and finally, a damage
indicator was established by using the marginal spectrum. Likewise, the
WT-based methods can detect and locate damage by means of the ir­
regularities or discontinuities generated into the time signals (Cheng
and Ni, 2018; Machorro-Lopez et al., 2021; Kankanamge et al., 2020;
Liew and Wang, 1998), which produce high values of the coefficients
across the CWT (continuous wavelet transform) and they can be related
to defects in the structure (Machorro-Lopez et al., 2021; Kankanamge
et al., 2020; Liew and Wang, 1998). Nevertheless, these methods have
2
Developments in the Built Environment 14 (2023) 100166
some disadvantages, including a meticulous process to find the most
useful mother wavelet to make evident the damage presence in each
application, as well as the need of removing the edge effects into the
CWT diagrams produced by the inherent discontinuities at the ends of
any time signal, which can be interpreted as damage (Machorro-Lopez
et al., 2021). Recent research involving the use of the WT to detect and
locate damage in bridges is presented in (Tan et al., 2022), where a
methodology was developed based on a damage index calculated from
the wavelet energy obtained by using the vibration measurements pro­
duced by moving vehicles. In the MUSIC-based methods, algorithms
based on subspace techniques are used, which post-process time signals
embedded in high-level noise to define their corresponding frequency
components, being capable of detecting frequencies with
low-amplitudes, which is useful for damage identification in structures.
However, in order to perform reliable analyses to evaluate the integrity
condition of a civil construction, these methods require a significant
computational burden and the appropriate order selection (Jiang and
Adeli, 2007; Amezquita-Sanchez et al., 2013; Perez-Ramirez et al.,
2020). Lastly, the TSM-based methods operate directly with data in the
time domain, avoiding transformations of domain and using statistical
concepts to extract useful features, which change with the damage
presence; moreover, they do not present the leakage and truncation
errors associated with other methods (Tee, 2018; Carden and Brown­
john, 2008; Gul and Catbas, 2009; Gao et al., 2021). Some examples of
the TSM-based methods are the Autoregressive (AR) models. Despite
providing promising results, these methods have also important disad­
vantages, which limit their applications in analysis of real-life structures,
among which can be mentioned the need of the suitable order selection,
the difficulties to interpret dynamic data of structures with nonlinear
behaviors, and the complications produced by noise effects (Gao et al.,
2021). The above mentioned non-parametric methods have provided
interesting results for important advances in SHM; however, more
research is still needed in order to develop other methods, based on
vibration signals analysis, to identify damage in civil structures effi­
ciently and at low cost in terms of computational cost.
In recent years, the homogeneity algorithm, a nonlinear index, has
been applied in diverse applications (Bekaddour and Amine, 2015;
Martinez-Herrera et al., 2022; Amezquita-Sanchez et al., 2018; Razo-­
Hernandez et al., 2018; Lizarraga-Morales et al., 2017) e.g., evaluation
of the induction motor condition (Martinez-Herrera et al., 2022), sudden
cardiac death prediction (Amezquita-Sanchez et al., 2018), detection of
power quality disturbances (Razo-Hernandez et al., 2018), among
others. Homogeneity is characterized by measuring the uncertainty in
1D signals; in general, it offers a uniformity or complexity measure
contained in a time signal (Lizarraga-Morales et al., 2017). Hence, it can
be an appropriate nonlinear indicator for defining the integrity state of
infrastructure, since their vibrational responses can vary in accordance
with the damage level as well as its location, generating a change in the
homogeneity value.
In this work, the capabilities of the homogeneity measurement or
index (HI) for identifying a cable loss in the cable-stayed bridge Rio
Papaloapan Bridge (RPB), subjected to dynamic vibrations, are investi­
gated. HI is utilized to characterize changes in the acquired vibrational
signals and, then, be employed for determining the RPB condition. In
this regard, as main contribution, the calculated HI values are integrated
into a new damage indicator (DI) for defining the global state of the
bridge. Additionally, the variations of the obtained HI values with a
proposed multilayer perceptron neural network (MLP-NN) are
employed for determining the damage location. For validating the
proposal, the vibrational responses experimentally measured by a set of
wireless accelerometers from the RPB located in Veracruz, Mexico are
studied. The results demonstrate that the method developed in this
article is reliable to discover useful features into the noisy signals for
efficiently detecting and locating a damage in the RPB.
M. Valtierra-Rodriguez et al.
2. Methodology
Civil structures are daily subjected to undesirable dynamic excita­
tions e.g., traffic, earthquakes, wind, among others, which can produce
an inevitable deterioration of structural elements (Park et al., 2019). In
this regard, the vibrational response generated by a civil structure is a
suitable alternative for determining its state since it (1) contains the
dynamic alterations produced by a damage and (2) can be acquired in a
constant manner, permitting the online evaluation of the structural
condition (Mousavi et al., 2021).
A representative diagram of the proposal for establishing the cable-
stayed bridge condition is shown in Fig. 1. As the first step, the vibra­
tional responses of the cable-stayed bridge subjected to dynamic vi­
brations, generated mainly by wind and traffic, are acquired for both
conditions: (1) healthy and (2) damage produced by a cable loss. Later,
the acquired signals for both conditions are analyzed by HI in order to
characterize patterns with the potential of evaluating correctly the
cable-stayed bridge condition. As the second step, the Kruskal–Wallis
method (KWM) is utilized to identify the most reliable HI values in order
to determine the overall condition of the bridge. Then, a feature
reduction is carried out according to the KWM results. Later, based on
the selected features in previous step, a new damage indicator (DI) is
introduced to estimate the global condition of cable-stayed bridge,
which is formulated by integration of the estimated HI values from all
sensors. Once the bridge condition is determined by DI, the damaged
zone is located by a proposed MLP-NN, which is also based on the
estimated HI values. The main steps of the proposed method are detailly
described in the following sub-sections.
2.1. Homogeneity feature
Homogeneity is a texture index initially employed for characterizing
patterns into images (Unser, 1986); however, it has recently proved to
be a suitable index for examining time signals (Lizarraga-Morales et al.,
2017). In particular, it is characterized by computing the uniformity or
complexity of time signal, which varies between 0 and 1, indicating a
high, i.e., a time-varying signal, and low, i.e., a quasi-stationary signal,
uniformity of the patterns inherent in a time signal (Lizarraga-Morales
et al., 2017). In this sense, the HI can characterize an alteration into time
signals associated to a damage encountered in a civil structure.
HI is calculated as follows:
Firstly, a vector of differences for a 1D signal, x, with N samples, is
computed by:
Dj (n) = x(n) − x(n − j) (1)
where j represents a time-invariant integer and n varies from 0 to N-1
samples, which are quantized in K different levels. This process consists
of transforming the input time signal in a discrete time signal defined by
the analog-digital converter (ADC) resolution (number of bits of ADC)
employed for acquiring the time signal. For instance, if ADC is of 10 bits,
it offers 210 = 1024 possible quantizing levels in which the analyzed
time signal can be transformed.
Fig. 1. Block diagram of the proposal.
3
Developments in the Built Environment 14 (2023) 100166
Secondly, a histogram, hj(m), of Dj(n) is computed, which varies from
− K+1 to K− 1.
Thirdly, a probability function, PD(m), of hj(m) is calculated by:
hj (m)
PD (m) = (2)
A
where A represents the total number of differences in Dj(n).
Finally, the homogeneity value of a 1D signal is calculated by:
∑
HI =
1
PD (m) (3)
m
1 + m2
It is worth noting that HI requires a time-invariant integer, j, for
estimating the complexity or uniformity of a time signal. Liz­
arraga-Morales et al. (2017) noted that for time-varying or nonsta­
tionary signals the HI value varies according to the j selected. In this
regard, a lower number of j implies a compact histogram and thus a
higher HI value is obtained; on the contrary, a higher j value implies an
expanded histogram and thus a lower HI value is estimated. Hence, in
this work different values of j are investigated in order to identify more
suitable features to evaluate the integrity condition of the studied
cable-stayed bridge.
2.2. Feature selection
KWM, a nonparametric method, is employed for comparing the dif­
ferences among datasets with non-normal or normal distribution
(Kruskal and Wallis, 1952). For performing this task, a probability value
(p-value), based on a chi-square distribution, must be computed, which
denotes the probability of rejecting a null hypothesis (NH). This value is
generally set in 0.01 (Pakyari and Balakrishnan, 2012), where the me­
dians of datasets are analyzed for determining if they present similar or
equal values (Kutner, 2005). In this regard, if p-value is lower than NH
value, the NH is rejected; therefore, it is established that the datasets
contain patterns with the capability for being associated to the phe­
nomena studied. In contrast, if p-value is higher than NH value, the NH
is accepted, indicating that the datasets present similar values and they
cannot be useful for distinguishing among the diverse conditions eval­
uated. Therefore, KWM is utilized for discovering the most convenient
patterns for evaluating the health state of the cable-stayed bridge.
2.3. Condition assessment of the bridge
Civil infrastructure is characterized by changing their physical
properties such as stiffness, damping ratio, mass, among others, when
they experience a damage. These changes can be monitored in their
dynamic response (Ruocci et al., 2014). Taking in consideration the
aforementioned affirmation, the authors have the research ideology that
the HI values obtained by all sensors located along the structure can
exhibit a similar value when the bridge has a healthy condition; on the
contrary, when the bridge has a damage condition, the HI values will
present some type of variability in their values.
Therefore, it is required to suggest a DI capable of determining the
M. Valtierra-Rodriguez et al.
healthy or damage condition of the bridge by integrating in a quanti­
tative way the variations of the HI values provided by all sensors. In this
sense, for determining if the bridge is damaged, the following new DI
based on HI values is proposed.
( ⃒)
Ns ⃒
1 ∑ ⃒HIi − std(HI)⃒
DI = 1 − ⃒ ⃒ (4)
Ns i=1 ⃒ min(HI) ⃒
where HIi indicates the HI value at the position i, min(HI) and std(HI) are
the minimum and standard deviation values of HI at all the positions,
respectively, and Ns represents the number of sensors.
It should be noted that the DI is introduced in this work to measure
the variability of HI values at all locations in order to determinate the
bridge condition. In this regard, firstly, the difference, HIi − std(HI), is
proposed because it allows evaluating the variability/dispersion of each
HI value (i.e., if a bridge in healthy or damaged, the HIs will maintain
similar or different values due to the low and high standard deviation
values, respectively). Secondly, each difference i is divided by the
minimum value of HI, min(HI), of all sensors, which allows obtaining a
value from 1 (if the obtained minimum value is similar to the difference)
to 0 (if the obtained minimum value is larger than the difference, which
occurs when the damage produces a variation in the HI values, mainly in
the zone affected). The resulting summation is divided by the number of
sensors, 1/Ns , in order to determinate a proportional variation of the HI
values, generating a value between 0 and 1. Finally, the resulting value
is subtracted from 1 in order to obtain a final DI value, where a closer
value to 0 indicates the healthy condition and a farther value to 0 in­
dicates the damage condition. To differentiate between the two condi­
tions, a threshold value has to be established. Throughout the analysis of
the existing data and the experimentation carried out, this value can be
determined. For the bridge treated in this work, a value of 0.5 is iden­
tified and discussed later in the article. This value can change according
to the in-test structure,
2.4. Damage location
Damage location is a fundamental task to apply fast and proper so­
lutions, mainly considering large structures as the case of cable-stayed
bridges. In this regard, the MLP-NN is proposed to analyze the HI
values obtained from the sensors which are located along the bridge and,
from them, recognize where the damage is. In other words, the
assumption is that the closest sensor to the damage will measure a vi­
bration signal with the strongest changes associated to the damage.
Fig. 2a shows the previous idea. That is, if the bridge is healthy (HLT), all
the sensors will capture a similar vibration signal (e.g., empty squares);
Fig. 2. (a) Damage location strategy and (b) proposed MLP-NN for damage location.
4
Developments in the Built Environment 14 (2023) 100166
on the contrary, if a damage occurs in a specific zone (i.e., a damaged
zone, DZi for i = 1, 2, 3, …, n-1, n), the closest sensor will measure the
vibration signal with the strongest changes (e.g., the blue square in
Fig. 2a for each DZi). It is important to note that in this work only the loss
of one cable is considered, i.e., there are no simultaneous losses of cables
that could generate, for example, two different blue squares in Fig. 2a. It
is also worth mentioning that the analyzed damage (i.e., the loss of a
cable) is a real damage in a real-life bridge; therefore, different damage
configurations, as the case of a laboratory experiment where simulta­
neous damages at different locations can be carried out, are not possible,
limiting the available data. Yet, the proposed strategy can be applied
under this laboratory conditions.
From Fig. 2a, it is evident that the damage location can be carried out
through a pattern recognition algorithm, i.e., an algorithm that recog­
nizes where the blue square is. In this regard, the MLP-NN is proposed by
its easy implementation and low complexity (Abiodun et al., 2019) (see
Fig. 2b). In general, the MLP-NN consists of an input layer, a hidden
layer, and an output layer, where each layer is compound of neurons. In
the proposed architecture, the quantity of input neurons is determined
by the number of available sensors, since each input corresponds to the
HI value obtained from the vibration signal measured at the sensor
location. On the other hand, the amount of output neurons is equal to the
number of inputs since each output represents the place of the damaged
zone. Thus, the damage location will be given by the activated output
neuron. If none output neuron is activated, the condition of the bridge is
healthy; however, this condition is firstly assessed by the proposed DI.
Finally, the quantity of neurons in the hidden layer is estimated by a
trial-and-error process, i.e., different amounts of neurons are tested and
the number with the best accuracy result is chosen. In order to map the
desired outputs according to the given inputs, the MLP-NN is trained by
the backpropagation algorithm. This algorithm is a supervised learning
method which minimizes the error between the desired and the calcu­
lated outputs through the adjustment of weights and bias. The output of
each neuron is given by (Abiodun et al., 2019):
∑
n
yj = wij xi + θj (5)
i=1
where y, wi, xi, and θ represents the output, i-weights, i-inputs, and bias
for the node j, respectively. The output value is also evaluated by an
activation function.
For the MLP-NN, a confusion matrix can be used to summarize its
performance according to the number of correct and incorrect pre­
dictions. The accuracy, A, precision, P, recall, R, and F1 values of the
suggested MLP-NN can be computed as follows:
M. Valtierra-Rodriguez et al.
TP + TN
A= (6)
TP + TN + FP + FN
P=
TP
(7)
TP + FP
TP
R= (8)
TP + FN
P⋅R
F1 = 2 (9)
P+R
where TP, TN, FP, and FN indicate true positives, true negatives, false
positives, and false negatives, respectively.
3. Application to the RIO Papaloapan brige
A cable-stayed bridge named the Rio Papaloapan Bridge which is
located in Veracruz, Mexico, is employed to develop and test the pro­
posed methodology. The bridge, built in 1994 and shown in Fig. 3, is
407.2 m of length and 203 m of the main span. It consists of 8 semi-harps
(represented by the word SH in Fig. 4), where each one of them has 14
cables, resulting in 112 cables in total. In order to anchor each cable on a
pylon, an upper anchoring system is employed,. It is based on a steel
plate attached to the anchoring element by welding. The shape of the
anchoring element is cylindrical on one side and flat on the welded side
as shown in Fig. 5.
During the years 2000 and 2015, the bridge suffered fractures in its
elements of anchoring, resulting in the loss of cables. For this reason, it
was instrumented with a remote monitoring system and complementary
instrumentation based on wireless accelerometers, in order to analyze its
vibratory response and structural behavior. In particular, the bridge, in
the year 2019, was monitored during a maintenance service by means of
twelve LORD MicroStrain® wireless sensors model G-Link®-LXRS®,
which are high-speed and low-cost tri-axial MEMS accelerometers with a
measurement range of ±2 g (bridge was exposed to ambient vibrations
produced by wind and random traffic). These accelerometers have an
internal temperature sensor and are suitable for remote monitoring and
vibration data acquisition of structures. Moreover, these sensors have a
sampling frequency up to 4096 Hz, allow up to 2 km of wireless range,
and have low power consumption for extended use. The gateways are
the fundamental components of the wireless sensing system since they
coordinate the wireless transmissions among a network of nodes (sen­
sors). The wireless communication protocol between nodes and gate­
ways, named LORD MicroStrain® LXRS® communication protocol,
allows lossless data throughput, ±32 μs node-to-node synchronization,
and high-speed sampling. The nodes can be easily programed and
configured for data logging by using the corresponding software (Node
Commander®). Lastly, the web-based interface called SensorCloud™
makes efficient the analysis of large amounts of data (gigabytes) from
remote networks.
The accelerometers were oriented in vertical direction for the RPB
monitoring (see Fig. 6a) and positioned in the SHs 3, 4, 5, and 6, which
are indicated by blue circles in Fig. 6b. In this regard, the bridge was
firstly monitored during a time window of 1800 s with 64 Hz of sampling
frequency (this range allows measuring the relevant information of the
Fig. 3. Analyzed cable-stayed bridge.
5
Developments in the Built Environment 14 (2023) 100166
studied bridge (Yañez-Borjas et al., 2021)), producing 115,200 samples
by each sensor for generating its health condition. On the other hand,
the cable No. 6 from SH 3 was removed in order to generate a damage
condition as shown in Fig. 7, where the red line indicates the cable
removed. In order to maintain the consistence between both conditions,
the bridge was monitored during 30 min with the same sampling fre­
quency. For both conditions, only a dataset is obtained by each scenario
of bridge; therefore, the monitored vibratory response is segmented in
time windows of 1 min each one, allowing obtaining somehow 30 tests
for each condition.
4. Results
Following the flowchart steps of the proposed methodology, the
accelerations acquired by both conditions of the bridge, healthy and
cable loss, are evaluated through the HI method. Fig. 8 shows the
vibrational responses acquired by the twelve wireless accelerometers
when the RPB condition is healthy and damaged (cable loss). Based on
this figure, it should be pointed out that substantial alterations or vari­
ations between both conditions are not visually identified because the
vibrational responses of a civil structure are nonstationary and
nonlinear, restricting a direct and reliable recognition of features or
patterns with the potential of evaluating the structure condition
adequately. Therefore, this study offers a new computer-aided assess­
ment methodology for identifying features or patterns with the ability of
estimating/evaluating the health state of the cable-stayed bridge.
It is important to mention that HI requires a time-invariant integer j
(a distance of separation between two data points of the analyzed signal)
for estimating the complexity or uniformity of the vibration signal
correctly. This value can change according to the application. To select
this value, j is varied from 1 to 10 (this range is investigated since it
allows capturing/identifying suitable patterns into the analyzed signal
(Lizarraga-Morales et al., 2017)), resulting that the j = 7 value presents
the best results. It is worth mentioning that this task is performed by
means of KMW, which allows estimating the data distribution of HI
values as well as its p-value for determining the most discriminant
patterns. Fig. 9 illustrates the data distribution of the estimated HI
values for diverse values of j, where it is possible to appreciate that the
HI values obtained by the twelve sensors for both conditions, respec­
tively, are joined in order to identify the most reliable j value for
assessing the bridge condition, i.e., for separating the two conditions.
According to this figure, it is possible to observe that the j = 7 presents a
larger separation or variation and lesser overlap between both condi­
tions than other values of j, which is also confirmed by the lowest
p-value (value estimated by KWM) of 7.4 × 10− 47, which indicates that
this j value is the most reliable value for analyzing the vibration signals
with the aim of identifying the bridge condition.
Despite that the j value of 7 can be useful for estimating the health
condition of the cable-stayed bridge, an overlap between both condi­
tions is obtained; hence, a new DI denoted by Eq. (4) is formulated/
generated in order to get maximum discrimination between both con­
ditions of the bridge. Fig. 10 illustrates the results obtained by applying
the proposed DI. Based on this figure, it can be observed that the new DI
allows a more distinct separation between two classes, healthy (HLT)
and damaged (cable loss - DMG). In particular, when the bridge is
healthy, the DI value is less than 0.5. This value is selected as the
threshold value to separate both classes as shown in Fig. 10 through a
red line. The obtained results indicate that HI values of the measured
vibration signals exhibit a close range for the HLT condition; on the
contrary, if the bridge is damaged (cable loss) the HI values decrease and
the estimated DI values become larger than the threshold. Table 1 pre­
sents the confusion matrix obtained for the established threshold ac­
cording to an if-else rule, where it is possible to observe that 93.33% of
accuracy for determining the bridge condition is obtained (28 tests for
each condition are correctly detected). If a damage scenario is deter­
mined, the stage corresponding to the damage location is carried out as
M. Valtierra-Rodriguez et al. Developments in the Built Environment 14 (2023) 100166

Fig. 4. Rio Papaloapan Bridge layout for general dimensions and identification of semi-harps.

Fig. 5. (a) General design of cables’ anchoring system and (b) its assembly before installation.

Fig. 6. (a) Mounted wireless sensor on the RPB and (b) location of accelerometers (accelerometers: S1, S2, …, S12) employed for monitoring the vibration responses
of the bridge.

Fig. 7. Removed cable (red line) to create the condition of damaged bridge, (a) real condition and (b) schematic. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this
figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

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M. Valtierra-Rodriguez et al. Developments in the Built Environment 14 (2023) 100166

Fig. 8. Vibrational responses acquired by twelve wireless accelerometers for (a) healthy bridge and (b) damaged bridge (cable loss).

mentioned in section 2.4.
In order to have a trained MLP-NN and due to the limited data,
synthetic data are generated from the real data distribution depicted in
Fig. 11, i.e., random HI values that satisfy the boxplot for each sensor are
generated for both HLT condition and DMG condition, where is observed
that the HI values decrease with a bigger change in sensor 5, which is
expected since it corresponds with the damage location. It is worth
noting that the data presented in Fig. 11 are an ungrouped version of
data presented in Fig. 9d. For synthetic damage condition data, two
steps, i.e., generation of random HI values and circular shifting, are

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M. Valtierra-Rodriguez et al. Developments in the Built Environment 14 (2023) 100166

Fig. 9. HI values estimated by a j-value of (a) 1, (b) 3, (c) 7, and (d) 10.

values. For the validation of both the HLT condition and the DMG
condition in sensor 5, the 30 real HI values for each condition are used
(see the dataset presented in Fig. 12).
Once the dataset is built, the following MLP-NN architecture is
proposed: 12 input neurons (i.e., 12 HI values obtained from the vi­
bration signals measured by the 12 sensors), 50 hidden neurons, and 12
output neurons (i.e., one neuron for each possible damage location). The
quantity of neurons in the hidden layer is obtained by a process of trial-
and-error, where the goal is to obtain the best accuracy. In all the neu­
rons, the sigmoid symmetric function is utilized as activation function.
As previously mentioned, the training is carried out with the 70% of the
available data (i.e., 910 HI values) and a k-fold cross validation of 10.
The validation results are shown in Table 2 as a confusion matrix. In
quantitative terms, the metrics for DZ5 (i.e., damage location) are: 1 of
accuracy, 1 of precision, 1 of recall, and 1 of F1-score, i.e., perfect
metrics. These high metrics demonstrate the effectiveness of the pro­
posal. It is worth noting that the MLP-NN has a perfect score for damage
location, but its global effectiveness is determined for the damage
detection stage, i.e., if the damage scenario is not detected, the stage of
Fig. 10. Distribution of DI values estimated according to the HI values using j
damage location will not be carried out; therefore, the 28 tests detected
= 7 for evaluating the bridge condition.
with damage (93.33% of accuracy according to Table 1) present 100% of
accuracy to locate the damage on the bridge since in all the cases its
Table 1 location is correctly determined.
Results obtained by evaluating the bridge condition (confusion matrix).
Healthy Damaged Accuracy 4.1. Discussion
Healthy 28 2 93.33%
Damaged 2 28 93.33% In the literature, different works related to detection and location of
damage in bridges have been proposed. Table 3 summaries the main
features of similar works and the proposal. As can be observed, all the
carried out in order to represent the scenarios where the cable loss ap­
works presented carry out the detection and location of a damage con­
pears in other location; thus, the structure of the dataset presented in
dition; however, in some of them, i.e., (Ni et al., 2008; An et al., 2016;
Fig. 2a is obtained. 100 HI values for each condition (i.e., DZ1, DZ2, DZ3,
Tan et al., 2022), the accuracy is not reported or analyzed, which can
DZ4, DZ5, DZ6, DZ7, DZ8, DZ9, DZ10, DZ11 DZ12) are synthetically
compromise negatively their reliability. Although a strict comparison in
generated for training (70%) and validation (30%), resulting in 1200
terms of accuracy cannot be carried out because the conditions are

8
M. Valtierra-Rodriguez et al. Developments in the Built Environment 14 (2023) 100166

Fig. 11. Real data distribution for the HI values.

degraded under the scenarios previously mentioned since its accuracy

for both detection and location of damage depends strongly on the
number and position of the accelerometers. A small number of accel­
erometers reduces both the capability of sensing vibrations associated to
the damage throughout the bridge and the resolution to locate the
damage, mainly considering, for instance, a bridge of 407.2 m of length
as the one analyzed in this work.
It is evident that real experimentation is fundamental to validate and
improve structural health monitoring schemes; however, the analysis of
real-life bridges under healthy and damaged conditions is not an easy
task in terms of human, infrastructure, and economical resources. In this
regard, the development and application of FEM-based models have to
Fig. 12. Dataset for training and validation.
be explored as in (Ni et al., 2008)- (Quintana-Rodriguez et al., 2014) in
order to study and generalize the methodology in other structure
totally different, it is important to note that the highest value, i.e.,
conditions.
97.00%, is presented in (Meng et al., 2018), whereas the proposal and
(Quintana-Rodriguez et al., 2014) provide 93.33% and 90.00% of
5. Conclusions
effectiveness, respectively, where the primary advantage of the proposal
is that none domain transformation is required, i.e., the HI is computed
A novel approach based on the homogeneity method to detect and
in time domain, implying a lower computational cost. This fact is
locate lost cables in a cable-stayed bridge subjected to dynamic excita­
fundamental for this work since in future research the goal is to integrate
tions (ambient vibrations) is introduced in this article. In particular, the
to the accelerometers the low-cost hardware solution for implementing
proposal analyses/examines the bridge vibrational responses through
the in-situ HI estimation before the wireless transmission, thus reducing
the HI in order to characterize vibrational changes with the capability of
transmission and storage costs. In addition, the proposal has the
evaluating the structural condition of the bridge, where the KWM is
advantage of locating the damage by means of a conventional and
utilized to encounter which HI j-value calculated for all sensors gener­
low-complex MLP-NN in an automatic way, making possible the com­
ates the most useful information to evaluate the bridge state. The
plete methodology implementation in a future hardware solution based
selected HI j-value is employed to develop a new DI which considers the
on a low-end processor.
HI values obtained by all sensors for establishing, in an automatic way,
Although promising experimental results have been obtained for this
the bridge state. Likewise, the MLP-NN is utilized for determining which
particular scenario, further experimental and analytic research has to be
zone presents the damage. For defining the effectiveness of the proposal,
explored. Regarding experimental research, study cases that consider
the vibrational responses obtained experimentally from the RPB located
scenarios where i) the location of an accelerometer does not coincide or
in Veracruz, Mexico, are studied. The results prove that HI coupled with
is far away from the damage location, ii) the cable is not completely
the new DI is efficient to determine the bridge condition (damage
removed (i.e., stiffness reduction of the cable), and iii) there is more than
detection) because 93.33% of accuracy is reached, where if a bridge a
one cable removed, are necessary to improve the robustness of the
damage condition is determined, its location is defined with 100% of
proposal. At this moment, the performance of the proposal will be
accuracy, i.e., all detected damage conditions are correctly located on

Table 2
Confusion matrix for damage location.
True class

Predicted class DZ1 DZ2 DZ3 DZ4 DZ5 DZ6 DZ7 DZ8 DZ9 DZ10 DZ11 DZ12
DZ1 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
DZ2 0 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
DZ3 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
DZ4 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
DZ5 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
DZ6 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 0 0
DZ7 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 0
DZ8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0
DZ9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0
DZ10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0
DZ11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0
DZ12 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28

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M. Valtierra-Rodriguez et al. Developments in the Built Environment 14 (2023) 100166

Table 3 with or is far from the damage location, 2) the cable is gradually losing
Features of the proposed method and other works for structural monitoring of its stiffness, rather than being entirely removed, 3) multiple cables have
bridges. been removed, and 4) other kind of damages are present. These studies
Work Proposed methodology Structure Accuracy will allow for a better understanding of the proposed methodology’s
condition (%) efficacy under different conditions, especially when the availability of
Ni et al., (Ni et al., 2008) * FEM is utilized to Detection/ Not experimental research is limited.
obtain the bridge modal Location reported
flexibility matrices.
Declaration of competing interest
* Changes in the
flexibility are
considered to define the The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
damage condition and interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
its location. the work reported in this paper.
Quintana-Rodriguez * FEM is used to obtain Detection/ 90.00
et al., ( the bridge model. Location
Quintana-Rodriguez * The dynamic response Data availability
et al., 2014) is experimentally
acquired. Data will be made available on request.
* Function minimization
to determine structural
changes between the Acknowledgments
experimental and FEM
data. This work was supported by the “Facultad de Ingeniería-Problemas
An et al., (An et al., * Frequency variation is Detection/ Not Nacionales 2021 No. project 202112” and the National Council of Sci­
2016) used as damage Location reported
ence and Technology (CONACYT - Mexico) through the project 34/2018
indicator to assess the
cable condition. of the Program “Investigadoras e Investigadores por México” del CON­
* A strategy based on the ACYT (Cátedras CONACYT).
implementation of a
steel bar to amplify the
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