System Identification Applied to Dam Safety and Integrity

The problem of damage assessment in dam structures is addressed: the aim is to employ a system identification technique (Kalman Filter) and determine unknown elastic constants, whose values can be related to the current structural conditions and can be interpreted as ‘indicators’ of degradation phenomena. Namely, the final objective is the estimate of pairs of parameters (bulk modulus and shear modulus) in critical zones, where material properties might be affected by damage processes: the use of both moduli is justified by the fact that structural damage is often due to the combined action of isotropic and deviatoric stress components, as explained by various theoretical models. After giving some basic information about the proposed method, we briefly discuss numerical simulations, which show that the Kalman Filter can be conveniently exploited to detect areas where damage has occurred and/or is spreading and/or is likely to be present.