Integration of Wavelet Denoising and HHT Applied to the Analysis of Bridge Dynamic Characteristics

Abstract

When the dynamic characteristics of a bridge structure are analyzed though Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT), the noise contained in the bridge dynamic monitoring data may seriously affect the performance of the first natural frequency identification. A time-frequency analysis method that integrates wavelet threshold denoising and HHT is proposed to overcome this deficiency. The denoising effect of the experimental analysis on the simulated noisy signals proves the effectiveness of the proposed method. This method is used to perform denoising pre-processing on the dynamic monitoring data of Sutong Bridge, and the denoised results of different methods are compared and analyzed. Then, the best denoising data are selected as the input data of Hilbert spectrum analysis to identify the structural first natural frequency of the bridge. The results indicate that the wavelet-empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method effectively reduces the interference of random noise and eliminates useless intrinsic modal function (IMF) components, and the excellent properties of the signal evaluation index after denoising make the method suitable for processing non-stationary signals with noise. When Hilbert spectrum analysis is applied to the denoised data, the first natural frequency of the bridge structure can be identified clearly and is consistent with the theoretical calculation. The proposed method can effectively determine the natural vibration characteristics of the bridge structure.

Keywords

• Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT)
• empirical mode decomposition (EMD)
• wavelet threshold denoising
• dynamic characteristic
• first natural frequency