Structural Dynamics

13th of February, Bartosz Siedziako defended his PhD thesis entitled "Modelling of the self-excited forces for bridge decks subjected to random motions: an experimental study". The trial lecture had the following prescribed subject: "Cable vibrations in cable supported bridges". 

A video of the wind tunnel rig made by Bartek for his PhD work can be found on YouTube. 

Opponents were Professor Alberto Zasso from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and Dr.ing. Ketil Aas-Jakobsen from Aas-Jakobsen AS. Associate Professor Ole Øiseth was the main supervisor.

The group wish Bartek the best of luck on his new job as a structural engineer at Norconsult in Trondheim. 

From the 12th to 15th of February, members of the Structural Dynamics group attended the 36th International Modal Analysis Conference (IMAC XXXVI) in Orlando, USA. The conference was hosted by the Society for Experimental Mechanics. 

Professor Anders Rønnquist was chair for one session in dynamics of civil structures. Rønnquist, Post docs Petter Nåvik and Knut A. Kvåle and PhD candidate Stefano Derosa all presented their papers at the conference. The conference was very interesting, and the group plan on attending the upcoming IMAC in Fenruary 2019. 

Tuesday August 15^th, members of the Dynamic Group went on a field trip to Fokstua, on the Trondheim – Oslo railway line, to mount, with the support of Bane NOR and Jernbanedirektoratet, a wireless monitoring system for railway catenaries. This system, recently developed in collaboration between NTNU and Elektromotus, will help in investigating the dynamics of railway catenary systems and the pantograph-catenary interaction, with the objective of an increased knowledge about the system. This will lead to a better utilization of existing infrastructure, and will help in the development of new ones.

From Monday 21^st to Tuesday 22^nd of November, members of the Dynamic Group went on a field trip to Vålåsjø, on the Trondheim – Oslo railway line, to collaborate with Bane NOR and Jernbanedirektoratet on mounting a monitoring system  on one of the catenary poles, and a weather station for wind measurement. Aim of the study is to correlate the dynamic behaviour of the catenary infrastructure with the environmental excitation due to wind itself. The measuring system for pole monitoring is composed by the National Instrument CompactRIO platform that collects data from the Dytran Instruments piezoelectric accelerometers mounted in different locations along the pole height.

In August, the first measurements were performed at the Hell Bridge Test Arena by the PhD candidates Bjørn Thomas Svendsen and Gunnstein Frøseth including Professor Anders Rønnquist. These are the first in a series of measurements with the main objective of detecting damage to improve inspection of bridges.

The Hell Bridge Test Arena is a full-scale laboratory where an old railway bridge is moved to new foundations on land. The bridge serves as a test arena for research and development related to structural health monitoring (SHM), detecting structural damage, performing inspection and estimating remaining service life of bridges.

15th of December, Knut Andreas Kvåle defended his PhD thesis entitled "Dynamic behaviour of floating bridges exposed to wave excitation: A numerical and experimental investigation". The trial lecture had the following prescribed subject: "Strength assessment of end anchored floating bridges". 

Opponents were Associate Professor Elsa Cateano, University of Porto (Portugal) and Chief Engineer Bernt Jakobsen from the Norwegian public roads administation. 

The Structural Dynamics group is pleased that Knut Andreas will continue his good work in a 50% post doctoral position at NTNU, in addition to his work at the civil engineering consultant Aas-Jakobsen.