Web-Based Imaging Tech Revolutionizes Structural Health Assessment

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico

Understanding how cars, planes, bridges, and other structures handle vibrations and dynamic loads can be critical to their design and performance. Researchers have developed a new way to measure the response of civil, mechanical, and aerospace structures to dynamic loads and analyze their structural health.

Researchers adjust the video camera used in ViDeoMAgic to measure and assess the response of structures to dynamic loads.

Video-Based Dynamic Measurement & Analysis (ViDeoMAgic) technology takes a video of a vibrating structure and extracts high-spatial-resolution (pixel-level) structural vibration/dynamics information such as displacement time histories, natural frequencies, damping ratios, and mode shapes.

Unsupervised machine learning algorithms then analyze those dynamic responses and extract the structure’s dynamics properties (resonant frequencies, damping, and mode shapes) from the video data. The data then can be used to assess the system’s health (with respect to damage and defects).

This technology’s high-fidelity, in situ damage detection of civil, mechanical, and aerospace structures enables identification and remedy of incipient damage before it becomes critical and leads to costly repairs, delays, and even deaths.

For more information, contact Nancy Ambrosiano at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; 505-667-0471.