TY - JOUR A1 - Wiehle, Philipp A1 - Härder, Michelle A1 - Strangfeld, Christoph T1 - Quantification of moisture content in earth block masonry under natural climatic conditions N2 - The aim of this study is to accurately predict the moisture content in earth block masonry exposed to natural climatic conditions, which is a key factor in assessing its load-bearing capacity. Nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometry and humidity sensor measurements were carried out to quantify the moisture content. In addition, a customised test setup was developed to determine the capillary water absorption of earth blocks. This approach takes into account the deceleration of water absorption due to the swelling of clay minerals and organic additives, which leads to realistic transport coefficients in the hygroscopic range. This allows the moisture content of earth block masonry to be predicted accurately. With regard to the moisture behaviour of typical exterior wall constructions in living spaces, it was found that the equilibrium moisture content in earth block masonry is always lower than 65 % relative humidity, which corresponds to the permissible limit of the recently published German design standard for load-bearing earth block masonry. KW - Earth block masonry KW - NMR relaxometry KW - Hygrothermal simulation KW - Load-bearing capacity KW - Moisture content KW - Embedded humidity sensors PY - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-623518 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2024.139513 VL - 459 SP - 1 EP - 10 PB - Elsevier Ltd. AN - OPUS4-62351 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Baeßler, Matthias A1 - Simon, Patrick ED - Cunha, Álvaro ED - Caetano, Elsa T1 - Review of Ballasted Track Destabilization on Shake Table Tests N2 - Shake table tests have been used for a long time to understand the densification and fluidization of granular materials. While purely vertical shaking is quite unlikely to be found in vibration analysis when it comes to granular materials as soils, it has been found that the vertical vibration of railway bridge support structures can affect the fabric of the ballasted track on top. Starting from the experience at French railway lines with destabilizing track conditions on short bridges in high speed lines in the 1990s, various shake table test configurations have been used to investigate the destabiliza-tion of ballast at high acceleration levels. This article describes the effects of the variously investigated dynamic excitations of railway bridges on the bal-lasted track itself. T2 - 11th International Conference on Experimental Vibration Analysis for Civil Engineering Structures (EVACES 2025) CY - Porto, Portugal DA - 02.07.2025 KW - Infrastructure KW - Ballasted track KW - Ballast KW - Railway bridge dynamics PY - 2025 SN - 978-3-031-96105-2 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-96106-9_62 SP - 595 EP - 604 PB - Springer CY - Cham AN - OPUS4-64265 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Auersch, Lutz T1 - Characteristic Frequencies of Train-Induced Bridge, Track, Ground and Building Vibrations – Excitation and Mitigation N2 - The characteristic frequencies of train-induced vibrations are discussed in theory and experiment following the propagation of vibrations from the source to the receiver: 1. Out-of-roundness frequencies of the wheels, 2. sleeper-passage frequency, 3. the vehicle-track eigenfrequency, 4. band frequency of the impulses of the passing static axle loads, 5. car-length frequency and multiples, 6. axle-distance frequencies with two characteristic zeros, 7. bridge eigenfrequencies, 8. the cut-on frequency due to the layering, and 9. the cut-off frequency due to the material damping of the soil, 10. the building-soil eigenfrequency, 11. as a rigid building or flexible wall/column mode, 12. floor eigenfrequencies, 13. acoustic room resonances, 14. the „resonance“ frequency or cut-off frequency of a base isolation. Coincidences of some of these characteristic frequencies or frequency ranges can be typically problematic and mitigation measures at the track or at the building can be necessary. The bridge response to the passing static loads is deter¬mined by the axle-sequence spectrum, the eigenfrequency (transfer function) of the bridge, and the modal force or mode shape spectrum. The ground vibration has typically high frequencies for a stiff soil and low frequencies for a soft soil. The high amplitudes between the zeros of the axle-sequence spectrum are often measured in the ground vibrations, and they can be mitigated by soft support elements or a higher bending stiffness of the track. T2 - EVACES 2025 CY - Porto, Portugal DA - 02.07.2025 KW - Train-induced vibration KW - Vehicle excitation KW - Track response KW - Bridge resonance KW - Ground vibration KW - Soil-building transfer KW - Floor resonance KW - Axle-sequence spectrum KW - Vehicle-track eigenfrequency KW - Axle impulses PY - 2025 SN - 978-3-031-96113-7 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-96106-9_77 VL - 2025 SP - 1 EP - 8 PB - Springer CY - Cham, Schweiz AN - OPUS4-63655 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Simon, Patrick A1 - Baeßler, Matthias ED - Cunha, Álvaro ED - Caetano, Elsa T1 - On the reassessment of bridge superstructure vibrations for high-speed traffic N2 - The acceleration thresholds of bridge superstructures remain critical for designing and reassessing railway bridges on high-speed lines, with ballasted track systems historically limited to 3.5 m/s2 vertical accelerations due to destabilization risks. As part of the European InBridge4EU project, this study addresses methodological uncertainties in linking vertical bridge vibrations to lateral track creep—a key focus area for modernizing assessment protocols. A comparative analysis of two acceleration postprocessing methods (peak identification vs. fatigue-derived rainflow counting) as part of a recently proposed framework was conducted using an example bridge and train combination. Results demonstrate that rainflow counting yields more conservative creep estimates with the bulk of cumulative vibration-induced creep attributable to accelerations exceeding 3 m/s2. However, discretizing acceleration ranges into 1 m/s2 bins introduced significant errors compared to continuous cycle data, highlighting sensitivity to analysis parameters. These findings underscore the complexity of reconciling laboratory-derived harmonic vibration models with real-world bridge dynamics, where non-uniform acceleration patterns dominate. The research directly informs ongoing efforts to refine standardized criteria for ballasted track stability, particularly through the InBridge4EU project’s systematic re-evaluation of vibration limits and their engineering implications. By quantifying discrepancies between computational approaches, this work advances the development of robust protocols for predicting track degradation under high-speed operational loads. T2 - 11th International Conference on Experimental Vibration Analysis for Civil Enginering Structures (EVACES 2025) CY - Porto, Portugal DA - 02.07.2025 KW - Infrastructure KW - Railway bridges KW - Ballast destabilization KW - Acceleration limit KW - Ballasted track KW - Rainflow counting PY - 2025 SN - 978-3-031-96105-2 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-96106-9_53 VL - 675 SP - 506 EP - 515 PB - Springer CY - Cham AN - OPUS4-64267 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Liao, Chun-Man A1 - Bernauer, F. A1 - Niederleithinger, Ernst A1 - Igel, H. A1 - Hadziioannou, C. T1 - Assessment of prestress loss in a large-scale concrete bridge model under outdoor condition N2 - Environmental conditions affect the accuracy of field measurements used to monitor civil structures. Previous studies have shown that measured dynamic responses often lack the sensitivity needed for effective localized damage detection. To address this issue, our study focuses on distinguishing environmental effects from damage related effects in measured data to enhance vibration-based damage identification methods. Experimentally, the problem of prestress loss in a prestressed concrete bridge model was examined. By adjusting the pre-stressing force in a large-scale concrete bridge model, cracking phenomena were observed. To demonstrate field monitoring of a large-scale prestressed structure, noise recording was performed and the measurement data was analyzed with operational modal analysis. Additionally, ultrasonic testing, known for its high sensitivity in damage localization, was used to cross-check the structural damage. Seismic and coda wave interferometry were also employed to estimate wave velocities, providing insights into the level of prestress loss and temperature sensitivity. Ultimately, these measurable wave properties help to overcome the uncertainties associated with traditional vibration-based damage detection methods. T2 - EVACES 2025 CY - Porto, Portugal DA - 02.07.2025 KW - Prestress Loss KW - NDT KW - Ambient Vibration KW - Ultrasonic Testing KW - Coda Wave Interferometry KW - Seismic Interferometry PY - 2025 SN - 978-3-031-96105-2 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-96106-9_20 VL - 675 SP - 181 EP - 189 PB - Springer Nature CY - Cham AN - OPUS4-64212 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Baier, Johanna T1 - Down to Earth - Stampflehm N2 - Der Vortrag „Stampflehm“ gibt einen kurzen Überblick zur stofflichen Zusammensetzung von Stampflehm sowie zu verschiedenen Fertigungstechniken im Stampflehmbau. Es werden wichtige konstruktive Details erläutert und Hinweise bezüglich der Ausführung von Stampflehmwänden gegeben. Darüber hinaus wird das aktuell gültige Bemessungskonzept vorgestellt und dessen Schwachstellen aufgezeigt. Im Anschluss erfolgt eine Gegenüberstellung von Stampflehm mit verschiedenen Massivbauweisen hinsichtlich Tragfähigkeit, Schall- und Brandschutz sowie der Ökobilanz. Abschließend wird von aktuell laufenden Forschungsvorhaben im Bereich des Stampflehmbaus berichtet. T2 - Down to Earth - digitale Ringvorlesung CY - Online meeting DA - 10.12.2025 KW - Stampflehm PY - 2025 AN - OPUS4-65093 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Auersch, Lutz T1 - Reduction of ground-induced building vibrations by kinematic and inertial soil-structure interac-tion and by base isolation N2 - Many buildings on the soil have been measured and the transfer function freefield-to-building is ana-lysed. In general, an amplification at low frequencies, an amplification for the floor resonances, and a reduction for higher frequencies can be observed. Most of the measurement examples show a flexible behaviour along the height of the buildings. The prediction of building vibration consists typically of three steps. At first, the dynamic stiffness of the foundation and secondly the kinematic soil-structure interaction has to be calculated for example by the combined finite-element boundary-element meth-od. The stiffness of the foundation reduces the incoming waves (the kinematic interaction). Finally, the inertial interaction of the building with the foundation soil is calculated by the conventional finite ele-ment method where the dynamic foundation stiffness from the first step is added at the bottom of the building. The building on the compliant soil has a fundamental vertical resonance usually below 10 Hz. A parametrical variation clearly shows the influence of the elasticity of the building on this reso-nance frequency and amplitude. Moreover for column-type office buildings, the low-frequency floor resonances can further reduce this fundamental frequency. A 1-dimensional model has been estab-lished which can well approximate the behaviour of the 3-dimensional building models. It is used to demonstrate the effect of a base isolation with soft elements at the foundation. A rigid building model clearly over-estimates the isolation effect, which is smaller for a model with flexible walls, columns and floors. An even simpler model of an infinitely high building is suggested for the mitigation effect, and the resonance frequency of the rigid building should be replaced by a better performance indica-tor, which is based on the impedance ratio of the isolation and the wall and which can be also ex-pressed as a characteristic frequency. T2 - 30th International Congress on Sound and Vibration CY - Amsterdam, Netherlands DA - 08.07.2024 KW - Building vibrations KW - Base isolation KW - Foundation stiffness KW - Kinematic soil-structure interaction KW - Transfer functions of flexible buildings PY - 2024 SN - 978-90-90-39058-1 SN - 2329-3675 SP - 1 EP - 8 AN - OPUS4-61245 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kang, Chongjie A1 - Arcones, Daniel Andrés A1 - Becks, Henrik A1 - Beetz, Jakob A1 - Blankenbach, Jörg A1 - Claßen, Martin A1 - Degener, Sebastian A1 - Eisermann, Cedric A1 - Göbels, Anne A1 - Hegger, Josef A1 - Hermann, Ralf A1 - Kähler, Philipp A1 - Peralta, Patricia A1 - Petryna, Yuri A1 - Schnellenbach‐Held, Martina A1 - Schulz, Oliver A1 - Smarsly, Kay A1 - Fatih Sönmez, Mehmet A1 - Sprenger, Bjarne A1 - Unger, Jörg F. A1 - Vassilev, Hristo A1 - Weiser, Martin A1 - Marx, Steffen T1 - Intelligente digitale Methoden zur Verlängerung der Nutzungsdauer der Nibelungenbrücke N2 - Um die Lebensdauer von Bauwerken unter Wahrung derer Standsicherheit und Funktionsfähigkeit zu verlängern, bedarf es effektiver Monitorings‐ sowie Instandhaltungskonzepte. Im Rahmen des von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) geförderten Schwerpunktprogramms 2388 „Hundert plus – Verlängerung der Lebensdauer komplexer Baustrukturen durch intelligente Digitalisierung“ (kurz: SPP 100+) werden hierfür innovative, interdisziplinäre Methoden entwickelt und an der Nibelungenbrücke in Worms (NBW) validiert. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt einige dieser neuentwickelten digitalen Methoden vor. Unter anderem umfasst dies zwei Systeme des Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) und deren zielorientierte Verknüpfung von mehreren Beschleunigungsmessdaten zur umfassenden Zustandsbewertung. Ergänzend werden innovative datenbasierte Simulationsmethoden zur Bestimmung des Temperaturfelds des Brückenüberbaus vorgestellt sowie mehrere Finite‐Elemente‐Modelle unterschiedlicher Detailtiefe präsentiert und miteinander verglichen. Abschließend werden innovative Methoden zum Verwalten des Bestandswissens von Brückenbauwerken diskutiert. Die Methoden wurden überwiegend unabhängig voneinander entwickelt und an der NBW validiert. Im nächsten Schritt werden die Methoden integriert, um die Instandhaltung der NBW zu unterstützen. KW - Nibelungenbrücke Worms KW - Digitaler Zwilling KW - Prädiktive Instandhaltung KW - Bauwerksmonitoring KW - Nachrechnung KW - Verkehrsinfrastruktur KW - FE-Modell PY - 2025 DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/best.70070 SN - 0005-9900 VL - 121. Jahrgang 2026 SP - 1 EP - 18 PB - Ernst & Sohn a Wiley Brand CY - Wien, Austria AN - OPUS4-65288 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - THES A1 - Schneider, Ronald T1 - Time-variant reliability of deteriorating structural systems conditional on inspection and monitoring data N2 - The current practice of operating and maintaining deteriorating structural systems ensures acceptable levels of structural reliability, but it is not clear how efficient it is. Changing the current prescriptive approach to a risk-based approach has great potential to enable a more efficient management of such systems. Risk-based optimization of operation and maintenance strategies identifies the strategy that optimally balances the cost for controlling deterioration in a structural system with the achieved risk reduction. Inspections and monitoring are essential parts of operation and maintenance strategies. They are typically performed to reduce the uncertainty in the structural condition and inform decisions on future operation and maintenance actions. In risk-based optimization of operation and maintenance strategies, Bayesian updating is used to include information contained in inspection and monitoring data in the prediction of the structural reliability. All computations need to be repeated many times for different potential inspection and monitoring outcomes. This motivates the development of robust and efficient approaches to this computationally challenging task. The reliability of deteriorating structural systems is time-variant because the loads on them and their capacities change with time. In most practical applications, the reliability analysis of deteriorating structural systems can be approached by dividing their lifetime into discrete time intervals. The time-variant reliability problem can then be represented by a series of time-invariant reliability problems. Using this methodology as a starting point, this thesis proposes a novel approach to compute the time-variant reliability of deteriorating structural systems for which inspection and monitoring data are available. The problem is formulated in a nested way in which the prediction of the structural condition is separated from the computation of the structural reliability conditional on the structural condition. Information on the structural condition provided by inspections and monitoring is included in the reliability assessment through Bayesian updating of the system deterioration model employed to predict the structural condition. The updated system reliability is obtained by coupling the updated deterioration model with a probabilistic structural model utilized to calculate the failure probability conditional on the structural condition. This approach is the first main outcome of this thesis and termed nested reliability analysis (NRA) approach. It is demonstrated in two numerical examples considering inspected and monitored steel structures subject to high-cycle fatigue. An alternative – recently developed – approach, which also follows the strategy of discretizing time, describes deteriorating structural systems with hierarchical dynamic Bayesian networks (DBN). DBN combined with approximate or exact inference algorithms also enable the computation of the time-variant reliability of deteriorating structural systems conditional on information provided by inspection and monitoring data. In this thesis – as a proof of concept – a software prototype is developed based on the DBN approach, which can be used to assess the reliability of a corroding concrete box girder for which half-cell potential measurements are available. This is the second main outcome of this thesis. Both approaches presented in this thesis enable an integral reliability analysis of inspected and monitored structures that accounts for system effects arising from (a) the correlation among deterioration states of different structural elements, (b) the interaction between element deterioration and system failure, and (c) the indirect information gained on the condition of all unobserved structural elements from inspecting or monitoring the condition of some structural elements. Thus, both approaches enable a systemwide risk-based optimization of operation and maintenance strategies for deteriorating structural systems. The NRA approach can be implemented relatively easily with subset simulation, which is a sequential Monte Carlo method suitable for estimating rare event probabilities. Subset simulation is robust and considerably more efficient than crude Monte Carlo simulation. It is, however, still sampling-based and its efficiency is thus a function of the number of inspection and monitoring outcomes, as well as the value of the simulated event probabilities. The current implementation of the NRA approach performs separate subset simulation runs to estimate the reliability at different points in time. The efficiency of the NRA approach with subset simulation can be significantly improved by exploiting the fact that failure events in different years are nested. The lifetime reliability of deteriorating structural systems can thus be computed in reverse chronological order in a single subset simulation run. The implementation of the DBN approach is much more demanding than the implementation of the NRA approach but it has two main advantages. Firstly, the graphical format of the DBN facilitates the presentation of the model and the underlying assumptions to stakeholders who are not experts in reliability analysis. Secondly, it can be combined with exact inference algorithms. In this case, its efficiency neither depends on the number of inspection and monitoring outcomes, nor on the value of the event probabilities to be calculated. However, in contrast to the NRA approach with subset simulation, the DBN approach with exact inference imposes restrictions on the number of random variables and the dependence structure that can be implemented in the model. T3 - BAM Dissertationsreihe - 168 KW - Reliability KW - Structural systems KW - Deterioration KW - Bayesian analysis KW - Inspection KW - Monitoring KW - Zuverlässigkeit KW - Tragstrukturen KW - Schädigungsprozesse KW - Bayes'sche Analyse KW - Inspektion KW - Monitoring PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-512977 SN - 1613-4249 VL - 168 SP - 1 EP - 188 PB - Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) CY - Berlin AN - OPUS4-51297 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Strangfeld, Christoph A1 - Wiehle, Philipp T1 - Closure of "Quantification of moisture content in earth block masonry under natural climatic conditions" N2 - In January 2025, the research paper “Quantification of moisture content in earth block masonry under natural climatic conditions” was published in Construction and Building Materials. The central theme was the moisture monitoring of a masonry wall made of unstabilised earth blocks over a period of around 18 months. The experimental results were compared to WUFI simulations, and the moisture transport in layered wall constructions was eventually studied in WUFI. Prof. Janssen discussed this publication in Construction and Building Materials. He raised concerns about the experiments and modelling of moisture transport. In this closure, the capillary adsorption coefficient was recalculated, and deviations from the initial value were quantified. Sensitivity analyses were conducted in WUFI to evaluate the influence of different water vapour resistances and water adsorption coefficients. The resulting moisture transport was then compared to material moisture profiles measured using 1H NMR relaxometry. Finally, the water adsorption behaviour of different earth materials is discussed in respect to material moisture and corresponding relative humidity. KW - Earth masonry KW - Moisture transport KW - Capillary water absorption KW - Embedded humidity sensors KW - NMR KW - WUFI KW - Material moisture KW - Water vapour diffusion resistance KW - Sustainable building materials PY - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-637569 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2025.142552 SN - 0950-0618 VL - 491 SP - 1 EP - 6 PB - Elsevier Ltd. AN - OPUS4-63756 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -