Statistical approach to damage diagnosis of concrete dams by radar monitoring: formulation and a pseudo-experimental test

This paper deals with the investigation of a diagnostic procedure especially suited for large concrete dams. The main features of such methodology are as follows: static excitation of the dam; displacement monitoring by radar device; identification of the unknown Young moduli in pre-defined homogeneous zones through a batch least square method. The uncertainty of the identified parameters is assessed by means of a thorough statistical processing. The numerical validation of the proposed method is carried out on the basis of pseudo-experimental data. The most important results, summarized in the paper together with some computational remarks, are critically examined.