TCMS: A Software for Vibration-Based Condition Monitoring of Post-Tensioned External Tendons

This paper presents a developing open-source software, named TCMS (Tendon Condition Monitoring Software), for condition monitoring of post-tensioned external tendons. This software allows users to run a complete process with three main goals: pre-processing of the input data, system identification for modal analysis, and tensile force estimation. A new Graphical User Interface (GUI) designing tool, App-Designer, is used to create a friendly GUI on the MATLAB software environment of MathWorks. A new approach for Finite Element (FE) modeling of an experimental tendon in which the load-bearing component is separately developed from the mass and stiffness components is also presented. The FE tendon model's modal parameters are identified from modal analysis to validate the applicability of TCMS. Then, the identified mode shape ratios and frequencies are used for vibration-based tensile force estimation. A comparative study based on provided tools and FE models in TCMS is conducted on different methods for tensile force estimation. The obtained results show that the existing tensile force using different methods can be estimated with accuracy in an average range of 1 to 10%. The current version of TCMS is mainly focusing on the establishment of examined modules for tensile force estimation. The TCMS source-code and data are available online on: https://github.com/miladcheraghzade/TCMSSoftware.git.