Selection of optimal threshold to construct recurrence plot for structural operational vibration measurements

The structural health monitoring (SHM) involves the sampled operational vibration measurements over time so that the structural features can be extracted accordingly. The recurrence plot (RP) and corresponding recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) have become a useful tool in various fields due to its efficiency. The threshold selection is one of key issues to make sure that the constructed recurrence plot contains enough recurrence points. Different signals have in nature different threshold values. This paper is aiming at presenting an approach to determine the optimal threshold for the operational vibration measurements of civil engineering structures. The surrogate technique and Taguchi loss function are proposed to generate reliable data and to achieve the optimal discrimination power point where the threshold is optimum. The impact of selecting recurrence thresholds on different signals is discussed. It is demonstrated that the proposed method to identify the optimal threshold is applicable to the operational vibration measurements. The proposed method provides a way to find the optimal threshold for the best RP construction of structural vibration measurements under operational conditions.