Hurst exponent footprints from activities on a large structural system

This paper presents Hurst exponent footprints from pseudo-dynamic measurements of significantly varied activities on a damaged bridge structure during rehabilitation through continuous monitoring. The system is interesting due to associated uncertainty in large-scale structures and significant presence of human intervention arising from fundamentally different processes. Investigations into the variation of computed Hurst exponents on time series of limited lengths are carried out in this regard. The Hurst exponents are compared with respect to specific events during the rehabilitation, as well as with the data collection locations. The variations of local Hurst exponents about the values computed for each activity are presented. The scaling of Hurst exponents for different activities is also investigated; these are representative of the extent of multifractality for each event. The extent of multifractality is assessed along with its source and time dependency.