Discrepancy Analysis of Load–Displacement in the Combination Space for Concrete Box Girder Assessment

The combination space concept had its origin in the theory of subspace and combinatorics. The combination space may be treated as the space reconstruction through combination, as well as the subspace one. Several new analytical methods are proposed based on combination principles applied to some operations. Under progressing structural damage, simple raw data cannot adequately characterize continuously changing processes and provide early prevention of considerable damage or loss of resistance to hazardous failure. Therefore, the data need to be further processed to find new criteria and factors of damage assessment. Three evaluation methods were experimentally established with the combination space. For the damage assessment and its early prevention, some factors are also proposed such that the combination space method can find the structural change earlier than the original data space. In the case of the the disparity between different conditions and the initial state, this method can contribute to the structure recovery, preventing its failure.