Damage Detection of Structure using Vibration Characteristics

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Damage Assessment (DA) based on measured data is one of the most important issues related to safety and reliability of engineering structure especially in the areas such as Civil, Mechanical and Aerospace engineering. Effective methods and tools developed for SHM and DA can help not only to prevent catastrophic failure but also to prolong the service life of the structure. However, the primary objective for SHM is to detect the state of the structure, either healthy or damaged, by comparing the vibration characteristics of healthy and damage structure. Damage changes the vibration characteristics such as natural frequency, frequency response and mode shapes. In this paper steel beam is modeled and analyzed for vibration characteristics using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tool. The changes in the natural frequencies, mode shape and other associated vibration characteristic may be considered for interpreting an unhealthy structure with reference to a healthy one. The damages in the structure may be introduced as cut-outs, stiffness reduction. The outcome of this study is to detect and localize the damage in the structure using the vibration characteristics. The procedure is analyzed numerically and validated by introducing known location(s) of damage in the structure.