Damage Localization in Plate-Like Structures Using Wavelet Energy Analysis

Abstract

As a matter of fact, health monitoring of structures to ensure their safety and Integrity is very important. A factor that can endanger the safety and integrity is the process of occurrence of damage. Therefore, finding a way to identify damages is an essential issue. In this paper, damage localization of plate-like structures such as bridges and walls have been investigated. 9 virtual accelerometers have been placed in different locations of the structure to extract acceleration signals. Ultimately, two damage indices were introduced using continuous wavelet energy analysis. The most important advantage of the proposed method is that one can easily detect the approximate location of damage with a few number of accelerometers although there is no need to calculate mode shapes, obtain structural features of the structure and use expensive linear variable differential transformers (LVDTs).

Keywords

• structural health monitoring
• damage localization
• plate-like structures
• accelerometer
• wavelet energy analysis