Statistical enhancement of a dynamic equilibrium-based damage identification strategy: Theory and experimental validation

A previously developed damage identification strategy, named Pseudo-Excitation (PE), was enhanced using a statistical processing approach. In terms of the local dynamic equilibrium of the structural component under inspection, the distribution of its vibration displacements, which are of necessity to construct the damage index in the PE, was re-defined using sole dynamic strains based on the statistical method. On top of those advantages inheriting from the original PE compared with traditional vibration-based damage detection including the independence of baseline signals and pre-developed benchmark structures, the enhanced PE (EPE) possesses improved immunity to the interference of measurement noise. Moreover, the EPE can facilitate practical implementation of online structural health monitoring, benefiting from the use of sole strain information. Proof-of-concept numerical study was conducted to examine the feasibility and accuracy of the EPE, and the effectiveness of the proposed statistical enhancement in re-constructing the vibration displacements was evaluated under noise influence; experimental validation was followed up by characterizing multi-cracks in a beam-like structure, in which the dynamic strains were measured using Lead zirconium titanate (PZT) sensors. For comparison, the original PE, the Gapped Smoothing Method (GSM), and the EPE were respectively used to evaluate the cracks. It was observed from the damage identification results that both the GSM and EPE were able to achieve higher identification accuracy than the original PE, and the robustness of the EPE in damage identification was proven to be superior than that of the GSM.