Structural Damage Detection and Localization with Unknown Postdamage Feature Distribution Using Sequential Change-Point Detection Method

Efficient wind energy harvesting becomes more and more important as a consequence of the increasing interest in renewable energy in the European Union [1]. This leads to growing sizes of wind turbines (WTs), and with it, larger WT blades (WTBs). The structural designs of these WTBs are created to optimize the potential energy output, where low mass is a key requirement. However, high flexibilities and lower buckling capacities are further results of these developments [2], thus certain damage scenarios become significant. Intelligently designed structural health monitoring (SHM) systems can help to reduce the associated operations and maintenance costs. Even though, several techniques are already developed for structural damage detection (SDD) in WTBs, the majority of these methods is not suitable for inservice measurements. This paper presents a SDD and structural damage localization (SDL) method based on the partial autocorrelation function (PACF) of vibration responses. The approach is applied to a numerical model of a large WTB, where the acceleration responses are obtained from transient dynamic simulations with a simplified aerodynamic loading approach. The novel damage sensitive feature (DSF) is developed as the Mahalanobis distance between a baseline and current vector of PACF coefficients. First, numerical modal analysis of the finite element (FE) WTB model is performed in order to estimate the effect of a disbonding damage scenario on the vibration characteristics. Second, the behaviour of the PACF for time series of the healthy system is discussed. Third, the SDD results on the basis of statistical hypothesis testing are assessed for two selected sensor locations and increasing damage extents. Finally, the performance of the proposed DSF with respect to SDL is illustrated for multiple locations on the WTB’s surface. This study demonstrated the efficiency of a DSF based on the PACF for SDD and SDL, which is promising for future developments of vibration-based SHM techniques in WTBs.

Fukunaga-Koontz feature transformation for statistical structural damage detection and hierarchical neuro-fuzzy damage localisation

This thesis is devoted to present some novel techniques in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). SHM is a developing field that tries to monitor structures to make sure that they remain in their desired condition to avoid any catastrophe. SHM includes different levels from damage detection area to prognosis field. This work is dedicated to the first level, which might be considered the main and most important level. New techniques presented in this work are based on different statistical and signal processing methods such as Principal Component Analysis and its robust counterpart, Wavelet Transform, Fuzzy similarity, Andrew plots, etc. These techniques are applied on the propagated waves that are activated and captured in the structure using appropriate transducers. Piezoceramic (PZT) devices are chosen in this work to capture the signals due to their special characteristics such as high performance, low energy consumption and reasonable price. To guarantee the efficiency of the suggested techniques, they are tested on different laboratory and real scale test benchmarks, such as aluminum and composite plates, fuselage, wing skeleton, tube, etc. Because of the variety of tested benchmarks, this thesis is called damage detection in smart structures. This variety may promise the ability and capability of the proposed methods on different fields such as aerospace and gas/oil industry. In addition to the normal laboratory conditions, it is shown in this work that environmental changes can affect the performance of the damage detection and wave propagation significantly. As such, there is a vital need to consider their effect. In this work, temperature change is chosen as it is one of the main environmental fluctuation factors. To scrutinize its effect on damage detection, first, the effect of temperature is considered on wave propagation and then all the proposed methods are tested to check whether they are sensitive to temperature change or not. Finally, a temperature compensation method is applied to ensure that the proposed methods are stable and robust even when structures are subjected to variant environmental conditions. La presente tesis doctoral se dedica a la exploración y presentación de técnicas novedosas para la Monitorización y detección de defectos en estructuras (Structural Health Monitoring -SHM-) SHM es un campo actualmente en desarrollo que pretende asegurarse que las estructuras permanecen en su condición deseada para evitar cualquier catástrofe. En SHM se presentan diferentes niveles de diagnóstico, Este trabajo se concentra en el primer nivel, que se considera el más importante, la detección de los defectos. Las nuevas técnicas presentadas en esta tesis se basan en diferentes métodos estadísticos y de procesamiento de señales tales como el Análisis de Componentes Princpales (PCA) y sus variaciones robustas, Transformada wavelets, lógica difusa, gráficas de Andrew, etc. Estas técnicas de aplican sobre las ondas de vibración que se generan y se miden en la estructura utilizando trasductores apropiados. Dispositivos piezocerámicos (PZT's) se han escogido para este trabajo ya que presentan características especiales tales como: alto rendimiento, bajo consumo de energia y bajo costo. Para garantizar la eficacia de la metodología propuesta,se ha validado en diferentes laboratorios y estructuras a escala real: placas de aluminio y de material compuesto, fuselage de un avión, revestimiento del ala de un avóin, tubería, etc. Debido a la gran variedad de estructuras utilizadas, su aplicación en la industria aeroespacial y/o petrolera es prometedora. Por otra parte, los cambios ambientales pueden afectar al rendimiento de la detección de daños y propagación de la onda significativamente . En este trabajo , se estudia el efecto de las variaciones de temperatura ya que es uno de los principales factores de fluctuación del medio ambiente . Para examinar su efecto en la detección de daños, en primer lugar, todos los métodos propuestos se prueban para comprobar si son sensibles a los cambios de temperatura o no. Finalmente , se aplica un método de compensación de temperatura para garantizar que los métodos propuestos son estables y robustos incluso cuando las estructuras se someten a condiciones ambientales variantes

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is a condition-based maintenance technology using sensing systems. In SHM, the use of domain knowledge is essential: it motivates the use of machine learning approaches; it can be used to extract damage sensitive features and interpret the results by machine learning. This work focuses on two SHM problems: damage identification and substructure clustering. Our solutions to address them are based on machine learning techniques and robust feature extraction using domain knowledge. In the first problem, damage sensitive features were extracted using a frequency domain decomposition, followed by a robust one-class support vector machine for damage detection. In the second problem, a novel clustering technique and spectral moment feature were utilised for substructure grouping and anomaly detection. These methods were evaluated using data from lab-based structures and data collected from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We obtained high damage detection accuracies and were able to assess damage severity. Furthermore, the clustering technique was able to group substructures of similar behaviour and detect spatial anomalies.

Experimental system identification of the dynamics of a vibro-impact beam with a view towards structural health monitoring and damage detection

In the present paper, Structural health monitoring has become an evolving area of research in last few decades with increasing need of online monitoring the health of large structures. The damage detection by visual inspection of the structure can prove impractical, expensive and ineffective in case of large structures like offshore platforms, multistoried buildings and bridges. Structural health monitoring is defined as the process of detecting damage in a structural system. Damage in the system causes a change in dynamic properties of a system. The structural damage is typically a local phenomenon, which tends to be captured by higher frequency signals. Most of vibration-based damage detection methods require the modal properties that are obtained from measured signals through the system identification techniques. However, the modal properties such as natural frequencies and mode shapes are not such a good sensitive indication of structural damage. Structural damage detection and damage localization of jacket platforms, based on wavelet packet transforms is presented in this paper. Dynamic signals measured from the structure by the finite element software package ANSYS are first decomposed into wavelet packet components. Component energies are then calculated and used for damage assessment. The results show that the WPT-based component energies are good candidate indices that are sensitive to structural damage. These component energies can be used for damage assessment including identifying damage occurrence and location.

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an important application area for wireless sensor networks. SHM techniques attempt to autonomously detect and localize damage in large civil structures. Structural engineers often implement and test SHM algorithms in a higher level language such as C/Matlab. In this paper, we describe the design and evaluation of NETSHM, a sensor network system that allows structural engineers to program SHM applications in Mat-lab or C at a high level of abstraction. In particular, structural engineers do not have to understand the intricacies of wireless networking, or the details of sensor data acquisition. We have implemented a damage detection technique and a damage localization technique on a complete NETSHM prototype. Our experiments on small and medium-scale structures show that NETSHM is able to detect and localized damage perfectly with very few false-positives and no false negatives, and that it is robust even in realistic wireless environments.

In this paper, an improvement of the elliptical triangulation method for damage detection using Lamb waves is presented. The damage is the main cause of structural failure and often occurs on structures. In order to avoid sudden failure, a special attention was given in the past decades to the damage detection in structures. In order to obtain efficient damage detection techniques, the structural health monitoring has been the main research topic of many scientists worldwide. The elliptical triangulation method, proposed in this paper, is a non-destructive method based on measurement of Lamb waves. This method, through the calculation of the time of flight of the signals and the actuator-sensor positioning, allows to identify position and dimension of the damage. The application of the method to the metallic structures and to the composite material structures is presented in this paper. The complexity connected with the uncertainty of the waves’ propagation speed due to the anisotropy of the composite materials has been explored through an iterative approach. The initialization of the wave propagation speed at first tentative iteration is the key issue for the convergence of the method. Seven different conditions were used to validate the method on both metallic and composite structures combining two damage shapes, two damage dimensions (effective damaged area), and three different positions. Upon evaluating the effectiveness, the method has been applied at two composite panels in order to detect by test the post-impact damages. Tests results have been compared with the numerical ones. The feasibility of the elliptical triangulation method to detect the damage (evaluating the damage position and area) has been proved using the ultrasonic C-Scan.

Bayesian‐optimized unsupervised learning approach for structural damage detection

Impact of time synchronization error on the mode-shape identification and damage detection/localization in WSNs for structural health monitoring

Structural health monitoring is a discipline dedicated to the detection, identification, location and quantification of damage in structures based on performance indicators. Given the aim of the discipline, non-destructive method for data acquisition are always preferred. One such method is vibration-based testing, with which this work concerns itself. There has been widespread use of both machine learning applications when dealing with vibration data and use of computer vision-oriented machine learning models with pictures of the studied structure in order to address the concerns of structural health monitoring applications; this work propose a combination of the two. Since there are many pre-trained models for computer vision-oriented applications, this work successfully proposes a method for harnessing such models for processing of vibrational data through the use of transfer learning methodologies and finite element models. This can be achieved thanks to the visual nature of the Complex Frequency Domain Assurance Criterion (CFDAC) matrix, which can be obtained from vibrational data.

Vibration-based damage detection methods, leveraging structural response data to identify structural damage, play an important role in structural health monitoring, particularly for critical infrastructure like bridges and high-rise buildings. In recent years, deep learning, which can autonomously learn damage-sensitive features and classify damage from complex datasets, has been widely used in structural damage detection. This paper reviews deep learning architectures, including Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and autoencoders, applied in vibration-based structural damage detection for civil structures over the past ten years, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages. The challenges and future trends for vibration-based damage detection by using deep learning are summarized.

Structural health monitoring (SHM) and damage detection have attracted great interest in recent decades, in meeting the challenges of assessing the safety condition of large-scale civil structures. By wiring remote sensors directly to a centralized data acquisition system, traditional structural health monitoring systems are usually costly and the installation is time-consuming. Recent advances in wireless sensing technology have made it feasible for structural health monitoring; furthermore, the computational core in a wireless sensing unit offers onboard data interrogation. In addition to wireless sensing, the authors have recently developed a mobile sensing system for providing high spatial resolution and flexible sensor deployment in structural health monitoring. In this study, transmissibility function analysis is embedded in the mobile sensing node to perform onboard and in-network structural damage detection. The system implementation is validated using a laboratory 2D steel portal frame. Simulated damage is applied to the frame structure, and the damage is successfully identified by two mobile sensing nodes that autonomously navigate through the structure.

The development of large wind turbines that enable to harvest energy more efficiently is a consequence of the increasing demand for renewables in the world. To optimize the potential energy output, light and flexible wind turbine blades (WTBs) are designed. However, the higher flexibilities and lower buckling capacities adversely affect the long-term safety and reliability of WTBs, and thus the increased operation and maintenance costs reduce the expected revenue. Effective structural health monitoring techniques can help to counteract this by limiting inspection efforts and avoiding unplanned maintenance actions. Vibration-based methods deserve high attention due to the moderate instrumentation efforts and the applicability for in-service measurements. The present paper proposes the use of cross-correlations (CCs) of acceleration responses between sensors at different locations for structural damage detection in WTBs. CCs were in the past successfully applied for damage detection in numerical and experimental beam structures while utilizing only single lags between the signals. The present approach uses vectors of CC coefficients for multiple lags between measurements of two selected sensors taken from multiple possible combinations of sensors. To reduce the dimensionality of the damage sensitive feature (DSF) vectors, principal component analysis is performed. The optimal number of principal components (PCs) is chosen with respect to a statistical threshold. Finally, the detection phase uses the selected PCs of the healthy structure to calculate scores from a current DSF vector, where statistical hypothesis testing is performed for making a decision about the current structural state. The method is applied to laboratory experiments conducted on a small WTB with non-destructive damage scenarios.

Nowadays, structural health monitoring has attracted much attention, due to the construction of important and complex structures and their safety. One branch of structural health monitoring is damage detection, estimating the location and extent of eventual damages in the structural systems. In this study, an efficient method is introduced to determine the location and extent of damage in the frame, beam and truss structures using time domain response and an optimization algorithm. First of all, the structural damage detection problem is formulated as a standard optimization problem. So that, the optimization objective function is defined by using the acceleration of damaged structures and analytical model acceleration. The acceleration is obtained using Newmark method. Damage is simulated by reducing the elasticity modulus of structural members. Then, damage problem converted to an optimization problem are solved by teaching–learning-based optimization (TLBO) algorithm therefore, the exact location and extent of damage in structure can be determined. In order to show the capabilities of the proposed approach for identifying structural damage, four illustrative test examples are considered with considering measurement noise effect. The results clearly show that the proposed method is as a powerful method to detect multiple damage in structures.