THE CHARACTERISTIC RECEPTANCE METHOD FOR DAMAGE DETECTION IN LARGE MONO-COUPLED PERIODIC STRUCTURES

An approach based on the concept of wave propagation to detect the structural damage in large mono-coupled periodic structures is presented in this paper. The free vibration analysis of a finite mono-coupled periodic structure with a single disorder has been conducted by the characteristic receptance method, and the sensitivity of the natural frequencies to the disorder in flexibility has been discussed. Based on the sensitivity analysis, the locations and magnitude of damage in large mono-coupled periodic systems have been estimated using measured changes in the natural frequencies. The paper also introduces a substructure-based method for improving the computational efficiency and the accuracy of damage detection in large mono-coupled periodic structures. Numerical results from two periodic mass-spring-structures show that the proposed method can provide good predictions of both the locations and magnitude of damage at one or more sites. Furthermore, the proposed method, in which a priori information about the nature such as stiffness of the undamaged structure is not needed, and only measurements of the change in a few of the structure's natural frequencies between the undamaged and damaged states are required, is particularly attractive in practice. However, some issues such as the role of noise in actual measurements, application to multi-coupled periodic structures with complex boundary conditions remain to be resolved before this approach becomes a truly variable method of structural damage assessment.