Damage Detection Methods Of Elastic Beam Structures

This dissertation chiefly deals with the model-based structural damage detection.There are three groups of the sensitivity parameter indexes to the local damage and related methods to determine the damage of structures: the methods based on the mode parameter analysis, the techniques based on the strain parameter analysis and the application of the wave propagation theory in structural damage detection.In the analysis of the mode parameters, two new damage detection methods are developed, the displacement shape difference and the shape difference of rotation angles. These methods are based on the variation of the mode shapes when any damage occurs in the structure.The dissertation puts forward the method to locate the damages by calculating the strain distribution when the strain parameters are discussed.Furthermore, the dissertation introduces the dereverberation transfer function and its application to damage detection, and extends the application to the Timoshenko beam. The dissertation also discusses the influences of damping in the structural damage detection.Numerical case studies based on different types of damages are used to verify the proposed methods. The proposed methods have been found to be successful in locating the damage in all cases.