Damage Detection in Nonlinear Structures Using Discrete-Time Volterra Series

Abstract

Structural damage identification is basically a nonlinear phenomenon; however, nonlinearprocedures are not used currently in practical applications due to the complexity and difficulty forimplementation of such techniques. Therefore, the development of techniques that consider the nonlinearbehavior of structures for damage detection is a research of major importance since nonlineardynamical effects can be erroneously treated as damage in the structure by classical metrics. Thispaper proposes the discrete-time Volterra series for modeling the nonlinear convolution between theinput and output signals in a benchmark nonlinear system. The prediction error of the model in anunknown structural condition is compared with the values of the reference structure in healthy conditionfor evaluating the method of damage detection. Since the Volterra series separate the responseof the system in linear and nonlinear contributions, these indexes are used to show the importanceof considering the nonlinear behavior of the structure. The paper concludes pointing out the mainadvantages and drawbacks of this damage detection methodology.