Response-based multiple structural damage localization through multi-channel empirical mode decomposition

Abstract

ABSTRACTExtensive research has been carried out on vibration-based structural health monitoring in the last few decades. A large number of these studies focus on response-based techniques due to its ease and efficiency. The main concern in such investigations is to extract a proper damage indicative feature from response data. This paper presents a new scheme in decomposing response data in order to extract a structural damage feature. Individual points on the structure body have their own time response signal. All these signals decomposed simultaneously through Multi-channel Empirical Mode Decomposition. Decomposed data of all structural points are put together to form a virtual structural deflection shape over time for each decomposed base vector. These time dependent deflection shapes are employed as a feature to determine damage location, if any. The proposed method was implemented both numerically and experimentally. In all cases, the proposed technique was able to locate the damaged zone successfully.