Structural identification and damage diagnosis using self-sensing piezo-impedancetransducers

Abstract

The use of smart materials, such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT), has accelerateddevelopments in the fields of structural identification and automated structuralhealth monitoring (SHM). One such technique that has made much progress isthe electro-mechanical impedance (EMI) technique, which employs self-sensingpiezo-impedance transducers. In this technique, a PZT patch is surface bonded to thestructure to be monitored and its corresponding electro-mechanical admittancesignature is used for damage detection. This paper introduces a new methodfor identifying structures from the measured admittance signatures in terms ofequivalent structural parameters, whereby the identified parameters are used fordamage characterization. The new method has been applied to a truss, a beamand a concrete cube, and found to be able to successfully perform structuralidentification and damage diagnosis. In addition, several advantages have beenascertained in comparison with the conventional, non-parametric statistical methods.