Damage Detection Based on Adaptive Estimation of Amplitude and Phase

This paper presents a novel structural health monitoring method that shows promise in identifying damage location within a structure while providing some means of indicating the severity of the damage. The proposed method is based on an adaptive sinusoid-tracking algorithm (STA), which is capable of tracking sinusoid parameters, namely amplitude, phase, and frequency. The proposed method makes use of the estimated amplitude and phase parameters obtained by processing strain recordings at individual sensors located along an excited structure to identify damage locations and severity. Damage indices have been developed that compare the tracked amplitude/phase from a baseline (or healthy) case to the tracked amplitude/phase from the structure under test at specific locations. The proposed methodology is applied to both simulated and experimental plates in a number of damage scenarios. The results of both simulated and experimental data indicate that the proposed method is promising in the detection of the damage, its location and its severity.