Baseline-free structural damage detection based on fractal dimension analysis for vibration mode

Abstract

Recently, assessing the integrity of the civil or mechanical structures accurately has been extremely important in order to ensure safety. Generally, the damage detection of the structure is carried out through comparison between some baseline data under intact condition and current observation data. However, not many structures have such data in advance. In this study, an attempt is made to develop a baseline-free damage detection system using fractal dimension analysis. The results demonstrate that the proposed system can make it possible to detect damage location without using any baseline data by evaluating breakpoints of fundamental vibration mode of structure.