抄録
A simplified and practical method of evaluation of the local bending flexibility of structures employing the measurement of angular rate is presented in this paper, by making an approximation of the previously proposed concept of local flexibility index. Experiments using a desktop-scale test structure are carried out to show that the proposed algorithm can detect the extent of the local damage that does not affect the global feature such as natural frequencies. Because the proposed damage index is evaluated from dynamically-identified mode shapes without calculating mass-normalization constant, this methodology can be realized by installing two or three gyroscopes and accelerometers per one location of interest, not deploying many sensors throughout the whole structure. This would be advantageous when considering the implementation of this algorithm in the wireless sensor network environment, so that the progress as a distributed computing structural health monitoring strategy is expected in the future.
