Structural Damage Localization Based on Recurrence Plots of Chaotic Response Attractor

Abstract

The field of vibration-based structural health monitoring involves extracting a feature which robustly quantifies damage-induced changes of the structural dynamics. Generally, the change of structural characteristics due to damage is analyzed by observing frequencies, mode shapes, damping, etc. However, the change of those modal features due to damage is minor, so that detecting the location of damage is difficult. Recently, an attractor-based monitoring system has been proposed. The recent study using chaotic excitation has demonstrated that the change of the attractor caused by damage is more sensitive than that of the most commonly used frequency and mode shape of the structure, in which the recurrence plot was applied successfully to the damage detection. However, damage localization has not been discussed sufficiently. An attempt in this study was made to develop a damage localization method using chaotic excitation and recurrence quantification analysis. It was demonstrated through experiment results that the proposed system makes it possible to detect damage locations.