Decentralized Health Monitoring for Beam-Like Truss Structure Using Wireless Acceleration Lab Measurements

Abstract

This paper presented a decentralized health monitoring study for beam-like truss structures with a lab verification using wireless acceleration measurements. According to structural geometrical layout, the structure is divided into multiple local subgroups firstly. Based on vibration test within each subgroup, structure dynamic flexibility matrix of each measured subgroup is estimated and structural damage locating vector is computed. Structural damage location can then be detected among each subgroup. The final decisions on structure damage occurrence and location are made by comparing the results obtained from different subgroups. Both numerical and experimental studies on a cantilever beam-like truss structure are conducted to demo the procedure. The results verify that this model-dependent health monitoring method is applicable to detect and locate elemental stiffness reduction in the truss structures even when some modeling errors exist.