Structural Health Monitoring Using Peak Of Frequency Response

Methods in detecting damages in structural components and monitoring their health is on the way to develop in today’s technology. Approaches; nondestructive towards the part or with the lowest risk; which locate the damage and even diagnose its size, are accentuating the importance of smart materials. One of these materials are piezoelectric that is used both as transducers and actuators in research centers, industries and laboratories. The present work is spotting on a new and totally different method compared to the current techniques in frequency analysis. ABAQUS 6.5-1 is the FEM tool to model an iron plate in this research. Piezoelectric patches are used for both shaking and sensing the resulting frequencies. Damping is neglected in this modeling. Simultaneously harmonic and modal analyses are done for 18 different diameters of a hole in the center of the plate. Both modal analysis and steady state harmonic analysis are done; without and with piezoelectric patches respectively; so that we can compare and validate the results. The result are monitored in several different points and compared as well. In this work the numbers of peak points (natural frequencies) are counted for each hole, so that formulate a way to identify its diameter. Research based on this framework is a novel job (it is based on the effect of diameter in arousing new peaks in certain frequency). Key-Words: Damage detection, Defect diameter, Smart materials, Piezoelectric, ABAQUS, FEM, Frequency response, Modal analysis