Condition Based Maintenance and Intelligent Structures

VOLUME 1
STRUCTURAL
HEALTH
MONITORING
2011
Condition-based Maintenance and Intelligent Structures
Edited by
Fu-Kuo Chang
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Structural

Health Monitoring, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
September 13–15, 2011
Sponsors:
Air Force Office of Scientific Research
Army Research Office
National Science Foundation
Office of Naval Research
DEStech Publications, Inc.

Structural Health Monitoring 2011

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Preface
This proceedings is a collection of papers detailing the most recent technology devel-
opment in the field of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) from around the world since
2009. These papers were presented at the 8th International Workshop on Structural Health
Monitoring held at Stanford University on September 13-15, 2011. More than 325 papers
were selected and included in the proceedings with applications expanding from tradi-
tional aerospace structures and civil infrastructures to marine/offshore and wind power
infrastructures as well as structures in different platforms. Significant progress since the
last meeting, in 2009, is clearly noticeable, particularly in the area of sensors/actuators
development, detection capabilities, and system maturation for implementation.
SHM is a technology to automate the inspection process to assess and evaluate the
health condition of structures in real-time or at specified time intervals. Because it is a sys-
tem technology which integrates sensors/actuator networks with structures, software to in-
terpret sensor signals, and hardware to process and manage the signals, the technology ma-
turity based on its complexity and targeted solutions can be classified into four different
sequential levels: detection, identification, quantification, and decision. Detection is the
lowest level that the technology can be achieved for its maturity. Once detection is con-
firmed with a high degree of confidence, identification of the occurrence of the event in
time and space domain is critical which then can possibly lead to quantification of the
event. A more accurate quantification may produce a better decision, which provides a
much more efficient management solution for the structures than traditional inspections.
Therefore, the theme of the 8th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitor-
ing is “Condition-Based Maintenance and Intelligent Structures”. It is clear that
SHM is the key technology to enable the transition from traditional schedule-driven
maintenance to Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM). In a CBM environment, operating
platforms, embedded sensors, inspections, and other triggering events determine when
restorative maintenance tasks are required based on evidence of need. With the continu-
ing maturation of SHM technology to higher levels, it is foreseeable that SHM technol-
ogy will enable prediction of structural health conditions ahead of event and take appro-
priate actions. This is actually the goal of CBM+ in the US Department of Defense, a
proactive equipment maintenance capability to extend the availability of structural sys-
tems throughout their life cycles and reduce costs.
xxxiii
xxxiv Preface
From the proceedings, it can be seen that significant attention of the SHM community
continues to focus on the SHM technology development for achieving the goal of CBM+
in order to improve operation efficiency, reduce maintenance cost, as well as enhance the
structural reliability in a real-time operation basis. A growing number of papers focus on
verification, validation, and qualification of the technology for implementation, particu-
larly with attention to the aerospace platforms. Considerable studies also emphasize envi-
ronmental influences on SHM system stability, reliability, and applicability. New re-
search topics that deserve more fundamental studies are also identified from these devel-
opments.
With the continuing maturation of the SHM technology to higher levels, the SHM
system can potentially create a structural platform with a complete self-responsiveness
capability from sensing, diagnostics, to decision-making and then back to sensing in a
close loop, which is the exact foundation that is needed for construction of the so-called
“intelligent structures”. With advanced manufacturing technologies that allow hardware
and software to be built into the materials with SHM capabilities, it seems to be a logical
step for this research community to start exploring the linkage between Structural Health
Monitoring and intelligent structures.
Clearly, the development of SHM technology sets the foundation for the development
of intelligent structures. The roadmap of SHM technology development seems to target
CBM+ as its near-term goal with a long-term objective to develop new generation mate-
rials for intelligent structures. Numerous papers dealing with new concepts and ideas of
intelligent structures and bio-mimetic structures appeared in the proceedings. Special ses-
sions were organized to focus on bio-inspired sensor networks and intelligent sensor
nodes, which are the key fundamental elements in providing intelligence to the overall
systems.
Special thanks to the special session organizers whose contributions are listed below:
Bio-inspired Sensing and Actuation Technology J. Lynch, K. Loh

Wind Turbines Monitoring W. Staszewski
Monitoring of Civil Engineering Structures with MEMS C. Grosse, J. Lynch
Verification and Validation of Damage Sensing E. Medina
Intelligent sensor networks for SHM J. Lynch, A. Swartz
Structural Health Monitoring of Wind Turbines J. R. White
Advanced SHM for Ship Structures L. Salvino
Hot Spot Monitoring H. Sohn, J.B. Ihn, M. Leonard
Wave Propagation Simulation W. Staszewski, W. Ostachowicz
Decision Making in Structural Health Monitoring D. Zonta, M. Todd
SHM Benchmark for High-rise Structures Y.Q. Ni
Non-contact Sensing Technologies H. Sohn
This workshop is co-sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Les
Lee and David Stargel), the Army Research Office (Bruce LaMattina), the Office of Na-
val Research (Ignacio Perez), and the National Science Foundation (Shih-Chi Liu and
Preface xxxv
M.P. Singh). The workshop could not have been successfully organized without the sup-
port of the international organization committee, which includes the following members:
Academia
D. Adams, Purdue University, USA, (deadams@purdue.edu)
G. Akhras, Royal Military College of Canada, Canada, (akhras@rmc.ca)
A. Emin Aktan, Drexel University, USA, (aaktan@drexel.edu)
A. Braga, Rio Pontificia Unversidade Catolica do Rio de Janiero, Brazil, (abraga@mec.puc-rio.br)
F. Casciati, University of Pavia, Italy, (fabio@dipmec.univpv.it)
F.-K. Chang (Organizer), Stanford University, USA, (fkchang@stanford.edu)
W. K. Chiu, Monash University, Australia, (wing.kong.chiu@monash.edu.au)
C.-P. Fritzen, University of Siegen, Germany, (fritzen@imr.mb.uni-siegen.de)
B. Glisic, Princeton University, (bglisic@princeton.edu)
A. Guemes (Co-Organizer), Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain, (aguemes@dmpa.upm.es)
P. Hagedorn, TU Darmstadt, Germany, (peter.hagedorn@dyn.tu-darmstadt.de)
D. Inman, Virginia Tech, USA, (dinman@vt.edu)
S. Kapuria, India Institute of Technology, New Delhi, (kapuria@am.iitd.ac.in)
A. Kiremidjian, Stanford University, USA, (ask@stanford.edu)
T. Kundu, University of Arizona, USA, (tkundu@email.arizona.edu)
J. Lynch, University of Michigan, USA, (jerlynch@umich.edu)
A. Mita, Keio University, Japan, (mita@sd.keio.ac.jp)
Y.Q. Ni, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, (ceyqni@polyu.edu.hk)
W. Ostachowicz, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland, (wieslaw@imppan.imp.gda.pl)
U. Peil, Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, (u.peil@is.tu-braunschweig.de)
W. Staszewski, Sheffield University, UK, (w.j.staszewski@sheffield.ac.uk)
F. Lanza di Scalea, UC San Diego, USA, (flanza@ucsd.edu)
H. Sohn, KAIST, Korea, (hoonsohn@kaist.ac.kr)
N. Takeda, University of Tokyo, Japan, (takeda@compmat.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp)
M. Wang, Northeast University, USA, (mi.wang@neu.edu)
Z. Wu, Dalian Institute of Technology, China, (wuzhanjun@gmail.com)
Z. Wu, Ibaraki University, Japan, (zswu@mx.ibaraki.ac.jp)
Industry
S. Arms, Microstrain, USA, (swarms@microstrain.com)
S. Beard, Acellent Technologies, USA, (sjb@acellent.com)
M. Buderath, Cassidian, Germany, (matthias.buderath@cassidian.com)
P. Foote, BAE, UK, (peter.foote@baesystems.com)
B. Glass, Lockheed-Martin, USA, (betty.c.glass@lmco.com)
G. Gordon, Honeywell, USA, (grant.gordon@honeywell.com)
M. Hansen, Goodrich, USA, (matt.hansen@goodrich.com)
E. Haugse, Boeing Company, USA, (eric.d.haugse@boeing.com)
H. Speckmann, Airbus, Germany, (holger.speckmann@airbus.com)
P. Anchieta da Silva, Embraer, Brazil, (anchieta@embraer.com.br)
H. Wenzel, VCE Holding GmbH, Austria, (wenzel@vce.at)
Government
C. Boller, IZFP, Germany, (christian.boller@izfp.fraunhofer.de)
M. Derriso, Wright-Patterson Air Force Laboratories, USA, (mark.derriso@wpafb.af.mil)
C. Farrar, Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA, (farrar@lanl.gov)
S. Galea, DSTO Australia, Australia, (steve.galea@dsto.defence.gov.au)
B. Lamattina, Army Research Office, USA, (bruce.lamattina@us.army.mil)
D. Le, US Army Research Laboratory, USA, (dy.le@us.army.mil)
B.L. Lee, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, USA, (byunglip.lee@afosr.af.mil)
S. Liu, National Science Foundation, USA, (sliu@nsf.gov)
xxxvi Preface
S. Mahmood, Naval Surface Warfare Center, USA, (shah.mahmood@navy.mil)

W. Prosser, NASA-Langley, USA, (w.h.prosser@larc.nasa.gov)
O.Venta, VTT, Finland, (olli.venta@vtt.fi)
L. Salvino, (liming.salvino@navy.mil)
A. Srivastava, NASA-Ames, USA, (ashok.n.srivastava@nasa.gov)
D. Stargel, (david.stargle@afosr.af.mil)
H. F. Wu, NIST, USA, (felix.wu@nist.gov)
N. Li, China Communications Construction, China, (ln_prc@yahoo.com.cn)
The committee would also like to express its sincere appreciation for the dedication
and support of the workshop coordinators Ingolf Mueller, Surajit Roy, Kuldeep Lonkar,
Yu-Hung Li, Cecilia Larrosa, Zhiqiang Guo, Vishnuvardhan Janapati, Nathan Salowitz,
Yitao Zhuang, Philipp Maier, Sang-Jong Kim, David Wang, Kerstin Vonnieda, Alex
Guo, and many volunteers, as well as to Grace Fontanilla, Haruko Markitani and other
staff members from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics for making this
workshop possible.
Fu-Kuo Chang Alfredo Güemes

Organizing Chairman Organizing Co-Chairman
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics E.T.S.I. Aeronauticos
Stanford University, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid,
Stanford, CA 94305, USA Madrid, Spain
September 13, 2011

Table of Contents
VOLUME 1
Preface xxxiii
KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS
Integration of Structural Health Monitoring Systems into Unmanned
Aerial Systems—Challenges and Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
M. BUDERATH and L. BENASSI
The Journey to Incorporate Health Monitoring and Condition Based
Maintenance of Sikorsky Commercial Helicopters . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
J. P. CYCON
Embraer Perspective on the Introduction of SHM into Current and
Future Commercial Aviation Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
L. G. DOS SANTOS
Structural Health Monitoring for Civil Infrastructure—From
Instrumentation to Decision Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
A. S. KIREMIDJIAN
Does the Maturity of Structural Health Monitoring Technology
Match User Readiness? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
D. ROACH and S. NEIDIGK
ADVANCED DIAGNOSTICS FOR DAMAGE ASSESSMENT

Damage Diagnosis Algorithm for Civil Structures Using a Sequential
Change Point Detection Method and Time-Series Analysis . . . . . . . 55
H. Y. NOH, R. RAJAGOPAL and A. S. KIREMIDJIAN
Cointegration and SHM of Bridges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
E. J. CROSS, K. WORDEN, K.-Y. KOO and J. M. W. BROWNJOHN
iii
iv Table of Contents
Piezoceramic-Based 2-D Spiral Phased Array for Damage Detection

of Thin Orthotropic Composite Laminates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
B. YOO and D. J. PINES
Guided Wave and Probability Based Diagnostic Imaging for
Detection of Multiple Welding Damages in Welded
Tubular Steel Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
X. LU, M. LU, L. ZHOU, Z. SU, L. CHENG, L. YE and G. MENG
Nonlinear Cointegration as a Combinatorial Optimisation
Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
E. J. CROSS and K. WORDEN
Characterizing Damage in Plate Structures Based on Local
Perturbance to Dynamic Equilibrium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
H. XU, L. CHENG and Z. SU
Robust Diagnostics for Bayesian Compressive Sensing Technique in
Structural Health Monitoring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Y. HUANG, J. L. BECK, S. WU and H. LI
Damage Monitoring and Evaluation for Building Structures
Based on Measurement of Relative Story Displacements by
Noncontact-Type Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
T. HATADA, M. TAKAHASHI, R. KATAMURA, H. HAGIWARA,
I. MATSUYA, K. KANEKAWA, Y. NITTA and A. NISHITANI
Joint Condition Identification with Partially Measured Frequency
Response Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
M. WANG and G. ZHENG
Multi-Classifier Fusion Method Based on the Reliability of the
Individual Classifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
L. AL-SHROUF and D. SOEFFKER
Validation of a Hybrid Automated Modal Identification Algorithm
for Structural Health Monitoring Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
C. RAINIERI and G. FABBROCINO
Power Losses in PZT Disk Actuators' Adhesive . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
R. DUGNANI
Sensitivity of the Excitelet Imaging Algorithm on Material
Properties for Isotropic Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
P.-C. OSTIGUY, P. MASSON, N. QUAEGEBEUR and S. ELKOUN
Damage Detection Index Based on Statistical Inference and PCA . . . 159
L. E. MUJICA, M. RUIZ, F. POZO and J. RODELLAR
Table of Contents v
Effective Damage Sensitive Feature Extraction Methods for Crack

Detection Using Flaw Scattered Ultrasonic Wave Field Signal . . . . . 167
S. K. YADAV, S. BANERJEE and T. KUNDU
Time-Domain Localized Structural Damage Identification with
Incomplete Excitation Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
J. HE and B. XU
A Novel Damage Sensitive Feature Based on State-Space
Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
A. CLEMENT, S. LAURENS and S. GIRARD
Damage Classification in Composite Laminates: Matrix
Micro-Cracking and Delamination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
C. C. LARROSA, K. LONKAR, S. SHANKAR and F.-K. CHANG
Identifying Scatter Targets in 2D Space Using In Situ
Phased-Arrays for Guided Wave Structural Health Monitoring. . . . 200
E. B. FLYNN, M. D. TODD, S. S. KESSLER and C. T. DUNN
Reference-Free Damage Identification Using Statistical
Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
A. MEDDA and V. DEBRUNNER
Infrared Thermography and Piezoelectric Patches for Impact
Damage Detection in Composite Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
G. M. CARLOMAGNO, C. MEOLA and F. RICCI
An Integrated Structural Intensity Based Damage Detection
Approach for Nonlinear Behaving Damage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
F. SEMPERLOTTI, S. C. CONLON and E. C. SMITH
Experimentation and Detection Characters of Lamb Wave Phase
Array on a Large Thin Aluminium Plate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
D. GAO, Z. WU, M. LIU and Z. WANG
Damage Detection of Composite Structure Using Independent
Component Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
R. HAJRYA, N. MECHBAL and M. VERGÉ
Rapid Localization and Ultrasonic Imaging of Multiple Damages in
Structural Panel with Piezoelectric Sensor-Actuator Network . . . . . 249
G. K. GEETHA, V. T. RATHOD, N. CHAKRABORTY,
D. R. MAHAPATRA and S. GOPALAKRISHNAN
Damage Assessment of CFRP Stiffened Panels by Electro-Mechanical
Impedance Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
N. J. FERREIRA, J. M. SILVA, R. J. GUIMARAES, P. J. ANTUNES,
M. A. BAPTISTA, J. C. VIANA and G. R. DIAS
vi Table of Contents
Optimal Sensor Fusion for Structural Health Monitoring of Aircraft

Composite Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
S. COSTINER, H. A. WINSTON, M. R. GURVICH, A. GHOSHAL, G. S.
WELSH, S. L. BUTLER, M. R. URBAN and N. BORDICK
Impact and Damage Location Detection on Plate-Like Structures
Using Time—Reversal Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
C. CHEN, Y. LI and F.-G. YUAN
Fatigue Crack Detection Using Guided Waves and Probability-Based
Imaging Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
M. LU, X. LU, L. ZHOU, Z. SU, L. YE and F. LI
Adaptive Fuzzy-Based Approach for Clasification of
System's States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
H. ALJOUMAA and D. SOEFFKER
Image Processing Technique for Vibrothermographic Field Tests . . . 298
M. SZWEDO, L. PIECZONKA and T. UHL
An Optimal Image-Based Method for Identification of AE Sources
on Plate Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
G. YAN and L. ZHOU
Structural Health Monitoring System Based on Electromechanical
Impedance Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
M. ROSIEK, A. MARTOWICZ and T. UHL
Damage Monitoring Based on Wave Illumination of Structures . . . . 322
Y. LIU, N. MECHBAL and M. VERGÉ
ADVANCED MONITORING FOR LOAD/ENVIRONMENTS

Design of a Self-Powered Load Monitoring System for Hot Spot
Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Y. LIN, M. TAYA and J. B. IHN
A Robust Impact Force Determination Technique for Complex
Structures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
I. MUELLER, K. VONNIEDA, S. DAS and F.-K. CHANG
Analytical Formulation for the Determination of Torsional
Forces and Shear Stresses in Hydraulic Steel Structures
from Field Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Á. J. ALICEA-RODRÍGUEZ and G. RIVEROS
Experimental Evaluation of a Wavelet-Based FEM and its
Application to Load History Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
M. M. MOTA, L. PAHLAVAN and C. KASSAPOGLOU
Table of Contents vii
Application of Polarization-Maintaining Fiber Bragg Grating to

Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry for Simultaneous
Measurements of Strain and Temperature Distributions . . . . . . . . 370
D. WADA, H. MURAYAMA, H. IGAWA, K. OMICHI
and K. KAGEYAMA
A System for Static and Dynamic Monitoring and Ice
Sport Arena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
G. G. BOLDYREV and A. A. ZHIVAEV
Wireless, Batteryless Distributed Strain Sensing for Structural
Health Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
C. PALMER, A. GUTTERMAN, G. ARGENNA, V. INCLAN
and A. ZYUZIN
Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing for Wind Blade Strain
Monitoring and Defect Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
A. M. KAPLAN, S. M. KLUTE, D. K. GIFFORD
and A. D. HEANEY
AEROSPACE STRUCTURES: FIELD EVALUATION

AND VALIDATION
Real-Time Micro-Explosive Damage Detection in an Unmanned
Rotorcraft Vehicle Using Embedded Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
H. EDGE, H. CHUNG, M. COATNEY, B. MARY, P. TIBBITS,
M. MURUGAN, A. GHOSHAL, D. LE and M. PAPPAKOSTAS
Comparisons of SHM Sensor Models with Empirical Test Data for
Sandwich Composite Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
V. HAFIYCHUK, D. G. LUCHINSKY, V. N. SMELYANSKIY,
R. TYSON, J. MILLER and C. BANKS
Large Sensor Network Architectures for Monitoring Large-Scale
Structures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
D. C. ZHANG, V. NARAYANAN, X. B. ZHENG, H. CHUNG,
S. BANERJEE, S. BEARD and I. LI
Overview of CVM Technology Tests Performed by Embraer . . . . . 432
R. P. RULLI and P. A. DA SILVA
Advanced System-Level Reliability Analysis and Prediction with
Field Data Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
T. MEYER, J. BERG, A. PALLADINO, A. SARLASHKAR,
S. HUSSAIN and D. LAMB
viii Table of Contents
Development and Testing of an Ultrasonic Phased Array System

Based on Piezo Actuators and Fiber Optic Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . 447
M. SCHEERER, C. BOCKENHEIMER, A. DANTELE, Z. DJINOVIC,
F. GRAF, T. NATSCHLÄGER, A. PELDSZUS, M. REITERER,
T. SAUTER and R. STÖSSEL
Damage Detection Method for CFRP Bolted Joints Using Embedded
BOCDA Optical Fiber Sensor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
N. SAITO, T. YARI, K. NAGAI and K. ENOMOTO
Development of Simultaneous Measurement System for Strain
and Acoustic Emission Using a Fiber Bragg Grating
Sensor and a Fiber Ring Laser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
T. NAKAJIMA, E. SATO, H. TSUDA, A. SATO, N. KAWAI
and H. KAWASAKI
Wireless and Batteryless Accelerometry for Aircraft Structural
R. MONTHÉARD, C. ESCRIBA, J.-Y. FOURNIOLS, M. LASTAPIS,
J.-M. PRUNET, M. BAFLEUR and J.-M. DILHAC
Flight Data from an Airworthy Structural Health Monitoring
System for an Unmanned Air Vehicle Using Integrally
Embedded Fiber Optic Sensors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
N. GUPTA, M. J. AUGUSTIN, S. SATHYA, R. SUNDARAM,
M. H. PRASAD, A. PILLAI, S. GALI, J. BALTER, P. GUEDJ,
I. KRESSEL, A. HANDLEMAN, Y. BOTSEV, N. GORBATOV
and M. TUR
Algorithms to Monitor Damaging Events on a Plane Blade with an
Autonomous Embedded Microsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
M. LASTAPIS, C. ESCRIBA and J.-Y. FOURNIOLS
Numerical Predictions of Elastic Wave Scattering from a
Sub-Surface Defect in an F-111 Wing Skin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
W. H. ONG, W. K. CHIU, S. C. ROSALIE and N. RAJIC
Real-Time Condition Assessment of RAPTOR Telescope Systems . . 501
C. J. STULL, S. G. TAYLOR, J. WREN, D. L. MASCAREÑUS
and C. R. FARRAR
Autonomous Battery-Less Wireless Strain Gauge for Structural
V. OLARIU, A. GNADINGER, J. BAO and V. GIURGIUTIU
Mission and Scale Analysis on SHM of UAV's. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
M. ÇELEBÍ
Table of Contents ix
AEROSPACE STRUCTURES: LABORATORY DEMONSTRATION

Monitoring the Degradation by Fire of Composite Laminates by
Embedded FBG Sensors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
A. GÜEMES, C. E. GARCIA-GONZALEZ, I. GONZALEZ-REQUENA
and C. DE MIGUEL-GIRALDO
Nonlinear Ultrasonic Techniques for Nondestructive Damage
Assessment in Metallic Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
J.-Y. KIM, L. J. JACOBS and J. QU
Hierarchical Sensing System Combining a Fiber-Optic Network and
Distributed Built-in Capillary Sensors for Impact Damage
Monitoring of CFRP Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
H. BANSHOYA, S. MINAKUCHI and N. TAKEDA
Waveguided and Noncontacting Thermoacoustic Sensing of Thermal
Protection Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
D. HUSTON, D. HURLEY, D. FLETCHER and W. OWENS
Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensor Network for Aircraft Structures
Damage Localisation: Pitch-Catch Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
H. BOUKABACHE, M. MATMAT, S. KSOURI, C. ESCRIBA
and J. Y. FOURNIOLS
Detecting the Point of Impact on an Anisotropic Cylindrical Surface
Using Only Four Acoustic Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562
T. HAJZARGARBASHI, H. NAKATANI, T. KUNDU and N. TAKEDA
Impact Damage Assessment by Sensor Signal Analysis. . . . . . . . . 570
R. JOHN, I. READ and W. MACPHERSON
Beam Shape Sensing Using Inverse Finite Element Method:
Theory and Experimental Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578
M. GHERLONE, P. CERRACCHIO, M. MATTONE, M. DI SCIUVA
and A. TESSLER
Integrated Optical Fibers into Aluminum Extrusions Enabling
Structural Health Monitoring of Aerospace Structures. . . . . . . . . 586
G. POUGET, A. FERNANDEZ-LOPEZ, A. GÜEMES
and J. C. EHRSTRÖM
Early Results of Lamb Waves Approach to Assess Corrosion Damage
Using Direct Image Path in an Aeronautical Aluminum Alloy. . . . . 593
F. DOTTA, F. S. DA SILVA and A. B. DA SILVA
Contact Pressure and Ultrasonic Damage Feature(s) in Health
Monitoring of L-Shape Bolted Joints in Aerospace Structures. . . . . 601
M. JALALPOUR, A. EL-OSERY, E. AUSTIN and M. REDA TAHA
x Table of Contents
Application of Unscented Kalman Filters, Wavelet Packet

Transforms and Feedback Control to Monitoring and
Compensate Damaged Aircraft Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
R. VEPA
Bond Graph Model of a Thin SHM Piezoelectric Energy
Harvester . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618
S. THOMAS, D. CHRISTOPHE, G. SÉBASTIEN and P. CHRISTOPHE
Impact Location Based on Multi-Agent Coordination and Fusion
for Large Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 626
L. DONG and S.-F. YUAN
An Integrated Monitoring System for Damage Detection by Carbon
Fibers and Optical Fibers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635
H. HUANG, Z. WU and C. YANG
Advanced Approach for Multi-Site Damage Monitoring on Aircraft
Fuselage Panel Using Sparse PZT Actuator/Sensor Arrays . . . . . . 643
R. HEDL, J. FINDA and G. PARTHASARATHY
Anomalous Wave Propagation Imaging with Adjacent Wave
Subtraction: Composite Wing Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
C. C. CHIA, J.-R. LEE, C.-Y. PARK and H.-J. SHIN
CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURES: FIELD EVALUATION

AND VALIDATION
Self Powered Wireless Sensor Network for Structural Bridge Health
Prognosis: Achievement in the First Two Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661
V. GODÍNEZ, A. POLLOCK, M. GONZALEZ, S. MOMENI,
R. GOSTAUTAS, R. FUSTOS, B. NEWLIN, D. INMAN,
J. FARMER, S. PRIYA, P. ZIEHL, J. CAICEDO,
B. ZARATE, L. YU, V. GIURGIUTIU and A. NANNI
Fatigue Crack Monitoring with an Ultrasonic Sparse Array on a
Real Steel Structure Component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
M. VOSPERNIG, R. HEUER and M. REITERER
Challenges and Strategies in Remote Sensing Implementation for
Bridge Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 677
S.-E. CHEN, E. HAUSER, K. REHM and C. BOYLE
An Innovative Method to Measure Bridge Deflection Using Single
Telecom Fiber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 684
P. KUNG, L. WANG and M. I. COMANICI
Diagnostic Performance Indication Through Field Testing of a
Bridge Superstructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 692
M. V. GANGONE, M. J. WHELAN and K. D. JANOYAN
Table of Contents xi
Development of Reliable and Low-Power Wireless Health

Monitoring Systems for Highway Bridges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701
D. POTTER, J. FASL, V. SAMARAS, T. HELWIG, S. WOOD,
R. LINDENBERG and K. FRANK
Design and Application of a Wireless Sensor Network for
Vibration-Based Performance Assessment of a Tied
Arch Bridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 709
M. J. WHELAN
Risk Based Civil SHM and Life Cycle Management . . . . . . . . . . 717
H. WENZEL, R. VEIT-EGERER and M. WIDMANN
Integration of SHM into Bridge Management Systems: Case
Study—Z24 Bridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 725
E. FIGUEIREDO, L. RADU, G. PARK and C. FARRAR
RAPID System for Hot Spot Corrosion Monitoring of Gas
Pipelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
F. LI, S. BANERJEE, M. PAPPAKOSTAS, H. CHUNG, S. BEARD
and G. CHANG
Acoustic Emission Evaluation of Cavitation Erosion in Hydraulic
Turbines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 742
F. R. QUEIROZ, E. B. MEDEIROS, L. V. DONADON
and M. T. CORRÉA DE FARIA
Structural Health Monitoring During Progressive Damage Test
of S101 Bridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748
M. DÖHLER, F. HILLE, L. MEVEL and W. RÜCKER
CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURES: LAB DEMONSTRATION

Sensing Resolution and Measurement Range of a Passive
Wireless Strain Sensor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759
X. YI, T. WU, G. LANTZ, J. COOPER, C. CHO, Y. WANG,
M. M. TENTZERIS and R. T. LEON
Ultrasonic Wall Thickness Monitoring at High
Temperatures (>500°C) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767
F. CEGLA, P. CAWLEY, J. ALLIN and J. DAVIES
Early Detection of Fatigue Damage in Notched and Welded Steel
Structures Using Active Thermography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 775
R. PLUM and T. UMMENHOFER
A Wavelet Based Methodology for Damage Detection and Severity
Assessment on the ASCE Benchmark Structure Using Phase II
Experimental Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 783
M. JAMAL-AHMAD and J. N. CARTER
xii Table of Contents
Integrate On-Line RSSA and RSSI-COV Algorithms for Operational

Modal Analysis of Bridge Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 791
C.-H. LOH, Y.-C. LIU and F.-M. WU
Crack Growth Monitoring System for Concrete Structures
Based on Non-Contact Displacement Measurements . . . . . . . . . . 799
T. KUSAKA, Y. NOMURA, T. SAKAMOTO and T. FUJII
Experimental Verification of Controlled Substructure Identification
Using Control Devices: A Preliminary Simulation Study. . . . . . . . 807
C. DEVORE, E. A. JOHNSON and R. CHRISTENSON
High Frequency Axle Box Acceleration for Early Detection of Squats:
Numerical Simulation, Prototype Development and Testing . . . . . . 815
Z. LI, M. MOLODOVA and R. DOLLEVOET
A Comparison of Experimental Characterization Results for Multiple
Bridge Spans of the Same Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 823
R. MAESTRI, T. WANK and K. A. GRIMMELSMAN
Damage Assessment with Time Series Analysis Using Wireless
Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831
M. GUL, T. TERRELL, M. J. LEVY and F. N. CATBAS
An Ultrasonic Guided Wave Sensor for Gas Accumulation
Detection in Nuclear Emergency Core Cooling Systems . . . . . . . . 839
L. YU, Y.-J. SHIN, J. WANG and Y. SHEN
Understanding the Effects of a Breathing Crack on the Dynamic
Response of Cantilever-Type Structures for Damage Detection . . . . 848
A. U. REHMAN, K. WORDEN and J. A. RONGONG
Residual Life Prediction of Steel I-Beams Using Acoustic Emission
and Back Propagation Neural Networks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 856
Y. ZHANG, F. F. BARSOUM, E. V. K. HILL, Y. KWAN and A. KORCAK
Design of a Wheeled Climbing Robot for Automatic Inspection of
Hydraulic Turbine Blade with Curved Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . 864
Z. WU, Q. CHEN, Z. SUN and W. ZHANG
Experimental Investigation of the Excitation Level in System
Identification of Frame Structures Using Linear Shakers . . . . . . . 872
N. NAKATA and K. COLEMAN
Identifying Foundation Impedance Properties from Seismic
Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 880
A. IRIZARRY, D. BERNAL and L. SUAREZ
Application of Fuzzy Set Theory in Structural Health Monitoring to
Pattern Different States of an RC Bridge at Interstate 40 . . . . . . . 888
M. AZARBAYEJANI and M. REDA TAHA
Table of Contents xiii
MODELING/SIMULATION
Verification of Unified Framework for Plate Structures Using
Kirchhoff's Plate Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 899
A. DIXIT and S. HANAGUD
Finite Element Simulation of Compensation for Temperature
Influence on Lamb Wave Propagation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 907
Q. WENZHONG and D. J. INMAN
Experimental Validation of Algorithms for Wave Propagation
Modeling in 2D and 3D Structures Based on the Spectral
Element Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 915
W. OSTACHOWICZ, P. KUDELA and M. RADZIENSKI
Damage Assessment Using Hyperchaotic Excitation and Nonlinear
Prediction Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 923
S. TORKAMANI, E. A. BUTCHER, M. D. TODD and G. PARK
Wave Propagation in Anisotropic Layered 2D Structures Using
Spectral Finite Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 931
B. HENNINGS and R. LAMMERING
1-D and 2-D Modeling of Power and Energy Transduction of
Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors for Structural
B. LIN and V. GIURGIUTIU
A Time Domain Spectral Element for Coupled Piezoelectric
Actuator/Sensor with Complex Thin-Walled
Assembly Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 947
R. MOHAMED and P. MASSON
Simulation Platform for UWB Impulse Radio Wireless Sensor
Networks Dedicated to Aeronautic Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . 955
D. DRAGOMIRESCU, A. THAIN, F. CAMPS, F. PERGET,
A. LECOINTRE, A. BERTHE and R. PLANA
Finite Element Driven Damage Detection of a Skewed Highway
Bridge with Pin and Hanger Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 963
A. A. MOSAVI, H. SEDARAT, A. EMAMI-NAEINI, V. JACOB,
A. KRIMOTAT and J. LYNCH
Analysis of Bearing Damage Using a Multibody Model and a
Test Rig for Validation Purposes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 971
W. JACOBS, M. MALAGÓ, R. BOONEN, D. MOENS
and P. SAS
xiv Table of Contents
NOVEL SIGNAL PROCESSING TECHNIQUES

Real-Time Characterization of Aerospace Structures Using
Onboard Strain Measurement Technologies and Inverse
Finite Element Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 981
A. TESSLER, J. L. SPANGLER, M. MATTONE, M. GHERLONE
and M. DI SCIUVA
Impact Echo Signal Interpretation Using Ensemble Empirical Mode
Decomposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 989
Z. XIE, X. WEI and Y. ZHANG
Mode Conversion Estimation of Filleted T-Joint Using FEM and 3D
Laser Vibrometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 997
J. AYERS, E. SWENSON, M. RUZZENE and A. GHOSHAL
Detection of Impact Strain Waves in Composites by High-Speed
FBG Sensor System with AWG Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1005
Y. OKABE, N. WATANABE, M. SHIMAZAKI, H. SOEJIMA
and T. OGISU
The Application of Compressed Sensing to Detecting Damage in
Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1013
D. MASCARENAS, D. HUSH, J. THEILER and C. FARRAR
Measuring the Average Thickness of a Plate Using a Bayesian
Method and Free Vibration Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1021
E. Z. MOORE, K. D. MURPHY and J. M. NICHOLS
Morphological Filtering of SHM Datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1029
D. K. MCNEILL and M. SOIFERMAN
Examination of Wear Phenomena by Using Filtering Techniques
for FDI Purposes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1037
K.-U. DETTMANN, D. BACCAR and D. SOEFFKER
Automated Data Interpretation for Modal Identification of a Truss
Bridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1045
J. ZHANG, F. L. MOON and E. A. AKTAN
Structural Health Monitoring of an Advanced Composite Aircraft
Structure Using a Modal Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1053
T. H. OOIJEVAAR, R. LOENDERSLOOT, L. L. WARNET,
R. AKKERMAN and A. DE BOER
On the Application of Bayesian Analysis and Advanced
Signal Processing Techniques for the Impact Monitoring
of Smart Structures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1062
M. A. TORRES-ARREDONDO, C. YANG and C.-P. FRITZEN
Table of Contents xv
Comparison of Damage Localization Based on Modal Filters

Using Strain Measurements and Acceleration Measurements . . . . 1070
A. DERAEMAEKER and G. TONDREAU
Multi-Source Acoustic Emission Signals Analysis Based on Blind
Source Separation Using Macro Fiber Composite . . . . . . . . . . . 1079
H. NASSER and W. ZHOU
Finite Element Model Based State Estimation in Mechanical and
Structural Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1087
E. M. HERNANDEZ
Hybrid Immune Algorithm for Structural Health Monitoring
Using Acceleration Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1095
R. LI and A. MITA
Simulation Method of Selection of Diagnostic Parameters in the
Process of Monitoring the Rail Vehicle's Conditions. . . . . . . . . . 1103
A. CHUDZIKIEWICZ and B. SOWINSKI
Experimental Broadband Estimation of Guided Waves Group
Velocity with High Signal to Noise Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1111
N. QUAEGEBEUR, P. MASSON, P. MICHEAU and N. MRAD
Self Focusing of 2D Arrays for SHM of Plate-Like Structures
Using Time Reversal Operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1119
L. AMBROZINSKI, T. STEPINSKI and T. UHL
OPERATIONAL EFFECTS CONSIDERATION IN SHM

A View into Baseline Free Guided Wave Approaches for Structural
Health Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1131
U. LIESKE and C. BOLLER
Physics Based Temperature Compensation Strategy for
Structural Health Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1139
S. ROY, K. LONKAR, V. JANAPATI and F.-K. CHANG
Load-Enhanced Imaging of Fatigue Cracks Via Sparse Guided
Wave Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1150
J. E. MICHAELS, S. J. LEE, X. CHEN and T. E. MICHAELS
Effect of Water Temperature on the Laser-Based Ultrasonic
Testing of Immersed Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1158
P. RIZZO and E. PISTONE
Mystery Revealed on Natural Frequency Change of a Structure
During Rainstorms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1165
M. H. CHENG, V. HECKMAN and T. HEATON
xvi Table of Contents
Influence of Environment Condition on the Group Velocity

of the Lamb Wave for SHM System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1173
K. TAKAHASHI, H. SOEJIMA, T. OGISU, Y. OKABE, N. TAKEDA
and Y. KOSHIOKA
Measurement of Distributed Strain and Deformation and Load
Identification Using Optical Fiber Strain Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . 1180
K. TACHIBANA, H. MURAYAMA, H. IGAWA, T. NAKAMURA
and J. YOKOKAWA
Extension of the Generalized Unknown Input Kalman Filter for
Online-Reconstruction of External Structural Loads . . . . . . . . . 1188
Y. NIU, M. KLINKOV and C.-P. FRITZEN
Characterization of the Temperature, Load and Damage
Effects Using Piezoelectric Transducer Patches Based
on Fuzzy Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1196
V. LOPES, JR., C. G. GONSALEZ, S. DA SILVA, S. ROY,
K. KODE, F. SUNOR and F.-K. CHANG
An Efficient Temperature Compensation Technique for Guided
Wave Ultrasonic Inspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1206
J. B. HARLEY and J. M. F. MOURA
Machine Learning for Pipeline Monitoring under Environmental
and Operational Variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1214
Y. YING, J. H. GARRETT, JR., J. B. HARLEY, J. M. F. MOURA,
N. O'DONOUGHUE, I. J. OPPENHEIM, J. SHI and L. SOIBELMAN
PROGNOSTICS AND DATA MINING FOR HEALTH MANAGEMENT

Prognostic Modeling and Experimental Techniques for Electrolytic
Capacitor Health Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1225
C. KULKARNI, J. CELAYA, G. BISWAS and K. GOEBEL
Improving the Accuracy of Structural Fatigue Life Tracking
Through Dynamic Strain Sensor Calibration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1233
H. LEE, J. SHELDON, M. WATSON, C. PALMER and T. FALLON
A 9-Step Process for Developing a Structural Health Monitoring
System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1241
S. GRAVES, K. RENS and F. RUTZ
Combined and I Indices Based on Principal Component Analysis
for Damage Detection and Localization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1250
D. A. TIBADUIZA, L. E. MUJICA, M. ANAYA and J. RODELLAR
Table of Contents xvii
An Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Damage

Detection in a Mistuned Bladed Disc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1258
Fatigue Evaluation and Prognosis for Steel Bridges with Remote
Acoustic Emission Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1266
J. YU and P. ZIEHL
Impact Damage Characterisation Using a Statistical Approach . . . 1274
M. T. H. SULTAN, K. WORDEN and W. J. STASZEWSKI
Accelerated Aging Experiments for Prognostics of Damage
Growth in Composite Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1283
A. SAXENA, K. GOEBEL, C. C. LARROSA, V. JANAPATI,
S. ROY and F.-K. CHANG
Prognostics and Diagnostics of Rotorcraft Bearings. . . . . . . . . . 1292
M. HAILE, A. GHOSHAL and D. LE
Bayesian Sensitivity Analysis of Numerical Models for Structural
Health Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1300
R. J. BARTHORPE
Adaptive Classification Based on Multisensor Decision . . . . . . . . 1309
L. AL-SHROUF, M.-S. SAADAWIA, N. SZCZEPANSKI
and D. SOEFFKER
Artificial Neural Network Based Damage Detection from Lamb
Wave Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1317
A. BARANWAL and M. MITRA
Integration of Data Mining Operations for Structural Health
Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1325
E. SONNLEITNER, H. KOSORUS, S. ANDERLIK, R. STUMPTNER,
B. FREUDENTHALER, H. ALLMER and J. KÜNG
Cognitive Architectures for Real-Time ISHM . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1333
J. A. CROWDER
Integration of Structural Health Monitoring and Fatigue Damage
Prognosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1341
Y. LING and S. MAHADEVAN
Wavelet-Based SVM System for Evaluation of Wear States and
Remaining Life Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1349
M.-S. SAADAWIA, G. LI and D. SÖFFKER
KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS
1
Integration of Structural Health Monitoring
Systems into Unmanned Aerial Systems—
Challenges and Opportunities
M. BUDERATH and L. BENASSI
ABSTRACT
There is a simple reason for the dramatic growth in use of Unmanned Air
Systems (UAS). Today's operations with strict rules of engagement create an
.
insatiable appetite for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) in

particular in the form of live video-streams, imagery and signal intelligence. In this
mission spectrum, UAS platforms offer appealingly low sustainment costs. The
challenges and limits of UAS must be seen as opportunities. Defining the margin of
UAS effectiveness is the first step toward identifying where manned or unmanned
systems are the better solution.
The big question is whether the UAS market will continue its rapid growth and
whether we can develop the right technology in time and cost. It will be essential to
verify and validate the more complicated level of UAS autonomy and predictable
through life support costs. Open system architecture coupled with enhanced health
monitoring, embedded diagnostics and prognostics leading to automated decision
support are key technologies of the R&T roadmap to support the development of
UASs. All these technologies will have a main contribution to meet the certification
requirements.
SHM is seen as a sub-system within a UAS Integrated System Health
Management where information from a variety of sources is gathered in order to
generate a component Health Assessment and estimate the component Remaining
Useful Life for prognostic purposes.
This paper presents two main elements of the UAS R&T roadmap which are:
• the Design for Service (DfS) approach to secure predictable through life
support costs;
• the certification / verification and validation framework aspects of SHM
technologies.
_________
Cassidian, Rec hliner Strasse, 85077 Manching, German y - www.cassidian.com
.
3
INTRODUCTION
The UAS use in Europe has been slower to emerge than in the US and Israel.
However, experience of using mature UAS in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
has dramatically improved the European perspective on their utility, and the
military market is growing at a significant rate. Today a wide range of UAS are
deployed e.g. Mini UASs, Tactical UAV, ISR UAV and Armed ISR UASs (Figure
1). Probably in the near future we will also see Unmanned Combat Air Systems.
The experience of using these systems has been instrumental in shaping
requirements for a broader range of UASs, and in the development of a Concept of
Operation (CONOPS.) The success of UASs in providing real-time information to
commanders on the battlefield has contributed to both mission effectiveness and in
protecting personnel. It is their effectiveness in these roles which has encouraged
European countries to commit to the use of military UASs to an extent that will
support rapid market growth during the next ten years. We also have a few
examples of UASs that have the potential to support the civil and commercial
markets. Opening new markets will require answering important questions:
• What scenarios, limits or vulnerabilities might make UAS less, or more,
attractive?
• What could the opponent do to counter UAS?
• How truly flexible is a UAS?
• How will costs develop?
• What business and support concepts are required to support operation and
trough life support of UASs?
• What type of emerging technologies are required to support operational
needs, certification and affordability?
Finding the right balance between connectivity and autonomy will be central to
keeping a UAS employable, survivable, and affordable. Customers will reject a
UAS that cannot guarantee a certain level of connectivity. UAS data links are a key
vulnerability. UAS concepts are heavily dependent on advances in information
assurance, frequency assurance, data-link capacity, and bandwidth management.
• Focus also on civil

and commercial
applications
• Wide range of mission

payload integration
Altitude (Km)
• Air Traffic Management

integration and Certification
is essential for future
application of UASs in civil
and European market
• Focus on Mission Payload

below 150 kg due to
Certification Requirements
• Limited Mission Spectrum
due to size of mission
payload
Range (Km) equivalent to Flying Hours

Figure 1: UAS Applications and Challenges
4
Autonomy technologies are needed across a range of functions from flight
autonomy including navigation and sense-and-avoid, to communication autonomy,
to mission autonomy. More complex tasks will require higher-level autonomy. The
system must be able to contend with changing environments, threats, mission
elements, particularly within the context of Combined Air Operations (COMAO).
On-board systems will have to establish manoeuvring, timing and positioning
requirements without operator input. This will have to be done taking vehicle
performance into account. All this translates into a complex mathematical problem
that must be computed in near real-time. Giving an UAS all the capabilities of a
manned combat aircraft plus the brain power of a human pilot is hardly possible,
even if it were desirable. The higher the level of uncertainty and the more dynamic
a situation; the more autonomy is needed in the unmanned system – to the point
where a crew is the only solution for missions like air-to-air and close-air support
under stringent rules of engagement. Airspace management technology will be an
important market, particularly sense-and-avoid systems. Civil aviation authorities
will require the integration of UAS into civil airspace without impeding other
airspace users. New theatres of operation will not immediately have comprehensive
airspace management. The more complicated UAS autonomy technology becomes,
the more necessary it will be to ensure that commanders and political authorities
can trust it. For those marketing UAS, there will be a premium on developing
concepts of operation necessary to provide the trust governments and militaries
want. Higher performance requirements including survivability will generate higher
costs. This could leave UAS too expensive to use in the more probable low-threat
environments. Traditional cost metrics do not distinguish well between system and
peripheral costs like network support. This applies not only to the network, but to
the human operators who control the systems. This could leave UAS too expensive
to use in the more probable low-threat environments. In order to take over this issue
innovative business models have to be implemented to the market.
A Business Model defines how a group of organizations provides a service to a
customer. A business model is the foundation for a mutually beneficial, long-term
relationship between a company and its customers (Figure 2.) The main objectives
of an innovative business model are (Figure 3) to:
• secure predictable through life costs and
• improve mission capability.
UAS UAV
UAS Flight Time
UAS Information
Customer
Manufacturer $ Owner $ Service Provider $
D = Doctrine/Concepts
E = Equipment
P = Personnel
T = Training
O = Organisation
I = Infrastructure
L = Logistics
I = Information
Figure 2: UAV Flight Service Value Chain [1]
5
• Affordability / Predictable Through Life
Support
– A long-term capability contract which
rationalises multiple supplier contracts into
one performance based contract will enable
optimised through life support
• Implementation of Condition based Cost per

Maintenance
Preventive
Maintenance
Cost per
Maintenance
CBM+
Maintenance Action Action
Lost Revenues
– Reduction of unscheduled Maintenance Lost
Revenues Unscheduled
Removal &
– Reduce Inventory Unsch’d Repair
Removal & Repair
– Reduce Logistic Delay Time Predictive Maint.
Scheduled Maintenance
– etc. Scheduled Maint.
Routine Checks
Routine Checks
Maintenance Activity/Action Maintenance Activity/Action
• Mission and Availability Management

– Reduce Turn around Time (Pre-& Post
Flight Inspections)
– Prognostics based Mission Planning
– Reduce mean time to Repair
Figure 3: Value Proposition Chain
DESIGN FOR SERVICE
The DfS approach (Figure 4) has been developed under the pressure of
operators / and customers who require more confidence and creditability in the
through life support cost of UASs. To meet this objective Cassidian has developed
and implemented a DfS approach based on the following main elements:
• Provide design requirements in relation to the recommended business
model.
• Recognising relevant risks in the system design associated with the
capability commitment and / or service objectives.
• Mitigating the risk through application of enabling technologies.
• Perform Cost Benefit Analysis to define the best trade off between
Acquisition Cost and Operation and Support Cost.
• Validation of the Design for Service requirements.
Historically, validation and verification (V&V) has been heavily weighted
towards building and testing. With complexity growing at an ever faster rate, build-
then-test becomes ever more difficult. It is of upmost importance to establish a
validation framework to verify the DfS requirements including the air segment and
enterprise segment. The realisation of condition based maintenance is considered as
a strong enabler for a predictable Through Life Support which includes
requirements for enhanced health monitoring provisions, embedded diagnostic and
prognostic functions, maintenance and operational decision support to obtain
maintenance credit.
The real challenge for condition based maintenance is seen to obtain
maintenance credit and maintenance benefit, defined as:
• Maintenance Credit: reasoning beyond the aircraft operating and
airworthiness limitations as per type certificate.
6
• Maintenance Benefit: health monitoring and maintenance decision support
within the aircraft operating and airworthiness limitations as per type certificate.
Simulation
Design for Service Framework
Elements
Demonstrator HW in Loop
Target
Service System
Reqts. Architecture Enables & Analytics Applications
Offering Design
Option1 - Performance - System - Open System - Enhanced Health Monitoring - Maintenance - Risk- /
Integrated Metrics Engineering Architecture Mgt. Mgt.
System & System - Enhanced Diagnostics
- Supply - Liability
support - Cost Targets - Scalability Mgt. Mgt.
services - Open System - Enhanced Prognostics
Architecture - Technical - KPI
Option 2
- Interoperability Primary Mgt. Mgt.
- Safety & - Integrated
Contract for System - Operation
Certification Information Management - SLA
Availability Mgt..
- Open System Mgt.
PBC &
IM Services - Operational - Design for Architecture - Business Intelligence
Sovereignty Service Operational Decision Support - TLS
Option 3 Enabling Mgt..
Contract System - Operation Centre
- Availability
for Capability - Data Management
Mgt.
& IX Services - Information Management.
Business Needs Create & Design Capability Evaluation Capability Application
Figure 4: Design for Service [DfS] Framework
For CBM certification [2] the following elements have to be address:

• CBM suitable System selection
• Sensor Reliability and Integration
• Data Integrity and Quality of Service
• CBM data warehousing and configuration management
• Software and Hardware qualification according to the aircraft design rules
• Diagnostic accuracy and Failure Prognosis capabilities including usage and
trend monitoring for the selected subsystems [3]
• Validation Framework
SHM CERTIFICATION ASPECTS
Certification involves processes to obtain the approval of the Regulatory

Authority (for example EASA, FAA, MoD or the DoD) that the applicable
airworthiness requirements and operating regulations are met. Qualification is the
process to validate and verify that a product (an SHM system for example)
complies with a specified set of performance and airworthiness requirements.
References [4] and [5] contain requirements and certification guidelines for manned
aircraft, whilst reference [6] is specific for UASs. However, most requirements in
reference [6] are adapted from manned aircraft to a UAS development. In other
words, the current certification guidelines for UASs are not a set of evolutionary
7
improved requirements based on UAS usage, but rather an adaptation of existing
requirements from manned aircraft. Regardless of which standard is adopted, the
achieved goal must be the same [6]: “to assure Structural Integrity (static strength,
fatigue and damage tolerance) of a vehicle structure throughout its specified usage
without imposing an unacceptable threat to safety or economic burden through
failure of structural components to the customer”. In order to achieve this goal, a set
of tasks must be put in place to demonstrate the structural integrity to the customer
and certification authorities through an agreed validation and acceptance program
for all structural significant items. In this context, SHM represents one of the most
important features in order to demonstrate such required structural integrity.
In the past, SHM systems have been used to monitor the theoretical fatigue life
consumption as basis for fleet management and scheduling of inspections and
modifications. Due to the used safety factors and scatter factors the implication on
the day-to-day airworthiness was a secondary factor. Also, for manned aircraft the
identification, assessment and decision in case of an in-flight event like a bird-
strike, lightning strike, battle damage or damage during taxi or landing FOD, relies
always on the pilot. The absence of a pilot leads to the challenge that additional
highly advanced in-flight capabilities of UAS SHM systems need to take over the
responsibility for the above mentioned items. Furthermore, these certification items
identify the necessity of an onboard real time loads monitoring and specific damage
detection system with a subsequent diagnosis and health assessment functionality to
check after an in-flight event the structural strength capability and structural
performance with respect to the safety and mission requirements.
In addition, during an aircraft design, structural factors of safety must be taken
into account and documented in the Structural Design Criteria. UASs are meant to
be cost effective assets, therefore cost saving factors are driving the quest for
acceptable factor of safety reductions. The possibilities for factor of safety
reduction are based on better design tools which lead to more accurate load
calculations, more effective flight control system laws and extensive structural
health monitoring. Today, both military and civil regulations for manned aircraft
generally require a factor of safety of 1.5 with some deviations. Regarding UASs,
reference [6] states that: "The factor of safety shall not be lower than 1.5 for
structure whose failure would lead to a Hazardous or more serious failure condition.
For other structure, the factor of safety shall not be lower than 1.25. For a factor of
safety less than 1.5, the applicant must provide justification to be agreed to by the
Certifying Authority." This statement opens the door to the possibility of using
SHM as a tool in order to justify the use of a reduced factor of safety.
There are other factors related to certification that justify the use of an SHM
system. Transportability aspects are normally not applicable to manned aircraft, but
unmanned systems (up to the MALE class) are generally transported close to the
operational area. Transportability is therefore a key aspect of UAS operations. In
fact, it must be possible to quickly assemble and disassemble a UASs with simple
means at the deployed operational bases. Also, it may be required to fit a
disassembled UAS into standard containers which are already compatible with
truck, train or airlifter cargo loading requirements. These transport requirements
add design load cases to the UAS structural load envelopes and the structural
integrity of the UAS once it has been disassembled and transported must be taken
into account and monitored with an SHM system.
8
In conclusion, Structural Health Monitoring is definitely more important in
UASs than in manned air systems and the criticality (catastrophic, hazardous,
major, minor, no-effect [4]) of a structure shall be determined in combination with
the benefits that an SHM system offers. Once the system criticality is determined, a
Development Assurance Level (DAL) is assigned to the system. A DAL is a
category of development requirements and evidences needed to assure that the
integrity is met. DAL is determined from the safety assessment process and hazard
analysis by examining the effects of failure conditions. DAL can assume one of the
following categories A, B, C, D, E for the failure condition Catastrophic,
Hazardous, Major, Minor and No effect respectively.
Once the contractual performance obligations and the airworthiness standards
are understood, the system development begins, generally based on platforms
whose technology maturity is acceptable (TRL ≥ 6). Figure 1 illustrates the V
lifecycle of an SHM system, which spans maturation, design, installation and
acceptance phases.
Technology Contractual Airworthiness
Maturation Performance Standards
Acceptance
Requirements
Test
High Level System

Design Test
Detailed
Unit Test
Design
Implementation
Figure 5: "V" lifecycle phases of an SHM system
The following SHM sub-systems can be implemented in order to provide

capabilities which can be used to support a UAS certification:
• Overloads Monitoring and Detection, which may range from direct
measurement of flight loads using sensors to indirect evaluation of flight loads
using aircraft parameters provided by other systems.
• Fatigue Monitoring and Assessment, which may range from acquiring a few
fatigue related parameters to more complex analysis methods that may involve
reconstructing local load spectra, tracking of individual aircraft parameters,
detecting initiated cracks by inspection or by SHM sensors, monitoring/assessing
crack extensions using crack growth curves and information about in-service
loadings, etc. Such a system allows the implementation of condition based
maintenance as well as it enhances airworthiness through more effective
surveillance on fatigue related problems.
9
• Accidental Damage Detection and Assessment, which may range from
detecting the location of damage (e.g. impact damage in CFRP) with a certain
probability of detection to detecting, categorising and assessing damage in a
complex structure (e.g. detecting the location, size and type of damage in structures
with stringers, frames, etc.) with a certain probability. The extent of the
maintenance tasks will not only depend on the detected location, size and/or type of
damage, but will also depend on the detection accuracy as well as the availability of
assessment information that describes the influence of various locations, sizes and
types on structural performance.
• Environmental Damage Detection and Assessment, as a consequence of
exposure to environmental conditions that cause structural degradation. Examples
include corrosive atmospheres, salty water, erosive sand storms, hail, significant
changes in atmospheric temperature combined with salty environments, and
conditions causing moisture penetration in composite materials.
As shown in Figure 5, the acceptance test is the last lifecycle phase and it aims
at demonstrating that the system meets both contractual performance commitments
and certification requirements. Certification requires activities involving the SHM
developer and the regulator to verify and ensure adherence with functional
requirements, airworthiness and operating regulations, and to obtain the approval of
the Regulatory Authority that the applicable regulations are met.
CONCLUSIONS
At Cassidian, a Design for Service approach has been developed to provide

more confidence and creditability in the through life support cost of UASs. Within
this framework, UAS SHM systems play an important role because, beside the
attractive function to reduce direct operating and life cycle costs, SHM systems
contribute to the fulfilment of aircraft airworthiness requirements which have the
end effect of reducing UAS mishap rates and supporting the integration of UASs
into national and international airspace outside of restricted areas (CAT 3).
REFERENCES
1. Moirè Incorporated. June 2004. "Cost & Business Model Analysis for Civilian UAV Missions."
2. LtCol MacGillavry, J.C.W. "Condition Based Maintenance," presented at the NATO RTO
meeting, October 5 2010, Bucharest.
3. Benassi, L., M. Buderath, and M. Neumair. 2009. " A Structural Health Monitoring system as
part of an aircraft Integrated Vehicle Health Monitoring architecture for Condition-based
Maintenance," presented at the 7th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring,
September 9-11 2009, Stanford, CA.
4. European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). 2011. "Certification Specifications and Acceptable
Means of Compliance for Large Aeroplanes CS-25".
5. UK Ministry of Defence. 1984, "DEF-STAN 00-970".
6. NATO USAR Specialist Team. 2007. "USAR 3.0 – STANAG 4671", edition 1.
10
The Journey to Incorporate Health Monitoring
and Condition Based Maintenance of Sikorsky
Commercial Helicopters
J. P. CYCON
ABSTRACT
This paper is a discussion of the journey Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation (SAC) is on
to incorporate vehicle health monitoring (VHM) and condition-based maintenance
(CBM) capabilities into all our products. The paper focuses on SAC’s S-92®
aircraft, which was introduced in 2004 and was the first commercial helicopter
fielded with a state-of-the-art HUMS integrated into the baseline aircraft. From day
one, SAC has collected aircraft generated data and established data management,
analysis, and decision making processes to provide maximum benefit to the
operator with reasonable man-in-the-loop support. The paper discusses the
development of automated processes for collecting data daily from operators from
around the world; analyzing, trending, and flagging data for follow-up by subject
matter experts; and mining data to establish normal versus anomalous behavior.
The paper will also discuss SAC’s Fleet Management Operations Center (FMOC)
which was created to promote a collaborative environment between subject matter
experts from various engineering and support services groups and to quickly
recommend appropriate maintenance actions. Lastly, the paper discusses SAC’s
efforts to develop processes that can be used to achieve maintenance credits (e.g.,
TBO and retirement time extensions) and to expand health management across all
aircraft subsystems.
INTRODUCTION
A key objective of the Department of Defense and Civil rotorcraft industry is to
incorporate Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Condition-Based Maintenance
(CBM) practices to increase fleet readiness and reduce operational costs. The
inclusion of onboard sensors and a data acquisition system such as a conventional
Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS) is a necessary but insufficient step
to achieving this objective. HUMS provides a large amount of useful data and
insight into aircraft and fleet usage; however, even a small fleet of HUMS equipped
aircraft can generate a huge amount of data that can be difficult to manage and
exploit without the development of automated data management, analysis, and
decision support tools and processes. Besides the potential for vast amounts of data
that must be managed, one of the biggest challenges is changing methodologies and
processes to allow the maintainer to utilize this data as a foundation for making
maintenance decision and thus achieving SHM and CBM objectives.
____________
James Cycon, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, 6900 Main Street, P.O. Box 97 29, Mail Stop
S579A, Stratford Connecticut 06615-9129 U.S.A.
11
With the introduction of the S-92 aircraft, SAC made health and usage monitoring
standard equipment on the aircraft. The S-92 HUMS system monitors and collects
information from most aircraft subsystems including mechanical, electrical,
hydraulic, and avionics. The S-92 HUMS is fully integrated into the aircraft and
collects operational usage data (e.g., flight hours, engine starts/stops, take-
off/landings), aircraft parametric data, flight regime data, event data, and health
data (e.g., pressures, temperatures, and vibration data for rotor track and balance
(RTB) and mechanical diagnostics). Ground System Software (GSS) is utilized by
the operator to evaluate HUMS data on a flight by flight basis and thresholds are set
to alert the maintainer when a parameter or indicator has passed a predefined limit.
A key SAC goal for on the S-92 aircraft was the delivery of a HUMS system that
added immediate value to the customer. Thus, initial thresholds for warning and
alerts were established based on experience gained during the development flight
test program, and HUMS procedures were incorporated into the manuals and the
training syllabus (both pilot and maintainer).. SAC’s vision was that the initial
HUMS system would give value to the operator, while enabling long term greater
benefits using a spiral development approach throughout the aircraft life cycle.
During the past eight years, SAC has matured the S-92 HUMS system through
threshold updates, incorporation of new algorithms and most importantly the
development of new CBM tools and processes. The remainder of this paper
discusses those CBM tools/processes and examples of initial CBM successes,
including the management of fleet issues through the development of new
diagnostic features and release of software tools to minimize the need for physical
inspection, part removals based on anomalous behavior, TBO extensions, and
application of maintenance credits to adjust component retirement time based on
HUMS data.
HUMS DATA COLLECTION AND VEWING

For the S-92 SAC created an infrastructure to automatically collect, store and
analyze aircraft HUMS data obtained from the operators. With the delivery of an
aircraft, the customer receives a laptop configured with all the GSS required to
download data from the aircraft, transfer data to local area network servers, and
place a copy of the data in a local FTP site. Three times a day the SAC HUMS
master server automatically checks all customer FTP sites, collects Raw Data Files
(RDF) from each customer, and places the data into a data warehouse. A copy of
the data is utilized by an on-line transactional database (OLTD) for immediate
viewing by SAC engineers. To prioritize and focus human-in-the-loop evaluation
on high value information, a software program was developed to read and store data
with respect to a given HUMS function in the OLTD via fact tables. For example,
HUMS events are stored into an events table, and HUMS exceedances are stored in
an exceedance table. A script calculates statistics on the transactional database and
moves the results into the data warehouse. Statistics are calculated against each fact
table. Logic rules are applied to the fact tables to produce higher-level information
for notification of potential problems or issues. Lastly, a series of WebPages are
utilized to present fleet wide and individual aircraft information from both the data
warehouse as well as the transactional database. The web portal, which will be
discussed more in the next section, is used by SAC Engineering to gain insight into
12
fleet operations and issues thus allowing a continuing maturation of the S-92
system. The web architecture is structured such that SAC allows operators viewing
of their specific aircraft fleet, but limits access such that customers cannot see any
data from other aircraft models or operators.
DATA ANALYSIS
A three tier approach has been implemented for HUMS data analysis. Tier 1 is fleet
wide evaluation of the HUMS data utilizing the HUMS Web Portal. The HUMS
web portal is designed to notify the viewer at a top level when a potential problem
or issue has been identified for any specific tail number. This allows the user the
ability to understand fleet status and identify aircraft needing further investigation
at a glance without having to analyze large amounts of data. The first page of the
web portal, Figure 1, provides aircraft fleet activity for the last 14-days. Days are
color coded so the user can quickly see the state of all aircraft. If any day is red,
immediate investigation is required. Yellows means an anomaly has been detected
and needs to be investigated. Green indicates that everything is fine, and blank
days mean no flights were performed that day. If you click on a day, you can drill-
down to the daily flight page, which gives specific flight information for that
aircraft on that day (Figure 1 insert). Additionally the portal allows users, both
internal and external to SAC, to quickly review aircraft fleet flight manual
exceedance operational usage statistics. Finally and most importantly, the portal
allows users to establish base line parametric and health indicator characteristics.
Trending large amounts of data for an extended period of time establishes normal
characteristics of a given parameter. Once normal is defined, specific individual
aircraft data can be compared to the baseline to identify anomalous behavior. Over
64 pages exist in the HUMS web portal, which has been structured hierarchically to
provide more detailed information at each lower level.
Figure 1 - S-92 HUMS Web Portal Allows Easy Viewing of Fleet Data
13
The focus of the second tier is in-depth analysis conducted by subject matter
experts when a problem has been identified that requires a detailed analysis to fully
understand root cause and identify appropriate actions. In-depth analysis is done
with sophisticated tools and more experienced people outside the context of the web
portal. The focus of the third tier analysis focuses on how well the HUMS and data
management, data analysis, and decision support tools and processes are operating
with the objective of identifying areas and methods of improvement. For this level
of analysis, tools were developed that focus on specific HUMS functions. For
example, SAC worked with Impact Technologies to develop the Knowledge
Discovery Toolkit (KDT), which is used to evaluate condition indicators (CI) across
the fleet and flag changes in CI behavior. If existing HUMS algorithms, CIs or
thresholds miss a fault, KDT can be used to determine if other CIs were better able
to detect it or to evaluate new CIs.
The value of HUMS data analysis in support of Fleet Management can be

segregated into several areas:
 Direct support of troubleshooting field problems to reduce time to closure.
 Early detection of deteriorating component states for improved scheduling
of maintenance activities and parts ordering/delivery.
 Extension of part TBO or adjustment of replacement times based on
customers operations and actual utilization to reduce direct maintenance
cost (DMC).
 Provision of customer support tools and services to help reduce operational
cost using HUMS data.
DIRECT SUPPORT OF TROUBLESHOOTING

During the past eight years of S-92 operations there have been multiple examples of
how HUMS parametric data has been used to support incident investigations and
troubleshooting. A small fire during ground operation, contacting of a tail drive
shaft with a support structure, main gear box loss of oil pressure, and loss of engine
power during takeoff are just a few of examples of when HUMS data was used to
help focus the investigation by providing factual data during and preceding the
incident. HUMS data is also used to evaluate the fleet of S-92 aircraft to quickly
see if any additional aircraft are exhibiting similar characteristics. There have been
a small number of instances where the quick determination of root cause using
HUMS data not only minimized downtime of the subject aircraft, but avoided a
temporary fleet grounding or restriction pending resolution. The figure below is an
example of how HUMS data was used to solve a problem with a low oil pressure
caution light that continually went off in the cockpit of one operator after takeoff.
The initial troubleshooting focused on the problem being an electrical or sensor
issue. After examining aircraft attitude data across the fleet it was determined that
the transition from a high nose-up attitude during takeoff to a low nose-down
attitude as the aircraft went to forward flight created sloshing of the oil and thus low
oil pressure warning. The problem was easily solved by adding a quart of oil. SAC
continues to evolve the diagnostics trouble shooting process by developing
automated data mining tools and incorporating HUMS and expert knowledge to
reduce troubleshooting down time.
14
Figure 2 – Reduced pressure due to oil sloshing during takeoff
EARLY DETECTION OF DEGRADED COMPONENTS

Historically, HUMS data has focused on monitoring dynamic drive train
components (gears, shaft and bearings) for safety purposes. The S-92 HUMS
system is integrated into the avionics bus and thus collets a wealth of information
that can be utilized for early detection of degrading components before they reach a
critical stage that causes a chip detection. Admittedly SAC continues to evolve
HUMS ability to predict certain types of degradation, but over the past eight years
SAC has assembled a portfolio of examples of how HUMS data can be used to
monitor component or subsystem health for other systems besides the drive train.
One such example is loss of bolt torque on the S-92 pitch control rod. Loss of bolt
torque leads to accelerated wear of the connection. As slop was introduced into the
joint, the track split between blades increased which is clearly seen in Figure 3.
Even though design changes have been incorporated to reduce the probability of
torque loss, pitch control rod bearing do wear and track split is now monitored as an
indicator for detecting worn rod ends.
Figure 3 – Rotor Blade Track Split Show Deteriorated Rod End Bearing
15
Another example of early detection, enabling CBM, is shown in Figure 4. In this
example HUMS was able to detect and isolate progressing bearing degradation in
an accessory gearbox well prior to chip detection. The degradation was noted 260
hours prior to need for removal and thus allowed SAC to work with the operator to
preposition a replacement accessory gearbox and make the removal and
replacement of the degraded component a scheduled maintenance activity rather
than the inevitable unscheduled event. To date, on a fleet of over 120 aircraft and
300,000 flight hours, SAC has over two dozen proactive removals based on HUMS
data.
Left Accessory GBX Bearings

Accessory Gearbox
Sikorsky
Notified
Operator
Component
Replaced
~260 Hours
Figure 4 – HUMS detects a spalled bearing in an accessory gearbox
USAGE AND LOADS MONITORING

The Holy Grail of HUMS has always been Structural Usage Monitoring (SUM), the
ability to adjust retirement times based on actual usage. The S-92 system
incorporates the capability to determine aircraft usage through the application of
regime recognition algorithms that map aircraft state parameters to maneuvers or
regimes, which have traditionally been used as one key factor that drives
component design and life. Additionally, SAC has been developing virtual
monitoring of load (VML) technology, which is a revolutionary approach based on
advanced mathematical models developed from flight load survey test data. The
objective of the VML technology is to duplicate the load measurement output of a
load sensor (e.g., strain gage) without having a physical sensor installed. The value
of this technology is that it can be used to revolutionize present day lifing
methodology, enable more advanced Usage/Condition Based Maintenance
(UBM/CBM) concepts, and enhance helicopter Structural Health Monitoring
(SHM) methods.
VML models have been developed for several key S-92 dynamic component loads
(e.g., main rotor shaft torque and bending, rotor pitch control, servo loads) and
airframe strain on a primary structural element (PSE) (i.e., main transmission
support beam). In December 2010, SAC incorporated eight VML models within
the HUMS installed on an aircraft and conducted a short flight test program to
validate the VML results against truth data acquired from aircraft instrumentation,.
Sample results, shown in Figure 5, were very encouraging; the VML models
matched the time history graphs in both waveform and amplitude. The graph in the
bottom left of this figure shows a tight error band over a wide range of loads and
maneuvers.
16
Main Rotor Torque Time History
Load Waveform Scatter Plot

MR Torque Time History for One Maneuver
Figure 5 – Flight test comparison of VML model estimates versus

actual load measurements
RETIREMENT TIME ADJUSTMENT

SAC has developed a process and submitted an application for FAA approval of a
procedure to provide a retirement time adjustments for the S-92 main rotor hub
based on the actual usage as recorded by the on-board Health and Usage Monitor
System (HUMS). The methodology takes advantage of the accurate counting of
rotor speed-related Ground-Air-Ground (GAG) cycles. The GAG cycles comprise
the major part of the fatigue damage experienced by the main rotor hub in service.
The accurate assessment of the fractional safe-life expended can be easily
determined at a specific point in time from the HUMS collected data. The end-to-
end process show in Figure 6 results in a reduction in the current flight time
expended on each hub based on the calculated actual damage, i.e. a new equivalent
flight hours expended is established based on actual accrued damage.
Main Rotor Log Card

RPM Tack “End-To-End” Process Adjustment
One Time Reduction

of Consumed hours
On Board Aircraft Data Sikorsky Fleet Data on Component
Acquisition & Processing Collection & Storage
Data Quality & Data Mining & Hub FAA Approved

Sensor Reliability Condition Verification CRT Adjustment
Procedure (ODA)
Data Transfer Calculate New
between Aircraft Component Retirement
& Ground System Time (human in-the-loop)
Data Manipulation, Recommended

Storage & Transfer Component RT
Adjustment
Figure 6 - Hub Retirement Time Adjustment Process
17
STRUCTURAL HEALTH MANAGEMENT
SAC is also conducting R&D with the objective of developing practical next-
generation health monitoring technologies such as structural health monitoring
(SHM). Prior to making the investment of integrating SHM into onboard HUMS,
SAC has worked with a number of SHM technology developers to assess the
capabilities and readiness of SHM technologies relative to SAC requirements. One
such effort was a joint research program between the Army Aviation Applied
Technology Directorate (AATD) and SAC, which was undertaken to develop and
demonstrate a Structural Integrity Monitoring System (SIMS) for metallic airframe
structural components. The intent was to develop and evaluate a prototype SIMS
based on state-of-the-art, commercial-off-the-shelf or publicly available sensor
technologies having TRL-4 or higher. Based on a comprehensive technology
assessment, two types of sensors were selected for incorporation within the SIMS.
One was an eddy-current sensor that detects local surface and subsurface damage.
The second was a piezoelectric based transducer array that can detect damage more
globally. Both sensor types were demonstrated in a series of proof-of-concept tests,
including coupons, sub-components, and full-scale primary structural elements.
The results of the work to date have demonstrated that existing damage detection
sensors are capable of detecting and isolating cracks within complex airframe with
sufficient accuracy for practical fleet management applications. However, more
work is required to better characterize the effects of aircraft loading and
environmental conditions on damage detection sensors, as well as, develop
minimum weight and flight worthy hardware. The results have been sufficiently
encouraging to warrant inclusion of an effort to develop an approach to integrate
SHM technologies with HUMS in a new AATD-SAC project.
SAC AIRCRAFT’S FLEET MANAGEMENT OPERATONS CENTER

To proactively support the S-92 operators SAC established a Fleet Management
Operations Center (FMOC) that utilizes aircraft operational and maintenance data
to implement actions that improve aircraft readiness, material availability and
reduce direct maintenance costs (DMC). The center is staffed by Engineering,
Logistics and Reliability personnel who analyze fleet data, identify trends and
identify actions to improve component reliability. HUMS and maintenance data is
also utilized to predict material usage requirements and optimize future
maintenance actions. Initially, the FMOC’s primary focus was on supporting the S-
92 aircraft but based on the lessons learned and successes from the S-92 the FMOC
concept has been extended to other SAC aircraft models.
SUMMARY
In summary, over the past eight years of supporting S-92 operations SAC has
demonstrated a changing paradigm shift in aircraft support through the proactive
utilization of health and usage data. The journey is long and there are still many
technical and procedural challenges to implementation condition based maintenance
but SAC is committed to the journey of reducing both scheduled and unscheduled
maintenance, increase operational availability, decreasing operational cost and
enhancing aircraft safety through the incorporation of advanced vehicle health
management technologies.
18
Embraer Perspective on the Introduction of
SHM into Current and Future Commercial
Aviation Programs
L. G. DOS SANTOS
ABSTRACT
Knowledge about Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) evolved considerably on

the last 15 years and all major aircraft manufactures are conducting their own SHM
Research and Development (R&D) programs. Nevertheless, it is still not common to
see SHM systems playing significant role in current commercial aviation
maintenance programs. This paper presents Embraer’s perspective on the
introduction of SHM into current and future commercial aviation programs based
mainly on the latest discussions and changes to the Air Transport Association’s
Maintenance Steering Group 3 (MSG-3) methodology, used for scheduled
maintenance program development. Effects on the maintenance review board process
and aircraft maintenance manuals are also analyzed. Additionally, it briefly presents
Embraer’s general suggestions that should be taken into consideration by the SHM
community in order to make it possible to start realizing some of the SHM potential.
INTRODUCTION
Several SHM technologies and techniques with potential for application on the
aerospace industry are being investigated and all major aircraft manufactures are
conducting their own SHM Research and Development (R&D) programs. Regulatory
Authorities (RA) and Operators are increasingly participating in SHM discussions
and forums, as well as in flight tests of SHM solutions. Additionally, SHM cost-
benefits aspects are also being investigated, with promising indications.
Nevertheless, despite the amount and quality of researches and tests results on SHM,
one may reasonably ask why we still don’t see SHM systems being systematically
used as part of any current commercial aviation maintenance program. Aspects of
this topic were already analyzed by Derisso et al. [1] in a paper entitle “Why Are
There Few Fielded SHM Systems for Aerospace Structures?”, indicating that to be
possible to implement SHM solutions, a consistent business case and technical
feasibility must be demonstrated. Munns et al. [2], on earlier NASA report,
proposed that the implementation of health monitoring systems will depend on how
Luís Gustavo dos Santos, Embraer S.A., Av. Brigadeiro Faria Lima 2170, Sao Jose
dos Campos-SP, 12227-901, Brazil.
19
easily they will be approved in a certification process, their compatibility with
continued airworthiness requirements and their acceptability by operators.
Consequently, in order to improve the conditions for SHM to be an effective part
of current and future commercial aviation maintenance programs, these points must be
properly addressed by any original equipment manufactures (OEM) interested in
providing their customers with lower direct maintenance costs (DMC) through
application of SHM technologies in their aircraft models, and Embraer is committed to
be one of them.
Embraer believes that it is time for members of the SHM community to explore
other ways to translate the vast amount of knowledge accumulated so far in
applications, starting to realize part of the SHM potential in the current commercial,
executive and defense fleets. One of the ways to do so is to better understand all the
implication derived from the changes related to SHM in the Air Transport
Association’s Maintenance Steering Group 3 (MSG-3) methodology, used for
scheduled maintenance program development, and explore the potential effects on the
maintenance review board process, the aircraft maintenance manuals and ultimately,
on the operators maintenance programs.
HOW TO DEVELOP A SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE PROGRAM – A

SUMMARY
For transport category aircraft of more than 33,000 pounds maximum certificated
takeoff weight, a Maintenance Review Board (MRB) is normally formed, with
representatives from airlines, system suppliers, regulatory authorities and the aircraft
manufacturer, and a Maintenance Review Board Report (MRBR) generated as an
expeditious means of complying in part with the maintenance instruction requirements
of Appendix H to 14 CFR part 25 [7], developing part of the instructions for continued
airworthiness required by § 25.1529 [7]. The MRBR contains the initial minimum
scheduled maintenance/inspections requirements for a particular aircraft [3]. These
requirements partially come as a result of the activities of different Working Groups
(WG), an Industry Steering Committee (ISC), and a Maintenance Review Board
(MRB), normally using ATA MSG-3 methodology and following the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) Advisory Circular (AC) 121-22A – Maintenance
Review Board Procedures [3]. One of the ISC responsibilities is to prepare a Policy
and Procedure Handbook (PPH), which provides detailed guidance for all procedures
used in the development of the MRBR, including what version of the MSG-3
methodology will is being used and how it should be implemented by the WGs. The
approved PPH for a particular program is then the reference for development and
approval of the MRBR tasks by the ISC and WGs.
When all the analyses and activities of the WGs and ISC are done and if the
resultant MRBR is approved by the Regulatory Authorities (e.g. FAA, EASA,
ANAC), it constitutes a base over which each airline develops its own individual
maintenance program.
20
CURRENT STATUS OF SHM ON THE MSG-3 METHODOLOGY
The introduction of SHM concepts on the MSG-3 methodology occurred in April

2009, when the IMRBPB approved the contents of the MSG-3 revision of that year
[4]. During the 7th IWSHM, Wenk [5] presented details about how this was achieved
and what was revised in the methodology related to SHM. That revision can be
summarized in figure 1. Once incorporated as part of a PPH, the ATA MSG-3 2009.1
was understood as adequate to support a SWG and ISC making one of three possible
decisions when evaluation an MSG-3 analysis of a Structural Significant Item (SSI):
1) List the S-SHM task as alternative for the relevant ED, AD and/or FD inspection in
the MRBR (S-SHM listed together with the traditional inspections); 2) Replace a
traditional inspection on the MRBR by the S-SHM task and 3) Select (or maintain) a
traditional inspection over the S-SHM task to be listed in the MRBR. As one of the
first results of these discussions, the terms P-SHM and C-SHM were replaced by the
concept of Automated SHM (A-SHM), defined as “any SHM technology, which does
not have a pre-determined interval at which maintenance action much takes place, but
instead relies on the system to inform maintenance personnel that action must take
place” [6]. As a consequence, it was recognized that SHM can be implemented in two
operation modes: S-SHM and A-SHM.
• SCHEDULED SHM (S-SHM): The act to use/run/read out a SHM device at an

interval set at a fixed schedule.
• NEW MAINTENANCE TASK CATEGORY: S-SHM stands separated from the
traditional MRBR tasks (General Visual Inspections – GV or GVI –, Detailed
Inspection – DI or DET – and Special Detailed Inspection – SI or SDI), that are
directly associated with qualification required for the inspector).
• MSG-3 STRUCTURAL LOGIC REVISION: To evaluate the use of S-SHM as a
task for timely detections of Accidental Damage (AD), Fatigue Damage (FD) and
Environmental Deterioration (ED) for all metallic and damage (e.g., delamination
and disbonding) for all non-metallic Structural Significant Items (SSIs).
Figure 1. Summary of MSG-3 revision discussed in the 7th IWSHM
It was also agreed that SHM systems can be classified by their technology types,
based on their design principles, and that different MSG-3 structural analysis
considerations may be applicable to each type. Only two SHM technology types were
initially identified: 1) Damage Monitoring Systems – SHM systems using sensors to
directly monitor the structure for deterioration conditions, and 2) Operation
Monitoring Systems – SHM systems using sensors which do not directly check the
structure for damage, but instead correlate various measurements (e.g. environment
conditions, loads) to make an inference to the probability or likelihood of damage.
It was proposed to add a new paragraph (entitled “Structural Monitoring
Systems”) to ATA MSG-3 document chapter 2-4-2 - Scheduled Structural
Maintenance, stating that “once a Structural Health Monitoring system design is
demonstrated to be applicable and effective, it may be used to ensure inherent
airworthiness of the item being monitored and traditional inspection task selection
may not be appropriate. The specific design of this monitoring system will determine
the approach that should be used with regards to scheduled maintenance requirements.
21
The corresponding procedures need to be developed and accepted at the level of the
PPH” [6]. Additionally, the creation of a paragraph entitled “Evaluation of Structural
Health Monitoring Systems” to complement the current logic for scheduled structural
maintenance development was proposed. Basically, a new logic diagram (refer to
figure 2) would be used after the SWG consolidated traditional structural maintenance
tasks (GVI, DTE and SDI) and intervals, as well as the airworthiness limitations, in
order to evaluate possible effects on the final list of structural maintenance
requirements if a A-SHM system is available.
Finally, based on preliminary studies from Embraer and Airbus, it was concluded
that the current ATA MSG-3 aircraft systems and powerplant analysis procedures
were in general adequate for the evaluation of SHM systems, and only minor changes
and clarifications would be necessary.
AN APPROACH TO GRADUALLY INTRODUCE SHM INTO SCHEDULED

MAINTENANCE PROGRAMS
In Embraer perspective, what was explained up to this point should be taken into
consideration in order to define an approach or strategy to introduce SHM solutions
into current and future commercial aviation maintenance programs. This approach will
be described below in a form of general suggestions for the SHM community.
Be more familiarized with the MRB process and MSG-3 Methodology
In order to successfully introduce any SHM system into a commercial aviation

maintenance program, SHM system developers must remember that as per 14 CFR
part 25 § 25.1529 and Appendix H, instructions for continued airworthiness must be
developed for the aircraft [7] and therefore, SHM systems must be properly evaluated
in this aspect. As explained before, this may occurs as part of a MRB process,
governed by the instruction contained in the correspondent PPH, and using ATA
MSG-3 methodology [4].
Therefore, it is our first recommendation that more members of the SHM
community become familiar with this part of the certification process. Embraer and
other OEMs offer training on MRB process and MSG-3 methodology. With this, it
will be easier for SHM system and components providers to interact with OEMs in
order to investigate which requirements of the current MRBR are the best candidates
to be replaced or augmented by SHM solutions, and how the best and fastest way to
get it properly evaluated and approved by the WGs, ISC and MRB. It will also
contribute for the development of more studies and papers related to the development
of instructions for continued airworthiness for SHM systems.
22
FROM CURRENT STRUCTURES MSG-3 LOGIC
NO
A-SHM
AVAILALBLE?
YES
PROVIDES SHM SYSTEM

CAPABILITIES & SPECIFICATION
DIRECT DAMAGE MONITORING INDIRECT OPERATIONAL

MONITORING
A-SHM
TYPE?
YES
NO
NO REQ. MET BY
CAN TASK REQ. NO SHM
BE AUGMENTED DETECTION CAN NO
BY SHM SYSTEM? CAPABILITIES? INSPECTION
REQ. BE
IMPROVED?
YES
YES
REDESIGN
MAY BE LIST REQUIREMENTS YES
REQUIRED AFFECT BY
MONITORING
SYSTEMS
YES
CAN TASK
REQ. BE
IMPROVED? NO TASK
NO IDENTIFY MODIFIED / AFFECTED BY SHM
LIST TASK REQUIREMENTS
Figure 2: Evaluation of Structural Health Monitoring Systems Logic Diagram (based on IP 105 [6]).
Start with S-SHM applications
In Embraer’s perspective, the first SHM systems would be designed in a way that
only sensors, cables and connectors will be installed in the aircraft structure. They
would be only activated / energized on ground by a technician, using ground support
equipment (GSE). Also, they would be designed to meet the requirements and
inspection scope of specific MRBR tasks.
The first benefit from starting with S-SHM instead of A-SHM would be to avoid
the majority (if not all) of the issues related to how and when a structural degradation
will be annunciated to the flight crew or technical personnel. It would occur due to the
fact that the very definition of S-SHM tasks invokes that it must be performed on
ground, during maintenance checks or overnights, activated by humans, and for the
cases where a failure is found, corrective actions will be required before the next
revenue flight. If structural degradation (cracks, corrosion, impact damage etc) is
23
found, the technician must follow the appropriate maintenance manual procedure to
fix the problem, keeping the aircraft airworthy. If the problem is the functioning of the
S-SHM itself, detected by self diagnostics functions, the technician would have two
options: either to fix the S-SHM system and re-do the inspection or perform the
conventional inspection defined for that structure. That will be indicated as alternative
in the MRBR and other planning documents such as the Maintenance Planning
Document (MPD). A second benefit would be not having to make major revisions on
the current PPHs, as S-SHM tasks are already considered valid task types by the
current ATA MSG-3 methodology [4].
Another benefit would derive from the previous two, as OEMs and suppliers could
focus their efforts in validating each specific S-SHM system and procedures as
equivalent to the conventional MRBR tasks that will be replaced by it (for example, by
demonstrating that the correspondent probability of detection – POD – of the S-SHM
system is equal or greater than the one for the conventional task it is replacing), while
the impact on the correspondent structural MSG-3 analysis would be reduced. This
would occur due to the fact that, once a S-SHM system is validated, the SWG can
immediately considered it to replace an existent GVI, DET or SDI task, substantiation
data will be available for the ISC and MRB assessment.
The introduction of validated S-SHM inspections into the maintenance documents
and manuals such as MRBR, MPD and the aircraft maintenance manual (AMM)
would not demand any dramatic change in their current layout and content, yet
bringing significant results in terms of reduction of maintenance costs (refer to Figure
3).
Also, the correspondent maintenance procedure in the AMM could be
significantly simplified. Depending on the positioning of the S-SHM design and its
GSE connection point, the technician would not need to open several circuit breakers
or use a rear fuselage workstand to perform the inspections, or even set the elevator a
neutral position. The mechanic would connect the GSE to the S-SHM system, then
activate it and wait for the results (including the self-diagnostics results that will be
necessary before assessing the monitored structure condition). Additionally, the
current SDI procedures would be then considered as readily available alternative
maintenance procedures in case the S-SHM is defective.
Finally, the design and operational characteristics of S-SHM systems would make
their certification easier than for A-SHM solutions. Although it is not our intention to
discuss aspects of SHM systems certification other than the ones related to the creation
of the correspondent instructions for continued airworthiness, Embraer understands
that the initial S-SHM applications can be certified using the current regulations,
regardless if they will be classified as major or minor design changes. Additionally, by
Figure 3: Example of a S-SHM replacing a SDI in a MRBR.
24
trying to certify S-SHM applications for current commercial aviation models, OEMs
and SHM developers would receive valuable information for the regulatory authorities
in order to properly evaluate which aspects of the certification of SHM systems really
need to be clarified and/or standardized, contributing to initiatives such as the one
conducted by Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Aerospace Industry Steering
Committee for SHM (AISC-SHM), comprising industry, government and academic
members whose main goal is the development of a SAE International Aerospace
Recommended Practices (ARP) document on the implementation of SHM
applications.
Simplify the S-SHM Ground Support Equipment
One of the main issues for SHM applications is to be economically viable [8]. For
S-SHM a GSE will be required and sometimes its costs can become prohibitive for
Operators. Therefore, if the first S-SHM systems could rely on the use of conventional
laptops, computers or tablets running specific software, cost would be considerably
reduced as operators could use the same laptop, for example, to perform different S-
SHM tasks. Operators would also have the flexibility to perform this type of
maintenance at any of their maintenance bases or outstations, as it will be only
required to have the appropriate software and a connection cable to the aircraft.
Additionally, it would reduce OEMs and operators’ concerns related to problems of
GSE support and maintenance over the years.
Develop S-SHM systems as “bridges” for initial A-SHM applications
As A-SHM systems would be formed by sensors, cables, connectors, and

different types of signal generation and data processing units, as well as be integrated
somehow with other aircraft systems (related for example with communications and
electrical power), it will be necessary to analyze the A-SHM components and
functionalities in more ways than from just the MSG-3 structures procedures
perspective. Consequently, time, costs and risks associated with the definition of a
complete set of maintenance requirements for an A-SHM system will be normally
higher than for S-SHM application.
Part of the risks mentioned above is related to IMRBPB position regarding the
additional changes to the MSG-3 Methodology necessary to properly address A-SHM
systems. The regulatory authorities representatives in the IMRBPB closed IP 105 [6]
with the following statement: “IMRBPB fully supports the development of MSG 3
process for SHM systems. The proposal as attached appears to be a good starting
point. However the development of this type of logic analysis for SHM, must be
validated by various OEM’s on their applicable SHM systems to ensure the
effectiveness of the applicable methodology. Once the IMRBPB can validate such an
analysis process as being applicable and effective, a revision to MSG 3 will then be
accepted. This does not prevent a TCH (Type Certificate Holder), on a voluntary
basis, to introduce this proposal in its PPH, with approving authority’s agreement, to
apply this proposal in the frame of the validation”. Therefore, OEMs will change their
PPHs at some point in order to properly address the analysis of A-SHM systems and
eventual transitions from S-SHM to A-SHM solutions.
25
Regardless if an A-SHM system was developed or not based on enhancements of
less complex S-SHM applications, A-SHM systems may preclude traditional MRB
Tasks when all requirements defined during MRB Process are met by A-SHM
detection capabilities.
CONCLUSION
Despite the amount of knowledge gathered up to now by the SHM community, the
expected maintenance cost reductions of SHM systems and the latest changes in the
ATA MSG-3 methodology, SHM applications are still not present in the majority of
current commercial aviation maintenance programs. This paper shortly presented one
possible approach to change that scenario, in order to enable current and future
commercial aviation programs to start realizing some of the SHM potential.
SHM community members should take the challenge to design, develop, and
implement S-SHM systems to meet the same requirements of current MRBR tasks,
following the existent certification regulations and methodologies (such as the MRB
process and the MSG-3 analysis), in order to increase the participation of SHM
solutions in the maintenance programs and gradually be prepared for the
implementation of more complex and integrated SHM solutions (A-SHM).
REFERENCES
1. Derriso, M.M., S.E. Olson, M.P. DeSimio, D.H. Pratt, “Why are there few fielded SHM for
Structural. Health Monitoring” 6th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring,
Stanford CA, Sept 11, p55, 2007
2. Munns, Thomas E., R.E. Beard, A.M. culp, D.A. Murphy, R.M. Kent, 2000. Analysis of Regulatory
Guidance for Health Monitoring. NASA / CR-2000-210643, 6: 56.
3. Advisory Circular 121-22A – Maintenance Review Board Procedures, dated 3/7/97, Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA). Available at
http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAdvisoryCircular.nsf/0/498AA31
76CD47F93862569BC0057D2C8?OpenDocument&Highlight=121-22a
4. ATA MSG-3, Operator/Manufacturer Scheduled maintenance Development; Revision 2009.1, Air
Transport Association (ATA) of America, Inc., available from ATA at http://www.airlines.org.
5. Wenk, L., “Status of MSG-3 (Maintenance Steering Group 3) Guidance on Using SHM for
Scheduled Maintenance” 7th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, Stanford
CA, Sept 9, p103, 2009
6. Candidate Issue Paper 105, “Further advanced definition of Structural Health Monitoring
(SHM)/Addition to MSG-3”, a joint industry proposal (Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier,
Embraer, Gulfstream) presented to the IMRBPB, Singapore, 2010. Available with
attachments at http://www.easa.europa.eu/certification/flight-standards/IMRBPR-issue-
papers.php
7. Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Available
at http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgFAR.nsf/MainFrame?OpenFrameSet
8. Kent, Renee M., D. A. Murphy, 2000. Health Monitoring System Technology Assessments – Cost
Benefits Analysis. NASA / CR-2000-209848.
26
Structural Health Monitoring for Civil
Infrastructure—From Instrumentation
to Decision Support
A. S. KIREMIDJIAN
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we examine the main components of structural health monitoring

systems of civil infrastructure that are needed for a widespread implementation. These
include instrumentation, structural system damage diagnosis and prognosis, and
information delivery. The type of instrumentation is governed by the structural
properties and types of damage anticipated to occur due to different loading and
environmental conditions. Damage diagnosis is to a great extent dependent on the type
of instrumentation used, the structural behavior, and the needs of the end-user of the
information. Factors that are unique or specific to civil structures are highlighted and
key impediments to implementation of the current state of monitoring are presented. It
is recognized that one of the key impediments to implementation is the availability of
damage diagnosis algorithms and tools. Current research on damage-diagnosis using
statistical pattern recognition methods is briefly summarized drawing on the research
of the author and her research team. The paper concludes with current gaps in
knowledge and research needs that will advance the state of science and engineering in
the field.
INTRODUCTION
Structural health monitoring (SHM) has received increasing interest in the research
community [1] and in the past two decades significant advances have been made
towards the development of sensors and damage algorithms that are specific for civil
infrastructure systems. Recent research has also demonstrated that wireless sensing
networks can be successfully used for structural health monitoring [e.g., 2-3]. The
question that is in front of us is: Why haven’t we seen a more wide-spread
implementation of structural health monitoring systems to real structures.
The need for monitoring our civil infrastructure system has amply been
demonstrated. Our civil infrastructure is greatly deteriorating and in many cases the
Anne S. Kiremidjian, Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford

University, CA 94305.
27
deterioration is taking place at a rate much faster than originally considered. For
example, many bridges within the United States are reaching their design life and
strength capacity much earlier than their intended design life [4]. This accelerated
deterioration is caused by the ever-increasing every-day loads due to truck overloads
and by environmental conditions that are exacerbated by climate change. Increased
number of hurricanes and floods are putting additional stress on our infrastructure
components further adding to their deterioration. At the same time owners of critical
facilities such as nuclear power plants and chemical plants that are reaching their
design life would like to extend their life due to economic conditions.
In order for structural health monitoring (SHM) systems to be economically
viable, they should serve multiple purposes. The first is to determine damage from an
unusual or extreme load. The second is to determine strength degradation due to long
term deterioration from every-day loads and environmental effects. A third objective is
to obtain information on the structural parameters or the system in its as-built
condition, which is likely to be very different from the design parameters thus
improving future designs, as well as enabling life-cycle analysis and maintenance
planning. This is particularly true for reinforced concrete and masonry structures or
other highly variable materials. Such SHM systems are optimal and justifiable for
implementation.
Damage from unusual loads can occur several times over the life of the structure.
Such loads are typically greater than the design limits and they may cause anywhere
from small to moderate to large amounts of damage, depending on the size of the
overload. For example, a truck may have 30% more weight than the maximum
allowed by the design limits or by state/federal regulations. Extreme event such as an
earthquake, hurricane, tornado or a blast also cause loads that are over the design
limits. When such events occur, it is important to first determine if there is damage,
how much is the damage and what is the most likely location of the damage
comprising the damage diagnosis stage [5].
With the implementation of the latest performance-based engineering (PBE)
design paradigm for extreme loads this process will become even more difficult
because it will require that the monitoring system inform the occupants of the
functionality of the facility. In particular, we have shifted from design for life safety to
PBE that also includes different functionality criteria and the life-cycle durability. An
added component to these design processes is the issue of sustainability, which
requires that materials be reusable and cause minimal impact to our environment.
These are now part of the prognosis component of structural health monitoring.
Furthermore, new materials for which we have little knowledge about their
performance, deterioration and damage patterns are continuously being developed for
design and construction. As a result, SHM for civil structures is facing new challenges.
In this paper we examine the components of a SHM systems for civil
infrastructures with the objective to address some of the issues discussed brought forth
above. The main components of a SHM are sensing system, communications network,
data interrogation and interpretation engine, and a decision support system. In general
such a system can be expanded to include also control devices; in this paper, however,
we will focus on the main SHM system only. These components are essential for all
civil infrastructure SHM systems but their details can vary depending on the specific
system being monitored. We will discuss the function of each of these components,
their limitation and the current challenges. The component that seems to be the most in
28
need for further development is the information delivery primarily because damage
diagnosis and prognosis algorithms are lacking or have limited capabilities and
reliability.
In the remainder of this paper, we will first discuss the major components of a
SHM for civil infrastructure systems. We conclude with recommendations for future
research directions.
COMPONENTS OF STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING SYSTEMS

FOR CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURES
The four components of a civil infrastructure SHM system should include a

sensing system, a data diagnosis and prognosis engine, information transmission
network and an information delivery environment which we typically refer to as a
decision support system (DSS). Figure 1 shows schematically the main components of
a SHM system.
Sensing system Computational Engine

Multiple sensors Data collection
Computational engine Data cleansing
Power Damage diagnosis
Communications node Damage prognosis
DDS - Decision support

system Information transmission
Instrumentation monitoring Wired network
Transmission network state Wireless network
Structure state – From sensors to local hub
Damage diagnosis From Local hub to main
Life prognosis station
Figure 1 Main components of a structural monitoring system (SHM)
Sensing System
The sensing system should accommodate several different types of sensors. No

single sensor can detect the different types of damage that can occur on a civil
structure. Like other systems, such as airplanes, automobiles or mechanical
equipment, damage occurs in various parts of the overall system and it is manifested
by changes in the local structure of the material or changes in the connectivity of
components, or changes at the interfaces of different materials. An added
complication for civil infrastructure is that many of the materials are not well
understood, i.e., their material properties and mechanical behavior is difficult to
quantify. For example, concrete is typically poured in place at the construction site
with limited supervision. The amount and type of reinforcement varies greatly and
inspections are only partial, i.e. they do not cover the entire structure. Thus, there are
variations in the mechanical and chemical composition of these materials, leading to
29
variations in performance. Even when structures are built of materials that are well
understood when they are in the linearly-elastic range, such as steel moment resisting
frames subjected to everyday loads, their behavior under extreme loads is again
poorly understood because the loads push these materials into their nonlinear range,
where their behavior is relatively unknown. The reasons for these gaps in knowledge
are several. For one, we are not always able to reproduce the extreme loads in the
laboratory. For example, we cannot reproduce the earthquake forces on a structure
because our shaking tables have limited capabilities and we have to contend with
scaled input motions. In addition, scaled models do not truly represent the behavior of
full scale structures. Even with scaled models, we cannot test full systems, e.g., a ten
story three dimensional frame. Only within the past five years have we been able to
test full scale structures up to four stories high at the NEED facility in Japan. An
added problem is the high cost of testing which prevents us from performing multiple
tests to estimate the uncertainty on the various material and system parameters.
Recent testing of structural components, assemblies and small scale structures
through the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) program of
NSF, have provided valuable data that are now becoming available for verification of
models. These data will prove to be very valuable in calibrating and verifying our
damage algorithms.
TYPES OF SENSORS AND THEIR USE:
Sensors typically included in current SHM systems are vibration, strain, crack,
corrosion, displacement, tilt, wind speed, humidity and temperature. Vibration sensors
are used to track global behavior of the structure, such as changes in predominant
period, mode shapes, and permanent deformations. Strain sensors attempt to capture
local material failures and the remaining sensors have damage specific purposes.
Temperature and humidity sensors should be used alongside other sensors, especially
in field experimentation in order to track any systematic behavior of the structure. For
example, the mass of concrete can increase by as much as 30% when raining. The
period of a structure can also change dramatically (from 25% to 30%) between
daytime and nighttime temperature variations. Thus, damage diagnosis can be reliably
implemented only if these environmental effects are taken into consideration.
Currently fiber optic sensors are used for crack detection in reinforced concrete
structures. Crack sensors for steel, particularly for welds at member joins where most
damage is found to occur, do not exist. Corrosion sensors are still in their infancy
although several successful prototypes have been developed in recent years [e.g., 6,
7]. Direct displacement measurements are presently obtained with GPS instruments,
high definition digital video cameras, and laser interferometers. These are used both
for dynamic displacement measurements as well as for permanent deformation
estimation. Tilt meters are also often used to estimate permanent displacement.
With any structure, several of these sensors need to be deployed to provide
comprehensive damage detection. Their placement is critical and requires knowledge
and understanding of structural behavior and damage manifestation within the
structure, i.e. where damage is likely to occur and how large can it be. There are
numerous examples throughout the world where SHM systems have been deployed
with several of the sensors identified in this paper. An example system that has
30
deployed majority of these types of sensors was recently designed for the Guangzhou
TV and Sightseeing Tower (8).
Data Diagnosis and Prognosis Engine
Two main approaches are used presently to analyze and interpret data collected by
SHM at civil structures. These include the system identification based techniques and
the statistical pattern recognition methods. System identification (SI) based methods
require that the data from all sensors be obtained first and filtered. Moreover the
sensors need to be time synchronized. SI techniques are computationally very as
intensive requiring high capacity computational environments thus the analysis is
almost always performed at a local computer or a workstation. With the introduction
of wireless structural health monitoring (WSHM) systems [2] computational power is
included at the sensing unit leading to the need for developing data interrogation and
interpretation algorithms that use low power and can be embedded in a
microprocessor. Sohn et al [9] introduced some of the first algorithms that utilized
statistical pattern recognition methods. The advantage of these methods is that they
track changes in the structure using signals obtained at a single location. Over the past
decade there has been a proliferation of methods using statistical pattern recognition
and many of them have been successful in identifying and quantifying damage. It is
not the objective of this paper to provide an extensive review of all the methods that
have been developed. We will, however, mention a few algorithms as examples of
methods that can be used with either wireless or wired systems.
Statistical pattern recognition methods use initially the data from a single sensor to
identify a change in the structure. These methods have the following steps:
(a) Before damage has occurred data are collected, filtered and possibly
concatenated. Such signals are collected under varying environmental conditions to
establish a baseline for future comparisons. (b) Features are extracted from the signals
that capture the behavior of the structure; these features are stored in a baseline
database. (c) Periodic measurements are taken and the new signals are also filtered
and concatenated. (d) A signal and its feature are identified from the baseline database
that best match the environmental conditions of the newly collected signal. (e) The
features from the new signal and the baseline signal are compared and damage is
identified if the changes in the features are statistically significant.
Following Sohn et al [9], Nair et al [10] also showed analytically that the
autoregressive (AR) model coefficients are directly related to the frequencies and
mode shapes of the structure. Moreover, they modeled the AR coefficients as a
Gaussian mixture and showed that both the Euclidean and the Mahanalobus centroidal
distances between the baseline and the new signal coefficients can be used as a
damage extent indicator. Figures 2 and 3 show example results from the application of
the method to identify and measure the extent of damage on one of the columns of a
quarter scale four span three column bridge test performed at the University of
Nevada Reno. Figures 2a and 2b correspond to the Gaussian mixture for the damaged
and undamaged states of the structure at severe damage states (damage state 4) with
the concrete cover spalled at the base of the column exposing the rebar. Figures 3a
and 3b show similar results for extensive damage (damage state 5) with rebar
buckling and concrete from the core falling out.
31
3a 3b
Figure 2. Test results from a quarter scale four span three column RC bridge at the University of
Nevada, Reno. 2a shows severe damage to one of the columns. 2b shows the distance between two
Gaussian mixtures obtained before and after damage occurred. Damage measure = 36.8 – damage state
4 serious damage; (DM=0 corresponds to no damage)
4a 4b
Figure 3. Test results from a quarter scale four span three column RC bridge at the University of
Nevada, Reno. 3a shows extensive damage to one of the columns. 3b shows the distance between two
Gaussian mixtures obtained before and after damage occurred. Damage measure = 57 – damage state 5
extensive damage; (DM=0 corresponds to no damage).
A wavelet based feature was proposed by Nair and Kiremidjian [11] and was
further extended to be used with a structure fragility function by Noh et al. [12]. In
these developments, the wavelet coefficient energies were used as the features that
need to be tracked. Noh et al. [12] showed that these wavelet coefficient energies can
also be directly related to key structural properties. Noh et al. [13] further extended the
wavelet based algorithm to non-stationary vibrations, such as those from a strong
earthquake. In that paper the damage sensitive feature was also used to develop a
framework for obtaining building specific fragility functions. The correlation of the
wavelet energies to a fragility function is particularly important as it provides the link
between SHM and the new PBE approach discussed in earlier in the paper. Figure 4
shows the framework for computing building specific fragility functions. The fragility
functions describe the probability of being in a specified damage state or greater than
that state.
32
Figure 4 Framework for developing building specific fragilities using wavelet damage sensitive features
leading to identification of most likely damage state after an earthquake. DS1 = no damage, DS2 = minor
damage, DS3 = moderate damage, DS4 = extreme damage, DS5 = collapse. (from Noh et al, [13])
Figure 5 shows the functions for the probability of being in a particular damage
state. Thus, with such functions available for a structure, immediately after an
earthquake the damage sensitive feature is estimated from the earthquake response
record and the probabilities of being in each damage state are evaluated. The highest
probability provides the most likely damage level for the structure.
1
DS = DS1
Prob( DS = DSi | DSF )
DS = DS2
0.8 DS = DS3
DS = DS4
0.6 DM = DS5
0.4
0.2
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
DSF at Roof
Figure 5 Probabilities of being in a particular damage state (from Noh et al, [13])
It should be noted that system identification methods can also be used with
wireless systems provided that appropriate synchronization algorithms are
implemented. Similarly, statistical pattern recognition methods can be used with wired
33
system. As discussed in the previous section, it is likely that a comprehensive SHM
will include both wire and wireless components. For such systems, algorithms that are
SI based can be combined with local statistical methods for more robust damage
diagnosis.
Information Delivery System
The information delivery system is composed of the data acquisition, data storage
and data interpretation components. Traditional data acquisition and storage system
have been remote units with all data downloaded into the system. Information
transmission network is required to provide communication between sensors and from
the sensors to a local data base, and from local data storage to centralized data storage
and interrogation and interpretation system. With wireless communications making
significant strides and with increase capacity and small form of storage devices, as
well as increased local computational power and data storage, analysis and
interrogation can now take place at the sensing units greatly reducing the need for
large data transmission. Ultimately, both wired and wireless networks will be
deployed in the future making it possible to use both low power and power hungry
sensors. Table 1 lists sensors that are at present suitable for wireless networking and
those that require wired communication. The first column lists the sensors that are
likely to be used primarily with wired systems but not with wireless systems because
of their high power requirements. The column on the right lists the sensors that can be
used with either wireless or wired communications network.
TABLE 1 SENSORS FOR SUITABLE FOR WIRED AND WIRELESS

COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
Wired sensors Wireless/Wired sensors

Fiber optic sensors Accelerometers
High definition digital Strain gages
cameras
Laser interferometers GPS
Tilt meters
Temperature
Humidity
Corrosion
Anemometers
Decision Support System - DSS
Key to widespread implementation of SHM systems on civil structures is the

availability of a decision support system. Such a system serves several purposes.
These are identified as follows:
 Sensor Information: Maintain information on the sensing units – their type,
location, properties (e.g., for accelerometers, manufacturer, dynamic range,
34
date of last maintenance, log of repairs or replacements, etc.) As new sensors
are added to the system, their information can be logged in. In addition, with
multiple sensors at various nodes, some sensors may be deactivated while
others can be activated. These operations can be performed from the DSS.
 Sensor Functionality: Monitor the functionality of the sensing units and
report on their status – under this function a sensor that is not operating
properly can be identified and its location and type can be reported.
 Network System Information: Maintain information on the data and
information communication network, connectivity, log of date and type of
repairs, log of updates, specifications of materials, specifications of
communications protocols, etc.
 Network System Functionality: Monitor the communications system,
whether wired or wireless for functionality and operation. Under this
component, the communication between sensors, from sensors to local hub
and from local hub to a central hub is constantly tracked. If a link within the
network is severed, the system reports which link has failed and what is the
most likely cause of failure. In addition, the system will make
recommendation whether the link needs to be repaired immediately or can be
repaired during normal maintenance.
 Operations Scheduling: Schedule assessments at regular intervals, on
demand by system managers and upon an extreme event. The assessment can
be (a) of the SHM system components functionality or (b) of the structural
system performance. The scheduled assessment can be modified as needed.
Upon the occurrence of an extreme event the system turns on automatically,
collects data, performs assessment.
 Report Issuing: Similar to the assessment scheduling, the two types of reports
that are issued are (a) state of the SHM system and (b) state of the structural
system.
o SHM System Status: When the system performs various assessments,
resulting reports are viewed within a visual interface. The reports
include specific sensors that are malfunctioning, their location and
most likely cause for failure. Similarly, if a network communications
link is severed a similar report is issued. The reporting feature can also
show remaining power in sensing units that are battery powered and
recommend replacement.
o Structural System Status: For the structural system, alerts can be
issued after regularly scheduled evaluations, after an evaluation that
has been provided upon demand, and after an extreme event. The
alerts start with simple green, yellow or red light bringing the
information to the attention of the system manager. Subsequent drill
down menus provide additional information on the most likely cause
of damage, degree of damage, sensors reporting the alerts and thus the
most likely location of the damage, and ideally residual strength/life.
Alert reliability will also be issued. For example, cracking at welded
joint number 27 in the steel moment frame has occurred with 0.85
probability (i.e. there is 85% chance that there is a crack at the weld of
that joint).
35
 Decision Recommendations: Based on the alerts issued in the previous step,
this part of the system will present a list of possible corrective actions that the
system manager can take. For example, if there is failure of a particular sensor,
the recommendation may be to immediately replace that sensor or replace that
sensor during the next scheduled maintenance of the overall SHM system. If a
structural system level red alert is issued after an extreme event, then the
recommendation can be to immediately evacuate the building.
Figure 6 Instrumentation of a bridge shows locations of sensors within a window of the DDS. Red dots
indicate that sensor is reporting a problem at those locations.
Figure 7 Sensor management window of the DDS showing the parameters for the specific sensor
Figure 6 shows an example window of a prototype SHM-DSS system. Figure 7 shows

a window with information on a particular sensing unit and Figure 8 shows a typical
extreme event alert with recommendations for follow on actions. For SHM to be more
widely implemented, it is imperative that it comes with a DSS that system manager
can use. The advantage of such a system is that it can be tailored to for different uses
and alerts can be sent to cell phones, pagers, iPADs, or a dedicated web page.
36
Figure 8 Drop down window shows an alert has been issued at device 10.
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we present an overview of the main components of a structural health

monitoring system for civil infrastructure. It is observed that wide implementation of
these systems requires the availability of robust and reliable damage diagnostic and
prognostic algorithms. Examples are presented with the most recent algorithm tying
the link between damage states and the performance requirements on a structure
dictated by the PBE design criteria. However, much remains to be achieved in this
direction. In addition, the information that is generated by the system has to be
presented within a decision support system (DDS) that guides the end-users to take
appropriate action. In contrast, most current systems collect data and most of the
interpretation is performed off line and follow-on corrective actions are left to the
discretion of the owner/manager of the facility who typically may not have the proper
training to take such actions.
In summary the challenges that still remain are:
 Develop damage specific sensors that are cost effective
 Develop damage algorithms for specific types of damage
 Develop algorithms that quantify damage
 Develop residual life and residual strength algorithms
 Test and verify these algorithms with extensive laboratory and field
experiments
 Design robust wireless/wired communications networks
 Design hardware for continuous power generation in wireless sensors
 Design and develop decision support systems that can be utilized non-technical
user
37
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The present research study is supported by the National Science Foundation

through Grant No. CMS-0121841. We greatly appreciate their continued support.
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and 6th International Workshops on Structural Health Monitoring, Stanford University, Stanford,
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and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
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report-cards.
5. Farrar, C. R. and K. Worden. 2007. “An Introduction to Structural Health Monitoring,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 365, February, pp. 303-315.
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Detecting Corrosion in Concrete Bridges, Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC.
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Monitoring Corrosion in Concrete Structures, Proceedings of the SPIE Conference, San Diego,
CA.
8. Ko,J.-M. 2010. Mega-Structure Diagnostic and Prognostic System, Life-cycle Structural health
Monitoring, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
9. Sohn, H., C.R. Farrar, H.F. Hunter and K. Worden. 2001. Applying the LANL statistical pattern
recognition paradigm for structural health monitoring to data from a surface-effect fast patrol boat,
Los Alamos National Laboratory Report LA-13761-MS, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los
Alamos, NM 87545.
10. Nair, K.K., A.S. Kiremidjian and K.H. Law. 2006. “Time Series Based Damage Detection and
Localization Algorithm with Application to the ASCE benchmark Structure,” Journal of Sound and
Vibration, Vol 291, 102, pp 349-364.
11. Nair, K.K. and A.S. Kiremijdian 2009. Derivation of a Damage Sensitive feature Using the Haar
Wavelet TransformJournal of Applied Mechanics, ASME, Volume 76 , Number 061015-1
12. Noh, H.Y., Nair, K.K., Loh, C. H. and A. Kiremidjian. 2009. “Application of time series based
damage detection algorithms to the benchmark experiment at the National Center for Research
on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE)in Taipei, Taiwan”, Smart Structures and Systems, Vol. 5,
No. 1.
13. Noh, H.Y., Nair, K.K., Lignos, D. and A. Kiremidjian. 2011. “On the Use of Wavelet Based
Damage Sensitive Feature for Structural Damage Diagnosis Using Strong Motion”, Journal of
Structural Engineering, ASCE, doi:10.1061/(ASCE)ST.1943-541X.0000385.
38
Does the Maturity of Structural Health
Monitoring Technology Match User
Readiness?
D. ROACH and S. NEIDIGK
ABSTRACT
The use of in-situ sensors for real-time health monitoring of aircraft structures can be
a viable option to overcome inspection impediments stemming from accessibility
limitations, complex geometries, and the location and depth of hidden damage.
Reliable, structural health monitoring (SHM) systems can automatically process data,
assess structural condition, and signal the need for human intervention. There is a
significant need for an overarching plan that will guide near-term and long-term
activities and will uniformly and comprehensively support the evolution and adoption
of SHM practices. Such a plan must contain input from aircraft manufacturers,
regulators, operators, and research organizations so that the full spectrum of issues,
ranging from design to deployment, performance and certification is appropriately
considered. An important element in developing the FAA SHM R&D Roadmap is a
clear understanding of the current status of SHM technology and the pending
regulatory issues facing the aviation industry to safely adopt SHM solutions. Towards
that end, a comprehensive survey was implemented with the aviation industry to
determine the technology maturation level of SHM, identify integration issues, and
prioritize research and development needs associated with implementing SHM on
aircraft. Specific emphasis was placed on structural and maintenance characteristics
that may impact the operational performance of an inspection process or health
monitoring system. In addition, an SHM Technology Readiness Database (SHM
TReaD) and an SHM Sensor Database were developed to assess the present and future
prospects of SHM technology. This paper will present the results from these efforts
and describe how the FAA is using this information to support the safe adoption of
SHM practices.
INTRODUCTION OF SHM SURVEY – BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION
The Sandia National Labs’ FAA Airworthiness Assurance NDI Validation Center
(AANC), under contract to the Federal Aviation Administration’s William J. Hughes
Technical Center, collected information through the SHM industry survey to identify
and prioritize research and development needs associated with implementing Structural
Health Monitoring (SHM) on aircraft. An important element in planning the FAA
SHM R&D Program is a clear understanding of the current status of SHM technology
and the related regulatory issues. This survey was sent to persons involved with the
Sandia is a m ultiprogram l aboratory operated by Sandia Corp oration, a Lockheed-Martin Compa ny, f or
the United States Dept. of Energy un der Contract DE-AC 04-94AL85000. This work was p erformed for
the Federal Aviation A dministration (F AA) T echnical Center u nder US Dep artment of T ransportation
Contract DTFA 03-95-X-90002
39
operation, maintenance, inspection, design, construction, life extension, and regulation of
aircraft. The goal of this survey was to understand the current status of SHM
technology, as well as the obstacles impeding the implementation of SHM solutions.
The survey covered the gamut of SHM topics including: Background, SHM
Deployment, Validation and Approval for SHM Use, SHM Standardization, Sensor
Operation, Cost-Benefit Assessment, and Sensor Design. The survey was implemented
via a customized, on-line web site. Statistical trends analysis and assembly of the
survey results were carried out to meet the objectives listed above.
SHM INDUSTRY SURVEY RESULTS
Some of the survey responses were often broken down by respondent groups such
as: owners/operators, OEMs, and regulators. Regulators were classifies as those who
issue and enforce regulations and standards related to the manufacturing, operation,
certification, and maintenance of aircraft. Owners/Operators were classified as those
who own or operate an airline company, military aircraft, private company, or
government agency. Original equipment manufacturers (OEM) were classified as
agencies that play a principal role in manufacturing aircraft systems or structures.
Respondents to the survey came from nineteen different airline companies, twenty-
three different equipment manufacturers, twelve different regulatory agencies,
seventeen different aircraft maintenance facilities, and 120 different research and
development organizations including universities (see Figure 1). This list demonstrates
the breadth of agencies and perspectives included in this industry SHM survey. Of the
1,200 people surveyed, there were 455 responses (38%).
Owners/Operators OEMs Regulators Maintainers

All Nippon Airways Airbus Air Transport Aerotechnics Inc
American Airlines Astronics-Adv. Electronic Association Air New Zealand
Austrian Air Force Systems CAA - NL China Airlines
China Airlines Avensys Inc. CAA - Bra Christchurch Engine Centre
Continental BAE systems EASA Fokker Aircraft Services B.V.
Airlines Bell Helicopter Textron FAA Fuji Heavy Industries, Ltd.
Delta Air Lines Boeing NAVAIR Jazz Air LTD
Federal Express Bombardier Aerospace NAWCAD Lufthansa Technik AG
Finnair Cessna Aircraft Company Transport Canada NASA
Hawaiian Airlines Dassault Aviation (TCCA) Olympic Airways Services
Japan Airlines EADS Military Air Systems USAF S.A.
Jazz Airlines Embraer US Army SAA Technologies
Jet Blue Airways Goodrich USCG SR Technics Switzerland LTD
Kalitta Air LLC Honeywell US Navy Texas Aero Engine Services
NASA Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Timco / GSO
Qantas Airways Messier-Dowty United Airlines
Singapore Airlines Mistras Group, Inc USAF
Swiss Air Polskie Zaklady Lotnicze Sp. US Army
United Airlines PZL Swidnik USCG
US Airways Rolls-Royce Corp US Navy
USAF Systems & Electronics, Inc.
US Army TecScan
USCG
US Navy
Figure 1: Respondents to SHM Survey of Aviation Industry
Furthermore, 85% of the respondents felt that the near-term application of SHM is
for local, hot spot monitoring. In 5-8 years, 57% of the respondents felt that the long
40
term plans for SHM should revolve around global, wide area health monitoring
solutions. The anticipated global systems being applied by owners/operators increases
by 20% from the near- to long-term, and increases by almost 40% for the OEMs. This
indicates that technology is moving in the direction of global monitoring systems and it
is more desired by owners/operators. In one of the key questions intended to gage
SHM readiness, respondents were asked: “Are SHM solutions viable for aviation?”
The majority of the respondents (61%) answered “Yes” while only 17% said “No.”
Figure 2 shows the types of damage/flaws the industry is interested in detecting. It’s
not surprising that a large majority of the persons surveyed were interested in detecting
the major damage types found on aircraft: cracks, corrosion, delaminations and
disbonds. Related damage from stress risers, impact, fluid ingress, and other
environments are also sited often. Damage associated with composites, exposure,
mechanical malfunction and off-design conditions (e.g. ground support activities) are
were also listed. An overwhelming majority of the respondents (95%) would welcome
decision sciences or prognostic expert systems to diagnose or predict structural heath
using combined information from multiple maintenance and inspection sources.
Chemical Exposure
None
Unknown Phenomena
Equipment Damage
Ground Support
Coating Integrity
Parameters or Problems
Systems
Electrical Malfunctions
Mechanical Malfunctions
Cracks
Products
Corrosion By
Delaminations
Disbonds
Stress Levels
Fluid Ingress
Corrosion
Honeycomb Core
Collapsed or Crushed
Loss of Torque
Erosion
Other (Specify)
Lightning Strike
Impact
Heat Damage
Repair Flaws
Damage
Environmental
y
Porosit
Operation
Figure 2: Respondents View on Type of Operational Events or Damage

They Would Like to Detect Using SHM
The main trends of potential SHM applications include: general damage detection
and crack detection in structural members (bulkheads), corrosion detection and coating
monitoring, hard landing, load monitoring, impact detection and indication, hot spot
41
monitoring, bolt tightness monitoring, strain levels, heat damage, monitoring of
fuselage door and window areas, bond monitoring, delamination in composite
structures, monitoring of existing cracks, monitoring fuselage skin repairs and flaw
detection in difficult-to-inspect/access areas. Over 200 applications were listed by
survey respondents. Figure 3 shows that over 50% of respondents think that all of the
primary structural areas are candidates for SHM applications: fuselage pressure
bulkhead, frames, stringers, wing ribs and spars, landing gear, main attachments and
skin areas. In fact, there were no aircraft regions that received insignificant responses.
Areas where respondents are less interested in implementing SHM were: power train
Number of Responses
and nonstructural systems.
Figure 3: Aircraft Areas Where Respondents Feel SHM Solutions are Viable
Figure 4 shows that the main reasons respondents are interested in SHM are
associated with cost considerations (e.g. avoiding disassembly, reduction in labor
hours) and safety/reliability considerations (e.g. early flaw detection, improved
sensitivity). Another item of note is that almost all of the possible reasons for using
SHM were listed in over 1/3 of the survey responses. Reasons that were deemed as
less important pertained to obtaining design credits or weight savings, and monitoring
electrical and aircraft systems. These are mostly long-term prospects for SHM so it is
not surprising that these are currently ofless interest to end-users.
The only response that the majority of the OEMs and operators strongly perceived to
be a major impediment to the deployment of SHM on aircraft was achieving a positive
42
cost-benefit. The question that SHM must satisfy with the airlines is: How long will it
take for an SHM system to pay for itself in inspection time, maintenance credits, safety
benefits etc.? The top five cost-benefit considerations for an SHM solution were listed
as: 1) elimination of structural teardown to access regions to be monitored, 2) recurring
cost of SHM sensors, 3) initial cost of SHM equipment, 4) time required for
validation/qualification, 5) compliance requirements. Other highly-rated hurdles to
SHM utilization include: insufficient probability of detection or excessive false alarm
rates, overall performance assessment and validation of technology, field trials on
operating aircraft is necessary but time consuming, concerns over durability,
insufficient coverage area, lack of maturity of turnkey SHM systems, and lack of
regulatory guidelines and advisory materials for deploying SHM (certification). Fifty-
five percent of aircraft operators, maintainers, and military personnel say that 5 years is
a reasonable payback period for recouping the cost associated with using an SHM
system while 31% say that 2 years is a reasonable time.
Avoid disassembly to access hidden

areas for inspection
Flaw detection as an alternate to
current NDI procedures
Early flaw detection to enhance safety
Save time and money by reducing labor hours
associated with NDI tasks
Improve inspection reliability
Reduce human factors concerns associated
manually-deployed inspections
Sensors allow for condition based maintenance
Monitor a site to provide advanced notice
for maintenance activities
Provide rapid inspections to allow for more
frequent inspections
Move towards real-time health monitoring
Structural usage monitoring

Detection of blunt impact events occurring
during normal airplane operation
Improve inspection resolution
For maintenance planning purposes
Obtain maintenance credits
Obtain design credits or weight savings
Monitoring electrical and aircraft systems
Other (Specify)
None
Number of Responses
Figure 4: Respondents Reasons for Interest in SHM
43
With respect to validation and certification, survey respondents were asked: “Would
you accept performance data from operators/vendors /industry groups/military or
require the regulatory agency and/or OEM to be involved in a formal test program?”
Most of the responses (55%) fell into the affirmative/possible categories of “Yes” and
“would be considered.” However, almost 30% of the respondents indicated that some
sort of approval or oversight from the OEM or regulator was necessary to include such
validation data for SHM system certification. The “Yes” responders also indicated that
the performance data must have some sort of well-documented pedigree. Since the
validation data is so critical to SHM certification, the message taken from this question
is that a formal team - comprised of personnel from the operator, OEM, regulator and
others - should be established up front. All SHM validation testing should be carried
out with the agreement, and suitable oversight, of all team members.
Figure 5 shows respondents views on needed research and development to evolve
SHM to the point of implementation on aircraft. Most of these pertain to SHM sensor
development to improve sensitivity and spatial resolution while reducing the cost and
weight of the sensors and the peripheral SHM equipment. Other important items are
related to SHM deployment and include data acquisition and analysis, system
validation, and integration into maintenance programs. There was significant (> 33%)
but slightly less interest in the related items of education, training, and regulatory
guidance.
SHM TECHNOLOGY READINESS
The SHM Technology Readiness Database created a systematic method and

structure to compile, organize, and summarize SHM related data to identify the level of
maturity and rate of evolution. It provides a quick and ongoing evaluation of the
current state of SHM among research institutions and industry. Hundreds of technical
publication and conference proceedings were read and analyzed to compile the
database. Microsoft Excel was used to create a useable interface that could be filtered
to compare any of the entered data fields. Over 3,000 papers, covering SHM topics
from 1975 to 2010, were selected from all major, pertinent conferences and analyzed to
gain an accurate perspective of current SHM technologies. Papers addressed the full
gamut of SHM activities including: theory, technology description, development,
hardware, applications, lab work, evaluation, education, field work, certification, and
implementation.
During the information extraction process, the data processing agent was tasked with
identifying the specific technology type that best fit each individual entry. The
“Technology Type” descriptors accurately reflect the full spectrum of topics covered in
the large SHM TReaD. Figure 6 shows the technology type distribution across the
complete database. Figure 6 shows that pizeoelectric and crack detection transducers
are the most cited technologies within the database, followed by acoustic emmission,
fiber optics, corrosion and strain based sensors. Note that system operation and SHM
response modeling also received significant mention. The lowest cited technologies
within the database are shape memory alloy, nickle strip magnetorestrictive and
thermography based sensors.
In the next stage of this assessment, Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) were used
to rank SHM technology/systems through the development stages. The TRL’s mimic
44
those used by NASA and the military where this classification system clearly defines
benchmarks, direction and maturity of emerging technologies as:
TRL 1 - Physical principles are postulated with reasoning
TRL 2 - Application for physical principles identified but no results
TRL 3 - Initial lab tests on general hardware configuration to support physical
principles
TRL 4 - Integration level showing systems function in lab tests
TRL 5 - System testing to evaluate function in realistic environment
TRL 6 - Evaluation of prototype system
TRL 7 - Demonstration of complete system prototype in operating environment
TRL 8 - Certification testing on final system in lab and/or field
TRL 9 - Final adjustment of system through mission operations
Sensors (sensitivity,
accuracy, variability, …)
SHM Validation
SHM Integration
Regulatory guidance
Signal processing and

data interpretation
SHM electronics (size,

weight, cost, reliability)
Education (operators,
OEMS, regulators)
SHM design tools ( tools

needed for analysis)
Spatial resolution of
sensor and attaining…
Training
Tools to accommodate
integration of SHM into …
Study of trade-offs
incurred through …
None
Figure 5: Type of Research and Development That OEMs and Owners/Operators

Believe is Needed to Evolve SHM Systems for Aircraft Use
The TRL metric, which defines a technology’s stage of development, allows for
objective evaluation of its progression based upon benchmark goals and timetables.
The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) metric allows for direct comparisons and
projections for the technology’s implementation schedule. The technology readiness
levels of the entries in the database are very useful pieces of information that can be
easily compared and understood. The initial analysis done using the TRL levels in the
45
SHM database was to compare the entire population of entries in the database. Figure
7 shows the distribution of SHM TRL levels from all individual entries in the database.
Figure 6: Technology Types in SHM Readiness Database
Figure 7: Distribution of Overall SHM TRL Levels From

All Papers Within SHM TReaD Database
46
There are some key insights provided by Figure 7. The most obvious point is that
the overall TRL values are centered around level 4. This indicates that the SHM field
is well on its way but is not fully developed when it is analyzed using the TRL value
system. The peak in the distribution indicates that the bulk of technologies are at the
same level of maturity when viewed through the TRL values. The end result is that a
large number of these SHM technologies could move into the market in a tight time
frame when many of these technologies are projected to mature in the same period.
The skewness of the technologies (lower levels at 1 and 2 vs. higher levels at 6 and 7)
indicates that the number of technologies entering the system is trending downward.
This indicates a need for further R&D funding to energize startups. The final piece of
information that can be taken from the distribution is that there are no entries in the
database that have achieved TRL levels of 8 or 9. The gradual waning towards the
upper bound suggests that there is no restriction causing bottleneck or stoppage,
although the guidance or path may not be sufficient to allow these technologies to
smartly push through these final barriers. The current TRL center at levels 3-6
demonstrates that some technologies have reached full prototype systems designed for
aircraft and are entering the field (on-aircraft) evaluation stages.
Figure 8 shows the TRL calculation broken down by year from 2006-2009. It shows
a progress from 2006 TRLs that are centered around 2-4 to the 2009 TRLs that are
centered around 4-6 with growth into TRL 7. This moving “wave” of Technology
Readiness Level, clearly shifting from left to right in Figure 8, indicates the rapid
technology maturation that is ocurring in the SHM industry. At this current rate, a
number of SHM technologies should arrive at the TRL 7-9 levels in the next 3-5 years.
Figure 8: TRL Distribution by Year Showing Evolution and

Maturity Rate for SHM
47
The literature review revealed that SHM evaluation and development are high while
certification and field work are lagging. Responses from related questions in the SHM
survey indicated the following maturity levels as determined by the SHM development
company:
• 43% of SHM systems have been through initial laboratory tests
• 37% had completed formal laboratory performance evaluations
• 9% have had field evaluations
• 7% have undergone complete validation of the SHM system
• 7% have been proven and are ready for aircraft.
These self-evaluation results indicate TRL levels that are slightly ahead of those
determined from the SHM TReaD. However, whether the central TRL is currently a 4
or 5 with upper extensions into 7 or 8, both the industry and the literature reviews
suggest very similar trends in SHM evolution.
SHM SENSOR DATABASE
Sensors are the backbone and most critical part of a structural health monitoring
system. No matter how developed the accompanying software and data analysis
algorithms, and the data acquisition hardware of a system are, if the sensor function is
not adequate, the system will not operate properly. The sensor must be appropriate for
the application if the system is to be reliable and effective. Because of an increasing
demand for lighter, cost-effective, highly sensitive and robust sensors, research
laboratories, universities and private industry have been vigorously pursuing sensor
development and production. A comprehensive SHM sensor database was created to
display a variety of SHM sensors that are in different stages of development, testing,
and manufacturing. Analysis across the technology readiness database was performed
in order to determine what types of sensor technologies are being implemented
throughout SHM. Information in the SHM sensor database includes: 1) image of the
sensor, 2) name of the device, 3) parameter it senses, 4) how the sensor measures that
parameter, and 5) the company identified as either testing or producing the sensor.
The sensor database was produced to display a variety of SHM sensors that are in
different stages of development, testing, manufacture and sales for use in turn-key
SHM systems. An assessment of SHM sensor evolution provides insights into overall
SHM maturity and the potential for utilization on aircraft. There are many different
sensors on the market today. Figure 9 shows some of the almost 100 sensors that were
documented in this study. This sensor database was compiled to gain an appreciation
for the variety of applications and the maturity of technologies used. This database is
also able to provide insights into the many different physical parameters can be sensed,
such as strain, temperature, pressure, load, corrosion, displacement, and bond integrity.
The SHM sensor database is meant to be as all-inclusive as possible but is not intended
to intercompare sensors from different companies. The sensors were identified from
technical publications, conference proceedings, industry brochures, the SHM Industry
Survey, and internet searches.
Another issue highlighted in the survey is that operators and maintainers are
concerned with the recurring costs associated with SHM sensors. This coincides with
the expected life of an SHM system which ranges from 10 to 20 years. Reliability tests
must be performed on sensors to ensure that the lifespan of the sensor meets an
48
operator’s lifetime requirements. Environmental testing and reliability standards are
needed in order to instill confidence in SHM sensors among operators and maintainers.
Cumulative Environmental Flexible Eddy Current

Corrosion Sensor Array Probe
Direct Measurements Vibro Fibre SHM Sensor

Strain Sensor
Linear Polarization Comparative Vacuum Monitoring Sensor

Resistance Sensor
Figure 9: Sampling of SHM Sensors
A key element of the foreseen impediments in the deployment of SHM is the cost
benefit of the system. The survey revealed that half of the sensors developers are
working with a price range of $10-100 and a quarter of the sensors cost above $100. A
single, $100 dollar sensor is inexpensive in the grand scheme of an aircraft, but the
survey indicated that global systems are expected to double in the next five to eight
49
years and will make their way onto aircraft. Global systems utilize more sensors to
increase the area being monitored, hence sensor costs become critical. The survey
shows that sensor developers understand that industry is leaning towards global
systems and have long term plans to develop sensors for these systems. The SHM
TReaD indicates that about 13% of the papers read discuss local health monitoring and
about 9% discuss global health monitoring. This is consistent with how researchers
responded to the survey in that more local systems are currently being developed than
global. Overall SHM system costs provided by survey respondents were: 1) 8% less
than $1,000, 2) 28% between $1,000 and $8,000, 3) 21% between $8,000 and $16,000,
and 4) 31% greater than $16,000.
Related questions in the SHM survey indicate that the largest group of sensors (29%)
are deterministic and provide a direct readout of flaw indication. Figure 10 shows that
three other modes of data analysis are well-represented. Almost 25% of the sensors
use comparisons with previously-acquired data to arrive at a conclusion while another
25% use standardized algorithms to reduce data for interpretation of damage. This
indicates that over 50% of the SHM systems contain a built-in self-diagnostic
capability to automatically interpret the data. Very few of the sensors require data
fusion from other sensors to detect flaws.
24.6%
2.5% Deterministic – direct read
out indicating the presence
of a flaw
Comparison with
previously-acquired data is
required (calibration)
19.7% Use of data fusion from

other sensors
24.6% Use of algorithms to reduce
data and arrive at conclusion
Other (please specify)
28.7%
Figure 10: Response from SHM Developers Regarding the Amount of

Data Interpretation Required to Classify the Sensor Output
Almost 70% of respondents are developing sensor technologies for detecting cracks
in metal structures. Figure 11 also shows significant development (> 30% response
levels) in sensor technologies for composite delaminations, disbonds, and impact, and
metal corrosion. These trends in sensor development correlate well with the type of
damage owners, operators and manufactures are interested in detecting as determined
in the SHM survey. Another important consideration is the desire to create sensors
50
with a fail-safe feature. Fail-safe operation avoids the acquisition of data from faulty
sensors in order to avoid false positive or false negative indications. In the SHM
survey, 52% of the SHM developers indicated that their sensor and system had a fail-
safe feature.
Metal - Cracks
Composite Laminate - Delaminations
Composite Laminate - Disbonds

Metal – Composite (e.g.
GLARE -Delamitations
Composite Laminate – Impact energy detection
Metal - Corrosion
Composite Sandwich (honeycomb)
Construction – Disbonds in skin to core
Metal – Composite (e.g. GLARE -Other
Metal - Other
Construction – Core Damage
Composite Laminate - Other
Other (specify)
Construction – Fluid ingress
Construction - Other
Other plastics
Composite Laminate - Porosity
Number of Responses
Figure 11: Type of Materials, Flaws and Damage That Can Be

Monitored with Available Sensors
CONCLUSIONS
There is a strong commercial and military interest in pursuing SHM solutions for
aircraft. Multiple applications have been identified covering all aircraft structural,
engine, and systems areas. Research and development efforts should be focused on:
global systems, sensor technology, system validation and integration, and regulatory
guidance while standardization and guidelines are needed in the areas of: certification,
laboratory and field validation, and sensor design with aviation in mind. In order to
certify SHM systems, most people believe that SHM should run in parallel with current
NDI inspections for a period of time. There are a wide variety of SHM sensors
currently developed that have shown potential in aircraft applications. SHM maturity
has grown exponentially so desired usage and need for certification is expected to rise
51
rapidly. Industry’s main concern with implementing SHM on aircraft is achieving a
positive cost-benefit and the time needed to obtain approval for SHM usage. Thus,
validation and certification guidelines are needed. The SHM Technology Readiness
Database identified specific and overall SHM Technology Readiness Levels and
evolution trends. Currently, the majority of TRLs fall between 4 and 5 while no TRLs
were identified at the most mature, 8 or 9 levels. The sensor database shows that SHM
sensing is mature and expansive, in addition to being highly tested and proven in
various test settings. There are multiple, mature sensors that are being produced, used,
tested and evaluated. The sensor database is a tool that can be used to describe what
SHM sensors look like, how they work and what they can detect. When coupled with
the results from the SHM survey and the SHM TReaD, these databases can help
determine the technology gap that needs to be filled in order to implement SHM on
commercial aircraft. Overall, interest in SHM is high. SHM technology has been
steadily advancing in TRL over the past four years and, with the exception of a few
SHM systems, a substantial number of SHM systems should reach appropriate
readiness levels for on-aircraft use in the next 3 to 5 years. Of course, aircraft
maintenance programs and maintenance personnel will also need to adapt to SHM
processes in order for any usage to succeed.
52
ADVANCED DIAGNOSTICS FOR
DAMAGE ASSESSMENT
53
Damage Diagnosis Algorithm for Civil
Structures Using a Sequential Change Point
Detection Method and Time-Series Analysis
H. Y. NOH, R. RAJAGOPAL and A. S. KIREMIDJIAN
ABSTRACT
This paper introduces a structural damage diagnosis algorithm that uses time-series
analysis to extract damage sensitive features (DSFs) from structural responses and a
single fault sequential change point detection method to classify those features into
damage states. This algorithm provides the optimum asymptotic solution for the
problem of minimizing the fault detection time delay given a false alarm rate. The
advantage of this algorithm comes from its sequential nature, which allows us to
make a decision from a series of observations instead of one, eliminating the need
for all past observations to be stored. For validation, we applied the algorithm to
a set of white noise shake table test data collected from a four-story steel moment-
resisting frame. The results show that the algorithm can identify damage, particularly
when it uses multi-dimensional DSFs and lower false alarm rates, but further study is
necessary for damage localization.
INTRODUCTION
The main objective of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems for civil structures
is to estimate structural damage efficiently and reliably without the need for profes-
sionals to conduct visual inspections. Although the hardware aspect of SHM has
developed significantly in the past few decades (1), we still need robust and reliable
algorithms that take full advantage of the data. However, civil structures are complex
systems with various materials and complicated geometry. Moreover, civil structures
are subjected to significant uncertainties in loading and environmental conditions.
Therefore, it is difficult to identify the features that are sensitive to damage but in-
sensitive to environmental and loading conditions. Even if we identify sensitive and
robust features, their uncertainties can be significant due to the aforementioned uncer-
tainties in addition to measurement error. Thus, we need to consider the distribution
of the features to take into account their uncertainties. We also need an algorithm
that can take advantage of the sequence of measurements from multiple locations
Hae Young Noh, Ram Rajago pal, and Anne S. Kiremidjian, Depa rtment of Civil and
Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305.
55
for periodic and long-term monitoring systems using multiple sensors. In this paper,
we introduce a vibration-based damage diagnosis algorithm that is computationally
efficient, considers uncertainties of individual features and time of damage, and se-
quentially processes data to make a decision. This algorithm uses time-series based
damage sensitive features (DSFs) that are computationally very efficient to extract
from structural responses. As a result, the algorithm is particularly suitable to embed
in wireless sensing units. The algorithm uses the change point detection method(2),
which sequentially receives features extracted from structural vibration data and diag-
noses damage. It performs a hypothesis test involving damage states and the time of
damage using the known distributions of the feature and the prior distribution of the
time of damage. This approach allows us to consider uncertainties of the feature and
the damage time. The algorithm is able to systematically combine the information
about the distribution of previously collected DSFs, instead of relying on decisions
based on evaluating a single sample. This is important because DSF values are a
sequence of weak or noisy damage indicators over time.
In the past decade, various time-series based features have been developed for
damage diagnosis algorithms (3–6). Among these numerous options, we chose to
use the coefficients of both the single- and multi-variate autoregressive (AR) and
autoregressive with the exogenous input (ARX) model because of their relationship
to structural parameters (5, 6). Moreover, the use of the multi-variate ARX model
enables us to combine the information collected from multiple sensors.
Our contributions are investigation of various DSFs and representation of the
damage classification problem as the trade-off between the false alarm rate of declar-
ing damage before it happens and the detection delay in time incurred to assert dam-
age after it happens. Sohn et al. (3) used sequential probability ratio tests for the
standard deviations of the residual of the AR model to classify structural damage,
but they did not consider the uncertainty of the time of damage or multiple sensor
measurements. Under appropriate assumptions, our algorithm minimizes the dam-
age detection delay for an allowed probability of falsely declaring damage using a
Bayesian framework. Therefore, once we choose a false alarm rate, which sets the
reliability of the algorithm, the algorithm automatically optimizes the detection delay
to locate the damage both in space and time.
We verified this algorithm using a set of experimental data obtained from a series
of shake table tests. The experiment involved the collection of ambient-vibration re-
sponse data from each floor of a four-story steel moment-resisting frame. The results
show that this algorithm can identify damage with small detection delay, but further
research in defining features is necessary to localize the damage.
ALGORITHM
The algorithm consists of three steps: (i) collection of structural responses, (ii) extrac-
tion of a DSF, and (iii) identification and classification of damage. Figure 1 provides
the summary of the algorithm. The first step involves sequentially obtaining structural
response time-histories from multiple sensors and normalizing them. In the second
step, DSFs are computed using various combinations of the single-variate AR and
multi-variate ARX coefficients. The algorithm then defines a score that involves the
distribution of the DSF. The change point detection method essentially performs a
sequential hypothesis test to identify damage, which is equivalent to a threshold test
56
Figure 1. Summary of the algorithm
of the score based on the desired false alarm rate. In this algorithm, we assume that
the damage is irreversible; thus, the algorithm can eventually identify damage if it
keeps updating the score long enough. The change point detection method, however,
minimizes the detection time delay for a desired false alarm rate. In other words, the
method makes a trade-off between the detection time delay and the false alarm rate.
Description of Features
We focus on different types of AR models to generate DSFs:
Single-variate AR model. The AR model predicts the system output as a linear
function of previous outputs and captures the linear dynamics of ideal structures. Let
xi (t)(i = 1, , N ) denote the acceleration recording collected from sensor i, where N
is the number of sensors. The single-variate AR model of order p is given as
p
X
xi (t) = αk xi (t − k) + εi (t) (1)
k=1
where αk is the k th AR coefficient, and εi (t) is the residual. The DSFs are combi-
nations of AR coefficients such as {α1 }, {α1 , α2 }, and {α1 , α2 , α3 }. Estimating
the model includes removing trends, selecting the optimal model order, and checking
assumptions about the residual errors(7).
Multi-variate ARX model . The multi-variate ARX model predicts a multi-variate
system output as a linear combination of previous outputs and exogenous inputs. We
fit this model to the vector of acceleration data collected from multiple sensors at time
t, denoted by X(t). The multi-variate ARX model for the input U (t), output X(t),
and model orders of the AR and the exogenous input {p, q} is given as
p q
X X
k
X(t) = A X(t − k) + B k U (t − k) + Ξ(t) (2)
k=1 k=1
where Ak is the k th ARX coefficient matrix, B k is the k th exogenous input coefficient

matrix, and Ξ(t) is the residual. If input force or ground motion is not available, the
AR model can be applied instead of the ARX model. The second order ordinary
difference equation of motion of a perfectly elastic structure can be represented as a
multi-variate ARX model with the order of 2 for both p and q (6). For shear structures,
the diagonal elements of the A1 matrix, denoted by A1(i,i) , are functions of the story
stiffness, ki . The DSFs for this model are various functions of the coefficient matrices,
such as all elements of the Ak and B k , diagonal elements of the Ak , eigenvalues, and
eigenvectors.
57
Sequential Change Point Detection Method
The single-fault sequential change point detection method addresses the problem of
detecting a fault that happens at a random time λ as quickly as possible under a con-
straint of the probability of falsely declaring a fault before it happens. The sequence
of observations {X(t), t ≥ 1} is assumed to consist of independent and identically
distributed random variables that have the distribution f0 before the fault occurs(i.e.,
t < λ) and f1 after the fault (i.e., t ≥ λ). The distributions f0 and f1 are obtained
prior to the analysis from simulations or experiments. The optimal sequential proce-
dure for solving the problem is to perform the hypothesis test H0 : λ > n against
H1 : λ ≤ n at each time n based on the observations Fn (X) = {X(t), 1 ≤ t ≤ n}
(8). This hypothesis test is equivalent to finding the fault detection time ν̄ according
to the threshold test on the posterior probability ratio at time n for the false alarm rate
P(ν̄ < λ) ≤ α:
P(λ ≤ n |Fn (X))

Λn (X) = ≥ Bα , (3)
P(λ > n |Fn (X))
where the threshold Bα is defined as 1−αα

. The fault detection time ν̄ is then defined
as the earliest time when Λn (X) exceeds the threshold Bα . The Shiryaev-Roberts-
Pollak (SRP) procedure (8) achieves the minimum asymptotic detection delay(2)
m
λ m | log α|
Dm (ν̄) = Eλ [(ν̄ − λ) |ν̄ ≥ λ] =
˙ , (4)
q1 (X) + d
where Eλ denotes expectation with respect to the prior of λ, = ˙ denotes asymptotic
upper and lower bounds as α → 0, and typically m = 1 or 2. The delay bound is a
function of the false alarm α, the inverse of the mean of the prior for λ, denoted by d,
and the distance measure q1 (X) between the two probability densities f0 and f1 :
Z
f1 (x)
q1 (X) = f1 (x) log µ(dx). (5)
f0 (x)
This bound is the minimum asymptotic delay achievable by any method with false
alarm rate α. Furthermore, the test statistic in Equation (3) can be computed for
n ≥ 1 using the recursion (2)

Πn−1 π(n) f1 (Xn ) π(0)
Λn (X) = Λn−1 + , Λ0 = , (6)
Πn Πn f0 (Xn ) 1 − π(0)
where π(n) is the prior distribution of λ (i.e., π(n) = P(λ = n)), and Πn is the prior
complementary cumulative distribution of λ (i.e., Πn = P(λ > n)).
VALIDATION
Description of Experiment
The experiment involved a series of shake table tests of a 1:8 scale model for a four-
story steel moment-resisting frame (see Figure 2(a)) conducted at the State University
of New York at Buffalo (9). For this analysis, we used the acceleration measurements
58
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 2. Four-story steel moment-resisting frame: (a) after the completion of erection on the
shake table; (b) after collapse; (c) SDR histories of story 1 and 4
at each floor, including the ground motion and the roof response. The sampling rate
was 128 Hz. In order to introduce damage to the structure, the structure was subjected
to a series of the scaled 1994 Northridge earthquake ground motions recorded at the
Canoga Park, CA, station. The scaling factors were 40%, 100%, 150%, and 190%
for a service level earthquake (SLE), a design level earthquake (DLE), a maximum
considered earthquake (MCE), and a collapse level earthquake (CLE), respectively.
Figure 2(c) shows the story drift ratio (SDR) of the frame from elastic behavior (dur-
ing the SLE) up to collapse (during the CLE, see Figure 2(b)) for the first and the
fourth story, respectively. The second and the third story had SDR similar to that of
the first story. The frame was also subjected to white noise excitations before and
after each earthquake loading. For this analysis, we used the white noise excitation
responses collected before the SLE and DLE, and after the CLE.
The acceleration response from each white noise excitation was segmented, and
the AR coefficients were then extracted separately from each segment. To obtain the
distributions of the DSF before and after the fault (i.e., f0 and f1 , respectively), we
assumed Gaussian distributions (5) and computed the sample means and variances of
the DSF. For f0 , we used the features extracted from the responses before the SLE
and the DLE, and for f1 , we used the response after the CLE.
Results and Discussion

Single-variate AR model. The results of the analysis using various combinations of
the single-variate AR coefficients for the floor acceleration responses are presented
in this section. Each acceleration measurement was segmented into 50 chunks, each
of which includes 100 data points (100/128 seconds). The model order of 3 was used
TABLE 1. FAULT DETECTION TIME ν̄

DSF 1% 10−2 % 10−4 % 10−6 %
{α1 } 101 102 102 103
{α1 , α2 } 102 103 104 105
{α1 , α2 , α3 } 101 102 103 104
{A1(1,1) } 14 35 41 44
{A(1,1) , A(2,2) , A1(3,3) , A1(4,4) }
1 1
4 104 105 107
{eig(A1 )1 } 24 42 107 109
{eig(A )1 , eig(A1 )2 , eig(A1 )3 , eig(A1 )4 , }
1
29 30 104 105
{all elements of A1 } 102 102 103 104
1
{B(1) } 103 104 105 105
59
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 3. (a) Box plot of α1 ; (b) Λn statistic and ν̄ for α = 10−6 %; (c) Detection time delay
for various α
on the basis of the Akaike Information Criteria test (see Noh et al. (7)). 150 values
of the DSFs extracted from all 3 white noise excitations were fed into the algorithm
sequentially to compute the test statistic Λn for each floor response.
Figure 3(a) shows the box plot of the first AR coefficients extracted from the
roof acceleration responses. The center line and the edges of the boxes indicate the
median and the 25th and the 75th percentiles of the coefficients, respectively. The
whiskers of the boxes extend to the maximum and the minimum coefficients, exclud-
ing outliers. Figure 3(a) shows that the distribution of the first AR coefficient changes
before and after damage in the structure. This change is reflected in the change in the
test statistic value, as shown in Figure 3(b); this test statistic is computed from the
first AR coefficients for each floor acceleration responses. The thin dash line in Fig-
ure 3(b) indicates the threshold value for the false alarm rate of 10−6 %. The crossings
between the dash line and the test statistic plots indicate the corresponding fault de-
tection times. The detection delay is the difference between the fault detection time
and the true fault time, which is 101. While the algorithm identified damage without
a false alarm using the acceleration responses from the third floor and the roof, it
triggered the false alarm (i.e., fault detection time ≤ true fault time) using the second
and the fourth floor data.
Although the performance of the algorithm based on the single-variate AR is ex-
cellent for some acceleration responses, the single-variate AR model did not made
it clear which sensor data we should rely on for damage identification. Moreover,
although the first three stories are more severely damaged than the fourth story, as
shown in Figure 2(c), the rate of the increase in the Λn statistic for each floor af-
ter the true fault time does not correspond to the severity of damage for each floor.
Therefore, the single-variate AR coefficients cannot localize damage.
From the definition of Bα , as the false alarm rate decreases, the threshold value
increases, and, as a result, the detection delay increases (see Figure 3(c)). Similar
results are obtained using the DSFs defined as combinations of the first three AR
coefficients, and their fault detection times using the roof responses are summarized
in the first three rows of Table 1 for various false alarm rates. Although the use of only
the first AR coefficient as the DSF performs the best, the performance differences are
insignificant.
Multi-variate ARX model. The analysis results are presented for the cases where
we used all the elements of the Ak coefficient matrices, only their diagonal elements,
their eigenvalues, and the non-zero elements of the B k coefficient matrices separately.
Ak is a 4 × 4 matrix and B k is a 4 × 1 vector because the acceleration responses are
60
(a) (b) (c) (d)
Figure 4. Box plot of the diagonal elements of A1 : (a) A1(1,1) ; (b) A1(2,2) ; (c) A1(3,3) ; (d) A1(4,4)
collected from four different locations in the structure and the input force is applied
by the ground motion. Figure 4 shows the four diagonal elements of the A1 matrix,
and Figure 5(a) shows the test statistic for each diagonal element. Although the dis-
tributions of Ak(1,1) and Ak(4,4) change significantly after damage, Ak(2,2) and Ak(3,3) do
not change much. These behaviors are reflected in Figure 5(a), where the Λn statis-
tics for Ak(1,1) and Ak(4,4) show significant changes near the true fault time, while the
Λn statistics for Ak(2,2) and Ak(3,3) do not. Given that the first three stories are more
severely damaged than the fourth story, the diagonal elements of A1 cannot localize
the damage.
Various other DSFs are tested, and Figures 5(b)-(e) show the Λn statistic results
that use as a DSF four diagonal elements of A1 , four eigenvalues of A1 , all elements
of A1 , and the non-zero element of B 1 , respectively. Note that the DSFs for four
diagonal elements of A1 , four eigenvalues of A1 , and all elements of A1 are multi-
dimension. The second part of Table 1 summarizes the fault detection times for vari-
ous DSFs based on the multi-variate AR model at various false alarm rates. The table
shows that individual eigenvalue of the A1 matrix is more sensitive to damage than its
individual diagonal element. In addition, using a multi-dimensional DSF usually re-
sults in a more accurate fault detection time. The results also show that the algorithm
tends to perform better when the false alarm rate is lower. Among all the features, the
non-zero element of B 1 (its first element) has the most reliable performance because
its Λn statistic does not fluctuate much when the structure is undamaged.
(a) (b)
(c) (d) (e)
Figure 5. Λn statistics: (a) each diagonal element of A1 ; (b) four diagonal elements of A1 ;
(c) four eigenvalues of A1 ; (d) all elements of A1 ; (e) first element of B 1
61
CONCLUSIONS
We have developed a damage diagnosis algorithm based on time-series models and
a single fault sequential change point detection method. Following the collection of
structural responses, the algorithm extracts a damage sensitive feature (DSF) using
various time-series analysis and classifies the DSF into a damage state using a se-
quential change point detection method. We have investigated various DSFs and as-
sessed their performance in identifying damage. The classification using the change
point detection method involves sequential hypothesis test of the DSF extracted at
each time step using its distribution before and after damage. This method provides
fault detection time that minimizes the detection delay for a given false alarm rate.
Moreover, this method allows us to make a decision using a series of observations
sequentially and eliminates the need to wait for a set of features to be collected for
statistical analysis. It is particularly suitable for a long-term periodic monitoring of a
structure.
For validation, we applied the algorithm to a set of white noise shake table test
data collected from a four-story steel moment-resisting frame. The results show that
the algorithm can sequentially identify damage with the fault detection time delay less
than 10 time steps (i.e., 1000/128 seconds), and it performs particularly well using a
multi-dimensional DSF and a low false alarm rate. Although the algorithm obtains
small fault detection time delay, further research is necessary for damage localization.
To apply this algorithm in practice, we are currently developing several extensions
to the algorithm. The algorithm can be expanded using a different set of DSFs to
analyze non-stationary responses. Moreover, the case of unknown distribution of the
DSF is of great interest because in practice we are not likely to have this information.
We are also investigating the detection of multiple damage states at multiple damage
locations simultaneously using the change point detection method. Last, we need to
apply the algorithm to more experimental and field data to further validate it.
REFERENCES
[1] J. P. Lynch and K. J. Loh. A summary review of wireless sensors and sensor networks for structural
health monitoring. The Shock and Vibration Digest, 38(2):91–128, 2006.
[2] A.G. Tartakovsky and V.V. Veeravalli. General asymptotic bayesian theory of quickest change
detection. Theory of Probab. Appl., 49(3):458–497, 2005.
[3] H. Sohn, D. W. Allen, K. Worden, and C. R. Farrar. Statistical damage classification using se-
quential probability ratio tests. An International Journal of Structural Health Monitoring, 2(1):
57–74, 2003.
[4] P. Omenzetter and J. M. W. Brownjohn. Application of time series analysis for bridge monitoring.
Smart Materials and Structures, 15:129–138, 2006.
[5] K. K. Nair, A. S. Kiremidjian, and K. H. Law. Time series-based damage detection and localiza-
tion algorithm with application to the asce benchmark structure. Journal of Sound and Vibration,
291(2):349–368, 2006.
[6] A. Cheung and A. S. Kiremidjian. Damage localization on a shear story structure using multivari-
ate autoregressive time series modeling. In The 7th International Workshop on Structural Health
Monitoring, 2009.
[7] H. Noh, K. K. Nair, A. S. Kiremidjian, and C-H. Loh. Application of a time series-based damage
detection algorithm to the benchmark experiment at the national center for research on earthquake
engineering in taipei, taiwanese. Journal of Smart Structures and Systems, 5(1):95–117, 2009.
[8] A. N. Shiryaev. Optimal Stopping Rules. Springer-Verlag, 1978.
[9] D. G. Lignos. Sidesway collapse of deteriorating structural systems under seismic excitations.
PhD thesis, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, 2009.
62
Cointegration and SHM of Bridges
E. J. CROSS, K. WORDEN, K.-Y. KOO and J. M. W. BROWNJOHN
ABSTRACT
Cointegration theory from the field of econometrics has recently been suggested
by the authors as a useful tool for structural health monitoring. If two or more
nonstationary variables are cointegrated, then some linear combination of them will be
stationary, which is to say that common trends shared by the variables can be purged.
In SHM, this could be particularly useful where features contain environmental or
operational trends (a temperature dependency, for example) that can often mask any
changes in structural response caused by damage. In this situation, cointegration can
be used to combine monitored variables and create a feature independent of
environmental or operational variations but still sensitive to damage.
INTRODUCTION
Large scale monitoring campaigns are becoming more and more common for
bridges following a number of high profile failures and the well known fact that
many bridges across Europe and United States are in an aged state. Aims of bridge
monitoring campaigns have until recently remained fairly modest as there have
been many issues to overcome as far as instrumentation has been concerned. One
major question that still remains unclear is how capable any installed monitoring
system can be for fulfilling the vision of structural health monitoring (SHM), which
is ultimately to detect and locate any structural degradation on its occurrence and to
calculate the remaining life of the structure in its current state. Because of the
inherent difficulties of such a task, the aims of some monitoring campaigns have
subtly changed, and now focus more on performance monitoring and the detection
and forensic analysis of anomalies in monitoring data.
Whatever the aim of a monitoring campaign, be it for health or performance,
there remain common areas which will jointly benefit from ongoing research in this
community. One such area is how to deal with the contamination of useful data
____________
Elizabeth J. Cross, Keith Worden; Dynamics Resear ch Group, Department of Mechanical
Engineering, University of Sheffield, Mappin Street, Sheffield, S1 3JD, UK.
James Bro wnjohn, Ki-Young Koo: Vibration Engineering Section, Department of Civil and
Structural Engineering, University of Sheffield, Mappin Street, Sheffield, S1 3JD, UK.
63
with unwanted interference from environmental and operational variations. A prime
example of this comes directly from damage detection applications; commonly in
laboratory-based research, damage sensitive features or structural responses are
monitored and damage inferred from any notable change. Unfortunately damage
sensitive features are often equally sensitive to changing environmental and
operational conditions [1], which means that changes in a monitored variable can
no longer be attributed to the occurrence of damage with any confidence. This
problem is often called the data normalisation problem in the SHM literature, and
can equally well apply to monitoring issues not directly related to damage detection
(i.e. those of performance). One new approach to the data normalisation problem
imported by the authors from the field of econometrics is the idea of cointegration
[2], which seeks to purge time series data of common environmentally or
operationally induced trends via a linear combination, or a nonlinear combination if
nonlinear cointegration is used.
The ideas of cointegration will be outlined in this paper and then applied firstly
to data collected from the Tamar Suspension Bridge, which is currently being
monitored by the Vibration Engineering Section at the University of Sheffield.
Secondly the uses of cointegration will be explored in the context of data collected
from the SIMCES project on the Z24 Highway Bridge [3], which is well known to
SHM practitioners as an example of a campaign where researchers were able to
introduce real and significant damage to the structure.
LINEAR AND NONLINEAR COINTEGRATION
As mentioned in the introduction, cointegration originates from the field of

econometrics, but has recently been imported by the authors for use in SHM [2, 4].
Because the theory of cointegration is already well documented, only a brief outline
of it will be given here.
Perhaps the most useful concept to introduce before approaching cointegration
is that of the order of integration of a time series, which can be thought of as a
measure of how nonstationary a time series is. More formally, the order of
integration of a time series is the number of times a nonstationary time series need
be differenced before it becomes stationary. Probably the most common and
therefore relevant type of variables for SHM applications will be those that are
integrated of order one, which is denoted ~I(1), which are nonstationary with first
difference stationary.
Variables that are integrated of the same order and can be linearly combined to
create a single variable of a lower order of integration are cointegrated. As I(1)
variables are common both in econometrics and engineering, the definition of
cointegration is often reduced to a property of a set of nonstationary time series
which can be linearly combined to create a stationary residual series. While the
interests of econometricians generally lie in determining the nature of nonstationary
variables (for prediction purposes), i.e. whether variables are cointegrated or not,
the interest for an SHM practitioner most likely lies in determining how variables
sharing common trends may be combined to create a univariate stationary result, in
other words in how common trends (such as those induced by
environmental/operation variations) may be purged.
Finding the most stationary linear combination of cointegrated variables is
64
commonly achieved via the Johansen procedure which approximates the best
coefficients (called the cointegrating vector) in a linear combination via a maximum
likelihood approach. For more details readers are referred to [2] or [5]. For SHM
the suggested procedure is to use the Johansen procedure to create a stationary
combination of nonstationary variables that share common trends (most likely
induced by environmental or operational variations). If the data set used to establish
this combination is representative of the normal condition of the structure, the linear
combination can be used as a diagnostic tool by projecting all new data onto it. In
the event that the residual becomes nonstationary the structure can be said to have
departed from its normal condition, or be damaged if damage sensitive features
make up the linear combination.
The term ‘nonlinear cointegration’ can be somewhat ambiguous as the word
nonlinear can be used to refer to the types of trend to be purged or the fact that a
nonlinear combination may be needed. For the purposes of SHM, the authors have
explored the possibility of using differential evolution to choose the terms in a
nonlinear sum in order to create a stationary combination of nonstationary nonlinear
variables, see [6, 7].
COINTEGRATION FOR THE TAMAR BRIDGE
The Vibration Engineering Section (VES) at the University of Sheffield have,

over the last few years, developed various monitoring systems for the Tamar
Suspension Bridge in Southwest England. Modal parameters are automatically
identified by data-driven stochastic subspace identification (SSI); environmental
and operational conditions are monitored by a large network of sensors, and most
recently, a total positioning system (TPS) has been installed to measure reliably the
movement of the bridge deck and towers. Up to three years of dynamic, static and
environmental data are now available for analysis. In the following, areas where
cointegration could be of use for the Tamar monitoring campaign are highlighted.
One of the newest additions to the Tamar monitoring campaign is a TPS, which
uses a robotic total station (RTS) for precise monitoring of the displacement of the
bridge deck and towers (accurate to within 2 or 3mm). Figure 1 displays a plot of
longitudinal deflections of the deck and tower measured over a time span of just
over three days (77 and half hours). From this plot the daily fluctuations in deck and
tower displacements caused by operational and environmental conditions are
obvious, but without further investigation the plot is somewhat unenlightening and
uninformative for making any judgement about the structure’s performance or
condition. However, if the variables in figure 1 are cointegrated, the stationary
linear combination of the variables that can be found (via the Johansen procedure)
could be used as a measure of normality of structural response. The procedure
would be to find the best cointegrating vector of a training set of data from a period
where one has high confidence that the structure’s responses are normal and
representative. All new data would then be projected onto the established linear
combination, which should remain stationary all the time the structure operates in
its normal condition. In the event that the cointegrated residual becomes
nonstationary (which could be monitored with a statistical process control (SPC)
chart, see [8]) one has an indication that the way the variables interrelate has
changed, and further investigation into the cause can be carried out.
65
Deck 44m from Saltash end
2
Top of Plymouth side tower
Top of Plymouth tower, south
Top of Plymouth tower, north
1.5
Normalised displacement
0.5
20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

data point reference
Figure 1. TPS measurements of bridge displacements (Eastings) over three days

15 30
10 20
cointegrated residual amplitude
Cointegrated residual amplitude
5 10
0 0
-5 -10
-10 -20
-15 -30
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500
data point reference data point reference
Figure 2(a). (left) Cointegrated residual of variables in figure 1.

Figure 2(b). (right) Data collected over two months projected on cointegrated residual established in
on data in figure 1.
As perhaps expected from the plot, the variables in figure 1 are cointegrated,
and their stationary linear combination is shown in figure 2(a), along with error bars
at plus and minus three standard deviations of the residual added to act as an SPC
control chart. From figure 2(a) it is clear that the environmental or operationally
induced trends have been purged. As the data in figure 1 is considered to have come
from normal operating conditions, the stationarity of the linear combination can be
considered to represent a normal operating condition. Figure 2(b) is a plot of further
TPS data collected over two months projected onto the linear combination
established on the data shown in figure 1, the same error bars as in figure 2(b) have
been added to continue to act as an SPC control chart. The residual continues to
remain stationary for the duration of the two months, which indicates that the
relationships between the considered variables remain the same.
66
While the above example has demonstrated that cointegration can be used to
remove environmental and operational variation from displacement monitoring
data, the aim is to use the residual as a condition or performance indicator, and so in
order to test this a known performance anomaly is needed. In fact, despite its age
the bridge performs so well that neither VES nor the bridge operators have found
such an anomaly during the monitoring, and so the only alternative is to fabricate
one. For illustrative purposes, one could manipulate the data in an attempt to
mimic/simulate a potential non-normal change in structural response and see the
effect on the trained cointegrated residual. Here, in a crude attempt to simulate the
possible effect of a loss in tension in one of the stay cables (specifically the stay
cable labelled P2 in figure 3), additions are made to some of the displacement
channels of the data that was used in figure 2(b). After an arbitrary number of data
points (500 in this case), an additional 5mm was added to the longitudinal
displacements of the deck 44m away from the Saltash end of the bridge (the
reflector placed between the stay cables labelled S2 and S4 in figure 3), 4mm was
added to each reading of the deflections at 62m away from the Saltash end of the
bridge (the centre of the bridge), and 3mm was added to each reading of
longitudinal displacement 80m away from the Saltash end of the bridge (between
the stay cables labelled P4 and P2 in figure 3). The projection of this corrupted data
onto the stationary linear combination established with the (un-tampered with) data
from figure 2 is shown in figure 4. After 500 data points there is a clear shift in the
residual, which could clearly be taken as an indication that the bridge is no longer
operating in its normal condition.
As a further example of the application of cointegration to this monitoring
campaign the natural frequencies of the deck are considered. These are calculated
by the application of stochastic subspace identification (SSI) [9] which uses
Figure 3. Sensor locations of RTS system on the Tamar bridge (blue triangles)
15
10
5
-5
-10
-15
-20
-25
-30
-35
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500
Figure 4. Cointegrated residual with manipulated data
67
acceleration measurements of three accelerometers on the deck. Figure 5 shows a
plot of the lowest five natural frequencies recorded over the duration of one month,
again operational and environmentally induced trends are clearly visible. A
stationary linear combination of these variables can be found, as plotted in figure
6(a), in this instance the Johansen procedure was trained on the first 500 data points
of the set plotted in figure 5. Again, this can be used as a measure of normality; one
would expect the linear combination to remain stationary all the time the bridge
responds in a normal condition. Figure 6(b) is a plot of new data projected onto the
established cointegrating vector with error bars at plus and minus three standard
deviations of the residual during the 500 point training period. This data was
collected over a period of six months almost a year and a half later than the data
used to choose the cointegrating vector. From observation, the residual remains
fairly stationary over the 6 month period indicating that relationships between the
frequencies have remained constant. There is, however, one large anomalous area in
the plot, where, around data point 4000, the deviation of the residual becomes much
larger, and the error bars are exceeded many times consecutively. This large
anomaly indicates that something untoward happened during this period of the
monitoring campaign. On further investigation, the anomaly occurs at a time when
one of the accelerometers became waterlogged and was therefore providing a
corrupted signal which destroyed the equilibrium of the linear combination.
0.75
0.7
0.65
Natural Frequency (Hz)
0.6
0.55
0.5
0.45
0.4
0.35
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600
Figure 5. First five deck natural frequencies recorded over one month
15 15
10
10
5
5
0
-5
-5
-10
-10 -15
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000
data point reference data point reference
Figure 6(a). (left) Cointegrated residual of first five natural frequencies plotted in figure 5
(cointegrating vector established on first five hundred points only)
Figure 6(b). (right) Data from later on in the year projected onto the same cointegrating vector.
68
COINTEGRATION FOR Z24 HIGHWAY BRIDGE
The second application of cointegration directly concerns creating features

suitable for damage detection. The SIMCES project on the Z24 Highway Bridge [3]
is well known to SHM practitioners as an example of a campaign where researchers
were able to introduce real and significant damage to the structure. Modal
properties extracted from acceleration data recorded over a monitoring period of a
year exhibit sensitivity to both damage and environmental variations, (temperature
in this case) and so provide a good test bed for cointegration, as it should be able to
combine the modal frequencies recorded to create a damage sensitive,
environmentally insensitive feature for damage detection. Figure 7 is a plot of the
natural frequencies of the bridge deck extracted over the whole monitoring period;
the large jumps in frequency in the first half of the record have been attributed to
periods of extremely cold weather, whilst the downward drift towards the end of the
record has been attributed to the introduction of damage.
Unfortunately, the periods of extremely low temperature have introduced
nonlinearity into the problem. At times of very low temperature the natural
frequencies are nonlinearly related to temperature and importantly to each other,
meaning that linear cointegration is not a suitable method for removing
environmental trends from this data. This is an excellent motivation for nonlinear
cointegration, which could deal with nonlinear trends, but is outside the scope for
this paper, see instead [6, 7]. Instead of dealing with the problem of nonlinear
cointegration, the potential usefulness of linear cointegration will be addressed
simply by looking at the linear portion of the data from the Z24 campaign (which is
in fact the majority of the data), this could be called looking at locally linear
models.
To sidestep the nonlinearity issue only data points occurring when the
temperature was hotter than 1°C were considered. As before, the cointegrating
vector was chosen using a training period, this time of 500 data points. All further
data points were then projected onto the established linear combination and the
results are plotted in figure 8a (figure 8b is an X-bar control chart of the same
residual). The dashed horizontal lines indicate plus and minus three standard
deviations of the residual during the training period and the solid vertical line
indicates the time when damage was introduced to the structure. Studying figure 8,
one can see that the residual no longer contains environmentally induced trends and
also becomes nonstationary after the introduction of damage to the structure, it is
therefore a successful damage feature, although somewhat limited to when
temperatures occurred above 1°C.
13
12
11
10
Natural frequency (Hz)
3
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
Figure 7. Plot of Z24 natural frequencies over the monitoring campaign
69
5
6 4
3
4

2
2
1
0
0
-2 -1
-4 -2
-3
-6
-4
500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 -5

data point 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Figure 8. (a) All data occurring above 1°C projected onto established cointegrating vector (left)
(b) X-bar control chart of cointegrated residual (right)
CONCLUSIONS
Cointegration has been introduced as a means of purging environmental and

operational trends from monitoring data and its application demonstrated on data from
real bridges. In the case of the Tamar Bridge it has been introduced as a rapid means
of assessing the normality of new structural response data. Although no ‘damage’ data
is available from the Tamar bridge, the cointegration allowed the independent
diagnosis of a performance anomaly that had previously been noted. In the light of
current thinking for civil infrastructure where it is considered that performance
monitoring is highly desirable in its own right, this is a significant result. In the case of
the Z24 bridge where ‘damage’ data were available, it has been introduced as a means
of creating a damage sensitive feature that was insensitive to environmental
fluctuations (in temperature in this case). The results here confirm that cointegration
shows significant potential for the SHM of civil infrastructure.
REFERENCES
1. Worden, K., C. Farrar, G. Manson, and G. Park, 2007."The fundamental axioms of
structural health monitoring," Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical
and Engineering Science, 463(2082): 1639.
2. Cross, E.J., K. Worden, and Q. Chen, 2011."Cointegration; A novel approach for the
removal of environmental trends in structural health monitoring data," Proceedings of the
Royal Society - Series A Preprint: availabe as online content at
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/firstcite.
3. De Roeck, G., 2003."The state-of-the-art of damage detection by vibration monitoring: the
SIMCES experience," Journal of Structural Control, 10(2): 127-134.
4. Sturgeon, R., E.J. Cross, K. Worden, J.M.W. Brownjohn, K.Y. Koo, and Q. Chen. 2009.
"Elimination of long-term trends in SHM data using cointegration," in 7th International
Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring. Stanford University.
5. Johansen, S., 1995. Likelihood-based inference in cointegrated vector autoregressive
models. Advanced Texts in Econometrics: Oxford University Press.
6. Cross, E.J. and K.Worden. 2011. "Approaches to Nonlinear Cointegration with a view
towards applications in SHM," in 9th International Conference on Damage Assessment of
Structures. Oxford.
7. Cross, E.J. and K. Worden. 2011. "Nonlinear Cointegration as a combinatorial optimisation
problem," in 8th International Workshop on Strutural Health Monitoring. Stanford
University.
8. Montgomery, D.C., 2009. Introduction to statistical quality control: John Wiley & Sons.
9. Peeters, B. and G. De Roeck, 1999."Reference-based stochastic subspace identification for
output-only modal analysis," Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 13(6): 855-878.
70
(FIRST PAGE OF ARTICLE)1
Piezoceramic-Based 2-D Spiral Phased Array

for Damage Detection of Thin Orthotropic
Composite Laminates
B. YOO and D. J. PINES
ABSTRACT
In this paper, a new 2-D phased array signal processing method for structural
health monitoring (SHM) of thin orthotropic composite laminates is presented. The
new method is developed by applying experimental wavenumber and wavefront
curves to the same algorithm structure of the original 2-D phased array signal
processing. The wavenumber and wavefront curves are experimentally determined for
thin unidirectional and cross-ply laminates. Piezoceramic-based 2-D spiral phased
array is used as a sensor array, and multiple piezoceramic elements are used as
actuators in the experiments. Damage detection of the composite laminates is
investigated with the spiral array and the new signal processing method, using the
guided Lamb wave (GLW) technique.
INTRODUCTION
In order to evaluate the structural integrity of composite laminates, many
researchers have studied the use of guided Lamb wave (GLW) technique known as
one of the most reliable measurement tools for quantitative identification of damage in
the composite structures used for mechanical and aerospace systems [1]. The GLW
method includes a number of potential benefits such as large area inspection, wave
mode and frequency tuning capability, time- and cost-effectiveness, and simple
inspection methodology [2]. Various ultrasonic transducers made of piezoelectric-
based materials (e.g. PZT) have been used to generate the GLW in plate-like structures
and capture the structural response of the GLW interrogation [3-6]. The structural
health monitoring (SHM) technique with the ultrasonic GLW transducers was based
on the traditional sensor network approach [7]. The SHM technique was successfully
applied to extract structural vibration features and identify damages simulated in rods,
plates, pipes, and multi-layered structures. However, there are important challenges
for the GLW-based SHM technique. The method may experience difficulties in wave
mode separation/conversion and dispersion features related to excitation frequency,
structure’s thickness, and wave mode. In addition, it is hard to distinguish wave
Byungseok Yoo, Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Aerospace Engineering,

University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, Email: bsyoo@umd.edu
Darryll J. Pines, D ean a nd Professor, De partment of Aerospace En gineering, University of
Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, Email: pines@umd.edu
71
reflections from damages because the GLWs propagate in all directions and interfere
with every component in the host structure.
In recent years, many studies have examined phased array techniques combined
with the GLW method [8-11] and demonstrated their capability as the promising SHM
tools to overcome the drawbacks of the conventional GLW technique. The phased
array techniques can effectively examine and analyze the complicated GLW signals
gathered from the base structures. Two types of post signal processing methods, time
shifting and directional wavenumber filtering, are commonly used with the one- or
two-dimensional phased sensor arrays. In previous researches conducted by the
authors [12,13], the directional wavenumber filtering technique using piezoelectric
two-dimensional (2-D) spiral phased array was examined for damage detection
application, based on the GLW interrogation in thin aluminum plates. The
conventional ultrasonic testing methodology, pitch (PZT actuator) – catch
(piezoelectric 2-D spiral array), was used to detect the presence and the extent of
various artificial damages such as holes, cracks, and rubber patches in the aluminum
plates. An innovative 2-D phased array signal processing method was implemented to
virtually steer the sensor array and directionally filter a desired wavenumber
component in the sensor array signals. Experimental GLW signals were evaluated
based on the signal processing method so that array responses were produced, and
analyzed to detect/monitor the structural damages in the aluminum plates.
However, the original 2-D phased array signal processing method is limited to
apply for anisotropic plates (e.g. composite laminates) because the GLW propagation
speed is dependent on the material properties of the plate-like structures. In the
composite laminates, the GLW propagation speed is closely related to the wave
propagation direction. The original phased array technique assumes that the GLW
propagates omni-directionally at the same speed and the phase velocity direction is
identical to the group velocity direction (i.e. wavefront curves are perfect circular
shapes). On the other hand, wavefront curves in the composite laminates are non-
perfect circular shapes (e.g. ellipses) due to material anisotropy [14]. The GLW skew
effect should be taken into account in the modification aspect of the directional
wavenumber filtering algorithm. The new 2-D phased array signal processing method
(for the directional wavenumber filtering) is developed by applying experimental
wavenumber and wavefront curves into the same algorithm structure of the original
phased array signal processing method used for damage detection of the aluminum
plates.
Spiral
0.03
0.02
Side lobes Main lobe
3/16”
0.01
Y (m)
0
15°
-0.01
-0.02
-0.03
-0.04 -0.02 0 0.02 0.04
X (m)
(a) (b)
Figure 1. 2-D spiral phased array: (a) sensor distribution layout; (b) directivity function result
72
FUNDAMENTALS OF 2-D PHASED ARRAY
Characteristics of 2-D Phased Array
Directivity function [12, 13] can be used to quantify the sensitivity of the sensor
array to the waves of different wavelength and traveling direction. The directivity
function was evaluated for the 2-D spiral phased array (Figure 1(a)) and the associated
result is plotted in Figure 1(b). For directional wavenumber filtering, virtual steering
of the sensor array is accomplished by using selective gains and a signal processing
technique to artificially modify the directivity function as desired.
Signal Processing with 2-D Phased Array

Like the time shifting method, the directional wavenumber filtering technique is
able to enhance a desired signal component by eliminating unwanted components in
the signals obtained from a sensor array. Array response for the 2-D phased array can
be determined by equations (1) through (3).
1 N 1 N
 (t , )    R ( xn , y n , )v( xn , y n , t )  i   I ( xn , y n , )v( xn , y n , t ) (1)
N n1 N n 1
 R ( xn , y n , )  cos( xn k cos   y n k sin  ) (2)
 I ( xn , y n , )  sin( xn k cos   y n k sin  ) (3)
In the above expressions, the R ( x n , yn , ) and  I ( x n , yn , ) are the real and
imaginary parts of a spatial weighting function, respectively, at the ( x n , y n ) location.
The spatial weighting function is based on an ideal wavenumber filter (i.e. Dirac delta
function) and related to the directivity function (Figure 1(b)) under a steered condition.
The v( x n , y n , t ) is a transient signal obtained from the n-th sensor element at ( x n , y n )
location of the sensor array. The k is a desired wavenumber for filtering, and the  is
a steering angular direction, 0    360 .
Excitation source
Wavefront
(a) Discrete linear array (b)

Figure 2. GLW wave propagation: (a) for isotropic plates; (b) for anisotropic plates
MODIFICATION OF 2-D PHASED ARRAY ALGORITHM FOR

COMPOSITE LAMINATES
The Figure 2(a) shows the fundamental assumptions of the original phased array
signal processing method. In order to apply the phased array technique for composite
laminates, the original signal processing method should be modified based on the
configuration shown in Figure 2(b). The group velocity direction (θ – α) is not
identical to the phase velocity direction (θ) but the group velocity direction is normal
73
to the wavefront in the composite laminates. In the figures, the k is the wavenumber of
a GLW mode coming from an excitation source.
Experimental Set-ups for New Phased Array Technique

Unidirectional and cross-ply laminates were made of IM7/8552 unidirectional tape,
with [90]6 and [90/0/90/90]sym lay-up sequences, respectively. The composite
laminates were under fixed-free boundary conditions. Two boundary edges for the
composite laminates were fixed. In order to construct ground electrodes, thin copper
sheets were bonded onto the composite laminates before mounting the 2-D sensor
array and multiple actuators. As shown in Figure 3, piezoceramic-based 2-D spiral
phased arrays were instrumented at the center of the composite laminates. The spiral
array was made of 25 discrete PZT elements with 1/8 in. diameter. The array sensor
element spacing was 3/16 in. and the angular spacing was 15 deg. as shown in Figure
1(a). A quadrant of the composite laminate was experimentally examined with the 2-D
phased array technique in conjunction with the GLW interrogation. Seven PZT
elements with 1/4 in. diameter were used as off-centered GLW actuators. They are
denoted by EO1 through EO7 in Figure 3. They were bonded at 10 in. distance
location from the center of the spiral array, and the angular spacing of the actuators
was 15 degrees. Gaussian windowed tone burst signals at 60 kHz and 80 kHz were
excited from the EO1 through EO7 actuators, and the associated structural response
signals were gathered from the spiral array. The groups of the array signals were
processed using the original 2-D phased array signal processing method to yield array
responses.
2-D Spiral array
90°
0°
(a) (b)
Figure 3. Instrumented composite laminates for evaluation of directional GLW characteristics: (a)
unidirectional laminate; (b) cross-ply laminate
Experimental Wavenumber and Wavefront Curves

The wavenumber of the A0 mode in the experimental sensor signals according to
an actuator may be determined by using the spatial Fourier transform with the spiral
array configuration and the associated sensor signals. This process was repeated over
the different actuators (EO1 ~ EO7) to evaluate directional wavenumber information.
Due to the symmetrical quadrant properties of the composite laminates, wavenumber
information for the other three quadrants is assumed to be the same as the
experimentally evaluated quadrant. In the Figure 4(a) and (c), small circles in blue and
in red are the experimental wavenumbers according to the off-centered actuators
excited at 60 kHz and 80 kHz, respectively. And the dotted line in blue and the solid
74
line in red are Cubic Spline curve-fitting results. The curve-fitting results are used as
experimental wavenumber curves. In the figures, the highlighted areas are the
experimental testing quadrants.
90 1000 (rad/m) 90 80 (in/s)

120 60 120 60
800 60 kHz 60
600
150 30 80 kHz 150 40 30
400
20
200
180 0 (deg.) 180 0 (deg.)
Experimental
wavenumber
210 330 210 330
Experimental
Curve fitting
240 300 240 300 group velocity
270 270
Ellipse construction
Experimental testing region
(a) (b)
90 1000 (rad/m) 90 60 (in/s)
120 60 120 60
800
40
600
150 30 150 30
400
20
200
180 0 (deg.) 180 0 (deg.)
210 330 210 330
240 300 240 300

270 270
(c) (d)
Figure 4. Modification features for new 2-D phased array technique: (a) wavenumber curves for
unidirectional laminate; (b) wavefront curves for unidirectional laminate; (c) wavenumber curves
for cross-ply laminate; (d) wavefront curves for cross-ply laminate
Array response results corresponding to the off-centered actuators could be

reproduced by using the original 2-D phased array signal processing method that
assumes wavefront curve is perfect circular shapes (Figure 2(a)), and by using the
experimental wavenumber curves shown in Figure 4(a) and (c). The array response
results noted that the angular locations of the maximum value of the array responses
are different from the associated actual actuator locations, because the wavefront
curves of the composite laminates are not perfectly circular (e.g. Figure 2(b)). In order
to evaluate the wavefront curves (i.e. group velocity curves) for the composite
laminates, the maximum value locations in the array responses should be compensated
based on the actual actuator locations, while maintaining the corresponding time-of-
flight information. Since the actual distance between the actuators and the center of the
spiral array was known as 10 inches, the directional group velocity information could
be determined. In order to perform simple curve-fitting for the experimental group
velocity results, parametric ellipses were constructed by using the maximum and
minimum group velocity information. The resultant ellipses are considered as the
experimental wavefront curves for the composite laminates as shown in Figure 4(b)
and (d). With the estimated wavefront curves, the group velocity direction (i.e. normal
75
to the wavefront curve) can be determined and applied to modify the original 2-D
phased array signal processing method.
Using the experimentally determined wavenumber and wavefront curves shown in
Figure 4, the original phased array signal processing method was modified and the
new signal processing method can be developed. As a result, the governing equations
of the spatial weighting function (equations (2) and (3)) should be modified as below.
R ( xn , yn , )  cos( xn k ( ) cos(   ( ))  yn k ( ) sin(   ( ))) (4)
I ( xn , yn , )  sin( xn k ( ) cos(   ( ))  yn k ( ) sin(   ( ))) (5)
In above expression, k ( ) and  ( ) may be defined from the experimental
wavenumber and wavefront curves, respectively.
DAMAGE DETECTION WITH NEW 2-D SPIRAL PHASED ARRAY

ALGORITHM
Experimental Set-up for Damage Detection
For the unidirectional laminate, it was observed that one single actuator positioned
at the center of the testing panel was insufficient to detect simulated damages due to
the material characteristics, like high attenuation factor and significant wave energy
variation of the A0 mode according to the propagation directions within the composite
laminate. Therefore, three PZT elements with 1/4 in. diameter were bonded on the
same unidirectional laminate, and used as actuators (EO8, EO9, and EO10 shown in
Figure 3(a)) for damage detection tests. Similar to the previous test (i.e. the
experimental test for new 2-D phased array signal processing method development),
Gaussian windowed tone burst signals at 60 kHz and 80 kHz were excited from the
EO8 through EO10 actuators, and the spiral array captured the GLW signals traveling
in the composite laminate. For the cross-ply composite panel, on the other hand, the
EC actuator (i.e. the center actuator shown in Figure 3(a)) was used as an actuator,
because there is insignificant wave energy variation of the A0 mode according to the
wave propagation directions. The GLW signals were processed with the new 2-D
phased array signal processing method, and baseline array responses (for no damage
cases) and damage array responses were produced. For the unidirectional laminate,
rubber patches were used as artificial damage, and weights were used for the cross-ply
laminate. The simulated damage information is described in Table I.
Table I. Damage Type and Location According to Panel Type and Actuator
Type of Panel Actuator Damage Type Damage Location* Damage Index
**
EO8 Rubber patch 8 in. at 90 deg. UL_D1
Unidirectional laminate EO9 Rubber patch 12 in. at 43 deg. UL_D2
EO10 Rubber patch 8 in. at 15 deg. UL_D3
Weight*** 8 in. at 180 deg. CL_D1
Cross-ply laminate EC
Weight 8 in. at 210 deg. CL_D2
*
from the center of the spiral array to the simulated damage
**
with 3/4 in. width and 3/2 in. length
***
with 5/8 in. diameter surface contact area and about 300 g
Array Response Result

Array responses were produced by using the new signal processing method for the
simulated damages according to the actuator cases and the type of panel. Differential
array responses were reproduced by subtracting the damage array responses from the
76
baseline array responses. The differential array response results for the unidirectional
laminate case are shown in Figure 5. In the figures, the red arrows indicate the actual
directions of the rubber patch damages, and the dotted circles in red are the estimated
damage locations within the differential array responses. The results note that there are
small directional errors to identify the simulated damages in the differential array
responses, but the estimated damage locations (waveform images with high intensity)
are generally in good agreement with the actual damage locations. In the array
responses of the Figure 5(a) and (b), there are a few noticeable waveform images
except for the high intensity waveform images (within the dotted circles in red). The
waveform images are the negative filtering effect due to the side lobes of the
directivity function for the spiral array, and they are shadow images related to the high
intensity waveform images. The limitation of the filtering capability with the 2-D
spiral array can be improved by increasing the total number of the sensor elements and
changing the sensor distribution layout.
(a) UL_D1 (b) UL_D2 (c) UL_D3

Figure 5. Differential array responses for three damage cases of the unidirectional laminate (60
kHz): (a) UL_D1 case; (b) UL_D2 case; (c) UL_D3 case described in Table I
(a) CL_D1 (b) CL_D2

Figure 6. Threshold filtered differential array responses for two damage cases of the cross-ply
laminate (60 kHz): (a) CL_D1 case; (b) CL_D2 case described in Table I
The differential array response results for the cross-ply laminate case are shown in
Figure 6. The threshold-filtered results were determined by applying a threshold
setting (80% of the maximum value of the differential array response) to the
differential array responses. Using the threshold filter, the negative filtering effect due
to the side lobes of the spiral array could be eliminated. In the same manner as the
unidirectional laminate case, the red arrows indicate the actual directions of the weight
damages, and the dotted circles in red are the estimated damage locations in the
threshold-filtered differential array responses. The array response results note that the
estimated damage locations are in good agreement with the actual damage locations.
77
CONCLUSIONS
This paper discussed a piezoceramic-based 2-D spiral phased array technique to
detect various damages of thin orthotropic composite laminates. New signal
processing method was developed for the phased array technique by applying
experimental wavenumber and wavefront curves determined for unidirectional and
cross-ply laminates. Damage detection of the composite laminates was investigated
with the spiral array and the new signal processing method, using the guided Lamb
wave (GLW) approach. The differential array response results demonstrated that the
2-D spiral phased array signal processing method is capable of being used as an
effective SHM tool not only for metallic plates, but also for orthotropic composite
laminates.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the NASA CUIP program (Contract NCC3989),
Claudia Meyer, Project Manager. The support of the agency is gratefully
acknowledged.
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Array for Thin-wall Structure Damage Detection. Proceedings of SPIE, Vol. 6529, 652939.
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78
Guided Wave and Probability Based
Diagnostic Imaging for Detection of
Multiple Welding Damages in
Welded Tubular Steel Structures
X. LU, M. LU, L. ZHOU, Z. SU, L. CHENG, L. YE and G. MENG
ABSTRACT
Propagation of guided waves (GWs) in a welded tubular steel structure (WTSS)

with rectangular cross-section is investigated using experimental analysis and finite
element method (FEM) simulation with the purpose of identifying multiple welding
damages on it. A sensor network made up of sixteen piezoelectric wafers is
established on the WTSS, generating and collecting GWs. With the aid of a series
of signal processing, a time-domain feature, termed ‘time of maximal difference’
(ToMD) is extracted from each captured GW signal. Base on the ToMDs, a novel
concept ‘damage presence probability’ (DPP) is consequently defined. Finally, a
probability-based damage imaging approach and a two-level image fusion scheme
are adopted to predict presence and location of two different damages in welding
zones of the WTSS as validation. Both simulation and experimental results
demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed approach for identifying multiple
damages in similar structures.
Keywords: guided wave, welded structures, damage presence probability,

diagnostic imaging
INTRODUCTION
†
Engineering structures in large scale are ubiquitous and closely related to safety
of people. Failure of them during operation can result in tremendous life and
monetary loss [1]. Recently, a number of cracks detected in the bogie systems of
Mass Transit Railway (MTR) trains have attracted public attention in Hong Kong
[2]. Consideration on the importance of safety toward public transportation has
Xi Lu, Guang Meng, State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, Shanghai Jiao
Tong University, Shanghai 200240, P. R. China
Mingyu Lu, Limin Zhou, Zhongqing Su, Li Cheng, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR
Lin Ye, Laboratory of Smart Materials and Structures (LSMS), Centre for Advanced Materials
Technology (CAMT), School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, The
University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
79
entailed the rapid development of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques [3,
4]. However, the efficiency of these traditional NDE techniques is usually
incommensurate with the cost. Since the 1990s, condition-based philosophy in
conjunction with embedded active sensor networks has been established, termed
structural health monitoring (SHM) [5]. Amongst various SHM tools, guided waves
(GWs) are particularly promising for their superb capabilities [6]. GW-based
damage identification and SHM techniques have been practiced in many
applications with demonstrated effectiveness [7, 8]. Studies on SHM in rail have
been addressed by some research groups [9, 10] but train bogie is barely referred.
In this paper, a WTSS of rectangular cross-section with welding damages is
investigated by analyzing GW signals generated and collected by a PZT sensor
network. A GW and probability-based diagnostic imaging approach was specialized
for the WTSS. Time domain feature of GW signals, termed ‘time of maximal
difference’ (ToMD), was extracted to establish damage presence probability (DPP)
of arbitrary location on the WTSS. The diagnostic imaging approach for damage
evaluation was developed based on ToMD and DPP, accompanying a two-level
image fusion scheme with the aim of enhancing the robustness of the approach. As
validation, the approach was utilized to evaluate presence and locations of multiple
damages in the welding zones of a WTSS.
GW PROPAGATION IN WTSS
A typical bogie frame from a real train carriage of MTR, comprising of a

number of WTSSs with rectangular cross-sections, is schematically shown in
Figure 1(a). An investigation on an artificial WTSS, a true-scale section model of
the bogie frame, as shown schematically in Figure 1(b), was carried out. The WTSS
consists of four facets which were pre-welded to shape a tube with rectangular
cross-section. The detailed geometrical dimensions are shown in the same figure.
Two welding damages were focused in this study. Simulated damage scenarios, (i)
through-thickness slot-like welding defect on the weld seam between Facets A and
B, 12 mm long, 1 mm wide and 10 mm deep; (ii) eight through holes on the weld
seam between Facets A and D, about 1.5 mm in diameter each and 2 mm away
from each other; were introduced. Their positions are detailed in Figure 2. In this
study, it was assumed that the two welding damages locate on Facet A.
(a) (b)
Figure 1 (a) A typical train bogie frame consisting of a number of WTSSs and attachments; and (b)
geometrical details of the WTSS under investigation
80
Figure 2 Layout of the active PZT sensor network surface-bonded to Facet A of the WTSS (Facet C
shares the same network configuration)
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 3 Simulation snapshots for GW propagation in the WTSS at selected moments: (a) 25.6 μs;
(b) 54.4 μs; and (c) 92.8 μs
As detailed in authors’ previous work [11], various GW modes co-exist in the

solid media once being generated and the transverse-dominant mode was chosen for
damage identification. It can also be concluded that (i) GWs generated by surface-
bonded PZT actuator on any facet of the WTSS propagate within the same facet at
first; (ii) when incident GWs reach boundaries of the WTSS, they are scattered into
different components including reflected, transmitted and diffracted waves; (iii)g
all the scattered wave components continue their propagation in adjacent facets.
Typical snapshots for simulation of GWs are exhibited in Figure 3. Additionally,
velocity of the dominant GW mode, Vd, could be fixed on 2950 m/s experimentally.
Considering the above observations and geometry features of the WTSS, Facet C
can be recognized as the benchmark of Facet A since it was in good accordance
with the latter except for the damages. Being regarded as newly introduced
boundary conditions of the WTSS to GWs in comparison with benchmark, the
welding damages would affect the propagation of GWs, resulting in wave scattering.
GW signals sensed by PZT sensors, bearing damage information, would be used for
evaluating the corresponding damage in the following section.
DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING FOR DAMAGE DETECTION IN WTSS
An active senor networks consisting of sixteen circular PZT wafers were

designed based on propagation characteristics of GWs in the WTSS with welding
damages and symmetrically mounted to Facets A and C, forming twin subnets with
81
eight PZT wafers each. Figure 2 shows the layout and nomenclature of PZT wafers
on Facet A. The subnet on Facet A or C is able to render fifty-six intramural
sensing paths. For convenience of discussion, each sensing path is denoted by AmAn
for that on Facet A or CmCn for that on Facet C ( m, n ∈{1, 2,...8}, m ≠ n ) in what
follows, assuming the symbols for actuators always come first.
As mentioned above，Facets A and C of the WTSS are entirely symmetrical in
geometry and sensor network configuration. Differences between captured GW
signals from corresponding intramural sensing paths of the two facets can be fully
attributed to the damage. For simplicity, Pm,n ( m, n ∈{1, 2,...8}, m ≠ n ) hereinafter
represents the sensing path pair consisting of an arbitrary sensing path AmAn and its
corresponding benchmark counterpart CmCn. For a given Pm,n, two raw GW signals,
i.e., Sigm,n_C(t) from CmCn and Sigm,n_A(t) from AmAn, can be captured, where t is
time variable. After applying CWT, subtraction, HT and envelop algorithm to raw
signals successively, corresponding CWT coefficients, difference signal and the
final envelop curve were derived respectively, termed Coefm,n_C(t) and Coef-
m,n_A(t), Diffm,n(t) and Envelopm,n(t). In Envelopm,n(t), the arrival time of local
amplitude maximum was named as time of maximal difference (ToMD) in regard to
Pm,n, denoted by ToMDm,n hereinafter. Deduction from raw signals experimentally
captured from P2,3 to ToMD2,3 is shown in Figure 4.
1
Sigm,n-C(t)
Sigm,n-A(t)
0
Normalized Amplitude
-1 (a)
60 80 100 120
1
Coefm,n-C(t)
Coefm,n-A(t)
0.5
0 (b)
60 80 100 120
1
Envelopm,n(t)
0.5 ToMD
2,3
0 (c)
60 80 100 120
Time(μ s)
Figure 4 Normalized signals for sensing path P2,3 at excitation of 150 kHz: (a) raw signals; (b) envelope
of corresponding CWT coefficients; and (c) envelope of the difference signal
Figure 5 ToMD-based determination of DPP Figure 6 Distribution of the probability density

on Facet A of the WTSS in regard to the occurrence of damage at a
specific grid of the WTSS
82
When ToMDs were figured out, an imaging algorithm was further employed to
calculate damage presence probabilities (termed DPPs) for arbitrary location(s) of
the WTSS. Supposing Facet A is virtually meshed into KA grids (e.g., 1 mm x 1 mm
each), the distance from a certain grid Lj ( j ∈{1, 2,...K A} ) to PZT wafer Am can be
uuv uv uv v
expressed as Dm , j = rm − rj where rm and rj are location vectors of Am and Lj, as
shown in Figure 5. The time needed for GWs to travel along the route AmÆLjÆAn
can then be defined as Tm , j ,n = ( Dm, j + Dn , j ) Vd . In the following equation,
ToMDm ,n − Tm , j ,n = 0 , (1)
coordinates of the damage centre are two unknown variables. The solution of
Equation (1) presented an ellipse locus with the two PZT wafers being two foci.
In principle, the further any grids away from the above-mentioned ellipse locus,
the less the probability that they bear damages. In order to quantify the DPP values
at all grids in relation to their locations Lj and relevant sensing path pair Pm,n
( m, n ∈{1, 2,...8}, m ≠ n ), a cumulative distribution function (CDF) defined as
t
Fm,n (t ) = ∫ f (Tm′, j ,n ) ⋅ dTm′, j ,n (2)
−∞
1 (Tm′, j ,n )2
was introduced where f (Tm′ , j ,n ) = exp[− ] is the Gaussian
σ m,n 2π 2σ m2 ,n
distribution function, representing the density function of DPP. In Equation (2),
Tm′, j ,n = ToMDm,n − Tm, j ,n is a function of Lj when ToMDm,n is given. σ m ,n is the
standard variance and integral upper limit t is the value of Tm′ , j ,n when m, j, n are
specified. Given a Tm′ , j , n , the DPP value of grid Lj regarding Pm,n becomes
DPP( L j , Pm ,n ) = 1 − Fm ,n (Tm′ , j , n ) − Fm , n ( −Tm′ , j ,n ) (3)
as exhibited in Figure 6. After applying the above algorithm to all facets of the
WTSS, a three-dimensional DPP image was constructed. For illustration, the image
featured by DPP( L j , Pm ,n ) |mj ==1,2,...
2, n = 4 (K is the total number of all grids) is shown in
K
Figure 7. In this image, DPP values vary within [0, 1] with the two extremes
standing for 0% and 100%. The darker the image appears, the greater the DPP of
this grid is. However, it’s insufficient to determine the damage location from this
image because too many grids possess the same highest DPP. Therefore, images
contributed by all available Pm,n were fused to figure out the common estimate of
the location(s) of damage(s). To strengthen damage-associated information in final
TABLE I. MATERIAL PROPERTIES OF

THE WTSS SPECIMEN
Density 7.85 g/cm3
Poisson’s ratio 0.28
Elastic constant, E 210 GPa
Figure 7 DDP image contributed by P2,4
83
estimation result, a two-level image fusion scheme was proposed based on
conjunctive image fusion techniques [12]. Supposing DPP images established from
all available Pm,n under excitations at different frequencies, e.g., f1, f2, f3, etc., are
ready for use. These DPP images can be sorted into several sets according to
frequency, denoted by Set- f1, Set- f2, Set- f3 and so on. Fusion procedures within
each set and across sets, namely, the first and second level image fusions, were
taken successively. Taking Set- f1 as an example, algebraic operations were applied
to DPP values of all images in Set- f1 using conjunctive fusion schemes, as stated in
following expressions
Conj _ DPP _ f1 ( L j , P ) = N P ∏ mm ≠,nn∈{1,2,...8} DPP( L j , Pm ,n ) , j = 1, 2,...K (4)
where P is the set of all involved sensing path pairs; Np is the number of elements in
set P and equal to 56 in this study. ‘Conj_DPP_ f1’ is so-called first-level fusion
result for Set- f1. Similarly, the same operation was applied to Set- f2, Set- f3, etc.,
and resulted in a series of first-level fusion results. Furthermore, fusion across DPP
image sets was implemented. Conjunctive scheme was utilized again to combine
the first level image fusion results. The second-level fusion was performed as below:
Nf
Comb _ DPP = ∏ Freq∈{ f1 , f2 , f3 ,...} Conj _ DPP _ Freq (5)
where Nf is the number of excitation frequencies. The effectiveness of the proposed
imaging approach were then validated by simulation and experimental analyses.
SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
3D FE model of the WTSS in combination with assumed welding damages was

created. Elements in damage zones were removed to simulate the welding damages.
The PZT wafers were dealt using an actuator/sensor model pre-developed by the
authors elsewhere [13]. Dynamic simulations were then implemented in ABAQUS®.
Meanwhile, a sample of the WTSS shown in Figure 1(b) was prepared for
collecting experimental signals, as illustrated in Figure 8(a). The material properties
of the sample are listed in Table 1. The slot-like defect, measuring about 12 mm (L)
× 1 mm (W) × 10 mm (D), was introduced by keeping corresponding location intact
during the welding procedure, as shown in Figure 8(b). The eight through holes,
measuring about ∅ 1.5 mm each and very close to each other, were fabricated using
a drill press in workshop, as shown in Figure 8(c). The sample was supported along
two free edges of Facet B on a TMC® testing table. Arbitrary waveform generator
(HIOKI® 7075) and oscilloscope (HP® Infinium 54810A) functioned as excitation
P
generation unit and signal acquisition unit, respectively.

Three-cycle Hanning-window-modulated sinusoid tonebursts at 150 kHz, 175
kHz and 200 kHz were utilized as excitations in both experiment and simulations.
Simulations and experiments were conducted by taking each PZT wafer as actuator
in turn, while others functioning as sensors. The same procedure was repeated with
excitations of different central frequencies. Values of ToMDm,n
( m, n = 1, 2,...8, m ≠ n ) of all signals were figured out one by one and then
employed in calculation of DPP( L j , Pm,n ) |mj =,1,2,...
n =1,2,...8, m ≠ n . In this manner, fifty-six DPP
K
images can be drawn from either simulations or experiments under excitation at a
84
specific frequency. The two-level image fusion scheme was then adopted as stated
above.
Results of the second level image fusion from simulation and experiment data
are shown in Figure 9. In this image, dark areas rendering highest DPP values imply
the spots that most likely contain damages. The two welding damage at the welding
zones indicated by contrast colour are properly covered by corresponding dark
areas simultaneously. Detailed results for damage location estimation are listed in
Table 2. It can be found that the relative error of the estimated location in regard to
the real one is very small, indicating the effectiveness of the proposed diagnostic
imaging approach.
CONCLUSION
Propagation characteristics of GWs in a true-scale model of a train bogie frame

segment containing two damage in weld seams was investigated in this study. The
damage-scattered wave components carrying damage information were mainly
concerned. From results of damage detection, it can be found that, although the
damages located within the welding seams and near original edges of the WTSS,
making damage evaluation much more difficult, acceptable outcomes can still be
gained by applying the proposed imaging approach including the two-level image
fusion procedure. In addition, the two welding damages were detected
simultaneously in an intuitional way. It can be concluded that the recommended
diagnostic imaging approach is effective in evaluating presence and location of
such welding damage in WTSSs and shows potential for real-time SHM in similar
structures.
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 8 (a) Global view of the WTSS sample with emphasis on active PZT sensor network on facet A;
(b) zoom-in view of the slot-like damage and (c) zoom-in view of through holes
(a) (b)
Figure 9 Fused DDP images based on the two-level image fusion for (a) simulation and (b) experiment
85
Table II ESTIMATED DAMAGE LOCATIONS FROM TWO-LEVEL FUSION PROCEDURE
Results from simulation Results from experiment
Case Coordinates
Distance to
Relative Coordinates
Distance to
Relative
real location real location
(mm) error (%) (mm) error (%)
(mm) (mm)
Real
(275, 0, 0) -- -- (275, 0, 0) -- --
Slot-like location
Damage Estimated
(278, 0, -1) 3.2 1.16% (276, 0, 7) 7.1 3.09%
location
Real
(150, 290, 0) -- -- (150, 290,0) -- --
Through location
holes Estimated
(152, 291, 0) 2.2 1.45% (146, 289,0) 4.1 2.73%
location
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors are grateful for the support received from Research Grant Council
of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (grant: PolyU5333/07E), The
Hong Kong Polytechnic University (grants: G-U204, 1-BBZN and A-PE1F).
REFERENCES
1. NASA, 2007, Derailed, System failure case studies, 1(5): 1-4.
2. MTR, 2007, CIRCULAR FOR RAIL MERGER, available from
http://www.mtr.com.hk/eng/investrelation/circulars2007/ew%200066cir%2020070903.pdf.
3. Sohn, H., Farrar, C. R., Hemez, F. M., Shunk, D. D., Stinemates, D. W., and Nadler, B. R., 2003,
“Review of Structural Health Monitoring Literature: 1996-2001,” Los Alamos National Laboratory
Report, LA-13976-MS.
4. Boller, C., 2001, “Ways and options for aircraft structural health management,” Smart Materials &
Structures, 10(3): 432-440.
5. Moyo, P., and Brownjohn, J. M. W., 2002, “Detection of anomalous structural behaviour using
wavelet analysis,” Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 16(2-3): 429-445.
6. Raghavan, A., and Cesnik, C. E. S., 2007, “Review of guided-wave structural health monitoring,
Shock and Vibration Digest,” 39(2): 91-114.
7. Ostachowicz, W., Kudela, P., Malinowski, P., and Wandowski, T., 2009, “Damage localisation in
plate-like structures based on PZT sensors,” Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 23(6):
1805-1829.
8. Ihn, J. B., and Chang, F. K., 2004, “Detection and monitoring of hidden fatigue crack growth using
a built-in piezoelectric sensor/actuator network: I. Diagnostics,” Smart Materials & Structures,
13(3): 609-620.
9. Barke, D., and Chiu, W. K., 2005, “Structural health monitoring in the railway industry: A review,
Struct. Health Monit., 4(1): 81-93.
10. Rose, J. L., Avioli, M. J., and Song, W.-J., 2002, Application and potential of guided wave rail
inspection,” Insight, 44: 353-358.
11. Lu, X., Lu, M. Y., Zhou, L. M., Su, Z. Q., Cheng, L., Ye, L., and Meng, G. A., 2011, “Evaluation
of welding damage in welded tubular steel structures using guided waves and a probability-based
imaging approach,” Smart Materials & Structures, 20(1).015018
12. Bloch, I., 1996, “Information combination operators for data fusion: A comparative review with
classification,” IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Paart A-Syst. Hum., 26(1): 52-67.
13. Su, Z., and Ye, L., 2004, “Selective generation of Lamb wave modes and their propagation
characteristics in defective composite laminates,” P I Mech Eng L-J Mat, 218(L2): 95-110.
86
Nonlinear Cointegration as a Combinatorial
Optimisation Problem
E. J. CROSS and K. WORDEN
ABSTRACT
Recent papers by the authors have explored the possibility of furthering SHM
research by adopting techniques from time series analysis carried out in the context of
econometrics. In particular, the method of cointegration shows great promise as a
means of removing environmental and operational effects from SHM feature data.
Essentially, cointegration allows the combination of multiple features in such a way as
to purge the combination of any common trends e.g. variations due to changing
environmental temperature. One major limitation of the established cointegration
theory is that it is a linear one and does not accommodate the possibility that a
nonlinear combination of variates may be needed in order to completely remove
environmental and/or operational effects. In a previous paper, the authors made use of
an evolutionary algorithm in order to create a nonlinear combination of variates. This
algorithm was based on the idea that all possible multinomials in the variates might
appear in a parametrised sum. In situations with many features, the previous approach
is likely to run into difficulties due to the fact that the number of candidate terms
grows explosively with the number of features. In the current paper, an alternative
approach is taken whereby the optimisation procedure is used to select an optimal
subset of the candidate terms, with the parameters for combination then determined by
exploiting linear cointegration theory. The application of the method is demonstrated
via system simulation of data.
INTRODUCTION
A well documented hurdle for successful structural health monitoring (SHM)

strategies is the data normalisation problem, which simply stated, is the problem that
damage sensitive features are often also sensitive to the effects of changing
environmental and operational conditions [1, 2]. This means that damage detection by
monitoring change is open to false alarms generated by feature sensitivity to benign
changes in the environment of the structure. The authors of this paper have recently
_____________
Elizabeth J . Cross, Keith Worden, Dynamics Research Group, Department of Mechanical
Engineering, University of Sheffield, Mappin Street, Sheffield, S1 3JD, UK.
87
suggested a means of removing environmental or operational trends from damage
sensitive data by using cointegration, which is a field of interest in Econometrics [3].
If two or more nonstationary variables are cointegrated, a linear combination of them
can be found that is stationary, i.e. from which the common trends in the original
variables have been purged. When exploited in the context of SHM, cointegrated
damage sensitive variables can be linearly combined to remove the influence of
environmental or operational variation.
One obvious limitation to the idea of applying cointegration for SHM is that
nonlinearity, whether in the form of nonlinear deterministic trends affecting variables,
or nonlinear relations between variables, is not catered for. In these cases, a nonlinear
combination may be necessary in order to purge nuisance trends. A good example of
this comes from the Z24 highway bridge monitoring campaign [4], which is a well
known example within the SHM community of a comprehensive monitoring
campaign which included a period where researchers were able to introduce
significant damage to the structure. Data available from the Z24 monitoring campaign
comes in the form of natural frequency records over the period of the campaign which
display nonstationarity due to both ambient temperature variation and latterly damage.
At times of extreme cold the relationships between the frequencies, as well as between
the temperature and the frequencies become nonlinear, which means that the
temperature trends cannot be purged through a linear combination alone, instead some
form of nonlinear combination would be required.
Despite the motivation above, this paper does not deal with data from the Z24
bridge study, instead, at this early stage of research, ideas of what nonlinear
cointegration is and how it could be exploited for SHM uses are explored.
NONLINEAR COINTEGRATION
A set of linearly cointegrated variables are defined by the fact that some linear
combination of them will have a lower degree of nonstationarity than the original
variables themselves (all variables in the set must have the same degree of
nonstationary to begin with – technically termed as the degree of integration).
Intuitively, nonlinear cointegration relates to a set of nonstationary variables that
require a nonlinear combination to reduce the nonstationarity of the resultant.
Although econometric research into cointegration is substantial, research into
nonlinear cointegration is less so, owing mainly to the fact that nonlinearity and
nonstationarity have rarely been dealt with together. An outline of some of the
relevant work on nonlinear cointegration from the econometrics literature will be
given below, before moving onto how nonlinear cointegration could be used for SHM
purposes.
When reviewing progress of research into nonlinear cointegration, it is useful to
bear in mind that for SHM applications, the aims in using nonlinear cointegration are
probably very different to those of the econometrician. The approach in this paper
seeks to exploit the cointegration property of variables and create a stationary
combination of them purged of environmentally or operationally induced (nonlinear)
trends, and then use this stationarity residual as a diagnostic tool to determine whether
a structure continues to respond in a normal way. In the field of econometrics, the
behaviour and influences to a process/variable are more uncertain, and in general the
aim of studying cointegration is to establish if potentially spuriously related variables
88
are truly related, and to predict how they will move together in the long run even after
shocks and unforeseen events. Really the concern is to very accurately model the
structure of these stochastic variables in relation to each other. For these reasons, a lot
of attention is given to the nature of the variables under consideration, and statistical
tests are needed to determine whether a variable should be modelled as linear and
stationary, linear and nonstationary, nonlinear and stationary, or finally nonlinear and
nonstationary [5]. Nonlinear cointegration analysis is necessary for the nonlinear and
nonstationary variables (although nonlinear and stationary variables could also be
included in this remit, these variables are normally addressed through nonlinear
cotrending analysis, which is a subset of nonlinear cointegration [6]).
In econometrics, the property of nonlinear cointegration is often discussed and
expressed through the ideas of stability, attractors and mixing; the property of
cointegration generalises to whether or not variables have attractors with similar
topological properties (these include entropies, Lyapunov exponents and topological
dimension), or to whether the nonlinear combination of variables is mixing or not. The
concept of mixing is quite an abstract one, but for the purposes of SHM, it can simply
be regarded as a somewhat stronger condition than stationarity i.e. mixing in a time
series implies ergodicity of that series, which in turn implies stationarity (see [5] for
more details). For the purposes of this paper a definition of nonlinear cointegration
that will suffice applies to nonstationary variables that become stationary after some
form of nonlinear combination, and it is finding this nonlinear combination that is
most likely of interest to SHM practitioners more than anything else. The remainder of
the paper addresses the authors’ suggested methods for finding the most stationary
nonlinear combination of a set of nonstationary nonlinear variables. It should be noted
that very little attention is given to this issue in the econometrics literature, often the
form of nonlinear function needed is presumed to be already known, or in other
circumstances a neural network has been used as a nonparametric estimation approach
[5].
EVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHMS FOR NONLINEAR COINTEGRATION
Previously the authors have taken a fairly simple approach to the problem of how
one would best combine monitoring variables that included some nonlinearity to
create a stationary residual [7]. A simple theoretical example will be used here to
explain the approach. Suppose from some monitoring campaign, two (or more)
variables are driven by some external factor (fluctuating temperature say) and that one
variable 𝑥𝑖 reacts in a linear fashion to the external factor 𝑡𝑖 , and another 𝑦𝑖 reacts in a
quadratic way to the same disturbance. These variables could be represented as
𝑥𝑖 = 𝛼𝑡𝑖 + 𝜀𝑖 (1)
𝑦𝑖 = 𝛽𝑡𝑖2 + 𝜖𝑖 (2)
where 𝛼, 𝛽 are constants, 𝑡𝑖 is some deterministic trend caused by the external
disturbance and 𝜀𝑖 and 𝜖𝑖 are random normally-distributed processes. It is obvious
that no linear combination of these variables would be stationary; however a
nonlinear combination of the form
𝑧𝑖 = 𝑎1 𝑥𝑖 2 + 𝑎2 𝑦𝑖 (3)
89
would be comparatively stationary so long as suitable coefficients 𝑎𝑗 were chosen
(the modifier ‘comparatively’ refers to a subtlety that will be explained later). To
choose suitable coefficients the authors have suggested two methods, the first
involves calculating each term in the sum and then using the Johansen procedure
(from linear cointegration) to find the most suitable coefficients 𝑎𝑗 , the second
involves using an evolutionary algorithm, specifically, differential evolution [8].
Different cost functions for the optimisation have been trialled, one based on
minimising the variance of 𝑧𝑖 , and another which uses the Augmented Dickey
Fuller (ADF) test statistic which can essentially be used as a measure of the
stationarity of a time series [9].
To extend this simple example to something that would work for real data, the
authors envisage that a sum of the form (3) would have to be extended and all
possible multinomials of the variates considered for inclusion. However, in
situations with many features, such an approach is likely to run into difficulties due
to the fact that the number of candidate terms grows explosively with the number of
features and the allowed order of nonlinearity. In the current paper, an alternative
approach is proposed whereby the optimisation procedure is used to select an
optimal subset of the candidate terms, with the parameters for combination then
determined by exploiting linear cointegration theory. The assumption made is that,
once the multinomial candidate terms for the problem are established, a linear
combination can be constructed with the parameters determined by using the
Johansen procedure as discussed in [7]. The application of the method will be
demonstrated via system simulation of data.
Genetic Algorithms for candidate term selection
The Genetic Algorithm (GA) is the most fundamental of the evolutionary

optimisation schemes based on the Darwinian principal of natural selection or
‘survival of the fittest’ [10]. In its simplest form, the algorithm uses a binary
encoding to express possible solutions as individuals in a population which evolves
in a manner analogous to natural selection. The GA is the algorithm of choice for
the current work as it has proved extremely powerful for combinatorial optimisation
problems and the subset selection problem posed here is one of this type. The main
difference between the simple GA and the one adopted here is that the individuals
for the problem are encoded as integer vectors rather than bit strings and this means
that slightly modified versions of the genetic operators are needed. Extensions of
the GA of this type are often called Evolutionary Programs [11].
The implementation of the GA/EP used here is conducted as follows:
1. All variables to be included are standardised. This step is necessary as the

nonlinear combinations of variables can differ considerably from each other in
terms of scale and this can result in severe ill-conditioning for the coefficient
estimation step.
2. The initial population for the GA is generated. The user specifies the number of
terms to be used in each sum 𝑁, and the highest nonlinear order allowed 𝑛. A
candidate term is generated by creating a random string of integers of the same
length as the number of variables included in the analysis. This string is then
used in the following way, suppose three variables are included in an analysis
90
{𝑥𝑖 , 𝑦𝑖 , 𝑧𝑖 }, a random string (𝑎𝑏𝑐), where each bit is an integer from 0 to n,
would be generated, and the candidate term chosen as 𝑥 𝑎 𝑦 𝑏 𝑧 𝑐 . This action is
repeated 𝑁 times and a candidate linear combination arises which is a single
individual of the population. The whole process is repeated until the initial
population is established.
3. Evolution begins. In order to drive the process towards an optimum, the
algorithm requires a cost or fitness function in order to evaluate how good a
solution to the problem each individual represents. As the objective of the
current problem is to generate the ‘most stationary’ combination of variables,
the fitness function adopted here needs to be a measure of stationarity. For each
individual in the population, coefficients for a linear combination are calculated
by the Johansen procedure [3] and the (hopefully stationary) residual is
computed. The cost or fitness of the individual is then expressed as either the
variance of the residual, or its ADF statistic (user defined); both of these
quantities are measures of stationarity.
4. The operation of selection is performed whereby two parent individuals are
selected from the population for mating. Roulette wheel selection is used in the
implementation here. The individuals are more likely to be selected the fitter
they are. Once two parents are established, two child individuals are generated
by a crossover operation which mixes their genetic material. One-point
crossover is used in the implementation here. The two children are carried
forward into the next generation and the selection operation is repeated until a
full population is established. The crossover operation applied here is carried
out carefully to avoid introducing two identical candidate terms into the same
sum.
5. The mutation operation is applied to the child individuals. Each individual is
mutated with probability 𝑝𝑚 (user specified). If an individual is to be mutated,
one of the integers which forms the genetic material is randomly picked and
randomly regenerated. This operation encourages diversity and can prevent
stagnation of the population; however, it should be used sparingly as too much
mutation converts the algorithm into random search. Again mutation is
monitored to prevent the generation of duplicate terms.
6. To further reduce the chances of stagnation a ‘new blood’ stage is included at
this time, where a defined number of ‘un-fit’ candidates are replaced new with
randomly generated candidates for the next generation.
7. In order to prevent the loss of the fittest solutions, an elite was used here
whereby the 𝑁𝑒 fittest individuals were written directly into the next generation
(necessarily overwriting some of the children of the selection process).
8. The whole process is iterated until a stopping criterion is met. The usual
stopping criteria are that one reaches a pre-established number of generations
or that the fitness function attains some desired value; in this case a pre-
established number of generations was used.
RESULTS
The functionality of the genetic algorithm created for this work will be explored
here using a simulated test case. Specifically data simulated to reproduce the
91
theoretical example used above to explain the approach taken in this paper is utilised;
this consists of two input time series, one generated with a linear deterministic trend
(as in eq. (1)), the other generated with a quadratic deterministic trend (eq. (2)). The
input time series generated are 1000 data points long and the deterministic trend value
t in (1) and (2) has a maximum value of 10. These input series are plotted in figure 1.
Given these inputs, the genetic algorithm successfully chose the combination of
form (3) from an initial randomly generated population of 30 possibilities. The GA
was run ten times and the maximum number of generations was also set to ten. Figure
2 is a plot of the nonlinear combination chosen by the GA.
Studying figure 2, one can see that the GA has been successful in choosing a
combination of the original variables that doesn’t exhibit nonlinear trends.
Unfortunately there are two problems with this implementation, the first is that, for
this simulated example, the variance of the nonlinear combination is clearly increasing
with time, and so it is not strictly stationary. The combination takes the form of
equation (3) and when this is expanded, one can clearly see the reason for the
increasing variance;
𝑧𝑖 = 𝑎1 𝑥𝑖 2 + 𝑎2 𝑦𝑖
= 𝑎1 (𝛼 2 𝑡𝑖 2 + 𝑡𝑖 𝜀𝑖 + 𝜀𝑖2 ) + 𝑎2 (𝛽𝑡𝑖2 + 𝜖𝑖 ) (4)
Assuming that the quadratic terms in this combination dominate, the Johansen
procedure will be likely to specify coefficients which make them cancel. The residual
from the nonlinear combination in (4) will then take the form,
𝑧𝑖 = 𝑎1 𝑡𝑖 𝜀𝑖 + 𝑎2 𝜖𝑖 + 𝑎1 𝜀𝑖2 (5)
which contains a product of a deterministic trend with a randomly generated noise
term 𝑡𝑖 𝜀𝑖 which accounts for the growing variance.
The second, perhaps more, urgent problem is that during trials of the GA it was
noted that on occasion the GA made unexpected choices for the nonlinear
combination. One example of this is given below. The same structure of inputs as
above were trialled but with the maximum value of t in (1) and (2) set to four, with
this input the GA chose a combination, shown in figure 3, of the form,
𝑧𝑖 = 𝑎1 𝑥𝑖 𝑦𝑖 + 𝑎2 𝑥𝑖 3 (6)
This is not the expected choice of nonlinear combination and the reason for it appears
to be concerned with the cost function used in the algorithm. The cost of the chosen
combination (i.e. the value of the ADF statistic) was -22.5174 (more stationary signals
are indicated by larger negative values of the ADF statistic), the cost of the correct
expected function as expressed by equation (4) was -22.1052, hence the combination
of form (5) was chosen by the GA. If one expands (5) and assumes that the Johansen
procedure eliminates the leading order trends, the residual will take the form,
𝑧𝑖 = (𝑎1 𝛽 + 3𝑎2 𝛼 2 )𝑡𝑖2 𝜀𝑖 + (𝑎1 𝜖𝑖 + 3𝑎2 𝜀𝑖 )𝛼𝑡𝑖 + (𝑎1 𝜖𝑖 + 𝑎2 𝜀𝑖2 )𝜀𝑖 . (7)
Now, although this residual appears more complicated, it would appear that the
combination in equation (6), in this instance, with these data, allows the Johansen
procedure to select coefficients which make the residual in (7) a little more stationary
that the one in (5). This is undesirable as the residual in (7) now retains a quadratic
trend (visible in figure 3) which will eventually dominate at later times even if the
92
120
Series with linear deterministic trend
Series with quadratic deterministic trend
100
80
60
40
20
-20
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Figure 1. Linear and quadratic trends: inputs to test the GA.

6
-2
-4
-6
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Figure 2. GA choice for nonlinear combination of linear and quadratic trends.

4
-2
-4
-6
-8
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Figure 3. Unexpected GA choice for nonlinear combination of linear and quadratic trends.
combination (6) appears fortuitous on the training set. A possible means of

circumnavigating this problem is to introduce a penalty term in the optimisation which
weights against higher order residual trends. The ADF statistic, for this type of
simulation trial at least, will bear further investigation.
An alternative to the ADF statistic (as explored in [7]) is to use a cost function that
is dictated by the variance of the candidate nonlinear combination, or one which
factors in both the variance and the ADF statistic. Unfortunately neither of these
options are immediately viable due to the fact that the variance also introduces
subtleties in the combination choice. This is due to the fact that the Johansen
procedure, which is used to determine the coefficients of the nonlinear combination,
93
often chooses large coefficients for the combination that would normally be the most
successful, which drives the variance of the residual up. It is likely that the solution to
this issue will involve a combination of adding penalty terms and regularisers. Due to
lack of space, an issue which is not discussed here concerns the overall scale of the
linear combination coefficients; this may not be trivial and also requires further
investigation.
CONCLUSIONS
A genetic algorithm has been explored as a way of choosing multinomial

candidate terms for inclusion in a nonlinear cointegrating combination. The structure
of the GA has been explained and then trialled for a simple theoretical example. In
some circumstances the GA could successfully find a combination of the nonlinear
input variables trialled which had been purged of nonlinear trends. Unfortunately the
cost function used in the GA was found generate unanticipated results in some
circumstances and further work is needed to create a more suitable one. It is expected
that the problem is likely to yield to an appropriate application of standard penalisation
and/or regularisation methods.
REFERENCES
1. Worden, K., C. Farrar, G. Manson, and G. Park, 2007."The fundamental axioms of structural
health monitoring," Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and
Engineering Science, 463(2082): 1639.
2. Sohn, H., 2007."Effects of environmental and operational variability on structural health
monitoring," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society a-Mathematical Physical and
Engineering Sciences, 365(1851): 539-560.
3. Cross, E.J., K. Worden, and Q. Chen, 2011."Cointegration; A novel approach for the removal
of environmental trends in structural health monitoring data," Proceedings of the Royal Society
- Series A Preprint: availabe as online content at
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/firstcite.
4. Peeters, B. and G. De Roeck, 2001."One-year monitoring of the Z24-Bridge: environmental
effects versus damage events," Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics, 30(2): 149-
171.
5. Dufrénot, G. and V. Mignon, 2002. Recent developments in nonlinear cointegration with
applications to macroeconomics and finance. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
6. Bierens, H.J., 2000."Nonparametric nonlinear cotrending analysis, with an application to
interest and inflation in the United States," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 18(3):
323-337.
7. Cross, E.J. and K.Worden. 2011. "Approaches to Nonlinear Cointegration with a view towards
applications in SHM," in 9th International Conference on Damage Assessment of Structures.
Oxford.
8. Storn, R. and K. Price, 1997."Differential evolution–a simple and efficient heuristic for global
optimization over continuous spaces," Journal of global optimization, 11(4): 341-359.
9. Dickey, D. and W. Fuller, 1981."Likelihood ratio statistics for autoregressive time series with a
unit root," Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 49(4): 1057-1072.
10. Goldberg, D.E., 1989. Genetic algorithms in search, optimization, and machine learning.
Reading, MA.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Inc.
11. Michalewicz, Z., 1996. Genetic algorithms + data structures = evolution programs. 3rd ed:
Springer-Verlag.
94
Characterizing Damage in Plate Structures
Based on Local Perturbance to Dynamic
Equilibrium
H. XU, L. CHENG and Z. SU
ABSTRACT
Although vibration-based damage detection has been practiced over the years
with demonstrated success, such a technique may suffer from some bottlenecks
including strong dependence on benchmarks, baseline signals or pre-developed
global models, needs of additional excitation sources, excessive susceptivity to
boundary conditions but less sensitivity to damage until it reach a noticeable level.
A novel damage identification approach was developed by examining the local
perturbance to structural equilibrium characteristics described by higher-order
spatial derivatives. To reduce the influence of measurement noise on identification
accuracy during obtaining higher-order spatial derivatives, two de-noising options
were proposed including applying a wavenumber-based signal filtering and
appropriately adjusting measurement configuration, to enhance the capacity of
noise-tolerance of the method. The developed approach was experimentally
validated by detecting damage in a plate component of a structural system with
irregular boundaries, showing satisfactory results in pinpointing the damage. In
principle the method is applicable to complex systems comprising various structural
components such as beams, plates and shells, provided that the local equilibrium
relationship for the component under current inspection is known a prior.
INTRODUCTION
The safety and integrity of an engineering asset can be at the risk in the presence
of structural damage, potentially leading to disasters with large economic and life
loss. A large variety of damage detection techniques has been developed with
demonstrated success, able to facilitate early awareness and detailed evaluation of
structural damage, and further to prevent the further deterioration of the damage. In
particular, considerable efforts have been paid to global vibration-based (using for
example eigen-frequencies [1], curvature mode shape [2], flexibility matrix [3]) and
local guided-wave-based detection (using for instance Lamb waves [4]).
____________
Corresponding a uthors: MMSU@polyu.edu.hk (Dr . Zhongqing SU), T el: +85 2-2766-7818,
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom,
Kowloon, Hong Kong
95
However, both the global vibration- and local guided-wave-based detection
techniques are hampered largely by their respective drawbacks such as crucial
dependences on (1) benchmark structures from which baseline signals are acquired;
(2) pre-develop global models for vibration-based approaches to link changes in
global responses with damage, or local models for guided-wave-based methods to
associate changes in wave signals with damage; and (3) prior knowledge of
structural boundary conditions; and (4) additional excitation source. In addition,
vibration-based methods, capitalizing on changes in global dynamic properties, are
not sensitive to damage before it reaches a conspicuous level; whereas
guided-wave-based approaches can suffer from the wavelength of the selected wave
mode, and, typically, only when the damage size is larger than half the wavelength
can it be detected.
In recognition of the above disadvantages of conventional global vibration- or
local elastic-wave-based detection techniques, a novel identification method based
on examining damage-incurred local perturbance to structural dynamic
characteristics was proposed. The rationale of the approach is that the dynamic
equilibrium of a structural component under inspection is locally satisfied; and any
change in geometric or material properties due to damage, breaks or perturbs such a
satisfaction, which can be in turn used to indicate occurrence of the damage.
RATIONALE OF THE APPROACH
Given a system comprising different structural components, each identified

component, in its intact status, satisfies certain structural equilibriums such as the
equation of motion. Use a homogeneous and isotropic plate component in a system
for illustration and assume the plate is subject to a transverse load F ( x, y,  ) . The
equation of motion of the plate component, can be defined, locally, as
E *h3   4 w( x, y )  4 w( x, y )  4 w( x, y ) 
     h w( x, y)  F ( x, y,  ) , (1)
2
 2
12 1  2   x y 4  2 x 2 y 
4
where w( x) is the transverse displacement of the plate at point ( x, y) ; E * , 

and  the complex Young’s modulus (including material damping), Poisson’s
ratio and density of the material, respectively; h the thickness of the plate.  is the
angular frequency of the vibration. Further, in the absence of any external force
directly applied to the plate component, the right-hand term of Eq. (1) becomes zero;
any drastic deviation in the left-hand term from zero at a particular spatial position
of the plate component implies, in principle, the local breakage of structural
equilibrium, i.e., occurrence of damage therein. The degree of deviation from zero
(a residual) is calibrated by a damage index (DI), as
E *h3   4 w( x, y )  4 w( x, y )  4 w( x, y ) 
DI       h w( x, y ) .
2
2 
2 (2)
12 1       
4 4 2 2
x y x y 
The higher-order derivatives in Eq. (2) can be calculated by acquiring
displacements at closely spaced measurement points across the plate component, in
terms of the following finite difference scheme, leading to a damage index DI i , j , at
measurement point (i, j ) , as
96
E * h3
2  i, j
DI i , j   4 x  i4, yj  2 i2, xj 2 y    h 2 wi , j , (3)
12 1  
4w 1
i4, xj  
x 4  4x
 wi2, j  4wi1, j  6wi, j  4wi1, j  wi2, j  ,
4w 1
i4, yj  
y 4  4y
 wi, j 2  4wi, j 1  6wi, j  4wi, j 1  wi, j 2  ,
4w
i2, xj 2 y  
1
 x 2 y  2x  2y
2  wi1, j 1  2wi1, j  wi1, j 1  2wi, j 1  4wi, j  2wi, j 1  wi1, j 1  2wi1, j  wi1, j 1  ,
where wi , j is the flexural displacement measured at measurement point  i, j  , if

twelve neighboring measurement points are involved for the finite difference.
In theory this method is applicable to any complex system featuring various
structural components such as beams, plates or shells, provided that the local
equilibrium relationship for the component is known forehand.
FEASIBILITY STUDY USING FINITE ELEMENT (FE) SIMULATION
Construction of DI
WITHOUT INTERFERENCE OF MEASUREMENT NOISE
The proposed methodology was first validated using FE simulation. Consider a

rectangular aluminum plate (450×410×3 mm3, E*  70  (1  104 i) GPa and
  2700 kg / m3 ) with its right and lower edges being clamped and rest free, as
seen in Fig. 1. A damage with a cross-like shape was introduced into the plate with
all dimensions indicated in the figure. The damage had a reduced thickness of 1/3 of
that of the intact plate. The center of the damage was located at (280 mm, 260 mm).
The area of the damaged zone was about 0.3% of the entire plate area.
Three-dimensional brick elements (measuring 5×5×1 mm3) were used to evenly
mesh the plate, with three layers of elements being allocated along the plate
thickness. A transverse harmonic excitation was applied on the plate at point (120
mm, 80 mm). To eliminate the influence of external excitation force, the position of
excitation point was excluded by selecting an inspection region (the shadowed area
in Fig. 1), with the length and width being 300 mm, respectively. Displacement at
every FE node in the inspection region was acquired from the intact surface,
beneath which the damage was hidden, to construct DI i , j using Eq. (3). Fig. 2(a)
exemplarily shows the distributions of calculated DI i , j across the inspection
region when the excitation frequency was 1560 Hz. In the figure, drastic changes
can be observed phenomenally at the damaged zone and at edges of the damaged
zone in particular, indicating the damage location and rough shape, although the
plate showed no damage on the surface from which displacement was captured.
97
O
Figure 1. FE model of a rectangular plate with damaged zone (the damage was hidden beneath the
surface from which the FE displacements were measured)
(a) (b)
Figure 2. Distributions of calculated (a) DI i , j and (b) DI inoisy
,j
across inspection region
WITH INTERFERENCE OF MEASUREMENT NOISE
Involving high-order spatial derivatives in Eq. (3), the proposed approach can
be susceptible to measurement noise, because the measurement noise unavoidably
contained in the captured displacement signals can be exacerbated to a noticeable
degree during the procedure of differentiation, potentially impairing detection
accuracy. To study the noise influence on detection accuracy, the captured
displacements in the above FE case were polluted by adding 1% and 10 Gauss
random noise to the magnitude and phase, respectively. Following the same
principle to calculate DI, the noise-corrupted DI, DI inoisy
,j is shown in Fig. 2(b),
under the same excitation condition, presenting poor recognizability of
damage-associated information. This calls for effective de-noising treatment.
98
De-noising Approaches
OPTION I: APPLYING WAVENUMBER LOW-PASS FILTERING
Distribution of DI i , j and DI inoisy

,j in Fig. 2 were treated with two-dimensional
Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and results are presented in Figs. 3 (a) and (b),
respectively. It can be noticed that the noise components contained in the signal are
mainly in a relatively higher wavenumber domain. Based on this, a low-pass
wavenumber filter was designed to screen these noise components, in the
wavenumber domain, as,
h  k x , k y   1
 k x  kc and k y  kc , (4)

h  k x , k y   0
 otherwise
where h  k x , k y  is the transfer function of the filter in wavenumber domain, and kc
corresponds to the cutoff wavenumber. The filtered results of DI inoisy
,j shown in Fig.
2(b) is exhibited in Fig. 3(c), to observe that measurement noise has been screened
out largely.
(a) (b) (c)

Figure 3. (a) DI i , j and (b) DI inoisy
,j
in wavenumber domain and (c) reconstruction of DI inoisy
,j
after
application of low-pass wavenumber filtering (kc  250 rad / m)
OPTION II: ADJUSTING CONFIGURATION OF MEASUREMENT
Based on the use of the finite difference scheme described by Eq. (3), the
detection accuracy and noise immunity of the approach can be somewhat subject to
the density of measurement points and excitation frequency. Let Dm be the
distance between two adjacent measurement points and  the wavelength of the
vibration under the current excitation. Figure 4 displays the constructed DI inoisy
,j
at
various densities of measurement points and their corresponding Dm /  . It can be
observed that, with the increase of Dm /  (fewer measurement points and larger
differential intervals), resolution of the image decreases, posing difficulty in
depicting damage shape and leading to compromised identification accuracy;
whereas the calculated DI inoisy,j
, from Fig. 4(a) to (c), shows improving
reorganization of the damage location, indicating that the noise interference is being
99
minimized. This phenomenon articulates that, in the presence of measurement noise
in practice, proper configuration of measurement points and sensible selection
excitation frequency can play a certain role in determining the accuracy and
resolution that the approach is able to offer. Through a number of case studies as
seen in Fig. 4, Dm /   0.1 can be an optimal configuration of measurement in
practical implementation, well compromising the resolution and noise-tolerance of
the approach.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Figure 4. Distributions of constructed DI inoisy

,j
at different configurations of measurement:
(a) Dm /   0.05 ; (b) Dm /   0.07 ; (c) Dm /   0.09 ; and (d) Dm /   0.13
EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
A structural system was fabricated to experimentally validate the proposed

method. A rectangular aluminum plate was prepared (450×410×3 mm3;
E  70 GPa , and   2700 kg / m3 ) with clamped right and lower edges, as seen in
Fig. 5. In order to demonstrate the independence of the proposed approach of
complex boundary conditions due to the nature of local canvass in terms of Eq. (2),
another two pieces of aluminum plates with randomly selected shapes were
fastened at the top and left sides of the rectangular plate using bolts (Fig. 5(a)), to
form an irregular plate for inspection. Damage of a cross-like shape, the same as the
one used in the preceding FE simulation, was introduced into the plate by milling
the plate to a 1 mm reduction in its thickness, with its centre being 282 mm and
257.5 mm away from the left and lower edges of the plate, respectively, as seen in
Fig. 5(b). A shaker (B&K 4809), driven by an excitation with a central frequency of
100
1510 Hz, was in contact with the plate surface that bore the damage, at the point
123 mm and 95 mm away from the left and lower edges of the plate. An inspection
region was selected 85~409 mm to the left edge and 114~429 mm to the lower edge.
This inspection region was meshed virtually using 73  73 measurement points
evenly, at each of which the displacement was captured using a scanning laser
interferometry system (Polytec® Scanning Vibrometer, PSV-400) from the intact
plate surface (i.e., the surface beneath which the damage was hidden).
Inspection region
Bolts
Excitation point
y
Damage zone
o x
(a) (b)
Figure 5. (a) Front and (b) back views of the irregular plate under inspection (measurement was
conducted at the front surface of the plate)
The constructed DIi , j , shown in Fig. 6(a), obtained using the raw displacement
signal without applying any signal de-noising treatment, provides no information
relevant to the damage due to the strong noise interference in testing. By applying
the wavenumber low-pass filtering and appropriately adjusting measurement
configuration (reducing the measurement density to 19 19 ) for de-noising, the
re-constructed DIi , j over the inspection region is shown in Figs. 6(b) and (c),
respectively. It can be seen that, whichever de-noising treatment applied, the
damage location can be identified with satisfactory accuracy, well matching the
reality. To further improve the accuracy, the identification results using two
de-noising treatments were fused, as shown in Fig. 6(d), to observe improved
identification of the damage with further reduced noise influence.
CONCLUSION
A damage detection approach by examining local perturbance to dynamic

equilibrium of the structural component under inspection was developed. With a
nature of independence of benchmark structures, global structural models and prior
knowledge of boundary conditions, this detection technique can, in principle, be
used for any complex system comprising various structural components such as
beams, plates or shells, provided that the local equilibrium relationship for the
component is available. In order to circumvent the influence of measurement noise
on detection accuracy generated during the construction of damage index, two
de-noising options were proposed including wavenumber-based filtering and
101
adjustment of configuration of measurement. The effectiveness of the approach was
numerically and experimentally examined by quantifying a cross-shape damage in
an aluminum plate with complex boundary conditions, showing satisfactory
identification results.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The work described in this paper is supported by research grants from the Hong
Kong Polytechnic University (G-U859 and A-PL08).
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Figure 6. (a) DI i , j constructed using raw displacement signals captured at 73  73 measurement

points; DI i , j constructed by (b) applying low-pass wavenumber filtering (kc  200 rad / m) and (c)
adjusting the measurement configuration (reducing measurement density to 19 19 ); and (d) fused
DI i , j using data in (b) and (c)
REFERENCES
1. Lee Y. S. and Chung M. J. 2000. “A Study on Crack Detection Using Eigenfrequency Test Data”
Comp & Struct, 77: 327-342.
2. Qiao P. Z., Lu K., Lestari W. and Wang J. L. 2007. “Curvature Mode Shape-based Damage
Detection in Composite Laminated Plates” Compos. Struct., 80: 409-428.
3. Aoki Y Y. and Byon OI. 2001. “Damage Detection of CFRP Pipes and Shells by Using
Localized Flexibility Method” Adv. Compos. Mater., 10: 189-198
4. Su Z. Q., Ye L and Lu Y,. 2006. “Lamb Waves for Identification of Damage in Composite
Structures: A Review” J. Sound & Vib, 295: 753-780.
102
Robust Diagnostics for Bayesian
Compressive Sensing Technique in
Structural Health Monitoring
Y. HUANG, J. L. BECK, S. WU and H. LI
ABSTRACT
Signal compression is often important to reduce the cost of data transfer and storage
for structural health monitoring (SHM) systems of civil structures. Compressive
sensing is a novel data compressing method whereby one does not measure the
entire signal directly but rather a set of related (“projected”) measurements. The
length of the required compressive-sensing measurements is typically much smaller
than the original signal, therefore increasing the efficiency of data transfer and
storage. Recently, a Bayesian formalism has also been employed for optimal
compressive sensing, which adopts the ideas in the relevance vector machine
(RVM) as a decompression tool. In this article, we study the robustness of the BCS
method. We show that the usual RVM optimization algorithm lacks robustness
when the number of measurements is a lot less than the length of the signals
because it can produce sub-optimal signal representations; as a result, BCS is not
robust when high compression efficiency is required. This induces a tradeoff
between efficiently compressing data and accurately decompressing it. Based on a
study of the robustness of the BCS method, diagnostic tools are proposed to
investigate whether the compressed representation of the signal is optimal. The
numerical results also are given to validate the proposed method.
Keywords: Data compression, Bayesian Compressive Sensing, Structural health
monitoring, Relevance vector machine, Robust diagnostics, “Healing” algorithm
INTRODUCTION
Structural health monitoring (SHM) systems are an active and well-established

research area. They seek to detect damage and predict remaining service life in civil
structures through structural sensor networks. However, the complexity and large
scale of civil structures induce large monitoring systems, often with hundreds to
_____________
Yong Huang, School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, 202 Haihe Road,
Harbin, 150090, China
103
thousands of sensor nodes. A large amount of sensor data is usually produced,
especially when the long lifetime of a structure is considered. Therefore, innovative
sensor data compression techniques are necessary to reduce the cost of signal
transfer and storage generated from such a large-scale sensor network.
Several novel data compression techniques for SHM systems, especially for
wireless sensor networks have been developed, including wavelet-based
compression techniques [1-3] and Huffman lossless compression technique [4].
However, all these methods belong to traditional framework where the sampling
rate satisfies the conditions of the Nyquist–Shannon theorem.
Recent results demonstrate that sparse or compressible signals can be directly
acquired at a rate significantly lower than the Nyquist rate, using a novel sampling
strategy called compressive sensing (CS) [5-9]. Much smaller number of
measurements is obtained by projecting the signal onto a small set of vectors, which
are incoherent with respect to the basis vectors that give a sparse representation of
the signal. This new technique may come to underlie procedures for sampling and
compressing data simultaneously, therefore increasing the efficiency of data
transfer and storage. The signals can be subsequently recovered from the acquired
measurements by a special decompression algorithm. Recently, there has been
much interest to extend the CS method, including Bayesian CS (BCS) [10].
As a damage detection and characterization strategy for civil structures, SHM
systems should guarantee that the reconstructed signal from data compression is
accurate. For compressive sensing based on solving a convex optimization problem,
a condition on the number of measurements needed for perfect reconstruction of
signal is provided by Candes et al. [11]. However, they require the assumption that
the sparsity of the original signal is known in advance.
A BCS technique has been proposed by employing a Bayesian formalism to
estimate the underlying signal based on CS measurements. This technique adopts
the ideas of the automatic relevance determination (ARD) prior in the relevance
vector machine (RVM) as a decompression tool [13, 14]. One of the benefits of
using the BCS method is that measurement of confidence in the inverted signal is
given through variances on each reconstructed data point. He and Carin [12]
pointed out that these variances could be used to determine whether a sufficient
number of CS measurements have been performed, although the exact strategy to
implement it has not been presented.
In this paper, the robustness property of the BCS technique is studied and
diagnostic tools are proposed to investigate whether the compressed representation
of the signal is optimal. A set of numerical results are used to validate the proposed
methods.
BAYESIAN COMPRESSIVE SENSING FRAMEWORK
Consider a discrete-time signal , ( ) ( )- in represented in terms of

an orthogonal basis as
∑ or (1)
104
where ⌈ ⌉ is the basis matrix with the orthonormal basis of
vectors * + as columns; is a sparse vector, i.e., most of its
components are zero or very small (with minimal impact on the signal); the location
of the nonzero components of is referred to as the model indices and the number
of them represent the sparsity of the model, representation of the signal in
Equation (1).
In the framework of CS, one infers the coefficients of interest from compressed
data instead of directly sampling the signal . The compressed data vector y is
composed of individual measurements obtained by linearly projecting the signal
using a chosen random projection matrix :
(2)
where is known and represents the acquisition noise which is modeled
as a zero-mean Gaussian vector with covariance matrix . Since is a
matrix with , to give good data compression, the inversion to find the
signal is ill-posed.
However, by exploiting the sparsity of the representation of in basis * + , the
ill-posed problem can be solved by an optimization formulation to estimate ,
̃ *‖ ‖ ‖ ‖ + (3)
where the parameter balances the trade-off between the first and the second
expressions in the equation, i.e. between how well the data is fitted and how sparse
the signal is .
The ill-posed data inverse problem can also be tackled using a Bayesian
perspective, which has certain distinct advantages compared to previously
published CS inversion algorithms. It also provides a sparse solution to estimate the
underlying signal, and it provides a measure of the uncertainty for the reconstructed
signal, in particular.
Ji et al. [11] adopt the ideas in the relevance vector machine (RVM) proposed in
[13-14] for regression that was RVM method is implemented by using the ARD
prior that not only allows regularization of the inversion but also controls model
complexity by automatically selecting the relevant regression terms to give a sparse
representation of the signal. The characteristic feature of this prior is that there is an
independent hyperparameter for each basis coefficient:
( )
=∏ 0( ) ( ) 2 ( ) 31 . ( )/ (4)
where hyperparameter is the inverse of the prior variance of each coefficient .
The hyperparameter are selected by maximizing the Bayesian evidence (marginal
likelihood):
( ) ∫ ( ) ( ) (5)
where the likelihood function is given by:
( ) ( ) (6)
105
because of the Gaussian model for the noise in Equation (2). Maximizing the
evidence penalized signal models that are too simple or too complex and this has an
interesting information-theoretic interpretation [15].
ROBUST DIAGNOSTIC FOR BCS
The number of the measurements must be reduced to be much smaller than the
length of the original signal for data reconstruction. As a result, there is a large
number of local maximas in the evidence over that can trap the optimization for
BCS reconstruction[16].
Figure 1 illustrates the problem by showing some results from the fast optimization
algorithm in [23] to different samples of the data from the same signal by
choosing different random projection matrices , while the orthogonal basis was
held fixed, the signal of length consisted of uniformly spaced
spikes. The converged value of the log evidence is plotted against the size of the
final reconstructed signal (a constant noise variance variance was used that was
10% of the 2-norm of the measurement ). The figure shows only a few of the
optimization runs produce the correct signal size of 20. Most of the runs give local
maxima of the evidence that correspond to larger amounts of non-zero signal
components.
1.4
1.2
Reconstruction error
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
Size of the reconstruction models
Figure 1. Reconstruction error versus size of the final models

It is also found that the global maximum of the evidence corresponds to the most
stable signal model; this is almost the only one model in the adjacent area. The
signal models with local maximas of the evidence are much less stable; they have
the potential to converge to other models if perturbed slightly and re-run.
We conclude that the BCS technique lacks robustness when high compression
efficiency is required, and so a robustness diagnostic which works without knowing
of the original signal is necessary. Such robust diagnosing methods are proposed
here that utilize the different level of stability between the reconstructed signals that
correspond to global and local maxima of the evidence. The signal indices of the
previous final reconstructed signal are used to initialize a new diagnostic process.
This process tries to perturb the original converged result to another local maximum
based on the various strategies described next. If the current local maximum is
106
actually the global maximum, then this process will not make any changes in the
results, revealing that the optimum reconstructed signal has been achieved.
Change in noise variance and indices of the signal model
The selection of the noise variance may affect algorithm significantly due to the
underdetermined nature of the inverse problem. The noise variance has
significant influence on the trade-off between how well the signal model fits the
data and how sparse it is. The larger , sparser is the final reconstructed signal.
This is because larger noise variance reduces the information to support the
more complicated reconstructed signals.
Another method to perturb the converged solution for the reconstructed signal is to
delete or add some indices to the signal model (i.e. add or delete non-zero
coefficients in ). Since the signals corresponding to local maximum of evidence
are less stable than that for the global maximum, changing the indices of the signal
with a local maximum will lead to convergence to a new local maximum, showing
that the reconstructed signal is sub-optimal.
Robust diagnostic procedure
The method employs signal indices of the previous final reconstructed model to
initialize a new diagnostic learning process and the initial values of the
hyperparameter for every signal index are re-estimated. There are four
diagnostic steps shown below (the value of the noise variance for the last iteration
of original training process is ):
(1). Initialize with 80% of the signal indices obtained from first trial (randomly
choosing), take noise variance to be twice , then perform the second
trial with constant .
(2). Initialize with all signal indices obtained from first trial and 20% of extra
random signal indices, take noise variance as half of , then perform the
second trial with constant .
(3). Set the final signal of the second trial of step 1 as the original signal model and
perform step 2 again.
(4). Set the final signal of the second trial of step 2 as the original signal model and
perform step 1 again.
This procedure for diagnosis detects incorrect reconstruction signals when either the
original signal model (non-zero coefficients in ) is not included in the final signal
model or the final signal model is not included in the original one for the
diagnosing steps. If there is at least one diagnosis step that shows the reconstructed
signal is “incorrect”, the results can be judged as an incorrect reconstructed signal.
Numerical validations
For the numerical validations of the robust diagnosis procedure, 1000 runs are
performed, as shown in Figure 2. Signals with length and non-zero spikes
created by choosing discrete times at random are considered; the non-zero
107
spikes of the signals are drawn from two different probability distributions, one is
uniform random spikes, and the other one is zero-mean unit variance Gaussian
spikes. Uniform random projection is employed to construct the projection matrix
. In the experiment, the number of measurements is for signals with non-
uniform spikes and for signals with uniform spikes. For the BCS
implementation [10], we used the bcs_ver0.1 package available online at
http://people.ee.duke.edu/~lcarin/BCS.html, and the BCS parameters were set as
those suggested by bcs_ver0.1. Original signal reconstruction is defined as incorrect
if the actual reconstruction error is larger than 0.01, which we can compute because
in the test the original signal is known. The trials are sorted to better visualize the
accuracy of different diagnostic processes. Fig. 2 show that the robust diagnostic
procedure is a powerful tool to examine the correctness of reconstruction results
without knowing the original signal.
To examine how number of measurements and the addictive acquisition noise
affects diagnostic performance, we ran the robust diagnostic algorithm with various
number of measurement from 40 to 120 in step of 5 and two addictive noise
levels of 0.05% and 3% are employed as shown in Figure 3. As the change of signal
indices is sensitive to addictive noise, the error ‖ ‖ ‖ ‖ could
replace the comparison of signal indices for judgment of whether the obtained is
optimal, where and are the converged signal model from diagnostic step
and from original reconstruction, respectively. If the error index is larger than
a prescribed threshold, this procedure for diagnosis detects incorrectly
reconstruction signals.
We repeated each experiment 1000 times and the correct ratio of all experiments is
reported. In this experiment, the prescribed thresholds of are set as 0.05 and
0.20 for uniform spikes and non-uniform spikes, the correct ratio is defined as
number of runs which diagnostic procedure possesses correct judgment to repeated
runs of 1000 in each experiment.
For the noise level of 0.05%, the correct ratio is close to 100% for all values
showing that the diagnostic tool is efficient for both high and low compression
ratios. However, the smallest correct ratio decrease to 65% for non-uniform spikes
with 3% noise levels, though correct ratio for uniform spikes is still larger than 95%.
The reason is that the addictive noise reduces difference of stability between the
optimal and suboptimal reconstructed signal, especially for the non-uniform spikes.
Correct-actual
Step 4 Incorrect-actual
Correct-diagnostic
Incorrect-diagnostic
Step 3
Step 2
Step 1
Actual
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
The number of trials
(a) N=512, T=20, K=80; Signal with uniform spike
108
Correct-actual
Step 4 Incorrect-actual
Correct-diagnostic
Incorrect-diagnostic
Step 3
Step 2
Step 1
Actual
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
The number of trials
(b) N=512, T=20, K=60; Signal with non-uniform spike

Figure 2. Results of the robust diagnosis
1 1
0.95
0.995
0.9
0.99
Correct ratio
Correct ratio
0.85
0.985 0.8
0.75
0.98
0.7
0.975 Additive noise of 0.05 Addictive noise of 0.05%
0.65
Addictive noise of 3% Addictive noise of 3%
0.97 0.6
40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
K K
(a) Uniform spikes (b) Non-uniform spikes
Figure3: Number of measurements versus correct ratio of the diagnostic with various addictive noise
CONCLUSION
The robustness of the BCS method is investigated. We show that the optimization
algorithm of RVM lacks robustness when the number of measurements is a lot less
than the length of the signals because it often converges to sub-optimal signal
representations that are local maxima of evidence, so BCS is not robust when high
compression efficiency is required.
Based on a study of the robustness of the BCS method, diagnostic tools are
proposed to investigate whether the compressed representation of the signal is
optimal. With reliable diagnostics, the performance of the BCS method can be
monitored and, when necessary, improved by applying a potential healing algorithm
to a detected sub-optimal signal reconstruction. Numerical results based on
simulating SHM signals show that robustness is enhanced by the proposed
diagnostics.
109
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110
Damage Monitoring and Evaluation for
Building Structures Based on Measurement
of Relative Story Displacements by
Noncontact-Type Sensors
T. HATADA, M. TAKAHASHI, R. KATAMURA, H. HAGIWARA,
I. MATSUYA, K. KANEKAWA, Y. NITTA and A. NISHITANI
ABSTRACT
This study presents the formulation of a damage monitoring and evaluation

method for building structures based on the measurement of Relative Story
Displacements (RSDs) by noncontact-type optical sensors. The damage evaluation
method is formulated to detect the damaged locations of structural elements and
evaluate their damage degree based on the displacement loading analysis by the time
histories of measured RSDs. Furthermore in the evaluation process, the analytical
technique is introduced to compensate for the measurement errors associated with the
properties of sensors. The monitoring accuracies are analyzed through numerical
simulations on a model building subjected to a large earthquake. The results indicate
the effectiveness of the proposed method in its applications to the Structural Health
Monitoring (SHM) system.
INTRODUCTION
To securely mitigate the resulting disasters against earthquakes, Takahashi et al.

[1] reported the needs of appropriate strategies based on the information about
building damages. Among them, the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system can
provide viable means both for buildings and their users [2]. The SHM system is
applied for the diagnosis on structural deteriorations during the building life-span, or
the diagnosis on structural damages right after earthquake shocks. The latter one is
especially useful for the early recovery of building functions after earthquakes. In
utilizing the SHM system to evaluate the structural damages of buildings for
earthquakes, the Relative Story Displacement (RSD) can give the direct and clear
index. RSD is an important index specifically in the structural design process of
buildings; therefore, we can detect detailed structural damages by utilizing the RSDs
Tomohiko Hatada, Motoichi Takahashi, Ryuta Katamura, Hajime Hagiwara:
Kajima Corporation, 2-19-1 Tobitakyu, Chofu-shi, Tokyo 182-0036, Japan
Iwao Matsuya, Kiyoshi Kanekawa, Akira Nishitani:
Waseda University, 1-104, Totsuka-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 169-8050, Japan
Yoshihiro Nitta:
Ashikaga Institute of Technology, 268-1, Omae-cho, Ashikaga-shi, Tochigi, 326-8558, Japan
111
during earthquakes. To measure the RSDs directly, we have developed a simple RSD
measurement system with high accuracy based on two noncontact-type sensors
utilizing a Position Sensitive Detector (PSD) and a PhotoTransistor (PTr) array, and
verified the basic properties through the shaking table tests [3, 4] and the practical
effectiveness through the forced vibration test on an actual building [5].
In the application of the SHM system, as an indispensable component with the
measurement system, we have to set up an appropriate damage evaluation method for
building structures. In the past reports, we can survey two-type methods to evaluate
the macro-damage or the micro-damage of building structures. Among the methods to
evaluate the macro-damage, the typical method is to evaluate the changes of story
stiffness through the identification scheme [6, 7]. As another approach, Kusunoki et al.
[8] introduced the damage index to express the residual seismic capacity. On the other
hand, among the methods to evaluate the micro-damage, i.e. the damage of structural
elements, Inoue et al. [9] reported the two-stage identification scheme, and Tanaka et
al. evaluated the structural damage through the dynamic analysis [10].
This paper presents the formulation of a damage monitoring and evaluation
method for building structures based on the measurement of RSDs by noncontact-type
optical sensors. First, we formulate a damage evaluation method to detect the
damaged locations of structural elements and evaluate their damage degree based on
the displacement loading analysis by the time histories of measured RSDs. Next in
the evaluation process, we introduce the analytical technique to compensate for the
measurement errors associated with the properties of sensors. Finally, we analyze the
monitoring accuracies through numerical simulations on a model building subjected to
a large earthquake, and clarify the features and the effectiveness of the proposed
damage evaluation method in its applications to the SHM system.
RSD MEASUREMENT SYSTEM
In this study, we introduce a noncontact-type optical sensor for the RSD

measurement system. The sensor is composed of a light source and a sensing unit.
Figure 1 illustrates the conceptual schematic of the RSD measurement system. The
light source and the sensing unit are located on the upper and the lower floors of the
Upper floor (structural member)

Measurement distance
Measurement direction Light source
Light
Sensing unit
Lower floor (structural member)
※ The arrangement of light source and sensing unit

can be reversible.
Figure 1. Conceptual schematic of RSD measurement system
112
objective story. The sensor directly measures the relative displacement in the lateral
direction between them, i.e. RSD, by detecting the light spot emitted from the light
source on the sensing unit. By setting up the design parameters, the sensor can
measure wide-ranged displacements induced by various intensities of earthquakes, and
we can construct the applicable and compact measurement system for buildings [3-5].
FORMULATION OF DAMAGE EVALUATION METHOD
Displacement Loading Analysis
In the SHM system for earthquakes based on the direct measurement of RSDs, we
formulate a damage evaluation method to detect the damaged locations of structural
elements and evaluate their damage degree. The proposed damage evaluation method
is based on the displacement loading analysis by the time histories of measured RSDs.
First, the building is modeled as a three-dimensional (3D) frame model composed
of structural elements, e.g. columns, beams and joint panels, considering the
appropriate elasto-plastic characteristics on the stiffness of each structural element.
For this analytical model, consider the dynamic equilibrium of this n-degree-of-
freedom system with m-known displacement subset subjected to an external excitation.
The equation of motion at time instant t can be written in the following form as:
k 11 k 12   x 1 (t )  f 1 (t ) 
   (1)
k
 21 k 22  x 2 (t ) f 2 (t )
where x1(t) is an m-known displacement vector; x2(t) is an (n-m)-unknown

displacement vector; f1(t) and f2(t) are the resisting force vectors composed of inertia,
damping and excitation forces, corresponding to x1(t) and x2(t), respectively; and k11,
k12, k21 and k22 are the stiffness subset matrices composed of the structural element
properties. Here, let us set each floor displacement of the building given by the
measured RSDs to known displacement vector x1(t). Under the rigid floor assumption,
x1(t) can be represented as two horizontal and a torsional directions. Assuming that
the effect of f2(t) corresponding to x2(t) is negligible since its effect is generally small
comparing to that of f1(t) corresponding to x1(t), x2(t) and f1(t) can be solved as:
1
x 2 (t )  k 22 k 21 x 1 (t ) (2)
1
f 1 (t )  [k 11  k 12 k 22 k 21 ]x 1 (t ) (3)
Thus, we can clarify the relationship of resisting forces and displacements of the
system, and evaluate the damages of each structural element by expanding Eq. (1) to
each structural element stiffness matrix.
In the evaluation process, right after the earthquake duration, we perform the
displacement loading analysis for the building model by the time histories of measured
RSDs, and evaluate the hysteretic transitions of the stiffness of each structural element.
As a result, we can directly detect the damaged locations of structural elements, and
evaluate their damage degree. In the proposed method, we estimate the behaviors and
damages of each structural element by directly tracing the building responses during
earthquakes, and can evaluate the structural damage only by the stiffness-relating
information on the structural elements without any information on the mass or
113
damping properties of the building. As an additional feature, the analysis is not
affected by the stiffness of nonstructural members like partition walls in the building.
Based on these features, the proposed damage evaluation method is analytically robust
against the uncertainties intrinsically accompanying the modeling of the building.
Correction of Measurement Error induced by Local Rotation
In the RSD measurement system by noncontact-type optical sensors, it is possible

for the displacement component by the local rotation at the locations of the light
source or the sensing unit to affect the measurement accuracy as shown in Figure 2 [5].
Forcing direction Deformation shape of structural member
Light source
Light
Sensing unit
Relative story displacement Displacement component by local deflection

Figure 2. Schematic of the local rotation effect
To compensate for the measurement errors associated with this effect, we

introduce the following analytical technique in the evaluation process:
(i) Assume  (1) , the estimated RSD time history, to be  ' including the effect of
local rotation, the measured RSD time history.
(ii) Perform the displacement loading analysis for the building model by  (1) .
(iii) Evaluate the updated estimation  ( 2) by removing the measurement error from
 ' , being estimated by  (1) , the local rotation angle time history computed in
the displacement loading analysis. Here,  ( 2 ) is expressed as:
 ( 2)   'h (1) (4)
where h is a measurement distance.

(iv) Repeat the steps (ii) and (iii) by applying the updated estimations toward the
convergence over the whole time history.
Damage Evaluation Flow
As the complete formulation of algorithm, being composed of the displacement

loading analysis and the measurement error correction, the damage evaluation flow is
shown in Figure 3. Following this flow, we can accurately evaluate the structural
damage of the building right after earthquake shocks.
114
RSD measurement
・ Direct measurement of RSD
・ Effect of local rotation
Structural model Displacement loading analysis

・ 3D frame model ・ Trace of building responses during eq.
・ Composed of structural elements ・ Computation of local rotation angle
・ No need for mass, damping and ・ Evaluation of structural element damage
nonstructural members
Measurement error correction
・ Removal of measurement error
Convergence
・ Judgment over whole time history
Damage evaluation results

・ Animation of displacement and damage
・ Maximum of displacement and damage
Figure 3. Damage evaluation flow
NUMERICAL SIMULATION ON BUILDING MODEL
Objective Building and Analysis Conditions
To assess the basic features and verify the applicability of the proposed damage
evaluation method, we analyze the monitoring accuracies through numerical
simulations on a model building subjected to a large earthquake. Objective building is
an 8-story steel-moment-resisting framing structure of 29m height, weighing about
9300 kN. Figure 4 shows the floor plan and the structural framing elevation in the Y-
direction. The RSD sensors are installed on the B-C spanned beam on each floor.
RSD sensor (Upper unit)
Steel beam (H-600×200) Steel column (☐-450)

RSD sensor
525
Y
525
(a) Floor plan
(b) Structural framing elevation

(1-frame in the Y-direction)
Figure 4. Floor plan and structural framing elevation in the Y-direction
115
For the analysis, the building is modeled as a 3D frame model composed of
columns, beams and joint panels under the rigid floor assumption. To evaluate the
structural damage, we give the appropriate elasto-plastic characteristics on the
stiffness of each structural element, being determined by its yield moment, and use the
ductility factor of each structural element as a damage index. The investigation is
performed for the Y-direction, where the 1st natural period is 0.97 s. The damping
matrix, representing the inherent damping of the building, is set up to give the modal
damping 2 % for each vibration mode. The earthquake for the input ground motion is
EL CENTRO 1940 (NS) record with its peak ground velocity normalized to 50 cm/s.
Analysis Results
For comparison, the dynamic analysis result is assumed to be the response under
the real situation, and the measured RSD time histories including the effect of local
rotations are computed from the dynamic analysis. In the evaluation process, i.e. the
displacement loading analysis and the measurement error correction, we evaluate the
structural damage only by the stiffness-relating information of the building analytical
model and the measured RSD time histories including the effect of local rotations.
First, let us examine the validity of the measurement error correction. Figure 5
shows the RSD time stories of the 1st story, comparing the exact, measured and error-
corrected values, where the corrected time history is the result through two iterations.
We observe the measurement error associated with the effect of local rations; on the
other hand, the error-corrected time history agrees very well with the exact value and
we recognize no errors on the time histories, indicating that we can remove the
measurement error accurately through the measurement error correction process.
Next, let us investigate the damage evaluation results by the error-corrected RSD
time histories. Figure 6 shows the hysteretic curve of the bending moment versus the
rotation angle, and Figure 7 shows the distribution of the maximum ductility factors
 of structural elements in the 1-frame, comparing the exact and estimated damages.
From these results, we can detect the damaged locations of structural elements and
estimate their damage degree accurately through the proposed evaluation method. In
this analysis, we use the ductility factor of each structural element as a damage index;
however, in accordance with the monitoring object, it is possible to use other indices
like cumulative plastic deformation factors.
Exact Measured Corrected

4
2
(cm)
-2
-4
0 2 4 6 8 10
Time (s)
Figure 5. RSD time histories of the 1st story
116
1000 1000
Bending moment (kN･m)

Bending moment (kN･m)
500 500
0 0
-500 -500
-1000 -1000
-0.010 -0.005 0.000 0.005 0.010 -0.010 -0.005 0.000 0.005 0.010
Rotation angle (rad) Rotation angle (rad)
(a) Dynamic analysis (Exact damage) (b) Proposed evaluation (Estimated damage)
Figure 6. Hysteretic curve of bending moment vs. rotation angle
(A-end, A-B spanned beam on the 2nd floor)
1.0 ≦ μ ＜ 2.0
2.0 ≦ μ ＜ 4.0
4.0 ≦ μ
(a) Dynamic analysis (Exact damage) (b) Proposed evaluation (Estimated damage)
Figure 7. Distribution of maximum ductility factors of structural elements
(1-frame in the Y-direction)
CONCLUSIONS
In this study, we have proposed a damage monitoring and evaluation method for
building structures based on the measurement of RSDs by noncontact-type optical
sensors. The damage evaluation method is formulated to detect the damaged locations
of structural elements and evaluate their damage degree based on the displacement
loading analysis by the time histories of measured RSDs. In the proposed method, we
have estimated the behaviors and damages of each structural element by directly
tracing the building responses during earthquakes. Furthermore in the evaluation
process, we have introduced the analytical technique to compensate for the
measurement errors associated with the properties of sensors. To assess the basic
features and verify the applicability of the proposed damage evaluation method, we
have analyzed the monitoring accuracies through numerical simulations on a model
building subjected to a large earthquake. The results indicate the effectiveness of the
proposed damage evaluation method in its applications to the SHM system.
117
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) of the Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT), No. 21360271 with Dr. Akira
Nishitani as Principal Investigator. This support is gratefully acknowledged. The advice on the
development of the sensors of Dr. Iwao Ohdomari, Dr. Shuichi Shoji and Dr. Takashi Tanii at Waseda
University are greatly appreciated. The cooperation on the numerical analysis of Dr. Satoru Miura, Mr.
Masatoshi Ishida and Dr. Yasutsugu Suzuki at Kajima Corporation are also greatly appreciated.
REFERENCES
1. Takahashi, M, T. Nasu and T. Kobori. 2003. “Proposal for Real-time Disaster Mitigation
System with Structural Control Systems”, Proceedings of the Structural Health Monitoring and
Intelligent Infrastructure, 2, 953-961.
2. Nitta, Y. and A. Nishitani. 2003. “Structural Health Monitoring of Story Stiffness based on
Identification of Subsystem representing Specific Story of a Building”, Journal of Structural
and Construction Engineering, Transactions of AIJ, 573, 75-79.*
3. Matsuya, I, R. Tomishi, M. Sato, K. Kanekawa, Y. Nitta, M. Takahashi, S. Miura, Y. Suzuki, T.
Hatada, R. Katamura, T. Tanii, S. Shoji, A. Nishitani and I. Ohdomari. 2011. “Development of
Lateral Displacement Sensor for Real-time Detection of Structural Damage”, IEEJ Transactions
on Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 6, 266-272.
4. Kanekawa, K, I. Matsuya, M. Sato, R. Tomishi, M. Takahashi, S. Miura, Y. Suzuki, T. Hatada,
R. Katamura, Y. Nitta, T. Tanii, S. Shoji, A. Nishitani and I. Ohdomari. 2010. “An
Experimental Study on Relative Displacement Sensing using Phototransistor Array for Building
Structures”, IEEJ Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 5, 251-255.
5. Hatada, T, M Takahashi, R. Katamura, Y. Suzuki, I. Matsuya, K. Kanekawa, Y. Nitta and A.
Nishitani. 2010. “Measurement of Actual Building Motions on Forced Vibration Test by
Noncontat-type Relative Story Displacement Sensors”, Proceedings of the 5th World Conference
on Structural Control and Monitoring, Paper No.78.
6. Morita, K. and T. Matsumori. 2007. “Dynamic Properties Estimation on Damage Evolution of 6
story Reinforced Building through Shaking Table Test”, Journal of Structural Engineering, 53B,
39-46.*
7. Ono, M, K. Kanazawa, N. Iino, D. Sato, H. Kitamura and T. Nagae. 2011. “Seismic Damage
Detection of a High-rise Steel Building on the Full-scale Shaking Table Test”, Journal of
Structural and Construction Engineering, Transactions of AIJ, 662, 775-783.*
8. Kusunoki, K, M. Teshigawara and E. Koide. 2003. “Development of Real-time Residual
Seismic Capacity Evaluation System (Part 1: Outline of the Evaluation Method)”, Summaries of
Technical Papers of Annual Meeting, AIJ, B-2, 961-962.*
9. Inoue, R. and T. Hamamoto. 2009. “Two-stage Estimation Model from Story Damage to
Member Damage”, Summaries of Technical Papers of Annual Meeting, AIJ, B-2, 683-684.*
10. Tanaka, S, F. Arrecis and M. Motosaka. 2007. “Evaluation of the Structural Deterioration of a
Building for the Development of a Real-time Seismic Health Monitoring System”, Summaries
of Technical Papers of Annual Meeting, AIJ, B-2, 41-42.*
* in Japanese
118
Joint Condition Identification with Partially
Measured Frequency Response Function
M. WANG and G. ZHENG
ABSTRACT
Various joints are important parts of structures and more likely to develop
deteriorations than other structure parts, which are considered as substructures in the
present paper. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the condition of joints from time to
time. The condition of a joint can be represented by its parameters, such as stiffness and
damping. In this paper, the dynamic stiffness and/or Frequency Response (FRFs) of
joints are taken as condition parameters and a method for identifying these condition
parameters within a structure assembled of substructures and joint structures with
partially measured frequency response function is proposed. Four basic formulas are
derived first and with these four formulas a method for estimating FRFs is developed as
the second step of the identification procedure. Since the unmeasured FRFs of an
unconstrained substructure can be easily obtained through modal calibration, this
estimation method is for obtaining those of the assembled structure. Data used in the
estimation contains the measured FRFs of assembled structure and those calculated from
accurately calibrated substructure Finite Element (FE) model. To enhance the
identification accuracy, the derived four basic formulas are integrated together to form a
united form formula for utilizing all available data, i.e. all measured and estimated FRFs.
With this approach, the identification accuracy can be significantly improved. An
experimental example is provided to describe the identification procedure and show the
effectiveness of the proposed method.
INTRODUCTION
Structures are generally composed of substructures (or components) integrated

by such joints as bolts, welds and glue. These joints are more likely to develop
deteriorations than other structure parts, which are considered as substructures in the
present paper. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the condition of joints from time
to time. A generally applied approach of monitoring joint conditions is extracting the
joints’ properties from measured data, which is also known as joint identification
technique.
119
Both measured modal parameters and Frequency-Response Functions (FRFs)
can be used to extract joint properties. As the modal parameter method requires
accurate modal data, which is very difficult to obtain, especially for heavily damped
modes, methods using FRF data have been attracting more attentions since the past
few decades. The first FRF method for the joint identification was probably the one
proposed by Okubo and Miyazaki [1] in 1984, and an arguably more advanced
method was developed by Tsai and Chou [2] in 1988. Results of some early
developments were reported in 1991 [3].
Since Tsai and Chou’s method [2] is sensitive to measurement errors and noises
due to too many matrix inverse operations on the FRFs matrices, Wang and Liou [4]
improved this method by removing excess mathematically inverse operations for
enhancing the identification accuracy. Ren and Beards [5] generalized the FRF based
joint-identification technique for systems involving multiple rigid and flexible joints.
A proper criterion for the best solution was introduced for reducing the effects of
measurement errors and noises. Four basic formulas were proposed for identifying the
joint dynamic properties and each of them could be used to identify joint dynamic
properties separately.
Due to the difficulty in measuring Rotational Degrees of Freedom (RDOF), the
researches mentioned above mainly considered only Translational Degrees of
Freedom (TDOFs) and the RDOFs were modeled as two parallel springs or even
ignored. This kind of models works well in the low frequency range, but not in a
higher frequency range [6]. Recently, the RDOFs have become the focus of some
researches for the joint identification. Some researches had investigated the impact of
ignoring RDOFs on the joint identification and came to the conclusion that the
information of RDOFs was important to the identification accuracy and should better
be taken into consideration [6-9]. However, from these work, it was not clear that
how the RDOFs’ information was obtained in the identification process.
The basic idea of almost all of the FRF based joint identification techniques are
the same, i.e., the joint properties can be extracted from the properties of the
assembled structure and its substructures. However, due to differences in the strategy
and method of dealing with the problem of matrix inverse operations and also
measurement errors considered in the study, the identification accuracy can be
different.
It can be concluded from the above studies that there are two effective
approaches to improve identification accuracy. Removing excess matrix inverse
computation is a widely adopted one for reducing additional computation errors and
minimizing the influence of measurement error/noise that could be amplified during
the matrix inverse operation. For instance, Wang and Liou [4] removed the excess
mathematically inverse operation in Tsai and Chou’s method [2] and the identification
accuracy is thus improved. The second approach is taking more information, such as
that of RDOFs, into the identification process. Nevertheless, the difficulty in
measuring the FRFs of RDOFs proves to be a challenge to the effort of improving the
identification accuracy in practical applications [6-8]. Using only measurable FRFs is
therefore often taken as an alternative approach toward the solution, although these
measurable FRFs only contain a part of the structure information. A method of
overcoming this difficulty is to estimate unmeasured FRFs with measured FRFs.
120
Based on the linear joint assumption, Yang and Park [10] proposed a method for
estimating unmeasured FRFs by solving an over-determined set of linear equations
derived from measured FRFs and the substructure Finite Element (FE) models. This
method can only estimate a part of the unmeasured FRFs, while the others are still
missed. With this estimation method, Celic and Boltezar [8, 9] proposed a joint
identification method including both TDOFs and RDOFs. However, due to the
incomplete estimation of FRFs of unmeasured DOFs, not all of the information was
included in the identification process.
The purpose of this paper is to develop a joint condition identification method
such that all of the FRF information can be included in the computation and thus the
computation accuracy can be enhanced. Four basic formulas are derived at first. To
overcome the difficulty of immeasurable FRFs, including RDOFs, a new estimation
method for the unmeasured FRFs is proposed. Then, the four formulas are joined
together to obtain a united form of formula. Together with the measured and
estimated FRFs, the identification accuracy can be raised with this united mathematic
formula. An experimental example is provided for showing the effectiveness of the
proposed method.
FORMULAS FOR JOINT CONDITIONS MONITORING
According to Ref. 8, when joints are tightly fastened, their potential nonlinear
behavior is suppressed and thus the influence of nonlinearity is not significant. Since
in most engineering structures, the joints should be tightly fastened, such as bolts and
rivets, the main concern of this paper will be the linear joint model.
The structure studied here is composed of several substructures and some joint
structures. As shown in Fig. 1, the coordinates are divided into internal and joint
coordinates, with the subscripts “I” and “J”, respectively.
Joint Structure
I J I
Substructure Substructure
Fig. 1 Substructures and joints
The input-output relationship of substructures can be expressed as
 H II H IJ   FI   X I 
H   
H JJ   FJ   X J 
(1)
 JI
where H is the FRF matrix, XI and XJ are internal and joint nodal displacement
vectors of the substructure, respectively, FI and FJ are force vectors applied at the
internal nodes and joint nodes of the substructures, respectively. Similarly, the
input-output relationship for an assembled structure can be written as
 H IIA H IJA   FI   X I 
 A      (2)
 H JI H JJA   FJ   X J 
where superscripts “A” donates the assembled structure, FJ is the force vector
applied at the joint node of the assembled structure. Dynamic properties of the joint
121
structure can also be expressed with a FRF matrix equation as
H J FJ  X J (3)
where FJ is the junctional force vector applied at the joint nodes of the joint
structure, and HJ is the FRF matrix of the joint structure.

The force compatibility condition of the substructures and the assembled
structure at joint interfaces can be written as
FJ  FJ  FJ (4)
From Eq. (1), XJ can be extracted as

X J  H JI FI  H JJ FJ (5)
Substituting Eqs. (4) and (5) into Eq. (3), it is obvious that
H JI FI  H JJ FJ  H J  FJ  FJ  (6)
Let H C  H JJ  H J , FJ can be calculated from Eq. (6), which is

F 
FJ  H C1   H JI HJ  I  (7)
 FJ 
With expression FI  IFI , where I is an identical matrix, Eq. (7) can be expanded to
 FI   I 0   FI 
   
H H J   FJ 
1 1
(8)
 FJ    H C H JI C
Substituting the above equation into Eqs. (1) and (2) yields
 H II H IJ   I 0   H IIA H IJA 
H    
H C1 H J   H JIA
1
(9)
 JI H JJ    H C H JI H JJA 
From the relationship H C  H JJ  H J , it is apparent that

H J  H C  H JJ (10)
Substituting Eq. (10) into Eq. (9) yields four formulas as
H IJ H C1 H JI  H II  H IIA
H IJ H C1 H JJ  H IJ  H IJA
(11)
H JJ H C1 H JI  H JI  H JIA
H JJ H C1 H JJ  H JJ  H JJA
These are the basic formulas for the joint condition identification. If all of the FRFs
can be accurately measured, every single formula of Eq. (11) can be independently
utilized to compute HJ. Nevertheless, at least two difficulties will make this approach
almost impossible. One difficulty is that the FRFs matrices related to the rotational
DOFs, especially those among the joint DOFs, are not always possible to measure.
The other one is that most often not all of the internal DOFs’ FRFs are measurable
and usually only a small part of them can be actually measured. As a consequence,
nearly all of the current identification methods have to use incomplete data measured
from test to identify joint dynamic properties. In fact, only the first formula in Eq.
(11), or its equivalent forms, is applicable for these methods. Because all measured
122
FRFs are inevitably mixed with measurement errors and/or noises, if only this
formula is used, for the reason of not enough information available in the
identification process, the identification accuracy can be lowered or even further lead
to wrong results. Apparently, to raise the identification accuracy, more FRF
information should be introduced into the identification process. To overcome the
above discussed two difficulties, an alternative approach should be developed for
estimating all of the unmeasured FRFs.
Since unmeasured FRFs of unrestrained substructures can be conveniently
estimated through modal calibration as introduced in Ref. 6, only the method for
estimating unmeasured FRFs of the assembled substructure is studied here.
Unlike the division of “internal DOFs” and “joint DOFs” previously, here all of
the DOFs are divided into three groups, i.e. experimentally measured internal DOFs,
denoted by subscript K, experimentally unmeasured internal DOFs, denoted by
subscript E and experimentally unmeasured junction DOFs, donated by subscript J.
Utilizing the K, E and J DOF group definitions, Eq. (9) can be rewritten as
  H KK 
A A A
 H KK H KE H KJ   I 0 0 H KE H KJ
H    A A 
 EK H EE H EJ   0 I 0    H EK A
H EE H EJ  (12)
 H JK H JE H JJ    H C1 H JK 1
 H H JE
C H C1 H J   H JK
A A
H JE H JJA 
Since H J  H C  H JJ the following six equations can be yielded form Eq. (12) as
H KK  H KJ H c1 H JK  H KK
A
 H EK   H EJ  1  H EK
A

 H    H  H C H JK   A 
 JK   JJ  H
 JK 
H KE  H KJ H C1 H JE  H KE
A
 H EE   H EJ  1  H EE
A
 , (13)
 H
 H   H  C JE  A H 
 JE   JJ   H JE 
1
H JJ  H JJ H C H JJ  H JJ
A
 H KJ   H KJ  1  H KJ
A

 H    H  H C H JJ   A 
 EJ   EJ   H EJ 
From Eq. (13), all the unmeasured FRFs can be estimated as
 H EK
A
  H EK   H EJ  
 A    H KJ  H KK  H KK 
A
 H JK   H JK   H JJ 
 H EE
A
  H EE   H EJ  
 A    H KJ  H KE  H KE 
A
 H JE   H JE   H JJ  (14)
 H   H   H A   
H JJA  H JJ  H JJ   KJ    KJ    KJ A 

  H EJ    H EJ   H EJ   
T T T
A
H KE   H EK
A
 , H EJA   H JEA  , A
H KJ   H JK
A

where []+ donates generalized inverse operation.

To fully make use of all useful information, as discussed above for the purpose
of enhancing the identification accuracy, all formulas of Eq. (11) should be applied in
the identification procedure. Adding matrix
 H II H II H II H IJ 
H H H JI H IJ 
 JI II
123
to both sides of Eq. (9) yields
 H II H II  H IJ HC1 H JI H II H IJ  H IJ HC1 H JJ   H II  H IIA H IJ  H IJA   H II H II H II H IJ 
  
H JI H IJ 
1
(15)
 H JI H II  H JJ HC H JI H JI H IJ  H JJ HC1H JJ   H JI  H JIA H JJ  H JJA   H JI H II
The left side of this equation can be rearranged as

 H II H II  H IJ H C1 H JI H II H IJ  H IJ H C1 H JJ   H II H IJ   I 0   H II H IJ 
 
H JJ  0 H C1   H JI
  H JJ 
1
(16)
 H JI H II  H JJ H C H JI H JI H IJ  H JJ H C1 H JJ   H JI
With Eq. (16), Eq. (15) can be rewritten as

 H II H IJ   I 0   H II H IJ   H II  H IIA H IJ  H IJA   H II H II H II H IJ 
  
H JJ   0 H C1   H JI
  H JJ   H JI  H JIA H JI H IJ 
(17)
 H JI H JJ  H JJA   H JI H II
Apparently, Eq. (17) contains all of the measured and estimated FRFs, and the
formula for computing HJ, which contains the dynamic property information of the
joint, can thus be derived as
1
  H  H IIA H IJ  H IJA   H II H II H II H IJ    H IJ 
H J   H JI H JJ    II    H JJ
H JI H IJ    H JJ 
(18)
  H JI  H JI H JJ  H JJA   H JI H II
A
The corresponding dynamic stiffness matrix of the joint can be computed with the
inverse of calculated FRF matrix
DJ  H J1 (19)
EXAMPLE
To validate the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed identification method, an

experimental example is presented here. The test assembly consisted of two steel
beams with the same rectangular cross section, 30×12mm, and a length of 500mm,
which were connected together by a steel bolt. Each beam is discrete into 50 linear
element elements. The first four measured and computed natural frequencies and
modal damping factors are summarized in Table 1 and 2, respectively. The
measurements were made at five coordinates on each substructure respectively with
acceleration sensors, i.e. 10 coordinates on the assembly. The test assembly and data
acquisition system used in the test are shown in Fig. 2.
Table 1 Measured and computed natural frequencies
Mode number 1st 2nd 3rd 4th
Measured natural frequency (Hz) 256.228 699.285 1348.419 2210.548
Computed natural frequency (Hz) 253.616 696.638 1358.883 2231.709
Relative error (%) 1.02 0.38 0.78 0.96
Table 2 Measured and computed damping factors

Mode number 1st 2nd 3rd 4th
Measured modal damping ratio (%) 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.04
Computed modal damping ratio (%) 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04
Relative error (%) 25 0 25 0
124
The structure was suspended in such a way that it could vibrate only in z and α
direction. The joint was assumed to have two z direction DOFs (J1, J2) and two α
direction DOFs (α1, α2). Consequently, DJ(J1, α2)in the joint dynamic stiffness matrix
indicates that the response DOF is J1 and the excitation DOF is α2.
Figs. 3a and 3b show the identified joint dynamic stiffness DJ(J1, α2) and FRF
HJ(J1, α2). With the identified joint dynamic stiffness and substructure FE model, the
FRFs of the assembled structure were reconstructed using the following equation
1
 DKK DKE  DKJ
H   DEK
A
DEE  .
 DEJ (20)
 DJK DJE DJJ  DJ 
Fig. 4a and Fig. 4b contain the measured and reconstructed FRF HA(z3, z5) and
A
H (z8, z5). It can be seen that curves of the measured and reconstructed data coincide
with each other very well.
Fig. 2 Test assembly

-4
x 10
6 x 10
1.5 0.5
1 0
0.5
-0.5
| HJ (J1,  2) |
| DJ (J1,  2) |
0
-1
-0.5
-1.5
-1
-2
-1.5
-2 -2.5
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
Frequency [Hz] Frequency [Hz]
Fig. 3a Identified DJ(J1, α2) Fig. 3b Identified HJ(J1, α2)

-2
-2
10 10
Measured Measured
Reconstructed Reconstructed
-4
-4 10
10
-6 -6
10 10
| H (z8, z 5) |
| H (z3, z 5) |
-8 -8
10 10
-10 -10
10 10
-12 -12
10 10
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
Frequency [Hz] Frequency [Hz]
Fig. 4a Measured and reconstructed HA(z3, z5) Fig. 4b Measured and reconstructed HA(z8, z5)
CONCLUSION
A new joint condition identification method is developed in the present paper for
125
improving the accuracy in solving the problem caused by the fact that only a part of
the DOFs are experimentally measurable.
The inevitable measurement error is often considered before as a major factor
affecting the identification accuracy. With given measurement error, the accuracy can
be improved by including more FRF data into the computation. Unfortunately,
constrained by many factors, only part of FRF data can be measured, neither those at
the joint related DOFs as well as RDOFs nor most of DOFs’ FRF data can actually be
measured through experiment. The utilization of estimated FRF data for the
unmeasured FRF data is an alternative solution to this problem. With the measured
FRF data of the assembled structure and the accurately modal calibrated substructure
FE model, these unmeasured FRF data can be estimated with the method developed
in the presented paper.
To include both the measured and estimated FRF data into the identification
computation, a united form of identification formula is derived by joining all four
basic formulas together. The experimental example shows that this is an effective
approach for achieving accurate joint condition parameters.
REFERENCES
1. Okubo, N. and Miyazaki, M. 1984. Development of uncoupling technique and its application.
Proceeding of international modal analysis conference, Florida, U.S.A., 1194-1200.
2. J. S. Tsai and Y. E. Chou, The identification of dynamic characteristics of a single bolt joint, J. of
Sound and Vibration, 125, 487-502
3. Ren, Y. and Beards, C. -F. 1991. A new method for the identification of joint properties using FRF
data. Proceeding of Florence Modal Analysis Conference, Florence, Italy., 663-669.
4. Wang, J. H. and Liou, C. M. 1990. Identification of parameters of structural joints by use of
noise-contaminated FRFs. J. of Sound an Vibration, 142(2): 261-27.
5. Ren, Y. and Beards, C. F. 1995. Identification of joint properties of a structure using FRF data. J.
of Sound and Vibration, 186(4): 567-587.
6. Yang, T. C., Fan, S. H. and Lin, C. S. 2003. Joint stiffness identification using FRF measurements.
Computers and Structures, 81: 254-2556.
7. Liu, W. 2000. Structural dynamic analysis and testing of coubpled structures, PhD Thesis,
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London.
8. Celic, D. and Boltezar, M. 2008. Identification of the dynamic properties of joints using frequency
-response functions. J. of Sound and Vibration, 317: 158-174.
9. Celic, D. and Boltezar, M. 2009. The influence of the coordinate reduction on the identification of
the joint dynamic properties. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 23: 1260-1271.
10. Yang, K.-T. and Park, Y.-S. 1993. Joint structural parameter identification using a subset of
frequency response function measurements. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 7(6):
509-530.
126
Multi-Classifier Fusion Method Based on the
Reliability of the Individual Classifiers
L. AL-SHROUF and D. SOEFFKER
ABSTRACT
Multi-classifier fusion is a technique used to combine individual decisions of sev-
eral classifiers in order to improve the final classification performance. Fusion meth-
odologies are necessary to realize multi-classifiers-based monitoring systems. It leads
to more accurate decisions. In this paper two fusion approaches are presented. First
approach is based on the reliability analysis and Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) for
fault analysis. The first approach is appropriate to combine two independent classifi-
ers. The second approach is developed to combine any number of independent classi-
fiers. It is based on an Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The realized ANN includes
two hidden layers. First layer will be tuned using the weighting factors w to make an
acceptable decision about the current state of the system. The second layer includes
the activation functions to define the decision boundary between different system
states.
INTRODUCTION
The complexity of industrial processes, space applications, security systems, and

medical applications etc. is exponentially increased in the last years. Individual proc-
esses or classifiers are insufficient to monitor such complex systems. On the other
hand the necessity to meet an accurate decision about system states becomes very im-
portant. Therefore the necessity arise to realize multi-classifiers based monitoring sys-
tems based on a suitable combination methodology to arrange decisions of corre-
sponding classifiers in order to meet reliable recognition results about system states.
Multi-classifier combination is a technique to improve the classification perform-
ance of base classifiers in various pattern recognition problems [5]. Since years, many
researchers developed different methodologies to combine the decisions of several
various classifiers in order to improve the classification performance of the individual
classifiers. Some of the developed methodologies require a training process (example:
Naive Bayes and decision templates methods, …). Other methods do not require any
Chair of Dy namics and Control, University of Du isburg-Essen, Campus Duis burg,

Lotharstr. 1-21, 47057 Duisburg, Germany
.
127
training processes like voting fusion and Dempster-Shafer (DS) method. Many classi-
fication techniques such as Support Vector Machines (SVMs) or Artificial Neural
Networks (ANNs) could be used as decision fusion technique [4].
In this contribution two new decision fusion techniques will be developed and pre-
sented to combine several classifiers. The first developed method is based on reliabil-
ity analysis by investigating the Dempster combination rules. It is used to combine
two independent individual classifiers, the second developed method is an improve-
ment for the first method in order to combine more than two classifiers. It is based on
ANNs, which will be developed to generate an intelligent multi- classifier approach.
MULTI-CLASSIFIER CONB INER BASED ON RELIABILITY A NALYSIS

AND DST
Upon to reliability theory, the understanding of information as the systems func-

tionality assumed as independent from each other, the overall system is functional
weather all components are functional or just only one component is functional. The
consideration of this concept for a decision fusion problem leads to the fact that only
one individual decision from any classifier could be sufficient to meet correct decision
about system state, if the classifiers are independent from each other. Of course the
reliability of the individual components functionality has to be considered as the
evidence of the individual information validity.
Boolean reliability models can take only two values either zero or one (one means,
system has failed or the event has occurred, whereas zero means, system works or an
event has not been occurred). The considered classifiers have only two states -either
there is an event or there is no event-. But the reliabilities of the classifier statements
are unequal for the different classifiers. Even the statements reliabilities of the individ-
ual classifiers could be varied. The consideration of the reliabilities of the individual
classifier statements distinguishes this method from Boolean reliability models of de-
termining system operativeness.
Dempster-Shafer theory (DST)
The Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) is based on the idea of placing a number be-
tween zero and one to indicate the degree of evidence for a proposition [1,7]. The im-
portant difference between the classical Bayesian theory and DST is that the sum the
of the degree of evidence of any proposition A and it is against evidence should not
be equal one in case of insufficient evidence for or against A . Insufficient evidence for
or against A lead to a degree of uncertainty of the proposition A .
In [3,6] Guth applied the DST to the reliability and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA),
which allows him modeling of the uncertainties with less effort. This paper considers
that there is no uncertainty of the individual classifier statements. Guth [3,6] discusses
{ }
the case θ = {h1 , h2 , h3 } ≡ event , no event , uncertain . The same idea will be in-
vestigated here to model the uncertainty in the final decision. Although the uncertainty
of the individual classifiers statements is considered to be zero, but the fusion of the
different classifiers statements could lead to an uncertainty in the final decision.
128
Combination approach for independent multi-classifiers
The introduced combination approach will be demonstrated through a monitoring
system based on two independent sources/classifiers. Both classifiers describe weather
a specific event is occurred (positive). In case no specific event is taking place or if the
specific event is not detected through any of the classifiers, then the corresponding
source delivers no announcement (negative). No information -negative- is interpreted
as no specific event is taking place. However the experimental experience shows a less
of evidence for either the statement (specific event is taking place) or the statement (no
specific event).
Because of less of evidence of the classifiers statements, each statement could in-
clude a degree of evidence for the existence of a specific event (degree of belief), de-
gree of evidence against existence of a specific event (degree of disbelief), and degree
of uncertainty. Therefore basic assignment function for each statement could be writ-
{ }
ten as θ = {h1 , h2 , h3 } ≡ specific event , no specific event , uncertain .
As previously mentioned the two classifiers are independent from each others.
Therefore the concept of the OR-gate will be here considered to combine the state-
ments of the two classifiers. OR-gate in Boolean algebra define the maximum between
two binary digits. In this approach the OR-gate will be applied to find the maximum
value between the degree of belief and disbelief of the combined classifiers state-
ments. The idea behind, could be illustrated as follows. Each classifier statement -
either negative or positive- is defined by a specific degree of belief and disbelief. The
combination of the degrees of belief/disbelief of two classifier statements leads to four
combination possibilities (Figure 1). The combination of the degree of belief of classi-
fier A and the degree of belief of classifier B leads always to h1 (specific event ex-
ists). The combination of the degrees of disbelief of both classifiers statements leads
to h2 (no specific event). The combination results of degrees of belief/disbelief of
both classifiers statements is denoted as hx . Upon to the amount of the degree of be-
lief and disbelief of both classifiers statements, hx could be either h1 , h2 , or h3 . For
example, here it is considered that the degree of belief of classifier B is greater than
the degree disbelief of classifier A , then hx is set to be h1 . In contrast to that, if the
degree of belief of classifier B is smaller than the degree of disbelief of classifier A ,
hx is set to be h2 . In case that the degree of belief of one classifier is equal to the de-
gree of disbelief of the other one, then hx equal to h1 if classifiers statements are posi-
tive, to h2 if are negative, and to h3 if the statement of one classifier is positive and of
the other is negative.
According to the degrees of belief/disbelief of combined classifiers statements, as
well as to the variety/similarity of combined classifiers statements (positive/positive,
positive/negative, or negative/negative), the combination approach yields to three
combination possibilities:
Both classifiers statements are positive or negative
If both classifier statements are positive, concurrently the degree of belief of one
classifier is greater than or equal to the degree of disbelief of the other one, then final
decision could be determined as given with (1) and (2).
129
Figure 1: Combination logic.
m( Z1 ) = m( A1 )m( B1 ) + m( A2 )m( B1 ) + m( A1 )m( B2 ) , (1)

m( Z 2 ) = m( A2 )m( B2 ) , where (2)
m( Z1 ) represents the combined (final) degree of belief of the existence of a specific
event. m( Z 2 ) denotes the degree of disbelief of the existence of a specific event. How-
ever the degree of uncertainty in the final decision m( Z 3 ) is equal to zero.
In case that the degree of belief of one classifier statement is smaller than the degree of
disbelief of the other one, the determination of the degrees of belief/disbelief are per-
formed as given with (3) and (4), so m( Z 3 ) is still equal to zero.
m( Z1 ) = m( A1 )m( B1 ) and (3)
m( Z 2 ) = m( A2 )m( B2 ) + m( A2 )m( B1 ) + m( A1 )m( B2 ) (4)
Figure 2: Final degree of belief Figure 3: Possible related degree for

(both statements are positive). m( Z1 ) ≥ 90% .
130
Figure 4: Final degree of belief Figure 5: Final degree of belief
(both statements are negative). (statements are positive/negative).
In Figure 2 the combined degree of belief m( Z1 ) of both positive statements is

demonstrated as a function of the individual degree of belief of both positive state-
ments. m( Z1 ) is equal to zero as the degree of belief of both classifier m( A1 ) ,
m( B1 ) are zeros. It increases imperceptible according to the positive change in m( A1 )
and m( B1 ) . The maximum degree of belief m( Z1 ) as m( A1 ) and m( B1 ) smaller than
50% is about 24%. As m( A1 ) and m( B1 ) become equal to 50%, m( Z1 ) changes ex-
ponentially to 75%. If the minimum designated m( Z1 ) should be equal or greater than
90%, then the appropriate related degree of belief of both positive statements are lo-
cated in the marked area in Figure 3.
If both classifier statements are negative, concurrently the degree of disbelief (dis-
belief of existence of a specific event) of one classifier is greater than or equal to the
degree of belief (belief of existence of a specific event) of the other one, then the de-
grees of belief/disbelief are determined using (3) and (4). So here the degree of uncer-
tainty is equal to zero.
In Figure 4 the combined degree of belief (belief of existence of a specific event)
is demonstrated as a function of the degree of belief of both negative statements
m( A1 ) , m( B1 ) . As both m( A1 ) , m( B1 ) are equal to zero means so that the negative
statements are fully reliable and the evidence against this negative statement is equal
to zero. In other words the degree of belief that a specific event exists - m( A1 ) or
m( B1 ) -, is zero. Therefore the combined degree of belief is equal to zero at that point.
Relating to the decrease of the evidence of the negative statement, the combined de-
gree of belief starts to increase slowly. Once the degree of belief of both statements is
equal to 50%, then the combined degree of belief is equal to 25%. In contrary to that,
both positive statements at that time points lead to 75% degree of belief (Figure2).
Dissimilarity of classifiers statements
Making a decision about the non-/existence of a specific event is not a big chal-
lenge, if the combined classifiers statements both either positive or negative. The real
challenge is to make correct decision about the system states if the implemented clas-
sifiers lead to different statements about system state. This challenge is also considered
by the developed combination approach.
131
The degrees of belief/disbelief of the existence of a specific event could be calcu-
lated as in (1) and (2) if the degree of belief of one classifier is greater than the degree
of disbelief of the second one, so the degree of uncertainty is zero. In Figure 5 the
combined degree of belief (belief of existence of a specific event) is demonstrated as a
function of the degree of belief of both positive/negative statements m( A1 ) , m( B1 ) .
If degree of belief of one statement is equal to the degree of disbelief of the other
one, then the final decision is calculated as in (3), (2), and (5).
m( Z 3 ) = m( A2 )m( B1 ) + m( A1 )m( B2 ) (5)
It could be seen in (5) that the degree of uncertainty in the final decision, will be
not zero in this case. It is logically to have a degree of uncertainty, because one of the
combined statements negates the other, cconcurrently the probability of the correct-
ness of these statements is the same. Therefore the degree of belief of the existence of
a specific event is equal to the degree of disbelief of the existence of this event.
Implementation and results
The developed method delivers plausible results for combining two classifiers. All
combination possibilities are shown in Figure 2-4 and the combined degree of belief is
demonstrated as a function of degree of belief of both statements. The evidence of the
existence of a specific event is increased relating to the increase of the evidence of the
positive statements as well as to the decrease of the evidence of the negative state-
ments. Results show that the evidence of classifier statements (either positive or nega-
tive) should be at least 50% in order to make a logical decision about system states
(Figure 2 and Figure 4).
This method could be used to combine two classifiers, which is the actual limit of
this concept. This problem is appears due to the so called max-operator concept.
NEURAL NETWORK BASED MULTI-CLASSIFIER COMBINATION
Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are physical cellular systems which can ac-
quire, store, and utilize experiential knowledge. Each processing unit is characterized
by an activity level, an output values, a set of input connections, bias values, and a set
of output collections [2]. They are widely used in different domains like classification
processes, regression analysis, data processing, and decision fusion etc..
Combination approach
The previous approach is not appropriate to combine three classifiers. Therefore a
new approach is realized to combine more than two classifiers. It is based on the com-
bination of the degrees of belief/disbelief using two hidden layer neural network.
The implemented method will be illustrated by the combination of three classifiers
(Figure 6). The first layer includes the degrees of belief/disbelief of the different clas-
sifiers statements. The combination leads to eight combination possibilities. These
combinations possibilities are realized as activation functions { f1 , f 2 ,..., f8 } of the sec-
ond layer. The activation functions are described in the equations (8) - (15).
f1 = m( A1 )m( B1 )m(C1 ) (8), f 2 = m( A2 )m( B2 )m(C2 ) (9)
132
f 3 = m( A1 )m( B1 )m(C2 ) (10), f 4 = m( A2 )m( B2 )m(C1 ) (11)
f 5 = m( A1 )m( B2 )m(C1 ) (12), f 6 = m( A2 )m( B1 )m(C2 ) (13)
f 7 = m( A2 )m( B1 )m(C1 ) (14), f8 = m( A1 )m( B2 )m(C2 ) (15)

In order to demonstrate the implemented approach, the following numerical example
is used. Within this example three classifiers are combined using the introduced
method. The evidences of the classifiers statements are given in table I. Weighting
factors are considered to be one. Combination results are shown in table II. The results
Figure 6: The ANN for the developed approach. Pos denotes positive statement and Neg denotes nega-
tive statement.
Table I: Assumed evidence of Table II: Final decision

the classifier statements Case A B C m( Z1 ) m( Z 2 )
Classifier Positive Negative
1 Positive Positive Positive 90.2 9.8
A 80% 90%
2 Positive Positive Negative 75.9 24.1
B 90% 95%
3 Positive Negative Positive 57.9 42.1
C 70% 85%
4 Positive Negative Negative 15.55 84.45
5 Negative Negative Negative 2.0 98
6 Negative Negative Positive 10.3 89.7
7 Negative Positive Positive 66.4 33.6
8 Negative Positive Negative 21.3 78.7
133
show that the implemented method leads to plausible decisions for the different tested
states without any kind of training. Depending on the application, a training process is
necessary to find the appropriate weighting factors w for the adaptation layer, as well
as the acceptable bias value of the network such that the computed output is closed to
the actual system states as much as possible.
CONCLUSION
Two methods for multi-classifier fusion are presented. An appropriate combina-

tion is developed in order to combine the decision values of several classifiers to make
a reliable decision about the system states. The implemented methods will be realized
for the multi-classifiers based monitoring and supervising systems.
The First method is based on reliability analysis and DST for fault tree analysis.
This approach is more appropriate for combining two classifiers. Therefore a second
approach is introduced to solve this problem. This new approach based as well on reli-
ability analysis and on the ANNs. The realized ANN includes two hidden layers. Sec-
ond layer includes the activation functions. First layer (adaptation layer) includes the
relating degrees of belief/disbelief of the combined classifiers. The realized connec-
tions as well as the implemented activation functions lead to plausible results without
any kind of training.
As previously mentioned, the developed approach investigates the evidence of the
classifiers statements. The evidence of the considered classifiers statements are varied
depending on the companion conditions to the specific events. So it is a matter of indi-
rect decision functions. The SVMs or the standard known ANNs can not deal with this
kind of decision functions. Here the importance of the developed activation function
emphasized.
The second approach is just presented briefly in order demonstrate the developed
idea. Of course the method will be developed to be able to combine any number of
classifiers. It will be realized for real application. The training process will be per-
formed to adjust weighting factors of the adaptation layer as well as the bias value of
the ANN such that the computed output is closed to the actual system states.
REFERENCES
1. Cheng, Y.: Uncertainities in fault tree analysis. Tamkang Journal of Science and Engineering,
Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 23-29.
2. Fullér, R.: Introduction to neuro‐fuzzy systems. Physica‐Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany,
2000.
3. Guth, M.: A Probabilistic Foundation for Vagueness and Imprecision in Fault-Tree Analysis.
IEEE Transactions on Reliability 40 (5), 563-571, December 1991.
4. Lam, L.; Suen C.: Multiple classifier combination methodologies for different output Levels. Lec-
ture notes in computer science (1857), January 2000, pp. 52 -66.
5. Perols, J.; Chari, K.: Information market based decision fusion. Twenty-Seventh International Con-
ference on Information Systems, Milwaukee, 2006.
6. Rakowsky, U.: Fundamentals of the Dempster‐Shafer theory and its applications to system
safety and reliability modelling ‐ RTA # 3‐4, Special Issue, December 2007.
7. Shafer G.: A mathematical theory of evidence, Princeton University Press, 1976.
134
Validation of a Hybrid Automated Modal
Identification Algorithm for Structural
Health Monitoring Applications
C. RAINIERI and G. FABBROCINO
ABSTRACT
In recent years a growing interest in systems and techniques for fast damage
detection based on vibration analysis has raised. Modal-based damage detection
algorithms are well-known techniques for structural health assessment. The
development of several automated output-only modal identification procedures in the
last few years has led to a renewed interest in such techniques. However, robustness of
the automated modal identification algorithms towards slightly non-stationary
excitation, computational efforts and reliability of modal parameter and, in particular,
damping estimates still represent not definitely solved issues.
In this paper, starting from the lessons learned about the performance of popular
operational modal analysis techniques, an hybrid algorithm for automated output-only
modal parameter estimation for structural health monitoring purposes is proposed. It
has been obtained from different modal identification algorithms through a
hybridization process and, as such, some issues concerning the interpretation of
stabilization diagrams are overcome. The main advantages of the novel technique are
represented by the possibility to control the computational time and to obtain also
reliable and very accurate damping estimates.
Performance of the proposed procedure are assessed through its application to
simulated and real measurements. Results confirm the robustness and accuracy of the
algorithm, which can be certainly employed to monitor the modal parameters of large
civil structures such as bridges and tall buildings.
INTRODUCTION
Modal-based damage detection techniques have been extensively applied to

structural health assessment [1], but they also suffer limitations, in terms of damage
localization and, above all, quantification, as well as drawbacks (sensitivity to
measurement quality, environmental and operational factors and so on) [2].
_____________
Carlo Rainieri, Structural and Geotechnical Dynamics Lab, University of Molise, Via Duca degli
Abruzzi, 86039 Termoli – Italy.
Giovanni Fabbrocino, S tructural a nd Ge otechnical D ynamics Lab , Univer sity of Molise, Via
Duca degli Abruzzi, 86039 Termoli – Italy.
135
Nevertheless, the recent efforts in the development of automated output-only
modal identification and tracking procedures for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM)
applications are raising again the interest towards these techniques.
Several algorithms and applications of automated identification and tracking of
modal parameters based on Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) methods [3, 4, 5, 6]
are reported in the literature. An extensive review about automated modal parameter
identification can be found elsewhere [6].
A careful analysis of the technical literature on automated operational modal
analysis points out the main drawbacks of the available methods and algorithms. They
can be summarized as follows:
• Most of the methods adopt a threshold for peak or physical pole detection;
as a consequence, a preliminary calibration phase at each new application is
needed for its proper definition. In addition, the identified peaks or poles
could not correspond to structural modes and performance of peak detection
algorithms can also get worse in presence of measurement noise;
• Identification of structural modes is based on a number of parameters so that
a time consuming calibration process for each monitored structure is
required; moreover, a static identification of thresholds and parameters may
be unsuitable to track the natural changes in modal properties of structures
due to damage or environmental effects;
• Most of the algorithms are somehow sensitive to noise, and higher modes or
even poorly excited modes are not always identified, or they exhibit
problems of false or missed identification;
• The role of sensor layout on the success rate and the effect of spurious
harmonics superimposed to the stochastic response are rarely discussed.
In the present paper, a strategy for fully automated output-only modal
identification, based on the combination of different OMA techniques, is described.
The idea behind this approach is the simplification of the analysis and interpretation of
the stabilization diagram and, therefore, the separation of physical from spurious poles
by taking advantage of the Blind Source Separation (BSS) [7] operated according to
the Second Order Blind Identification (SOBI) [8, 9] procedure.
The main objective of the novel strategy is a robust and accurate identification of
the modal parameters and, in particular, modal damping ratios in operational
conditions.
A high success rate in modal identification is expected and its key feature is the
absence of any analysis parameters to be tuned at each new monitoring application.
Specific attention has been devoted to the control of the response time and
computational efforts, also through a reduction of the length of the analyzed records,
without affecting the quality of the estimates. This is relevant, in particular, for SHM
applications in seismically prone areas.
The performance of the proposed modal identification strategy is assessed through
its application to simulated data and a real case study. Robustness for different sets of
the analysis parameters is investigated, and a discussion of the results is reported in
order to identify advantages and drawbacks of the procedure in view of its application
in the context of vibration-based SHM.
136
THE AUTOMATED MODAL IDENTIFICATION STRATEGY: ARES
The proposed algorithm, called ARES (Automated modal paRameter Extraction

System), is based on the combination of different phases selected from well-
established output-only modal identification procedures and clustering approaches to
develop a new fully automated OMA method. The combined OMA methods are the
Second Order Blind Identification [8, 9], the Stochastic Subspace Identification (SSI)
[10, 11] and the Frequency Domain Decomposition (FDD) [12]. The algorithm takes
advantage of the separation of modal contributions and noise operated by the Joint
Approximate Diagonalization (JAD) [13] which is the basis of SOBI. The sources,
including both modal and noise sources, are then passed, one-by-one, to the SSI-based
step for the estimation of natural frequencies and damping ratios and identification of
noise sources. This step of the algorithm takes advantage also of advanced clustering
techniques [14] to identify the physical poles. The source separation at the first step
makes the discrimination of physical and noise modes easier and more reliable. In fact,
one main modal contribution is usually present in each source, eventually in
combination with noise or minor contributions from other modes. The dynamic
parameters of the identified physical modes are obtained via a hierarchical clustering
and looking for the cluster with the largest number of elements.
Mode shape estimates are finally obtained, at the present stage of implementation,
from Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) of the output Power Spectral Density
(PSD) matrix at the previously estimated frequency of the mode [12]. The flowchart of
the proposed algorithm is shown in Figure 1.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ANALYSIS PARAMETERS
ARES requires, in principle, the setting of a number of parameters in order to

extract the modal properties from the data. The effect of such parameters has been
previously analyzed in the context of the respective OMA algorithm, namely SSI and
SOBI. In particular, the application of SSI by varying the number of block rows i [10]
for a given maximum model order has pointed out that it is possible to find an optimal
value for i able to minimize the variance of the modal parameters among different
model orders, thus providing the clearest stabilization diagram [15]. This makes easier
the grouping of physical poles into clusters. In the case of ARES, an additional
advantage comes from the preliminary separation of the modal contributions operated
by SOBI. For each source, therefore, it is possible to apply the SSI and obtain accurate
natural frequency and damping estimates by sensitivity analyses of the results with
respect to the number of block rows, according to the procedure outlined in [15].
About the influence of the number p of time-shifted covariance matrices to be jointly
diagonalized [8] and the threshold t adopted to stop the JAD [13], sensitivity analyses
[16] have shown that the threshold t has negligible effects on the accuracy of modal
parameter estimates but it seriously affects the JAD computational time, while the
parameter p has a different influence on the modal parameter estimates. Since mode
shapes estimates are directly obtained from the mixing matrix in SOBI [8], it has been
shown that the accuracy of natural frequency estimates improves when p increases,
while the accuracy of mode shape estimates decreases when p increases. This
circumstance leads to recognize that an optimal value for p can be defined. In the
137
context of ARES, however, the mode shapes are not recovered from the mixing
matrix, so that there is no need to look for such an optimal value, but the definition of
the minimum value of p able to ensure accurate natural frequency and damping ratio
estimates is sufficient.
The effect of the analysis parameters on the modal property estimates is analyzed
with reference to a simulated dataset and a real ambient vibration response record. The
simulated dataset is generated by applying a Gaussian white noise to the Finite
Element (FE) model of a two-story 3D building (Figure 2a) and generating the
corresponding response at two opposite corners of the floors. More details about the
model can be found elsewhere [17]. The simulated dataset, therefore, consists of eight
measurement channels; the total record length is 3600 sec and the sampling frequency
is 100 Hz. Before processing, the dataset has been decimated up to a final sampling
frequency of 20 Hz. The second case study is, instead, based on real measurements
collected on a full scale civil structure characterized by close and coupled modes
(Figure 2b), the School of Engineering Main Building in Naples, Southern Italy [18].
The total record length is 1200 sec, sampled at 100 Hz. The record has been decimated
before processing, obtaining a final sampling frequency of 10 Hz. The structural
response of the structure to ambient vibrations has been measured through twelve
force balance accelerometers installed at two opposite corners of the building at the
third and the seventh floor and on the roof. The data acquisition hardware was
characterized by a 24 bit ADC. ARES performance at fundamental and higher modes
and in discriminating physical and noise modes are discussed on the basis of the
results obtained from these two case studies.
START
DATA LOADING
JAD (SOBI)
SSI OF THE SOURCES
CLUSTERING
(physical and noise modes)
MODE SHAPES
TRACKING/REPORT
No
FINISH
Yes
END
Figure 1. Flowchart of ARES.
138
(a) (b)
Figure 2. Two-story 3D FE model (a), the School of Engineering Main Building (b).
In the first case study, the three fundamental modes of the structure are in the
range 0-10 Hz, and they are characterized by a total participating mass ratio higher
than 0.90. The remaining three higher modes are outside this frequency range and they
are not taken into account in the present application. The simulated response of the
structure has been processed by considering different values for p (100, 200, 400, 500
and 1000) and carrying out a sensitivity analysis with respect to the number of block
rows i (ranging from 20 to 120). The threshold t has been set equal to 1E-8. It has been
shown elsewhere [19] that the threshold t has an influence only on the computational
time, while the accuracy of the estimates does not change even if it is set much higher
(up to 1E-4). It is also proposed the combined use of hierarchical clustering and
subtractive clustering [14, 20] to ensure robustness of the results, and avoid problems
of false or missed identification. However, more comprehensive evaluations
demonstrate that the radius of the cluster, which has to be set when subtractive
clustering is applied, can be sensitive to the application. Use of subtractive clustering
to analyze both simulated and measured data for a same value of the radius shows that
a unique value of this parameter cannot be set. In order to obtain consistent values
with hierarchical clustering it should be calibrated at each application. Even if similar
approaches have been already adopted in a number of automated OMA algorithms [6],
the target of the present research is different, aiming at the definition of a procedure
whose analysis parameters are independent from the application. As a consequence, an
alternative strategy has been developed in order to minimize the problems of false or
missed identification, thus ensuring reliability and robustness to the automated modal
identification procedure. In particular, it has been observed that, in the case of a
structural mode, the estimates of the natural frequency of a certain mode for different
values of the number of block rows i are very close each other, while a significant
scatter is obtained in the case of noise sources. Thus, structural modes have been
identified by looking at the differences between the maximum, average and minimum
values of the natural frequency estimated for different values of i and selecting the
sources characterized by values of such differences lower than a given threshold, say
5%, of the average value of the natural frequency obtained from the sensitivity
analysis with respect to the number of block rows. In the case of simulated data, this
approach has led to a clear discrimination between the structural modes and the noise
sources.
139
TABLE I. 3D FE MODEL: MODAL IDENTIFICATION RESULTS
Mode [f, ξ] [fav, ξav] [fav, ξav] [fav, ξav] [fav, ξav] [fav, ξav]
(Hz, %) (Hz, %) (Hz, %) (Hz, %) (Hz, %) (Hz, %)
FEM p=100 p=200 p=400 p=500 p=1000
I [3.58, 1] [3.58, 0.93] [3.58, 0.93] [3.58, 0.93] [3.58, 0.93] [3.58, 0.93]
II [4.01, 1] [4.01, 1.03] [4.01, 1.03] [4.01, 1.03] [4.01, 1.03] [4.01, 1.03]
III [5.75, 1] [5.75, 0.96] [5.75, 0.94] [5.75, 0.94] [5.75, 0.94] [5.75, 0.94]
(a) (b)
(c)
Figure 3. The School of Engineering Main Building: examples of well separated source (a), noise
source (b), not well separated source (c).
TABLE II. THE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING: MODAL IDENTIFICATION RESULTS

ARES
[f, ξ] LEONIDA
Source D escription
(Hz, %) f (Hz)
p=500
I Well separated [1.30, 0.65] 1.30
II Well separated [0.98, 1.02] 0.98
III Well separated [0.92, 1.26] 0.92
IV Not Well separated (mode ≈3.4 Hz + noise) [3.37, 1.89] 3.40
V Not Well separated (modes at ≈2.1 Hz and ≈4.2 Hz) MISSED 2.07
VI Noise Noise -
VII Not Well separated (mode ≈2.6 Hz + noise) MISSED 2.59
VIII Noise Noise -
IX Well separated [3.92, 2.19] MISSED
X Well separated [4.21, 1.62] 4.25
XI Noise Noise -
XII Noise Noise -
The modal identification results provided by ARES are summarized in Table 1

and compared with the reference values provided by the FE model. Symbols fav and
ξav denote the average values of natural frequency and damping ratio in the cluster
characterized by the minimum variance among those obtained for different choices of
the number of block rows. A very good agreement with the reference values provided
by the FE model has been obtained. The remaining 5 sources have been properly
identified as noise sources. As observed also in [19], the obtained results point out that
140
p has negligible influence on the accuracy of estimates (no influence if it is set high
enough) and that the optimal value of the number of block rows is usually the same for
different values of p.
The proposed approach to the discrimination of structural and noise modes has
been then applied to a dataset provided by the SHM system of the School of
Engineering Main Building in Naples [18]. In particular, the main objective of this
analysis is the assessment of the performance of ARES even at higher modes
(including poorly excited modes) in the case of real measurements. In this case ARES
was theoretically able to identify up to 12 modes, since the dataset consists of 12
measurement channels. However, the visual inspection of the sources (Figure 3)
shows that some sources are clearly related to structural modes, some others are
instead noise sources. The sources related to the structural modes are sometimes in
combination with noise or minor contributions from other modes.
The obtained modal identification results, together with a description of the
sources, are reported in Table 2 in comparison with those provided by another
automated modal identification algorithm, LEONIDA [6]. The values of natural
frequency and damping ratio provided by ARES are again obtained averaging the
estimated grouped in the cluster characterized by the minimum variance among those
obtained for different choices of the number of block rows. Since the results are not
very sensitive to the value of p, it has been set equal to 500, that is also the optimal
value [16] for a traditional (not automated) modal identification via SOBI.
The obtained results point out good performance of ARES even at higher modes.
It has been able to properly identify the content of 10 sources over a total number of
12, discriminating between physical modes and noise sources. The overall
performance of ARES is very similar to that of LEONIDA. The former, in particular,
misses the identification of the two modes at 2.07 Hz and 2.59 Hz but is able to
identify the mode at 3.92 Hz which is, instead, missed by LEONIDA.
A more detailed analysis of the results of ARES in the case of the two missing
modes, however, points out that it is due to the presence of an outlier in the sequence
of natural frequency estimates for different values of i. If this outlier is removed,
ARES is able to properly identify also these modes. It could be a result of the poor
excitation of the modes and of the poor preliminary source separation. Thus, an
assessment of the success rate of the proposed algorithm in the context of continuous
SHM applications is recommended. The results of the assessment could suggest
further refinement of the algorithm, for instance in the rules adopted to discriminate
structural and noise modes.
CONCLUSIONS
A recently developed automated output-only modal identification procedure for

SHM applications has been described. It is based on the combination of well-
established OMA techniques and clustering strategies for the discrimination between
structural and noise modes and the selection of the dynamic properties of physical
modes. Its performance has been assessed against both simulated and real
measurements, obtaining promising results even at higher modes. However, further
refinements and an assessment of its success rate in the context of continuous SHM
applications are recommended.
141
REFERENCES
1. Doebling, S.W., Farrar, C.R., Prime, M.B. and Shevitz, D.W. 1996. “Damage Identification and
Health Monitoring of Structural and Mechanical Systems from Changes in their Vibration
Characteristics: A Literature Review”, Technical Report LA-13070-MS, UC-900, Los Alamos
National Laboratory, New Mexico 87545, USA.
2. Peeters, B. and De Roeck, G. 2001. “One-year monitoring of the Z24-Bridge: environmental effects
versus damage events”, Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, 30: 149-171.
3. Brincker, R., Andersen, P. and Jacobsen, N.J. 2007. “Automated Frequency Domain
Decomposition for Operational Modal Analysis”, in The 25th SEM International Modal Analysis
Conference, Orlando, FL, USA.
4. Deraemaeker, A., Reynders, E., De Roeck, G. and Kullaa, J. 2008. “Vibration-based structural
health monitoring using output-only measurements under changing environment”, Mechanical
Systems and Signal Processing, 22: 34-56.
5. Magalhães, F., Cunha, A. and Caetano, E. 2009. “Online automatic identification of the modal
parameters of a long span arch bridge”, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 23: 316-329.
6. Rainieri, C. and Fabbrocino, G. 2010. “Automated output-only dynamic identification of civil
engineering structures”, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 24: 678-695.
7. Ans, B., Hérault, J. and Jutten, C. 1985. “Adaptive neural architectures: detection of primitives”,
COGNITIVA ’85: 593-597.
8. Poncelet, F., Kerschen, G., Golinval, J.C. and Verhelst, D. 2007. “Output-only modal analysis using
blind source separation techniques”, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 21: 2335-2358.
9. Belouchrani, A., Abed-Meraim, K., Cardoso, J.F. and Moulines, E. 1997. “A blind source
separation technique using second-order statistics”, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 45:
434-444.
10. Van Overschee, P. and De Moor, B. 1996. Subspace identification for linear systems: Theory,
implementation, applications. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, the Netherlands.
11. Peeters, B. 2000. System Identification and Damage Detection in Civil Engineering, Ph.D.
Dissertation. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
12. Brincker, R., Zhang, L. and Andersen, P. 2000. “Modal identification from ambient responses using
frequency domain decomposition”, in The 18th SEM International Modal Analysis Conference, San
Antonio, TX, USA.
13. Cardoso, J.F. and Souloumiac, A. 1996. “Jacobi angles for simultaneous diagonalization”, SIAM
Journal of Matrix Analysis and Applications, 17: 161-164.
14. Tan, P.-N., Steinbach, M. and Kumar, V. 2006. Introduction to data mining, Pearson Addison-
Wesley, Reading, MA, USA.
15. Rainieri, C., Fabbrocino, G. and Cosenza, E. 2010. “On damping experimental estimation”, in The
Tenth International Conference on Computational Structures Technology, Valencia, Spain.
16. Rainieri, C. and Fabbrocino, G. 2011. “Performance assessment of Second Order Blind
Identification for output-only modal analysis and vibration-based Structural Health Monitoring”,
submitted for publication.
17. Rainieri, C., Fabbrocino, G. and Cosenza, E. 2011. “Near real-time tracking of dynamic properties
for standalone structural health monitoring systems”, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing
(accepted for publication).
18. Rainieri, C., Fabbrocino, G. and Cosenza, E. 2010. “Integrated seismic early warning and structural
health monitoring of critical civil infrastructures in seismically prone areas”, Structural Health
Monitoring – An International Journal, doi:10.1177/1475921710373296.
19. Rainieri, C. and Fabbrocino, G. 2011. “A hybrid automated modal identification algorithm for
Structural Health Monitoring applications”, in The Fourth International Operational Modal
Analysis Conference, Istanbul, Turkey.
20. Chiu, S. 1994. “Fuzzy Model Identification Based on Cluster Estimation”, Journal of Intelligent &
Fuzzy Systems, 2: 267-278.
142
Power Losses in PZT Disk Actuators’
Adhesive
R. DUGNANI
ABSTRACT
Piezoelectric patches are used in structural health monitoring (SHM) to generate

diagnostic acoustic waves traveling in a structure and to gather the electro-mechanical
impedance (EMI) signatures of structures. Piezoelectric patches are generally bonded
to structures by means of adhesive layers. The adhesive layers could affect both the
amplitude of the generated acoustic waves and the EMI signature of the structure.
This article describes an analytical model to account for the power losses incurred by
the adhesive layer used to bond a circular actuator to a structure at resonance.
Validation of the model was carried out by actuating various sensors mounted with
epoxy adhesive thickness ranging from 20 to 640 µm on aluminum plates.
Experimental results confirmed that the thickness and the tangent loss modulus of the
adhesive layer might play a significant role in the energy dissipated. In addition, this
article explains how to interpret low-frequency EMI signature to assess the quality of a
bond and estimate the thickness of the adhesive layer.
WORK MOTIVATION
The work of Dugnani [1, 2], Qing et al. [2], and Park et al. [3] showed both from a
numerical and an experimental standpoint that the adhesive layer between a PZT patch
and the structure could have a significant impact both on the amplitude of the acoustic
wave propagating into the host structure and on the structure’s EMI signature.
Recently, the effect of the adhesive layers has also been studied by Sungwon and
Chang [4]. In their work an extensive numerical parametric study confirmed that the
adhesive layer has in some cases a strong influence on the magnitude of the signal
generated and transmitted into the structure.
This work addresses the need for understanding and measuring the power loss
through adhesive layers as a function of their geometrical features and mechanical
properties. The paper also outlines a method to monitor the mechanical properties’
degradation in the adhesive layer over time. Finally, the described technique could a
be used to estimate the uniformity of the adhesive layer across various sensors at the
manufacturing stage.
Roberto Du gnani, Exp onent Fail ure A nalysis Associates, 1 49 Co mmonwealth Dr. , Menlo
Park, CA. rdugnani@stanfordalumni.org
143
POWER TRANSMISSION MODEL
One of the goals of SHM patch actuators is to maximize the acoustic signal
transmitted into the monitored structure. For signal maximization, the patch’s size and
geometry needs to be carefully selected. In order to achieve high transmission power,
the mechanical impedance of the resonating sensor needs to be matched to the one of
the underlying structure. The mechanical equivalent circuit for the sensor/structure
can be represented as in Figure 1, where the mechanical impedance of the PZT patch
is denoted by ZPZT, the mechanical impedance of the structure is denoted as Zstr, and
the impedance of the adhesive layer as Zbond.
Figure 1. Mechanical equivalent circuit for PZT patch on a structure including the adhesive layer.
~
The equivalent structure impedance Z str is obtained combining the impedance of the
structure and the one of the adhesive layer, namely:
Z (ω ) ⋅Z bond (ω )
Z str (ω ) = str
~ (1)
Z bond (ω ) + Z str (ω )
The power dissipated by the structure, Pstructure, including the effect of the adhesive can
be calculated based on the equivalent circuit power loss equation:
2
1  ~ 2
⋅ Rstr = i RStr =   R =1
~ 1 2~ V V ~
Pstructure = i 2
RStr (2)
RMS
2 
2 Z PZT + Z~Str

 Str 2
 ( ~ 2
) ( ~
RPZT + RStr + X PZT + X Str )
2
Xi and Ri denote respectively the reactance and resistance portion of the impedance Zi.
Equation 2 shows that the power transmitted into the structure is maximized when the
sensor’s impedance, ZPZT equals to the complex conjugate of the equivalent structural
~
impedance, Z str (i.e., ‘impedance matching’).
The equivalent circuit analogy described above allows for the calculation of the
power loss from the adhesive layer. For the case analyzed, the power loss is computed
at frequencies corresponding to any of the structure’s resonance modes. For a one-
degree of freedom (1-DOF) system, the impedance of the structure near resonance can
be approximated as:
k j  ω  
2
ω 
Z str =   ⋅ j + 2ζ j   − j (3)
 
ω  ω nj 
  ωn  

kj, ωnj, and ζj are the modal stiffness, natural frequency, and damping coefficient
respectively. At resonance, equation 3 can be simplified as Z str ≈ c j , where cj is the
modal material viscous damping of the structure defined as cj=2ζjωnm. Since the
voltage, V2, across Zstr and Zbond is the same, it follows that the power dissipated by the
adhesive as the structure resonates can be approximated as:
144
V22
Im(Z bond ) −1
Pbond 2
Z bond  Z bond  c ⋅ tan δ B (4)
% Pbond = = 2 =  + 1 ≈
Pstructure + Pbond 2
c ⋅ tan δ B
c + 22 Im(Z bond )  
V2 V Z bond
2
c Z bond
Equation 4 shows that for structures resonating with low structural damping (i.e., c →
0), a negligible amount of power is lost through the adhesive layer. Conversely, for a
very soft adhesive (i.e., Zbond → 0), most of the power is dissipated by the adhesive
layer. For the case where the adhesive impedance is comparable to the structure’s the
power loss is mainly driven by the adhesive’s tangent loss, tanδB.
ADHESIVE SHEAR IMPEDANCE
The electro-mechanical impedance of a disk-shaped piezoelectric patch attached to

a host structure was modeled by Girgiutiu [6] and extended by Dugnani [2] to include
the effects of adhesive layers. The impedance of the adhesive layer was approximated
by solving the radial vibration of a piezoelectric disk with point-wise dynamic
structural stiffness at the boundaries. It can be shown that the equilibrium equation for
the adhesive layer of uniform thickness, hB, reduces to:
∂σ rr σ rr − σ θθ ∂τ rz
+ + =0
∂r r ∂z (5)
where σrr and σθθ the radial and the hoop stresses, and τrz the shear stress in the
adhesive. A full derivation of the model can be found in Dugnani [2]. The adhesive’s
mechanical impedance due to the shear deformation can be described by:
 β ⋅ ra ⋅ J1 (β ⋅ ra )2 − 2 J 0 (β ⋅ ra )J1 (β ⋅ ra ) + β ⋅ ra ⋅ J 0 (β ⋅ ra )2 
Z bond −shear (ω ) =
GB
  (6)
2 j ⋅ ω ⋅ hB  β ⋅ J1 (β ⋅ ra )2 
where ra is the sensor’s radius, GB the complex shear modulus, and β≡ω/ca with ca
indicating the speed of sound in the PZT material. For frequencies below the patch’s
first resonant mode, equation 6 is simplified to the form:
GB  ra  − j ⋅ GB  ra 
Z bond −shear (ω ) = bond ≈
k
 =   (7)
j ⋅ ω 2 j ⋅ ω  2hB  2 ⋅ ω  2hB 
In addition, the impedance of the adhesive layer as it stretches in-plane (ignoring its
mass inertia), can be approximated as:
k 1 hB EB 1 2hB GB (1 + ν B )
Z bond − planar = bond − planar = = (8)
j ⋅ω j ⋅ ω ra 1 −ν B j ⋅ ω ra (1 −ν B )
The in-plane and shear impedance in equation 7 and 8 are combined into one equation:
 2 −1 
G B  ra   
  1+ 1+
(1 − ν B )  ra   
 
Z bond = (9)
4 j ⋅ ω  2hB    4(1 + ν B )  2hB   
   
For large aspect ratios between the sensor’s radius and the adhesive’s thickness, ra/hB,
the effect of the in-plane resistance can be neglected. If we were to assume the
adhesive’s Poisson’s ratio equal to νB=0.49, for expect ratio hB/ra>15 the difference
between equation 9 and 7 is less than 5%.
145
LOW-FREQUENCY ENERGY LOSS IN THE ADHESIVE
Giurgiutiu [6] derived the equation describing the electromechanical admittance of

a disk patch mounted on a structure:

Y (ω ) = jω ⋅ C0 (1 − k P2 )1 + P 2
k2 (1 +ν a )J1 (ϕ A ) 
 (10)
 1 − k P ϕ A ⋅ J 0 (ϕ A ) − (1 −ν a )J1 (ϕ A ) + χ (ω ) ⋅ (1 + ν a )J1 (ϕ A ) 
where ϕa=ω⋅ra/ca is the normalized frequency, the term χ (ω ) = k str (ω ) k PZT describes
the stiffness ratio between the structure and the PZT disk, the stiffness of the PZT disk
[ ]
is defined as k PZT = t a ra ⋅ s11E (1 − ν a ) , C0 is the complex capacitance of the PZT
patch, and kp the planar coupling factor. At frequencies below the sensor’s first
resonant mode, equation 10 can be simplified by using the asymptotic values of the
Bessel functions (i.e, J0(ϕa) ≈ 1, J1(ϕa) ≈ ϕa/2). Finally, the value of the equivalent
~ ~
structural stiffness, k str = Z str j ⋅ ω , should be used in lieu of the structural stiffness to
account for the effects of the adhesive layer:
  k 
( )
Y (ω ) = jω ⋅ C0  1 − k P2 + k P2  ~ PZT  (11)
  k str + k PZT 
Equation 1 can be simplified assuming that as the structure resonates the
imaginary part of the structure’s mechanical impedance vanishes, i.e., Zstr = j·Xstr + Rstr
= c. Expressing the bondline’s mechanical impedance using its reactance and
resistance components, i.e., Zbond= j·XB + RB, equation 1 can be written as:
~
Z str =
[ ]
c X B2 + RB2 + c ⋅ RB + c 2 X B ⋅ j
(12)
(
X B2 + RB + c
2
)
Since for most adhesives, XB>>RB, the equation for the structural stiffness can be
simplified to the form:
~ c 2ω
k str ≈ cω ⋅ j + (13)
Z bond
Equation 13 suggests that the ratio between the real part and the imaginary part of the
~
equivalent structural stiffness k str at resonance is approximately equal to the ratio
between the modal structure’s impedance, c, and the adhesive’s impedance times the
tangent loss of the adhesive:
~
~ ≈ 
( )
Re k str  Z bond 
−1
− tan δ B  ≈
c
Im k str  c( )  Z bond
(14)
Combining the results of equation 14 with equation 4, an equation describing the

percentage of energy loss by the adhesive layer as the structure resonates is derived:
% Pbond ≈
c
≈
~
Re k str ( )
~ tan δ B
Z bond ⋅ tan δ B Im k str ( ) (15)
The dynamic portion of the electromechanical admittance of the system, Yd , at low

frequencies can be written as:
 k 
( ) k
Y (ω ) − C0 1 − k P2 ≡ Yd (ω ) = jω ⋅ C0 ⋅ k P2  ~ PZT  ≈ jω ⋅ C0 ⋅ k P2 ~PZT (16)
 k str + k PZT  k str
Also if we assume, kPZT ≈ | kPZT |, it follows:
146
tan ∠Yd ≈
~
Im k str ( )
~
Re k str ( ) (17)
By comparing the results from equations 15 and 17 a method to approximate the

percentage power loss through in the adhesive by means of the admittance of the
electro-mechanical system is finally obtained:
~
( )
Re k str
~ tan δ B = 
 tan δ B   tan δ B 
% Pbond ≈ ≈
( )
Im k str

 tan (∠Yd (ω ) )  ∠Yd (ω ) 
(18)
Figure 2. PZT sensor attached to thin aluminum structure.
Figure 3. Sensor-adhesive system measured using optical Profilometry (ST400 Optical Profiler, by
Nanovea).
TEST SET-UP
Validation of the model described in the previous section was carried out by
exciting various square aluminum plates to resonance by means of a PZT patch
147
mounted on the surface while measuring the electro-mechanical impedance of the
system. The tested structures consisted of 76mm x 76mm, 1.04mm-thick 2024-T4
aluminum plates. APC 850 PZT sensors (APC International) were mounted at the
center of each plate using pure silver conductive epoxy (NG Chemical) with thickness
ranging from 20µm to about 640µm. The sensors were 6.4 mm in diameter and 0.76
mm in thickness. Figure 2 shows an example of a sensor mounted on an aluminum
plate. The plates were resonated on a soft foam pad to simulate free boundary
conditions. The system’s impedance was recorded using an impedance analyzer
(Agilent, HP 4294A). The thickness of the adhesive layer was accurately measured in
all samples using an optical Profilometry (ST400 Optical Profiler, Nanovea). An
example of a profilometry measurement is shown in figure 3.
RESULTS
The previous section described how the energy dissipated by the sensor/structure
system at low frequency correlates with the inverse of the angle of the dynamic
admittance (eq. 18). Figure 4 shows the dynamic impedance angle’s for 20 µm and a
580 µm-thick adhesive layers. The figure also shows a pictorial representation of the
expected modal shapes for the various peaks based on solutions from vibration of
plates. As expected, the peaks for the thicker adhesive layer are less prominent as a
result of the adhesive losses.
95
93 580 um
20 um
91
89
87
Angle(Yd)
85
[Deg.]
83
81
79
77
75
2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000 9,000 10,000 11,000 12,000 13,000
frequency [Hz]
Figure 4. Admittance’s angle as a function of frequency for both 580µm and 20µm-thick adhesive.
Figure 5 shows the computed power loss from the adhesive versus hB/ra for
frequencies corresponding to the same structural resonance modes depicted in Figure
4. In the calculations, a value of the adhesive’s tangent loss, tanδB=0.035 was used
based on low frequency measurements carried out on the epoxy material. Based on
the admittance measurements, it was concluded that lower frequency modes dissipate
more energy into the adhesive than higher frequency modes. The result is consistent
with the observation from the following section, indicating that the structural
impedance decreases at higher modes.
148
4.0%
f = 12.3 KHz
3.5%
f = 7.3 KHz
3.0% f = 5.5 KHz
Adhesive Power Loss [%]
2.5% f = 2.7 KHz
2.0%
1.5%
1.0%
0.5%
0.0%
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
hB/rA
Figure 5. Percentage power loss due to the adhesive vs. adhesive’s normalized thickness for various
structural resonance frequencies.
25.0
f = 12.3 KHz
f = 7.3 KHz
20.0
f = 5.5 KHz
[c*ω*Im(Yd)/Re(Yd)]-1
f = 2.7 KHz
15.0
GPa-1
10.0
1/|kBond|
5.0
0.0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
hB/rA
Figure 6. Experimental data and analytical trend for 1/|kBond| versus the normalized adhesive thickness.
Combining the results from equation 14 and 17 it can be shown that:

1 1
= (19)
k Bond ω ⋅ c ⋅ tan ∠Yd
Figure 6 validates the results from equation 19. In the plot dynamic impedance
measurements at various frequencies are compared with the expected trend 1/|kBond|.
A shear modulus GB=50MPa was used for the adhesive layer based on mechanical
testing on the conductive epoxy. Fitting constants were used to express the structural
149
damping c for the modes considered. The value for c was found to scale well with the
square of the resonant frequency, i.e, c = (1.73±0.34 MPa ∙kHz-2)∙f2. The significance
of this result is unknown.
Figure 6 is particularly important as it shows that the model described in equation
17 accurately describes the behavior of the system. In the future, the model could be
used to monitor the quality of a bond-line of piezoelectric sensors applied to some
structure.
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
Results from the literature clearly show that the adhesive layer used to bond the
PZT patch to the structure could affect the amplitude of the generated acoustic waves
and the EMI signature of structure. This article described an analytical model to
account for the losses incurred by a circular piezo-actuator attached to a structure by
means of an adhesive layer. Validation of the model was carried out by actuating
various sensors mounted on a thin aluminum plate with epoxy adhesive of thickness
ranging from 20 to 640 µm. Experimental results conducted on square aluminum
plates at frequencies corresponding to various structural resonant modes matched the
trend from the analytical solution. These results confirmed that the thickness of the
bond-line and the loss modulus of the adhesive layer play a role in the amount of
energy dissipated. In the future, the EMI signature corresponding to structural modes
could be used to assess the quality and thickness of the bond-line between the sensors
and the structure.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank professor Fu-Kuo Chang for his mentoring and
support throughout the years. Also we would like to acknowledge the help of Dr. Paul
Verghese and Dr. Raymond Woo of Exponent respectively for conducting the
Profilometry measurements on the samples and granting access to the impedance
analyzer.
REFERENCES
1. Dugnani, R. 2007. “A Modified Global-Local Analysis Model of a PZT Disk Transducer Bonded to
a Host Structure,” Proceedings, 6th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring,
Stanford University, California September 2007.
2. Dugnani, R., 2009. “Dynamic behavior of structure-mounted disk-shape piezoelectric sensors
including the adhesive layer”. J Intell Mat Sys Struct. vol. 20 no. 13 1553-1564.
3. Qing, XP; Chan, HL; Beard, S J; Ooi, TK.; Marotta, SA, 2006. “Effect of Adhesive on the
Performance of Piezoelectric Elements used to Monitor Structural Health”, International Journal of
Adhesion & Adhesives, 622-628.
4. Park, G; Farrar, CR; Lanza di Scalea, F; Coccia, S. 2006. “Performance Assessment and
Validation of Piezoelectric Active-Sensors in Structural Health Monitoring”, Smart Materials and
Structures, 14(6), 1673-1683.
5. Ha, S., and Chang, F-K, 2010, Adhesive Interface Layer Effects in PZT-induced Lamb Wave
Propagation, Smart Mater. Struct. 19
6. Giurgiutiu, V., Zagarai, AN., 2001. “Electro-Mechanical Impedance Method for Crack Detection in
Thin Plates”, Journal of Intelligent Materials Systems and Structures, 12.
7. Giurgiutiu, V. Zagrai, AN, Bao, JJ, 2002. “Piezoelectric Wafer Embedded Active Sensors for
Aging Aircraft Structural Health Monitoring”, Structural Health Monitoring, 1, No. 1, 41-61.
150
Sensitivity of the Excitelet Imaging Algorithm
on Material Properties for Isotropic
Structures
P.-C. OSTIGUY, P. MASSON, N. QUAEGEBEUR
and S. ELKOUN
ABSTRACT
Imaging techniques such as EUSR or Excitelet algorithms used in guided wave damage detection rely
on an accurate knowledge of group or phase velocities. The problem is that variability in material
properties directly affects the guided wave dispersion curves. Traditional approaches to mechanical
characterization are based on ASTM standards. However, most of these techniques require numerous
specimens to test and evaluate the properties of a structure within a few percents. The main goal of this
paper is to assess a new integrated characterization approach to identify the mechanical properties of an
isotropic structure (Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, density) onto which imaging is performed to
detect damage. The integrated characterization approach is based on a modified version of the Excitelet
algorithm, where mechanical properties, instead of geometrical features, are set as the variables to be
identified. This paper thus aims at evaluating the benefit of using the same array of transducers, and
similar signal processing tools, to first identify the mechanical properties of the structure using a
modified version of the Excitelet algorithm and then produce an image of this structure using the
standard Excitelet imaging algorithm. The experimental setup consists of an aluminum plate with a 2
mm notched hole and instrumented with a linear array of seven circular elements micro-machined from
bulk piezoceramic (PZT). Excitelet imaging is performed with the linear array and the characterization
uses this same array and an extra PZT transducer located in the near field of the array. In this paper, low
order Lamb modes are exploited for both characterization and imaging techniques. The results obtained
for the properties identified with the modified Excitelet algorithm are within 1% of properties from the
material supplier. Imaging results are then presented using Excitelet with both A0 and S0 modes at
dispersive frequencies for the localization the notch. This integrated characterization algorithm
combined with the Excitelet imaging technique is shown to improve the accuracy of the localization of
the damage for isotropic structures.
1. INTRODUCTION
Most guided wave damage detection algorithms are based on estimation of Time of Flight (ToF) which
requires knowledge of group velocity at a given frequency. Such approaches have been used within
imaging techniques to process signals measured from the elements of sparse and compact arrays [1].
Among them, the Embedded Ultrasonic Structural Radar (EUSR) [2] uses a phased-array approach with
a round robin procedure to image defects within the far field of the array. The localization of reflectors
or defects relies, for this method, on the compactness of the envelope of the measured signal. Accurate
localization can be achieved for non dispersive frequencies. Even if non-dispersive modes are injected in
the structure, the accuracy and reliability of this approach can be compromised by mode conversion at
discontinuities [3] and also erroneous knowledge of exact material properties, that can however be
compensated by using an autofocus approach [4].
To overcome these limitations, few approaches have been proposed to extract mode-related
information from time domain signals. Among these, algorithms have been proposed based on the
matching pursuit approach [5]. The evaluation of various methods demonstrated that the least error
on the estimate of the ToF can be achieved via dispersion compensation [6].
________________________________________ _
Pierre-Claude Ostiguy, Patrice Masson, Nicolas Quaegebeur, Said Elkoun

GAUS, Mech. Eng. Dept., Université de Sherbrooke, QC, J1K 2R1, Canada
151
ToF approaches are based on dispersion curves, whether phase velocity, , or group velocity, .
These dispersion curves are intrinsically related to mechanical properties of the structure [7]. Typical
material characterization methods are based on ASTM standards [8-10]. These approaches allow to
evaluate the main material properties, elastic modulus , shear modulus , Poisson ratio and
density . These approaches have proven to be reliable when associated to statistical analysis
methods. Unfortunately, most of these tests are destructive; thus they prevent accurate
characterization of the structures since they require numerous test samples. Different alternatives
were presented for material characterization using ultrasonic approaches [11]. Among them,
ultrasonic through transmission or modal analysis of the structure are possible alternatives.
However, most of these approaches require specific, large, costly and complex devices.
In this paper, a technique called Excitelet [1] is used for both material characterization and imaging
of the structure. The contribution of this work is to first evaluate the material properties prior to
imaging, thus allowing accurate damage detection even on unknown structure. Section 2 presents the
formulation of the Excitelet technique for both imaging and material characterization. Section 3
presents the experimental test setup and methodology used for the material characterization and
section 4 presents the results of the analysis.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE EXCITELET IMAGING TECHNIQUE

Formulation of the approach
The Excitelet approach is similar to the Chirplet-based decomposition approach used in the matching
pursuit algorithm [12], except that the analysis atoms are built from theoretical predictions of the
excitation signal dispersed by the propagation into the structure. The general approach uses a burst
excitation signal generated by a piezoceramic (PZT) in a structure and a measured signal
from a second PZT . Assuming cylindrical propagation, the voltage measured for A0 and S0
modes into the PZT can be described by the function used to relate the stress excitation signal at
emitter m to a voltage measured at the receiver n [13]:
(1)
and,
(2)
where is the wavenumber for symmetrical or anti-symmetrical mode, a the radius of

the actuator, c the radius of the receiver and the center-to-center distance between the actuator and
the sensor. is the Bessel function of first order, is the Hankel function of order 0 of the
second type, can be replaced by or which are the geometrical amplitude
adjustment factors of the symmetrical and anti-symmetrical modes respectively [13]. The theoretical
voltage measured at receiver n after propagation from the emitter m is expressed by:
(3)
where is the Fourier transform of and is the Fourier transform of .
Correlation coefficient between theoretical signal and the measured signal is
expressed by:
(4)
152
Imaging with Excitelet
The Excitelet approach is implemented into the imaging strategy to map the possible reflectors within a
pre-determined area. The burst generated at emitter m propagates into the structure, and the
algorithm evaluates if there is a reflection at each coming back to the receiver n. For each point,
the distance between the emitter m, the receiver n and the target is as shown in Figure 1 a). The
elements of the array are actuated following standard round-robin procedure and the measurement is
conducted using the other elements. An image representing the correlation between the simulated and
measured signals for each point is achieved. It has been shown that multiple mode correlation tends to
give better results for imaging [1]. The image is obtained using from [1].
(5)
a) Imaging b) Characterization
y
(Xj,Yj)
rm rn
d d
m
x x
0 m n 0 n rmn
Figure 1 - Geometry of the array for imaging and characterization.
Characterization with Excitelet

The Excitelet approach is implemented into a characterization strategy to evaluate the optimal material
properties. In this case, two PZTs are considered and the distance between emitter and receiver are
measured with precision. The characterization approach uses the center PZT from the array as emitter,
and an extra PZT located few centimetres behind it as receiver, n, to generate and measure guided wave
propagating into the structure. The algorithm strategy is presented in Figure 2.
Excitation
Structure Measured
burst +
-
Model
(E,ρ,ν) Simulated Error
Figure 2 - Strategy of the characterization algorithm.
The strategy is based on reducing the error between the measured and simulated signal or, equivalently,
to find the largest correlation between both signals. The material properties are related to the dispersion
curves by the calculation of the longitudinal , and shear , velocities using:
and
(6)
Since the three variables are dependent upon two equations, ρ was fixed and calculated based on [8].
The minimization algorithm uses the simplex method because of its simplicity, accuracy and speed of
calculation [14]. An initial value had to be provided within 7% of the supplier properties in order to
obtain accurate convergence of the method. This criteria is necessary since the simplex algorithm
searches for local minimum thus if the guessed parameters are too far from the exact properties, the
algorithm might converge to erroneous properties. The termination conditions are the maximum number
153
of iterations, set to 300, and a tolerance of 1E-4 of variation between the results for two successive
iterations. In general, one analysis required 15 iterations.
3. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND METHODOLOGY

The characterization and imaging approaches are implemented for an aluminum plate with the properties
presented in Table 2. The imaging approach is used for the detection of a notch (length of 2 mm and
width of 0.8 mm) located on the side of a 14 mm diameter hole. As shown in Figure 3, the structure is
instrumented with a 5 mm circular PZT bonded using cyanoacrylate and a PZT array machined in a bulk
PZT using laser micro-machining [13] to cut circular electrodes on top of it. A distance of 15 cm
between the array and the circular PZT was selected in order to measure well separated wave packets for
A0 and S0 modes in the frequency range of interest.
A signal generator (Hewlett-Packard 33120A) with a sampling frequency of 15 MHz is used to generate
the burst and an acquisition board (National Instruments PCI 5105) is used to record signals with a
sampling frequency of 60 MHz from the PZT elements. A ProduitSon UA-8400 high voltage and large
bandwidth (1MHz) amplifier is used to amplify the excitation signals sent by the board to 60 VPk.
Bursts of 5.5 cycles are used to excite Lamb modes A0 and S0 at 600 kHz for imaging and low
frequencies (50-200 kHz) at 5.5 cycles are used for characterization.
EDM
notch
y Hole
φ7mm
0.46 x
Extra PZT for

characterization
0.71
Figure 3 - Experimental setup for characterization, imaging (dotted box) and plate dimensions.
The experimental results are presented in Figure 4. For imaging, the correlation threshold value was set
to 2.5. Measurements with 5.5 cycles at center frequencies between 50 kHz and 200 kHz were evaluated
for characterization. The imaging was done using a 2.5 cycle burst at center frequency of 600 kHz. The
mesh used for imaging is 150 by 150 points around the hole.
Table 1 - Properties of the main components.
Component Property Value

Thickness 0.00154 m
Poisson ratio 0.33
Plate
Elastic modulus 70 GPa
Density 2700 kg/m3
Number of elements 7
Spacing between the elements 0.003 m
PZT array Thickness of the elements 0.00025 m
Diameter of the elements 0.003 m
Piezoelectric type PZT-5A
Location of the PZT (center) (0.158,0.63) m
Diameter of the element 0.005 m
Extra PZT
Thickness of the element 0.0005m
Piezoelectric type PI PIC255
154
4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Characterization
The experimental results for characterization are presented in Table 2. Single mode and multiple mode
correlations are presented. The correlation between measured signals and simulated signals is conducted
using A0, S0 and both modes altogether. The percentage of variation in Table 2 is based on the
mechanical properties obtained from the material supplier given in Table 1.
Table 2 - Mechanical properties calculated.
Freq kHz 50 100 150 200 Avg. values

E v E v E v E v E v
Value 70.43 0.332 70.40 0.332 69.62 0.329 70.03 0.331 70.12 0.331
A0
% var 0.61 0.61 0.57 0.61 0.54 0.30 0.04 0.42 0.378 0.0015
Value -- -- 73.58 0.359 70.45 0.332 71.38 0.337 71.80 0.342
S0
% var -- -- 5.11 8.76 0.65 0.71 1.97 2.05 1.607 0.0143
A0 Value 70.44 0.332 70.41 0.332 69.62 0.329 70.01 0.330 70.12 0.331
& S0 % var 0.62 0.66 0.58 0.74 0.54 0.28 0.01 0.00 0.39 0.002
Table 2 shows that for the frequencies analyzed, the percentage of variation is more important with the
S0 mode (almost 5% at 100 kHz) then with the A0 mode (less than 1%). The average values for these
frequencies for E is 70.12 ± 0.39 GPa and for v is 0.331 ± 0.002. Results in Table 2 demonstrate that the
mechanical properties can be obtained within 1% for most of the modes and frequencies under 200 kHz.
According to the emitter size and material properties of the structure, at 50 kHz and 100 kHz, the energy
of the generated S0 mode is small, thus introducing large variations in material properties at 100 kHz.
Boundary reflections of the S0 mode are also present in the A0 signal at lower frequencies, thus
compromising the correlation calculation. Figure 4 presents the comparison between the measured
signals and simulated signals after the convergence of the characterization algorithm.
A0 and S0 A0 and S0
Normalized amplitude
1 1
0 0
-1 -1
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6
time(s) -4 time(s) -4
x 10 x 10
50 kHz 100 kHz
A0 and S0 A0 and S0
1 1
0 0
-1
-1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6
0 0.5 1 1.5
time(s) -4
x 10 time(s) -4
x 10
150 kHz 200kHz
Figure 4 - Comparison of measured (solid) and simulated (dotted) dispersed signals.
The properties used in Figure 4 for the simulated signals use optimization with both modes. For the four
frequencies presented, the measured and simulated signals agree relatively well for both modes.
Imaging
Scattered imaging results are presented, obtained by subtracting the healthy from the damaged (notched)
time signals. The imaging results are presented in Figure 5 using supplier properties and average
estimated properties as calculated previously. A correlation threshold of 2.5 was used in the figures.
155
0 -1 0 -1
0.005 0.005
-2 -2
0.01 0.01
y (m)
y (m)
0.015 -3 0.015 -3
0.02 0.02
-4 -4
0.025 0.025
0.03 -5 0.03
-0.02 -0.01 0 0.01 0.02 -5
-0.02 -0.01 0 0.01 0.02
x (m) x (m)
a) Supplier properties b) Calculated properties
Figure 5 - Comparison of the imaging results using two sets of properties.
The imaging result obtained using the supplier properties in Figure 5a) shows accurate damage
localization results. However, secondary echoes behind it are present. Using the properties obtained by
the characterization algorithm, the localization of the damage is slightly better and also the secondary
echoes behind the main one has almost disappeared. The maximum amplitude of the correlation with the
supplier properties is 4.94 and the correlation with the calculated properties, 4.99, an increase of almost
1%.
Figure 6 presents the sensitivity of the imaging results with respect to a slight change in material
properties of ± 5% for elastic modulus and ± 10% for Poisson ratio on imaging.
0 -1 0 -1
0.005 0.005
-2 -2
0.01 0.01
y (m)
y (m)
0.015 -3 0.015 -3
0.02 0.02
-4 -4
0.025 0.025
0.03 -5 0.03 -5
-0.02 -0.01 0 0.01 0.02 -0.02 -0.01 0 0.01 0.02
x (m) x (m)
a) E + 5% c) ν + 10%
0 -1 0 -1
0.005 0.005
-2 -2
0.01 0.01
y (m)
y (m)
0.015 -3 0.015 -3
0.02 0.02
-4 -4
0.025 0.025
0.03 -5 0.03 -5
-0.02 -0.01 0 0.01 0.02 -0.02 -0.01 0 0.01 0.02
x (m) x (m)
c) E - 5% d) ν - 10%
Figure 6 - Sensitivity of imaging on material properties.
The increase of E by 5% tends to reduce the amplitude of the correlation to 4.30, or 13%, and is also
responsible for a misplacement of the damage. The decrease on E by 5% has the opposite effect and
decreases the amplitude to 2.69, or 46%. In the case of variation of v, the width of the damage is
changed and the localization of the damage is slightly moved. For an increase of 10%, the location is
moved closer to the array, the amplitude is reduced to 3.78, or 24%, and for a decrease of 10% on v, the
amplitude is reduced to 4.80, or 3%. The variation on amplitude and misplacement of the damage can be
explained by a change in . The variation in the case of the elastic modulus can be explained by
the fact that the dispersion curves are shifted upwards or downwards following such a variation. These
results tend to indicate that the localization part of the imaging algorithm is very sensitive to the material
properties of the structures such as , and .
156
Figure 7 presents a study of the robustness of the algorithm when erroneous geometrical features (± 1%
on actuator/sensor distance and ± 2% on plate thickness) are initially provided to the algorithm. The
frequency used for the characterization was 200 kHz.
0 -1 0 -1
0.005 0.005
-2 -2
0.01 0.01
y (m)
y (m)
0.015 -3 0.015 -3
0.02
0.02
-4
-4
0.025
0.025
0.03 -5
-0.02 -0.01 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 -5
x (m) -0.02 -0.01 0 0.01 0.02
x (m)
a) E=68.25, v=0.324 b) E=67.83, v=.322

0 -1 0 -1
0.005 0.005
-2 -2
0.01 0.01
y (m)
y (m)
0.015 -3 0.015 -3
0.02 0.02
-4 -4
0.025 0.025
0.03 -5 0.03 -5
-0.02 -0.01 0 0.01 0.02 -0.02 -0.01 0 0.01 0.02
x (m) x (m)
c) E=71.85, v=.336 d) E=72.19, v=.337

Figure 7 - Robustness of the algorithm to variations in geometrical features.
The variation in geometrical features induces a change as large as 9% on the estimation of v and 4.3%
on the estimation of E. With respect to the correlation values calculated using the supplier properties, the
maximum correlation values obtained with erroneous properties are decreased by 12% for Figure 7 a),
8% for Figure 7 b), 32% for Figure 7 c) and 43% for Figure 7 d). For all the cases, it can be seen that the
localization of the damage is affected by the erroneous characterization and also the amplitude of the
correlation is significantly decreased. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the algorithm is more
sensitive to a variation in distance than to a variation in thickness. This demonstrates that the exact
geometrical features have to be provided to the model or erroneous material properties will be estimated.
CONCLUSION
This paper presents the implementation of the Excitelet algorithm for material characterization prior to
damage imaging. High frequency burst are injected in a structure using a PZT actuator and the
measurements were conducted using a compact linear array of 7 PZTs. For known geometrical features,
E and v were evaluated using an optimization algorithm. The mechanical characterization was validated
experimentally using a 1.54 mm thick aluminum plate with a notch in the periphery of a hole. The
excitation was made using 5.5 cycle bursts from 50 kHz to 200 kHz for characterization and 2.5 cycles
at 600 kHz for imaging. Results were presented using multiple mode correlation. The characterization
approach gave results within 1% of the supplier properties, thus allowing potential application of this
algorithm for characterization where material properties are unknown. The effect of material properties
(E, v) and geometrical features (thickness, actuator/sensor distance) on imaging results is also assessed.
Slight variations on material properties have a non negligible impact on damage detection and
localization and it is demonstrated that variation on geometrical features of 2% for thickness and 1% for
the distance between actuator and receiver can compromise the robustness of material characterization.
Ongoing work aims at implementing this approach to anisotropic structures to assess imaging on
composites. The next possible steps would be to integrate this algorithm for imaging on simple
anisotropic structures, to automate the approach, to increase the accuracy by using an extra PZT on the
antenna and to use a genetic algorithm to remove the need to guess initial values.
157
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
(NSERC). Special thank to Dominique Langlois-Demers for taking the baseline and damaged
measurements for the imaging part.
REFERENCES
1. Quaegebeur, N. & al. 2011. Dispersion -based imaging for structural health monitoring using sparse
and compact arrays. Smart Materials Structure, 20:025005
2. Yu, L. and Giurgiutiu ,V. 2008. In Situ 2-D piezoelectric wafer active sensors array for guided
wave damage detection. Ultrasonics, 48:117-134.
3. Lu, Y., Ye, L. Su, Z. and Yang, C. 2008. Quantitative assessment of trough thickness crack size
based on lamb wave scattering in aluminum plates. NDT & E International, 41:59-68
4. Hunter, A. J. & al. 2011. Least-square Estimation of imaging Parameters for an Ultrasonic Array
Using Known Geometric Image Features. IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and
Frequency Control, 58(2)
5. Christensen, D. & al. 2009. Highly scalable matching pursuit signal decomposition algorithm. Proc.
International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, 1194-1201
6. Xu, B., Yu, L., and Giurgiutiu, V. 2009. Advanced methods for time-of-flight estimation with
application to lamb wave structural health monitoring. Proc. International Workshop on Structural
Health Monitoring, 1210-1217.
7. Giurgiutiu, V. 2007. Structural Health Monitoring with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors.
Elseiver, 760pp.
8. ASTM Standard D792. 2000, "Standard Test Methods for Density and Specific Gravity (Relative
Density) of Plastics by Displacement", ASTM International, West Conshohocken, PA, 2000,
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9. ASTM Standard E111. 1997, "Standard Test Methods for Young Modulus, Tangent Modulus and
Chord Modulus", ASTM International, West Conshohocken, PA, 1997, www.astm.org
10. ASTM Standard E132. 2004, "Standard Test Methods for Poisson Ratio at Room Temperature",
ASTM International, West Conshohocken, PA, 2004, www.astm.org
11. Li, Zi-Quan & al. 2001. Determination of the elastic constants of metal-metal matrix composites
by a laser ultrasound technique. Composites Science and Technology, 61, 1457-1463
12. Raghavan, A. and Cesnik, C. E. S. 2007. Guided wave signal processing using Chirplet
matching pursuits and mode correlation for structural health monitoring, Smart Materials and
Structures 16: 355
13. Sohn, H. Lee, S. J. 2010. Lamb wave tuning curve calibration for surface bonded piezoelectric
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14. Bernard Tandzig, G. 1997. Linear Programming: Theory and extensions. Springer. 457 pp.
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for rapid prototyping of MEMS components. Sensors and Actuators A, 136,554-563.
158
Damage Detection Index Based on Statistical
Inference and PCA
L. E. MUJICA, M. RUIZ, F. POZO and J. RODELLAR
ABSTRACT
This paper is focused on the development of new estimators propounding if

someone statistical law could estimate or infer a system without damage knowing its
reliability. This new measurement considers each experiment, and consequently, each
projection to the PCA model as a random variable. An in-depth statistical analysis is
performed for SHM. PCA projections are obtained from the undamaged structure
(baseline projection). If these projections are considered as the set of possible results
(population), then the new projections from the current structure (healthy or not) are
defined as random samples. Therefore, the probability distribution of the baseline
projection can be found. This new distribution can make an inference about the state
of the structure and determine if there is damage in it. Consequently, the relative
likelihood of each new projection is determined. If the new projection is strongly
related with the population, then the structure is healthy. Otherwise, the relation
indicates the damage.
INTRODUCTION
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and damage detection methods are nowadays
playing a key role for improving the operational reliability of critical structures in
several industrial sectors through the integration of novel materials, sensors, actuators
and computational capabilities designed to operate automatically in real time. The
essential paradigm is that a self-diagnosis and some level of detection and
classification of damage is possible trough the comparison of the in-service dynamic
time responses of a structure with respect to baseline reference responses recorded in
ideal healthy operating conditions.
In previous works, the authors have presented a novel multi-actuator piezoelectric
system for detection and localization of damages. The approach combines: (i) the
dynamic response of the structure at different exciting and receiving points; (ii) the
correlation of dynamical responses when some damage appears in the structure by
Department of Applied Mathematics III. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Comte

d'Urgell 187, 08036 Barcelona, Spain. {luis.eduardo.mujica, magda.ruiz, francesc.pozo,
jose.rodellar}@upc.edu.
159
using Principal Components Analysis and statistical measures that are used as damage
indices; (iii) the contribution of each sensor to the indices, what is used to localize the
damage [1-4].
Damage indices, for detection, were calculated analyzing the variability of: (i) the
projected data (scores) in the new space of the principal components, (ii) the residual
data in the residual subspace and, (iii) a combination of them. In consequence, until
now, does not exist only one technique for damage detection. These methodologies
have been based in the combination of different techniques presenting on certain
features several pros and cons.
Keeping the same paradigm for damage detection, a new methodology for damage
detection is developed using statistical estimators. Firstly, from the undamaged
structure (baseline projection), a PCA model is calculated. From the model, the score
vectors (projection to principal components) are obtained and considered as the full set
of results under study (population) [5]. Then, the probability distribution of the
baseline projection is found. In this way, an inference about the current structure can
be determinate [6]. If the new score is similar to the range obtained from baseline
probability distribution then, the structure is healthy. Otherwise, the relation indicates
damage. The projection vector will be the random variable that controls the property
of the projection of data into a model and its distribution will depend on whether, or
not, exists a defect. In this way, these inferences could be used as a new index to
determine damage in structures.
The structure used to validate the index is an aluminium plate. Four piezoelectric
transducers (PZT’s) to generate lambwaves and to detect the time varying strain
response data, were distributed over the surface.
STATISTICAL INFERENCE
The main idea in statistical inference is to obtain conclusions from the population
(scores), based in observations of a simple sample, looking for the confidence. This
sample from an unknown distribution will draw estimators that will describe features
in undamaged systems. Before determining these statistical estimators, it is tested if
the normal distribution will be satisfactory as a population model (null hypothesis -
H0). In this respect, the goodness-of-fit test procedure should be performed based on,
for instance, the chi-square distribution. Thus, if the H0 – null hypothesis that the
distribution of the population is the normal distribution is not rejected, the population
can be categorized as a normal distribution. Otherwise, there is the option that scores
are not normally distributed (H1). When the sampling distribution can be considered as
normal, a wide variety of hypothesis tests can be performed and therefore some
confidence intervals can be determined. An essential requirement is that the sample
size has to be greater than or equal to 30.
The goodness-of-fit test procedure based on the chi-square distribution requires

1. A random sample of size n from the population whose probability distribution
is unknown.
2. To arrange the n observations in k bins or class intervals.
3. To compute the observed frequency Oi in the ith class interval.
4. To compute the expected frequency Ei in the ith class interval.
160
Finally, the goodness-of-fit test statistic is:
k 2
χ =∑2 (Oi − E i ) (1)

0
i=1
Ei
If the population follows the normal distribution, has, approximately, a chi-

square distribution with degrees of freedom where represents the
€
number of parameters of the normal distribution estimated (mean and standard
deviation). The hypothesis that the distribution of the population is normal is rejected
if the value in equation (1) is strictly greater than .
The following procedure can serve as a summary of the goodness-of-fit test based
on the chi-square distribution:
1. The variable of interest is the distribution of the population of scores.
2. Null hypothesis: The form of the distribution is normal.
3. Alternative Hypothesis: The form of the distribution is not normal.
4. The confidence coefficient is α=0.05, for instance.
5. The test statistic is
k 2
χ0 = ∑
2 (Oi − E i )
i=1
Ei (2)
6. Reject the null hypothesis if χ 02 > χ α2 , k− p−1
The goodness-of-fit €test is performed for both: the population of scores from the
baseline data and the population of scores from the current structure (damaged or not).
€
At this point, with the sample of undamaged results, the sample mean and the
sample standard deviation is calculated, which are then considered as the population
mean (µ) and the population variance (σ) , respectively. Let us consider X1,X2,…,Xn
(scores from experiments using the current structure: damaged or not) as random
sample from a population with normal distribution with unknown mean (µ) and
unknown variance (σ2). Considering the case of hypothesis testing on the mean, the
random variable described by equation (2) has a t-student distribution with n-1 degrees
of freedom.
X −µ
T= (3)
S
n
where X is the sample mean and S is the sample standard deviation. In this way, the
next hypotheses can be considered:
€ H :µ=µ 0 0
€ H1 : µ ≠ µ0
(4)
From the Fisher theorem and as population follows a normal distribution then:
n
€ ( X − X )2
∑ i
S2
i=1
= ( n −1)  χ n−1
2
σ2 σ 2
(5)
€
161
Then,
S2 2
χ n−1

σ2 (n −1) (6)
Replacing in equation (3):
X −µ
€ σ
X −µ n
T= = n
 t n−1
n 2 2
∑ (Xi=1 i − X) ∑ (X
i=1 i − X)
2
n −1 σ ( n −1)
n (7)
Therefore, the random variable follows the t-student distribution subject to the
constraint€given by the confidence level with n-1 degrees of freedom. In this way, µ is
estimated by means of the following confidence interval:
 
 X −µ 
P (−δ ≤ T ≤ δ ) = P −δ ≤ ≤ δ = γ
 S 
 n  (8)
Where γ corresponds to the confidence level and are upper and lower limits.
Solving for µ,€
the confidence interval is:
 S S 
X − δ , X +δ  (9)
n n
EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP
€ here is tested in the small aluminium plate (25cm × 25cm
Methodology proposed
× 0.2cm) shown in Figure 1. Four  Piezoelectric  transducer  discs  (PZT's)  are 
attached  on  the  surface.  Each  PZT  is  able  to  produce  a  mechanical  vibration 
(lambwaves  in  a  thin  plate)  if  some  electrical  excitation  is  applied  (actuator 
mode). Also, PZT’s are able to detect time varying mechanical response data (sensor
mode).
Figure 1: Aluminium plate: Dimensions and PZT’s location.
162
 
In  previous  work  [1‐4]  it  was  conclude  that  the  farther  is  the  damage  from 
the actuator, the more difficult is its detection. Therefore, to detect damage on a 
larger area and being useful the fact that PZT's ca be used as much as actuators as 
sensors, the experiment to assess the structure is performed in several phases as 
such as a Multiactuator Piezoelectric System. In every phase, just one PZT is used 
as actuator (exciting the plate) and the others are used as sensors (recording the 
dynamical  response).  100  experiments  were  performed  using  the  healthy 
structure.  Nine  damages  were  simulated  adding  different  masses  at  different 
locations.  By  each  damaged  structure,  50  experiments  were  achieved.  The 
excitation is a sinusoidal signal of 112 KHz modulated by a Hamming window. An 
example of excitation signal and dynamical responses are sown in Figure 2 
Figure 2: Excitation signal and dynamical response.
METHODOLOGY
The goal of the methodology proposed here is to find estimators that describe
undamaged model using statistical inference. For this, PCA latent variables
(specifically, scores vectors) are obtained representing the random experiment. The
use of statistical inference is justified due to all possible scores obtained for a specific
condition of the structure can be called as population. Each score has the same
probability of occurs, and a new result does no influence the next one. Each score
corresponds to an experiment, containing information from all sensor measures with
different levels of contribution and, with an extra benefit, the noise is removed.
The PCA model is performed using the unfolded sensor matrix that contains data
from 50 experiments with the undamaged specimen. The five scores obtained are
used as simple sample baseline of the undamaged population. Of them, the sample
mean ( X ) and standard deviation (S) are calculated. With a 95% of confidence interval
and the t-student distribution, the statistical estimator parameter is found. This
estimator indicates the range where the population mean (µ) is located. In
€ consequence, some hypothesis can be proposed, for example, is it the current structure
that undamaged range (H0)? For testing the hypothesis, 50 experiments by each nine
different damaged specimens and 50 with the intact structure are projected into the
PCA model. In this way, new scores are the current structure stage sets. From each
set, the mean is calculated and projected onto the statistical estimator (population
mean range). The whole methodology is showed in Figure 3.
163
 
Figure 3: Methodology for statistical inference process
DAMAGE DETECTION
Unlike previous works, here, the scores and T2 and Q indices (not shown) do not let
differentiation between undamaged and damaged experiments, much less between the
several damaged specimens due to many causes as: structural material, the damaged
type, frequency and amplitude of the excitation signal, among others. To review what
is happening, scores are agrupped. Figure 4 shows all the experiments for four scores,
where again, the differentation between different types of experiments is not possible.
 
 
Figure 4. Experiments by each score 
 
Before contrasting the hypothesis, behavior of each damaged and undamaged is
tested using the box plots. From Figure 5 it can be seen that the mean of the first score
of damages 1, 2, 5 and 7 could be confused with the baseline mean. Besides, if the
quartile 1 (Q1) and quartile 3 (Q3) are used like limits, then, damages 3, 5, 6 and 8
could be detected as undamaged specimens. Better differences can be appreciated for
the means of second, third and fourth score. But the error occurred again taking into
account the Q1 and Q3. 
164
 
Figure 5: The box plot for the scores 
 
Immediately after, the goodness-of-fit test based on the chi-square distribution is
used to determine if the simple samples (all scores) are normally distributed. The p-
value is the probability, under assumption of the null hypothesis, of observing the
given statistic. In this way, H0 is rejected with 5% of significance (therefore H1 is
accepted) if the p-values of the scores are equal or lesser than 0.05. Otherwise, the
samples (scores) are considered with normal distribution. Figure 6 shows the p-value
of simple samples from experiments when the PZT 2 is used as actuator. From them,
it can be seen that the fourth score cannot be used as feature to detect damages because
the baseline variables does not have normal distribution.
 
 
Figure 6: The goodness-of-fit test
 
This new distribution can make an inference about the state of the structure and
determine whether there is damage in it. Consequently, the relative likelihood of each
new projection is determined. If the new projection is strongly related with the
population, then the structure is healthy (H0). Otherwise, some damage is present in
the structure (H1). Table 1 shows a summary of the results for detection of damage.
Error type I means that the hypotheses was wrongly rejected (a damage is detected in a
healthy structure). Error type II means that the hypotheses was wrongly accepted
(damage was not detected 
165
PZT 1 as PZT 2 as PZT 3 as PZT 4 as
actuator actuator actuator actuator
H0 H1 H0 H1 H0 H1 H0 H1
No reject H0 4 4 5 2 4 3 4 21
Reject Ho and
1 41 0 43 1 42 1 24
accept H1
                 
Error type I                 
Error type II                 
Table 1: Inference about the state of the structure 
 
CONCLUSIONS
Although in SHM field, several researchers has focusing their works in

applications of PCA and statistical tools as inference, authors have not knowledge of
works that use PCA as statistical model combine with inference to calculate a damage
index. Results show a high accuracy of the methodology for detecting defects.
Besides, it help us to assess which experiments should not taken in account, and
therefore must be repeated.
In this work, inference over statistical means were performed, however, results
encourage to authors to keep studying inferences over standard deviations, difference
between means, etc. On the other hand, the population (means of scores) has been
considered by separately, it means that one diagnostic is performed analysing one
score, another diagnostic by using other score. For the next step, authors are
considering to do multivariate inference, in this way, one diagnostic can be obtained
from all scores.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Authors thank to Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain through the research

projects DPI2008-06564-C02-01/02. We are also grateful also to Ph students Diego
Tibaduiza, Fahit Gharibnezhad and Maribel Anaya who has collected the data.
REFERENCES
1. D.A. Tibaduiza, L.E. Mujica, A. Güemes, and J. Rodellar. Active piezoelectric system
using PCA. In European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, 5th edition.
Sorrento-Italy. 2010.
2. L.E. Mujica, D.A. Tibaduiza, and J. Rodellar. Data-driven multiactuator piezoelectric
system for structural damage localization. In 5th World Conference on Structural
Control and Monitoring. Tokio-Japan., July 2010.
3. L.E. Mujica, M. Ruiz, A. Güemes, and J. Rodellar. Contribution plots on PCA based
indices for damage identification on structures. In Proc of the 4th. ECCOMAS thematic
conference on smart structures and materials. Porto, Portugal, 2009.
4. L.E. Mujica, A. Fernández, A. Güemes, J. Rodellar. Q-statistic and T2-statistic PCA
based measures for damage assessment in structures. Structural Health Monitoring, an
International Journal. In press. 2011
5. Montgomery, D. C.; Runger, G. C.; “Applied Statistics and Probability for Engineers”;
Editorial Wiley, 2006
6. F. Pozo, N. Parés, Y. Vidal, F. Mazaira; “Probabilitat i estadística matemàtica”;
Iniciativa Digital Politècnica, (In catalan) 2010.
166
Effective Damage Sensitive Feature Extraction
Methods for Crack Detection using Flaw
Scattered Ultrasonic Wave Field Signal
S. K. YADAV, S. BANERJEE and T. KUNDU
ABSTRACT
The structural damage detection and flaw characterization are being

investigated by many researchers to evaluate the integrity of a structure. The
ultrasonic wave field analysis is one of the foremost nondestructive evaluation
techniques in this context because of its effectiveness and applicability in a
variety of materials. However, the complex and chaotic nature of raw time
domain ultrasonic signals makes it very difficult for any meaningful
interpretation of the unprocessed time histories. The real challenge comes in
extracting the damage information after analyzing large amount of such data.
The time series investigations have been conducted using STFT, WT, CWD,
Stockwell Transform, HHT, Winger-Ville, MP tools etc. and are being modified
to calculate the most meaningful damage sensitive index. The techniques are
being developed to analyze the ultrasonic data in time-frequency (TF) domain
which ensures to address these issues by focusing mainly on critical damage
sensitive features present in an ultrasonic signal. In the present study, different
methods are formulated, analyzed and assessed comparatively to pin-point
damage sensitive attributes out of Time-Frequency representation of the
ultrasonic signal. A steel channel section with several rivet holes has been
considered as a physical problem to be analyzed to generate ultrasonic wave
field data. The simulation has been carried out by the finite element method for
two cases – 1) a steel plate with cracks extending from the rivet holes and 2) an
un-cracked structure. A MATLAB code has been developed for analyzing the
FEM generated data.
INTRODUCTION
Automated damage prognosis in civil infrastructure systems is gaining

popularity due to ever increasing demand for providing effective public safety
measures. This has attracted researchers to develop new techniques which can
____________
Susheel K. Yadav, Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics,
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, U.S.A.
Sourav Banerjee, Acellent Technologies Inc, 835 Stewart Drive, Sunnyvale CA 94085,
U.S.A.
Tribikram Kundu, Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics,
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, U.S.A.
167
monitor structures on a regular basis and forecast probable structural failure. In
the past, various studies in structural health monitoring (SHM) on guided Lamb
wave based techniques have been carried out. Guided waves are known to
propagate long distances with little attenuation covering large inspection area. In
SHM, the structure under examination is excited by a disturbance of short pulse
from a PZT transmitter and the resulting guided wave is then allowed to
propagate. The ultrasonic wave field interacts with structure's internal
composition producing reflections or scattering in different directions. This
mechanism facilitates propagating ultrasonic waves to assimilate damage
information as well. These ultrasonic signals can provide information about
structural damages. The challenging part of the investigation comes in analyzing
the ultrasonic time series signal because of its highly complex nature for reasons
such as: presence of multiple modes, dispersion, signal contamination due to
wave scattering/reflection etc. The interpretation of these ultrasonic signals
requires understanding of advanced digital signal processing techniques.
Since inception, there has been substantial advancement in the field of signal
processing due to improved computational power in last few decades. Over the
year various disciplines of science and engineering have been using signal
processing tools such as Short Term Fourier Transform [1], Wavelet
decomposition [2], Hilbert-Huang transform [3,4], Wigner-Ville transform [5,6],
Choi-Williams Distribution [7,8] and S-transform [9,10] to analyze the transient
data. These advanced signal processing techniques are now being employed in
structural health monitoring for damage diagnosis.
The raw ultrasonic signal, in this study has been generated by modeling
ultrasonic wave field in a rivet plate using finite element based software
COMSOL [11] for undamaged as well as cracked plates. This study focuses on
assessing structural damage in a cracked plate using different advanced signal
processing tools and makes a comparison among these tools.
PROBLEM SATEMENT AND THEORY
A bridge structure is to be diagnosed for localized and hidden damages such

as cracks in the rivet holes of its structural members. A structural member (e.g.
steel channel section with several holes) of the bridge is analyzed using
ultrasonic Lamb wave based non destructive evaluation technique. A simplified
model of the steel channel section as a thin plate with five holes is analyzed by
the Finite Element Method (FEM) based commercial software COMSOL for
generating the scattered wave field. The geometry of the problem is shown in
Figure 1. The ultrasonic wave field is triggered by a short duration five cycle
burst disturbance with central frequency of 250 kHz at point A. The element
size for FEM mesh is chosen to be 0.08 inches well below one sixth of the
wavelength of the propagating wave to ensure convergence in solution. The
time-history signals of progressive ultrasonic wave field has been recorded with
sampling frequency of 12.5 MHz at locations S1(0.5,3.5), S2(6,3.5), S3(12,3.5)
and S4(17.5,3.5) on the plate. The primary objective of this study is to locate
and characterize the crack using sensor received ultrasonic signals with the help
of advanced signal processing techniques. For all ultrasonic time history signals
a time-frequency representation (TFR) has been obtained from various signal
processing techniques such as Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT), Wavelet
Transform (WT), Wigner-Ville Distribution Transform (WVD), Hilbert-Huang
168
y
3'' ϕ = 0.75''
Fixed edge
S1 S2 H2 Crack S3 S4
H1 H3
4''
H4 H5
A
1''
(0,0) 18'' x
6''
Figure 1. Geometry of the modeled steel rivet joint plate
Transform (HHT), Choi-Williams Distribution Transform (CWD) and S-

Transform (ST). In this study a damage index parameter (DI) has been proposed
as:
DI  DI f  125 kHz  DI f  250 kHz  DI f  500 kHz

(1)
T T
where, DI f 
B f ( ).B f ( )  D f ( ).D f ( ) (2)
T
B f ( ).B f ( )
and B f ( ) is the undamaged plate ultrasonic data (Baseline signal) and D f ( )

is the cracked plate ultrasonic data for frequency f on TFR of respective
ultrasonic signal data. The B f ( ) and D f ( ) are the damage sensitive features
extracted from time-frequency representation (TFR) of ultrasonic signals used in
damage index parameter (DI). The proposed damage index parameter returns a
zero value if the supplied damage signal is same as the baseline signal. As an
exception, in case of Hilbert-Huang Transform technique the D f ( )
components are evaluated using the intrinsic mode function with highest
spectrum energy. MATLAB codes are written for obtaining TFR for ultrasonic
signals and then to calculate the damage index parameter.
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
A homogeneous solid steel plate (density, longitudinal and shear wave

speeds, 7.9 gm/cc, 5.98 km/sec and 3.3 km/sec, respectively) of size 18'' x 4'' x
0.25'' with five circular rivet holes of diameter 0.75'' has been modeled by
COMSOL. The ultrasonic wave field is synthesized for the steel channel section
with a crack extending from the central rivet hole H2. A total of four distinct
cracked plate configurations have been adopted for analysis by introducing a
crack of size (one at a time) 2 mm at 0o (N or 12 o’clock position), 2 mm at 135o
169
(a) t = 0.18 μs (b) t = 0.32 μs
Figure 2. Ultrasonic wave scattering in the steel bridge connection plate at time (a) 0.18 μs and
(b) 0.32 μs.
5
( x 10 )
Figure 3. Typical ultrasonic signal collected at location S1
Figure 4. Typical time-frequency representations (TFR) for the recorded signal at location S1
170
(SE or between 4 and 5 o’clock positions), 4 mm at 0o (N) and 4 mm at 135o
(SE). The crack scattered wave fields at points S1, S2, S3 and S4 have been
recorded for a time span of 0.160 msec. The baseline signal is obtained from an
un-cracked plate configuration. Figures 2a and 2b show the ultrasonic wave
fields at two different times of progression - 0.18 μs and 0.32 μs, respectively.
The darker shades in the plots represent higher amplitudes of the propagating
wave. The ultrasonic wave field starts propagating from the actuator location A
and spreads gradually outwards from the center of the actuator. A typical
ultrasonic signal collected at S1 is shown in Figure 3. Different time-frequency
representations obtained after various signal processing techniques applied to
TABLE I: DAMAGE INDEX VALUES OBTAINED FOR SIGNALS AT SENSOR

LOCATIONS (S1, S2, S3 & S4), SUBJECTED TO ANALYSES (STFT, WT, CWD ETC.)
FOR DIFFERENT CRACK SIZES (2 & 4 MM) AND ORIENTATIONS (0O & 135O)
From STFT
2mm at 0o 2mm at 135o 4mm at 0o 4mm at 135o
S1 0.0215 0.1225 0.1514 0.0657
S2 0.0829 0.1933 0.0868 0.3213
S3 0.0818 0.1775 0.0839 0.3670
S4 0.0231 0.0434 0.1558 0.0753
From WT
S1 0.0567 0.1662 0.1801 0.0476
S2 0.0503 0.3091 0.0533 0.3325
S3 0.0586 0.1968 0.0486 0.2694
S4 0.0448 0.1892 0.1816 0.1301
From CWD
S1 0.2190 0.2314 0.4554 0.1442
S2 0.3122 0.6666 0.4735 0.8862
S3 0.3167 0.5111 0.4691 0.5282
S4 0.2186 0.1191 0.4669 0.1103
From WVD
S1 0.5445 0.4882 1.3983 0.4217
S2 0.2883 1.1724 0.4025 1.0304
S3 0.2312 0.9195 0.42 0.5158
S4 0.6208 0.7589 1.3743 0.1564
From ST
S1 0.0508 0.6839 0.8226 0.4316
S2 0.2218 1.6370 0.3148 1.19
S3 0.2251 1.6262 0.3874 1.1045
S4 0.0282 0.9726 0.8362 0.5470
From HHT
S1 0.1951 0.0799 0.1472 0.0012
S2 0.141 0.1471 0.0357 0.238
S3 0.1398 0.3633 0.0433 0.2235
S4 0.2511 0.0606 0.2235 0.0152
171
this signal are shown in Figure 4. Energy spectra at frequencies 125 kHz, 250
kHz and 500 kHz have been extracted from TFR and fed into the damage index
calculations. The damage index has been calculated from signals recorded at
locations S1, S2, S3 and S4 for all four crack plate configurations and shown in
Table 1.
The actuator A is located on the central middle line and the sensor data is
gathered with two sensors (S1, S2) on the left and two sensors (S3, S4) on the
right side of the central hole H2. Note that when there is no crack or when the
crack is oriented in the north direction then the problem configuration becomes
symmetrical about the central middle line. When the crack from the rivet hole is
oriented on either right or left of the central middle line then its effect on the
propagating guided waves on left and right sides of the central middle line
should be different. These two expected patterns in the results can form a
premise to scrutinize various signal processing tools. In addition to this it would
be interesting to see if sensor points (S2 and S3) located near the crack (but not
too close, about 3'' from the hole H2) are better in detecting cracks than the
sensor points (S1 and S4) located far away (9'' from the hole H2). The damage
index values obtained from various signal processing techniques are compared
and judged on the basis of expected premise mentioned above.
Plate Length (in) Plate Length (in)

Figure 5. Damage Index (DI) variations along the plate length for all four damage configurations
using six different signal processing techniques
172
The technique that corroborates the aforementioned premise can be assumed to
be best suited technique of analysis for the present problem. In structural health
monitoring, the location of sensors is one of the critical parameters for an
effective health assessment. In order to explore the effect of crack's presence on
received ultrasonic wave fields at various locations, the distribution of the
damage index (DI) along the line passing through sensor points S1, S2, S3 and S4
is shown in Figure 5. Because of our lack of confidence on choosing the most
suitable signal processing techniques a number of advanced techniques - STFT,
WT, CWD, WVD, ST and HHT are examined concurrently. A central middle
line is drawn in all plots to check expected symmetric trend about this axis in
case of 0o oriented crack. It is observed that although almost all six techniques
show this pattern for STFT, CWD, ST and HHT the symmetric patterns are
stronger. In a general consensus from all techniques the DI values obtained at
sensor points S2 and S3 show higher values for 135o orientation of crack as
compared to 0o oriented crack irrespective of the crack size (2 mm or 4 mm).
This is not the case for DI values obtained at sensor points S1 and S4. This
shows that the sensor locations S2 and S3 are better for capturing the crack
orientation information compared to S1 and S4. An interesting fact observed in
Figure 5 is that for 0o crack orientation the STFT and WT fail to give crack size
information if the sensor signals are collected from locations S2 and S3 which
are closer to the crack. However, sensor signals from S1 and S4 are good in
giving crack size information even with STFT and WT. Other techniques CWD,
WVD, ST and HHT did not encounter such difficulty. In case of 0o oriented
crack from STFT, WT and ST based analysis the DI value decreases for 2 mm
crack and increases for 4 mm crack size as the sensor location moves away from
crack. This trend is contradicted by WVD and HHT based analyses where DI
value increases as the sensor location moves away from crack irrespective of the
crack size (2 mm or 4 mm). Only CWD shows no significant change in DI
values as the sensor location moves away from the crack in case of 0o oriented
crack. In case of 135o orientated crack, all techniques except ST showed a
general asymmetry about the central middle line. The CWD and WVD based
analyses showed smaller DI values for sensor locations S3 and S4 as compared
to DI value for sensor locations S1 and S2 irrespective of the crack size. Next, a
quantitative study is carried out to see the relative capability of each technique
in predicting the change in crack orientation. Figure 6 shows the change in the
DI value as defined in equation 3.
( x 102 )
2 mm crack size ( x 103 )
4 mm crack size
Plate Length (in) Plate Length (in)

Figure 6. The percentage change in Damage Index (DI) values as the crack orientation changes
from 0o to 135o orientation
173
( DI  DI )
crack _ 135 o crack _ 0 o (3)
% Change in DI   100
( DI )
crack _ 0 o
The plot for 2 mm crack size does not reveal much information except that for
ST based analysis the change in DI values are significantly higher at locations
S1 and S4 in comparison to locations S2 and S3. The plot for 4 mm crack size for
all six techniques showed a consistent trend of noticeable change in DI values at
sensor locations S2 and S3 as compared to location S1 and S4.
CONCLUSIONS
A steel bridge member is analyzed for localized damages e.g. cracks around
rivet holes. The ultrasonic wave field is obtained from the FEM calculation and
used to analyze the effect of the crack's size and orientation. It is concluded that
the sensor locations S2 and S3 are better in comparison to S1 and S4 for capturing
the crack orientation information. The STFT and WT are not good in giving
crack size information if sensors are placed at locations S2 and S3.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST) for this research work.
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spectrum: The S transform: IEEE Trans. Signal Process., 44, 998–1001
11. http://www.comsol.com/
174
Time-Domain Localized Structural Damage
Identification with Incomplete Excitation
Measurements
J. HE and B. XU
ABSTRACT:
Though many system identification methods are currently available for system
identification (SI) and damage detection, the challenge lies in the numerical
difficulty in convergence when the number of unknowns is increasing. Moreover,
many available methods, e.g. traditional least-squares estimation (LSE), require that
the external excitation should be known for identification. However, in practice,
either sensors may not be installed to measure all the external excitations or some
external excitations are un-measurable. Consequently, it is highly desirable to
develop SI algorithms solely utilizing response measurements and incomplete
excitations. Rather than identifying the large-scale structure directly, substructural
identification (SSI) method decomposes the structure into several smaller
subsystems and provides an efficient way to identify the structure in sequence. In
this paper, based on the idea of SSI, an approach, referred to as weighted adaptive
iterative least-squares estimation with incomplete measured excitations for local
damage detection (WAILSE-IME-LDD), was proposed. The substructure was
firstly decomposed from the original large system, and the parameters were
identified by LSE based on the response measurements of the substructure and the
associated interface. The initial values of the unknown external excitations were
arbitrarily assumed and the iteration process continued until the errors of the
identifed forces of two adjacent iterations were within a defined tolerance. During
the iteration, the estimated input vectors were updated by partially known external
excitations, and the partially unknown excitations (if applied on this substructure)
were identified accordingly. To improve the convergence rate and the identification
accuracy, a weighted positive definite matrix and an adaptive learning coefficient
were introduced during the iteration. The efficiency and accuracy of the method
were validated via numerical simulation with a 10 degree-of-freedoms (DOFs)
high-rise building model. Results show that the proposed approach can
simultaneously identify the substructural parameters and unknown excitations with
high accuracy even the responses are noise-polluted.
KEYWORDS: substructural identification, weighted adaptive iterative

least-squares estimation, incomplete measured excitations, local damage detection,
incomplete inputs, adaptive learning coefficient
Jia He, College of Civil Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, Hunan, China
Bin Xu, College of Civil Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, Hunan, China
175
1. INTRODUCTION
System identification (SI) is the process of dealing with the inverse problem of
identifying structural parameters, e.g. stiffness and damping coefficients based on
input and output (I/O) observations. Besides validation and updating of the
mathematical models, SI provides a promising way of structural health monitoring
(SHM) and damage detection by comparing the identified values of structural
parameters with the design values or previously determined values. An
investigation reported by Ghanem and Shinozuka [1] reviewed the application of
various SI techniques in earthquake engineering. Furthermore, Wu et al. [2]
presented a detailed summary of vibration-based SI and damage detection methods.
Though many SI methods are currently available for parameter estimation of
structural systems, the challenge lies in the numerical difficulty in convergence
when the number of unknowns is increasingly large because the convergence of the
ill-conditioned inverse analysis becomes more difficult. However, if a whole
large-scale structure with vast account of unknowns can be decomposed into several
smaller substructures and identified independently, the identification results may be
performed more efficiently and accurately [3]. From such a point of view, the
substructural identification (SSI) method is preferable to cope with large-scale
structures.
Increasing interest has been focused on the SSI algorithms and much progress
has been made in the past several decades. Koh et al. [3] proposed a SSI approach
for estimating the stiffness and damping coefficients of structure by means of
extended Kalman filter with a weighted global iteration algorithm. By calculating a
few eigen-modes and their associated derivative matrices of the concerned
substructures, a substructure-based finite element model updating technique was
proposed by Weng et al. [4]. With the dramatically rapid development of the
computers and instrumentation capabilities, soft computing algorithms involving
artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms etc. have recently received
considerable attention in civil engineering. A survey of many applications done by
researchers in this field can be found in the literatures [5-6].
Generally speaking, only partial substructures are usually considered crucial in
many practical applications, so that local monitoring for damages rather than global
monitoring would be sufficient and less expensive. The primary motivation of the
localized identification is the fact that, since the damage is local, it is reasonable to
concentrate the identification at a small and local part which may be critical to the
overall performance of the structure. At present, many related methods based on
SSI analysis have been proposed. Yun and Lee [7] proposed a SSI approach for
damage estimation by using the sequential prediction error method as well as an
auto-regressive and moving average with stochastic input (ARMAX) model. Based
on the two trained neural networks, a post-earthquake damage diagnosis
methodology using dynamic responses was proposed for the identification of the
concerned substructures [8]. More recently, based on the virtual distortion method,
Hou et al. [9] proposed a substructure isolation method for local structural health
monitoring.
Though various methods have been available for localized damage
identification, most of them are required that all external excitations (inputs) should
be known for identification. However, from a practical point of view, either sensors
176
may not be installed to measure all the external excitations or some external
excitations are un-measurable. To handle this limitation, based on the idea of SSI, a
damage detection approach, referred to as weighted adaptive iterative least-squares
estimation with incomplete measured excitations for local damage detection
(WAILSE-IME-LDD), was proposed in this paper. The research interest
substructure was firstly decomposed from the original large system based on SSI
methodology. The substructural parameters (i.e. stiffness and damping coefficients)
as well as the unknown dynamic loadings were identified by means of least-square
techniques solely using dynamical response measurements of the substructure and
the associated interface. The initial values of the unknown external excitations were
arbitrarily assumed and the iteration process would continue until the errors of the
identified external dynamic loadings of two adjacent iterations were within a
defined tolerance. To improve the convergence rate and the accuracy of the
identification results, an appropriate weighted positive definite matrix was
introduced to the objective function and an adaptive learning coefficient using the
information of the previous two iterations was employed. The efficiency, accuracy,
and robustness of the proposed method were validated via numerical simulation
with a 10 DOFs high-rise building model. Results show that the proposed approach
can simultaneously identify the substructural parameters and unknown excitations
with high accuracy.
2. THE PROPOSED WAILSE-IME-LDD APPROACH
The motion of equation for a complete structural system can be written as,
Mx  Cx  Kx  f (1)
where M, C, and K are mass, damping, and stiffness matrix; x , x , and x are
acceleration, velocity, and displacement vectors; and f is the external excitation.
According to the substructure methodology, Eq. (1) can be rewritten using
partitioned matrices and shown as follows,
 M cc M cs 0   xc  C cc C cs 0   x c   K cc K cs 0   xc   f c 
M M ss M sr    xs   C sc C ss C sr    x s    K sc K ss K sr    x s    f s  (2)
 sc
 0 M rs M rr   xr   0 C rs C rr   x r   0 K rs K rr   x r   f r 
where the subscript c, s, and r denotes the concerned, interfacial, and remaining
degrees-of-freedoms (DOFs). Then the equation of motion for the concerned
substructure can be given as
M cc xc  M cs xs  Ccc xc  Ccs x s  K cc xc  K cs xs  f c (3)
Assuming the mass distribution is known, Eq. (3) can be re-arranged as
Ccc xc  Ccs x s  K cc xc  K cs xs  f c  M cc xc  M cs xs (4)
This equation can be represented as
177
H ( mn ) L L1  P( mn )1 (5)
where H = the concerned substructure and the interfacial DOFs response matrix
composed of the velocity and displacement;  = the unknown system parameters,
i.e. damping and stiffness coefficients; m = the number of sample points; n = the
total number of the DOFs including the DOFs in the concerned substructure and the
associated interface; L = the total number of the unknown parameters; and P = input
vector composed of external excitations and inertia forces at time t.
The vector P can be expressed as
P  P (t1 ) P(t 2 ) ... P (t m )

T
(6)
in which P (t j )   f c ,1  M cc ,1 xc ,1  M cs ,1 xs ,1 ... f c ,n  M cc ,n xc ,n  M cs ,n xs ,n T (j=1, 2, .., n).

Based on the external excitations and corresponding responses of the concerned
substructure as well as the interface, the parameters can be obtained according to Eq.
(5) by means of any available optimization algorithms. For example, the structural
parameters can be estimated by the least-squares estimation (LSE) as follows,
  H T H  H T P
~ 1
(7)
Form Eq. (7), it can be seen that the traditional LSE can not be directly
employed to obtain the parameters while the inputs are not available. Here, it is
assumed that the inputs are composed of the known part (Pk) and unknown part (Pu)
which is not measured as follows,
P  Pk Pu 
T
(8)
where the subscript k and u = subset consisting of the DOFs on which the known
excitations are applied, and the DOFs on which the unknown excitation are applied,
respectively. Consequently, the estimated input vectors on the ith iteration are
composed of two corresponding parts and shown below,
~ ~

P i  Pki
~
Pui 
T
(9)
where the symbol ’~’ indicates estimated values, superscript i means the ith iteration,
and subscript k and u are defined before. Here, the above estimated input matrix is
~
firstly updated by replacing Pki with known Pk as shown in Eq. (10),

Pˆ i  Pki
~
Pui 
T
(10)
where the symbol ’^’ indicates updated values at the ith iteration. In order to
accelerate the convergence of the unknown excitations, the increment of the
unknown external excitation identification results at the previous two iterations is
~
employed to re-update the unknown part ( Pui ) as shown in Eq. (10),
P i  Pki  Pui 
T
(11)
178
~ ~ ~
in which Pui  Pui   ( Pui 1  Pui  2 ) , the symbol ’-’ indicates the re-updated values,
and  is a learning coefficient taking the value   [0,1) . To prevent the
ultra-iteration, the learning coefficient  employed here can be variable values.
The estimated unknown excitations are getting close to the actual values when the
iteration process carried out, and then the learning coefficient should take smaller
values accordingly. For simplicity,  takes the value of  / i in this paper.
Moreover, a weighted positive definite matrix is employed to improve the
convergence rate and the accuracy of the identified results,
aE 0 
W   (12)
 0 bE 
in which E = identity matrix, and a, b = weighted coefficients ( a  [1,) , b  (0,1] ).

The dimension of aE and bE depends on the dimension of Pk and Pu defined before,
respectively. Based on the principle of LSE, the objective function of the estimated
system is improved by using the weighted matrix, and thus the LSE algorithm
shown in Eq. (7) can be rearranged as,
  H T WH  H T WP
~ 1
(13)
Start
Input response measurements,

form matrix H
Set the values of a, b, and  , assume Pu ,

and form input matrix P0
Estimate the parameters

  H T WH  H T W P0
~ 1
~
Obtain the estimated inputs P1 by
solving Eq. (5) using ~
Obtain the updated inputs P̂1 by

using the known input(s) PK
Get the re-updated inputs P1 basing

on the updated inputs P̂
1
No
Check convergence Let P0  P1
Yes
Stop
Figure 1. Flowchart for The proposed WAILSE-IME-LDD approach
179
The basic concept of the proposed localized damage detection approach can be
described in the following steps in which the symbol ’~’, ’^’, and ’-’, and
superscript i are defined before.
(a) Obtain the response measurements of the concerned substructure and the
interface, and form the response matrix H.
(b) Set the values of weighted coefficients and learning coefficient, arbitrarily
assign the initial value of the unknown excitation force for all time steps,
and form the initial input matrix named P0i .
(c) Using Eq. (13) and the re-updated inputs P0i , estimate the system
~
parameters  i .
~
(d) Using the estimated system parameters  i found in step (c), solve for the
~ ~ ~ T
 
estimated inputs P1i  Pki,1 Pui,1 according to Eq. (5).
(e) According to Eq. (10), obtain the updated inputs Pˆ1i  Pk  ~ T

Pui,1 .
(f) If i > 2, based on Pˆ , obtain P1 through Eq. (11); if i  2 , it’s unnecessary to
1
i i
re-updated the inputs, hence, let P1 i  Pˆ1i directly.

(g) Calculate the error between P1 i and P0i as e i  P1 i  P0i 1 which  1 is the
1-norm. If the error is below the acceptable threshold, i.e. e i   , the
procedure is complete; otherwise let P0i 1  P1 i , and repeat steps (b-f).
The flowchart of the approach shown in Fig. 1 helps to illustrate the procedure.
3. NUMERICAL VALIDATION OF THE WAILSE-IME-LDD APPROACH
To demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed approach, a

10-DOFs lumped mass model shown in Fig. 2 is employed as a numerical example.
The actual parameters of the intact structure are set to be Mi=20Kg, Ci=300Ns/m,
and Ki=2×105N/m for simplicity (i=1, 2, …, 10). It is assumed that localized
damage occurred resulting in the stiffness degradation of the 6th DOF. The damaged
stiffness coefficient of the 6th floor is assumed to be K6=1.9×105N/m. In this
example, the concerned substructure as shown in Fig. 2 is composed of the 4th, 5th,
and 6th DOFs with the lower boundary of the 3rd DOF as well as upper boundary of
the 7th DOF.
M10 M7 Upper boundary

K7, C7
K10, C10
M6
M9
K6, C6
M5
f5
K5, C5
M1
M4
K1, C1 K4, C4
M3 Lower boundary
(a) (b)
Figure 2. The numerical example: (a) the complete structure; (b) the concerned substructure
180
Assuming a random external excitation is applied on the 5th floor and the
corresponding responses of the ith DOF (i=3,…, 7) are obtained. The excitation is
then assumed to be unknown after the response measurements are given. Since
there are no forces on the 4th and 6th floors, the external excitations on these floors
are zero and can be considered as known inputs and used for identification.
Here, the responses are initially assumed to be noise-free. As a practical
consideration, some noise is expected in the output measurements. Without loss of
generality, the noise level is set to be 5% and 10%, which means the standard
deviation of the random noise are equal to 5%, and 10% of the corresponding mean
value, respectively. The weighted coefficients of a and b, as well as learning
coefficient  are set to be 10, 0.1, and 0.8, respectively. The total time duration from
0s to 6s with 600 sampling points are used for identification. The substructural
parameters are identified for all these various cases by the proposed
WAILSE-IME-LDD approach. The identified results and the corresponding errors
in their estimation are given in Table I. From the results shown in Table I, while the
signal is noise-free, the proposed approach is capable of identifying the precise
values of the structural parameters even the external excitation is unknown. Though
the identification errors are increasing as the level of noise increases, it is still
obvious that the proposed approach can identify the structural parameters including
stiffness and damping coefficients with acceptable accuracy. Moreover, noting the
damaged component (K6), it can be seen that the identified result has good
agreement with the simulated one. By comparing the identified values with the
designed values or the previous identified values, the damage can be localized and
determined. It means that the proposed approach can be employed to identify the
local damage qualitatively and quantitatively if the damage exists.
TABLE I. The identified parameters under different noise levels

Noise-free 5% noise 10% noise
Parameters
Identified Error (%) Identified Error (%) Identified Error (%)
C4 300.00 0.00 293.84 2.05 298.67 0.44
C5 300.00 0.00 302.63 0.88 310.99 3.67
C6 300.00 0.00 300.51 0.17 297.05 0.98
C7 300.00 0.00 292.08 2.64 319.28 6.43
K4 200000.00 0.00 199410.86 0.29 198191.48 0.90
K5 200000.00 0.00 200032.11 0.02 199039.29 0.48
K6 190000.00 0.00 189541.04 0.24 190503.66 0.27
K7 200000.00 0.00 200049.59 0.03 200915.42 0.46
4000 Identified Actual 4000

The external excitation (N)
2000 2000
Error (N)
0 0
-2000 -2000
-4000 -4000
3 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4 0 2 4 6
time (s) time (s)
Figure 3. The comparison of the external excitation (10% noise level)
181
Furthermore, the unknown external excitation can be simultaneously obtained.
The identified excitation while the signal is contaminated by 10% noise is plotted in
Fig. 3 as an example. For clarity of comparison, only a segment from 3 to 4 sec is
presented, and the error between the identified excitation and the actual one on the
total sampling points is also shown in Fig. 3. Note that identical amplitude scales
are applied to all the plots. It’s clear from the plot that the identified excitation has
good agreement with the actual value even the response measurements are
contaminated by 10% noise.
4. CONCLUSIONS
Based on the SSI algorithm and LSE techniques, a damage detection approach,
namely weighted adaptive iterative least-squares estimation with incomplete
measured excitations for local damage detection (WAILSE-IME-LDD), was
proposed in this paper. The parameters of the concerned substructure were
identified by the proposed approach solely utilizing the dynamical responses.
Moreover, the unknown external excitation was simultaneously obtained during the
iteration. The identified results in the numerical example show that the proposed
approach is capable of identifying substructural parameters as well as the unknown
dynamic loading, and provides a promising way for localized damage detection in
civil engineering structures.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided through the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant No. 50978092, and the
Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-08-0178).
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health monitoring, Structural Control and Health Monitoring, 18: n/a. doi: 10.1002/stc.389.
182
A Novel Damage Sensitive Feature Based on
State-Space Representation
A. CLEMENT, S. LAURENS and S. GIRARD
ABSTRACT
Damage detection in civil structure is a challenging task, mainly because of the

strong environmental variations and the variable and unknown excitation. There is still
a lack of a robust damage detection process. Taking advantage of the development of
the nonlinear dynamical systems theory which represents time series in a
reconstructed state-space, a novel damage sensitive feature vector is proposed.
Statistical modelling using extreme value theory is conducted to classify measurement
as damaged or undamaged. The whole approach is tested on two case studies. The first
one is a simple 4dof mass/spring numerical model, damaged by stiffness reduction.
The second one is a concrete beam subjected to temperature variations to simulate
realistic conditions. Damage is introduced by loading cycles.
From 30% of stiffness reduction, damage is correctly detected with a monotonic
trend. In the more realistic case, only few true detections are observed before macro-
cracking whereas all points are well classified after. Furthermore, the method is robust
against strong temperature variations.
INTRODUCTION
For few years, vibration-based Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) process is

presented in terms of statistical pattern recognition [1]. The extraction of Damage
Sensitive Feature (DSF) takes a central place in this process. The main challenge is to
preserve information about structure condition. For this purpose, the paradigm of
nonlinear dynamical systems offers some promising abilities [2, 3]. The information
contained in time-series is extracted using reconstructed state-space representation [4].
Among the numerous candidate features, the Lyapunov Exponents (LE) have been
particularly studied [5, 6]. They are related to the long term predictability of
dynamical system. To be more precise, two trajectories initially close in the state space
_____________
Antoine CLEMENT, Stéphane LAURENS, Université de Toulouse ; UPS-INSA ; LMDC, 135
Avenue de Rangueil ; F-31 077 Toulouse, France
Stéphane GIRARD, LJK & INRIA Rhône-Alpes, France
183
will diverge with an exponential rate proportional to LE. But two remarks can be
formulated on their use as DSF. First, the practical calculation of LE is very time
consuming as trajectories need to be followed for several thousand of time steps [7].
Then, since damage manifests itself as local irregularities in the signal, it should be
more visible if short evolutions of trajectories are considered. This leads to the
proposition of a new damage sensitive feature referred to as Jacobian Feature Vector
(JFV) [8]. It is formed by the components of the Jacobian matrix of the dynamic
estimated in the reconstructed state-space.
Once DSF are extracted from measurement, each new DSF has to be classified as
damaged or undamaged. In civil structures, since only data from the undamaged state
are available, damage is detected by comparison with the undamaged database. The
statistical classification is carried out in two steps. First, the Mahalanobis distance is
calculated to provide a scalar value. Then, exceedances statistical model is used to set
classification threshold for control charts.
The proposed approach is tested on two case studies : a 4 dof mass/spring/damper
numerical model, and a concrete beam subjected to temperature variations.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
State-Space Damage Sensitive Feature
The evolution of any dynamical system can be represented as a trajectory in it state-

space where each dimension is a degree of freedom. When it is impossible to measure
all dof, one can reconstruct qualitatively the state-space based on the measurement of a
single time series by using the delayed coordinates method [4].
The scalar time series ( x ) = x (1) ,… , x ( N ) is transformed into a collection of
n-dimensional vectors:
{ }
X ( k ) = x ( k ) , x ( k + τ ) ,… , x ( k + ( n − 1)τ ) . (1)
The first minimum of the autocorrelation function, or the first zero of the mutual
information function of (x) provides an estimate of τ [9]. Then the best embedding
dimension, n, is estimated with the false nearest neighbors method [10]. In the
reconstructed state-space, the dynamical system can be represented by the evolution
operator F, which links one point to the next one, in a trajectory:
X ( k + 1) = F ( X ( k ) ) . (2)
If Y ( k ) is a close neighbour of X ( k ) , and noting δ X i = X ( k + i ) − Y ( k + i ) , the
first order Taylor expansion of F introduces the Jacobian matrix calculated at the point
X ( k ) , i.e. J  X ( k )  :
δ X 1 = J  X ( k )  δ X 0 + ο δ X 0 ,
(3)
δ X 2 = J  X ( k + 1) J  X ( k )  δ X 0 + ο δ X 0 .
184
Figure 1. Illustration of the JFV calculation algorithm Figure 2. Mahalanobis vs Euclidian
distance
The algorithm used to estimate the Jacobian matrix with experimental data [7] is
presented in Figure 1.
A fiducial point X ( k ) is chosen in the reconstructed state space, and its r nearest
neighbors, noted Ynni ( k ) , i = 1… r , are selected to form a neighborhood. The
difference vectors are constructed as follows
δ X nn ( k ) = { X ( k ) − Ynni (k ) i = 1,… , r} . (4)
The least-square method is used to evaluate the Jacobian matrix as the best linear
mapping between the neighborhoods k and k+1 (Eq.4 and Eq.5, Figure 1).
δ X nn ( k + 1) = J1 δ X nn ( k ) 
(5)
δ X nn ( k + 2 ) = J 2 δ X nn ( k + 1)  .
A previous study [8] has shown that the sensitivity to damage is improved if the
mapping does not include the initial neighborhood. Hence, the components of J2
(Eq.5) are used to form a feature vector which will be referred to as the Jacobian
Feature Vector (JFV).
This process is repeated for 100 fiducial points across the state-space.
Novelty Detection
In order to compare a point from a set of points, the calculation of the Mahalanobis
distance (MD) is common [11]. Unlike Euclidian distance, it takes into account the
correlation between coordinates (Figure 2). It converts a multivariate DSF into a scalar
value which is easier to analyse with statistical modelling.
If the reference baseline is characterized by a mean vector JFV and a covariance
matrix C JVF , the square MD of the ith JFV vector is:
( ) ( CJFV ) ( JFV − JFV ) .

T −1
Di2 = JFVi − JFV i (6)
185
Statistical Modelling
The use of control charts implies the setting of control limit. Using the normal
hypothesis can lead to wrong value since extreme events reside in the tails which are
poorly modelled when the nature of the distribution in unknown. To overcome this
problem, it is possible to consider the variable Y, which represents the exceedances of
D over a threshold u. Regardless the distribution of D, if u is in the tail of D, the
distribution of Y will follow a Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD) [12]. A special
case of GPD is the exponential distribution which is easy to fit. Thus, for d ≥ u :
u−x
F ( d ) = P ( D ≤ d ) ≈ 1 − (1 − F (u ) ) exp   (7)
 σ 
with σ, the scale parameter.

The calibration of the model starts by the determination of the threshold, u. It is
done by choosing a number of exceedances k, among a sample of size m taken from
the undamaged database {d1 ,… , d m } . These values are sorted in descending order
{d1:m ≥ d 2:m ≥ … ≥ d m:m } . Then, u is associated with the k order statistics d k:m , and
F ( u ) is estimated by the empirical distribution of D (Eq.8). The parameter σ is
estimated using maximum loglikehood method (Eq.9) [12].
k
u = d k:m k < m and F (u ) = 1 − . (8)
m +1
1 k
σ = ∑ di:m .
k i =1
(9)
Finally, since only data from the undamaged state are available, the classification of
a new sample d as damaged or undamaged is done with a hypothesis test. To improve
the robustness of control charts, it is common to consider a run of p measurements
instead of each measurement individually [13]. Thereby, the null hypothesis
(undamaged state) is rejected if p consecutives values of d exceed the control limit:
H 0 : di ≤ CL, H1 : di > CL i = 1… p . (10)
The control limit (CL) is fixed with respect to a probability α of type I error. So,
with the verified assumption that di are independent, α is the probability that p
successive values exceed the control limit when the state is undamaged. CL is
calculated using Eq.11 and inversing Eq.7.
α = P ( D > CL ) = 1 − F ( CL ) ⇒ F ( CL ) = 1 − α .

p p p
(11)
.
186
Database repartition
When a learning process is involved in pattern recognition, data are usually split in
three parts to control the quality of the training.
• The reference baseline is composed of half of the undamaged database. It is
used as reference for Mahalanobis distance calculation.
• The classification base is composed of a quarter of the undamaged
database. It is used to estimate the parameters of the statistical model and
fixes the control limit.
• The test base is composed of a quarter of the undamaged database and all
damaged base. It is used to test the damage detection method.
CASE STUDIES
Case study 1
The first case study (CS1) is a 4 dof mass/spring/damper numerical model, excited
by a white noise. Damage is introduced by reducing the stiffness in traction of the
spring k1 to simulate opening and closing of a crack (Figure 3). The database is
composed of 120 times series of 8192 values at the undamaged state, and 90 damaged
one with a reduction of stiffness by 10% every 10 measurements. This case is a first
test for the damage detection algorithm, with very clean data and no external
variations.
Case study 2
To test the robustness of the approach, it has to be tested on more realistic data. In
civil engineering structures, environmental variations cause large fluctuations of
damage indexes making damage detection very difficult.
This second case study is a 200x12x10cm fibre reinforced concrete beam (Figure
4). To simulate environmental variations, 4 infra-red lights are used to heat the beam
on one face, up to 50°C. Damage is introduced by four points flexion cycles with an
increasing load. While temperature fluctuates, vibration measurements are recorded
through 4 vertical accelerometers placed on the top. Accelerometers will be referred to
as #1 to #4 from the right to the left of the beam. The excitation is an 800Hz band-
limited noise and is produced by an electrodynamic shaker. For each measurement
Figure 3. CS1 : Numerical model Figure 4. CS2 : Concrete beam dimensions [cm]
187
Figure 5. P-P plot for accelerometer 2 Figure 6. Q-Q plot for accelerometer 2
sequence, 5 times series are recorded. Each time series counts 8192 points at 2048Hz.
The undamaged and the damaged databases are composed of 210 times series each
(42 sequences).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The reconstruction procedure suggests that the optimal delays are 6 and 3 for
respectively CS1 and CS2, and reconstruction dimension of 7 for both. This leads to
JFV formed by 49 components.
To determine the control limit, the probability of type I error is set to 0.01 and 15
exceedances are used to calibrate the statistical models. The quality of the model can
be assessed by the quantile and probability plot (Figure 5 and Figure 6). As most of
the points lay on the central line for accelerometer #2 (CS2), the fit is acceptable.
Similar results are obtained with the other accelerometers.
The Figure 7 presents the Mahalanobis distance as function of the percentage of
stiffness decrease. The filled markers indicate that the null hypothesis is rejected (three
consecutive points exceed the control limit). Only one false alarm is detected. From
30% of stiffness reduction, all measurements are correctly classified (except one
point). Furthermore, the MD presents a monotonic trend as damage increase; this
could lead to a quantification of the degree of degradation. This simple case proves
that the proposed DSF offers some promising abilities.
The task is more complicated in more realistic conditions. The Figure 8 shows the
Figure 7. CS1 : Mahalanobis distance as function of the percentage of stiffness reduction
188
Figure 8. From top right, to bottom left : Accelerometer #1 to #4 ; Mahalanobis distance for each
sequence of measurement
control charts for each accelerometer. There are almost no differences between
sensors, it is not possible to locate the damage. This means that the global behavior of
the beam is affected significantly.
All the undamaged points in the test base are correctly classified since no false
alarms are detected. On the other hand, between measurement sequences 44 and 60,
only few points are classified as damaged. This indicates that the damage induced by
the first cycles of loading do not affect significantly the dynamic of the beam. It is
likely that only micro-cracking is developing during the early loadings. However, the
few true detections alert that a slight change occurs in the beam. Beyond the 60th
sequence, all points are detected as damaged and the change is strong between 60 and
61. It is related to the apparition of the first macro-crack which modifies considerably
the behavior of the beam.
Once the macro-cracking appears, the MD presents variations which are not related
to the severity of damage but more likely to the temperature fluctuations. Since it is
not present before the sequence 60, the cracking somehow amplifies the sensitivity to
environmental variations. In spite of this increased variability, the damage detection
algorithm keeps correctly classifying the measurements.
CONCLUSION
A damage detection strategy is proposed. It is formed by a new damage sensitive

feature formed by the evaluation of the Jacobian matrix of trajectories in the state
space. Then, the Mahalanobis distance compares a new vector to a reference database,
converting the multidimensional vector information into a unique scalar value. The
189
classification is finally carried out through control charts, in which the control limit is
set using extreme value statistics modeling.
The global approach is tested successfully on a simple 4 dof mass/spring numerical
model. It is able to detect damage from 30% of stiffness reduction, with no false
alarms. When tested on a concrete beam subjected to loading cycles, as well as
temperature variations, only few true detections are observed during the micro-
cracking. As soon as macro-cracking occurs, all points are classified as damaged in
spite of a greater dispersion due to temperature fluctuations.
To enhance the method, further investigations on the statistical modeling are
needed. Indeed, it appears that in spite of the small type I error probability selected,
some false alarms can occur depending on the repartition of measurements in the three
bases (train, classification and test). It is important to work on the selection of these
bases and on their minimum size required to achieve good statistical modeling.
The robustness of the algorithm has to be confirmed on different case studies and
compared to other damage sensitive features like time series models (AR) or modal
analysis.
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Trans. R. Soc. A, 365(1851):303.
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6. Fabio Casciati and Sara Casciati. 2006. Structural health monitoring by lyapunov exponents of non-
linear time series. Struct. Control. HLTH, 13(1):132–146.
7. Reggie Brown, Paul Bryant, and Henry D. I. Abarbanel. 1991. Computing the lyapunov spectrum
of a dynamical system from an observed time series. Phys. Rev. A, 43(6):2787.
8. A. Clément and S. Laurens. 2011. An alternative to the lyapunov exponent as a damage sensitive
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190
Damage Classification in Composite
Laminates: Matrix Micro-Cracking
and Delamination
C. C. LARROSA, K. LONKAR, S. SHANKAR and F.-K. CHANG
ABSTRACT1
Fiber reinforced composites have been widely used in aerospace applications

due to their functional properties, such as high strength-to-weight ratios. But many
challenges remain to be overcome in order to permit more confidence in the
performance of composite structures. In particular, composites have different failure
types and modes that make damage prediction and propagation a very challenging
subject. The main two damage types are matrix micro-cracking and delamination.
Matrix micro-cracking develops first, causing delamination. The detection and
quantification of matrix micro-cracks would provide the needed information to predict
the development of delamination and the correct safety or maintenance decision to be
made. The challenge in matrix micro-cracking identification is that it is a distributed
damage, while delamination is a localized damage. The state-of-the-art diagnostic
techniques are good at detecting and localizing major changes in sensor signals, which
usually points to delamination, holes or other localized defects. Furthermore, there are
a limited number of features that can be extracted from sensor signals, and most of
them are affected by both delamination and matrix micro-cracking. The work
presented in this paper aims at finding which features are more sensitive to each
damage type (delamination or matrix micro-cracks), and applying machine learning
techniques to learn and model a classifier that uses these features efficiently to classify
the detected damage .
INTRODUCTION
Within the requirements of next generation aircraft and spacecraft is the need for
fuel-efficient, cost effective, and safe vehicles. To meet these requirements the design
of lighter and intelligent structures surfaces as a solution. To solve the lighter
requirement, fiber reinforced composite structures offer the possibility to reduce
structural weight compared to their metal counterparts. An intelligent structure is a
Cecilia Larrosa, Kuld eep Lon kar and Santhos h Sh ankar, Ph D candidates, Department of
1
Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, Durand Bldng., room 250, 496 Lomita Mall,
Stanford, Ca 94305.
Prof. Fu-Kuo Cha ng, Dep artment of Aeronautics a nd Astronautics, Stanford University,
Durand Bldng., room 250, 496 Lomita Mall, Stanford, Ca 94305.
191
structure that is able to detect if it has developed damage, assess the severity of this
damage, and estimate its remaining useful life (RUL). The advantages of such a
structure are twofold. First, it reduces inspection time by providing condition based
maintenance, making a cost-effective vehicle. Second, it provides the information
needed to make better and safer decisions about the vehicle’s operation.
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of composite structures has demonstrated its
potential to meet the aforementioned requirements. An SHM system is one in which a
network of sensors is attached or embedded to the composite structure; these sensors
monitor the structure for changes. The sensed changes need to be interpreted into
damage type, quantity, and location. Once the current damage state of the structure has
been processed, this information can be used in prognostic models that estimate
damage propagation and remaining life [1-2]. There are many types of sensors that can
be used, but piezoelectric (PZT) sensors have been shown to be a very good method to
create acoustic Lamb waves through composite structures [2-3].
One of the main challenges with composite structures is the damage mechanics.
Composites structures suffer multiple damage types that can occur in sequence or
simultaneously within different plies (or laminae), which make the damage very hard
to detect and classify. The two main damage types are matrix micro-cracks and ply
delamination. Matrix micro-cracks develop in the matrix, in between and
perpendicular to the fiber direction. These micro-cracks act as stress concentrators
between plies. As the number of micro-cracks increases, the interfacial stresses
increase, and this interfacial stress mismatch creates delamination [4-7]. During an
impact event, this mechanism is very important; the presence of matrix micro-cracks
decreases the structure’s ability to withstand impact loads, increasing the rate of
delamination and hastening final failure [4]. Delamination decreases the structure’s
strength significantly and is usually the main cause of structural final failure.
Because of its important role in failure mechanics, delamination has been the focus
of much work on understanding Lamb wave propagation, detecting delamination
using Lamb waves and building SHM systems for it [2,8]. Very little research has
looked at detecting matrix micro-cracks in composite structures, even though they are
a precursor to, and would give an early warning of, delamination. [9-10] studied how
Lamb wave velocity is affected by the presence of matrix micro-cracks and
delamination but they did not discuss matrix micro-cracking detection.
In [11-12] the effect of both delamination and matrix micro-cracks was studied in
detail via fatigue experiments on composite plates with surface mounted piezoelectric
sensor network (Acellent’s SMART® Layers). It was found that Lamb wave velocity,
measured from Time of Flight (TOF) between actuation and sensed signal, was
affected by the presence of delamination, while matrix micro-cracks did not affect it
much. It was observed that after processing the sensed signal via Short Time Fourier
Transform (STFT), the Power Spectral Density (PSD) change with respect to the
undamaged signal (baseline) at the actuation frequency was affected by both damage
types. PSD change was found to be sensitive to the number of matrix cracks
developed, whereas when delamination was present the PSD changed abruptly and did
not further change with delamination growth. Other signal features where extracted
and studied as well, as shown in Table I.
The current work leverages from previous and ongoing work to tackle the problem
of damage classification; given an actuator to sensor path: can we identify if this
particular path has developed matrix micro-cracks only or delamination as well? This
192
paper will implement and discuss different machine learning algorithms and different
combinations of signal features to assess which combination yields the best results in
classifying matrix micro-cracks and delamination in the composite plate.
EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
Three layup configurations were used in these experiments in order to account for
the effect of ply orientation: Layup 1: [02/904]s, Layup 2: [0/902/45/-45/90]s, and
Layup 3: [902/45/-45]2s. All samples are 6 inches wide by 10 inches long. A necking
geometry plus a notch were used as stress concentrators for damage initiation, as
shown in Fig. 1.
Two six-PZT-sensor SMART Layers® from Acellent Technologies were attached
to the surface of each sample. This configuration provided six actuators and six
sensors to monitor wave propagation through the samples (see Figure 1). Acellent’s
ScanScentry 32 channel data acquisition hardware and SmartPatch interface software
were used to actuate and receive the corresponding signals for the 36 actuator-sensor
paths at a given actuation frequency. The dispersion curves for the composite plates
were computed using Disperse software. The frequency chosen was 250 KHz in order
to have the fundamental symmetric and anti-symmetric modes as distinguishable as
possible.
All tests were performed following ASTM Standards D3039 and D3479. Using an
MTS machine, samples were gripped using hydraulic grips. The maximum fatigue
load was set to 75-85% of the static failure strength, with a load ratio (R) of
approximately 0.14. The fatigue tests followed a sinusoidal load profile at a frequency
of 5Hz. Experimental details can be found in [12].
Figure 1. Composite sample with surface Figure 2. X Ray image of [02/904]s composite
mounted SMART Layer. specimen at 1 million cycles. Two diagnostic paths
are shown with different labels.
The main goal of this test procedure is to be able to acquire sensor data as a
function of damage progression; which can be obtained from X-ray images. The
fatigue tests were stopped every 50,000 cycles, the samples were unloaded from the
MTS machine, and sensor data was acquired. An X-ray of the sample was taken using
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a Faxitron X-ray cabinet. In order to be able to differentiate present different damages
in the composite sample, a dye-penetrant was used to enhance X-ray absorption.
EXPERIMENTAL DATA ANALYSIS AND FEATURE EXTRACTION
The X-ray images were analyzed per diagnostic path. For each diagnostic path,
matrix micro-cracks were counted at every cycle increment. For every diagnostic path
at each cycle increment a label of 0 was given if only matrix micro-cracks were
present or a label of 1 if the path had experienced delamination. An example is shown
in Figure 2.
The sensed signal for each diagnostic path at each cycle interval was processed
both in the time domain and frequency domain to extract different features
(parameters), as shown in Table I. The time domain features were the peak amplitude
of the fundamental symmetric mode (S0), and the Time of Flight (TOF) from actuation
signal to the center of the S0 mode, shown in Figure 3. Frequency domain features
were extracted for the actuation frequency of 250 kHz after a Short Time Fourier
Transform was performed. The features extracted are the energy content of the S0
mode, the peak of the PSD, the PSD rate of change from cycle to cycle, and the PSD
change from the undamaged state (or baseline). All features were normalized by the
corresponding baseline value. Three more features that are of interest are the ratios of
TOF and PSD change, PSD change and TOF, and S0 amplitude and TOF.
These nine features were used separately as well as in combination to investigate
different classification algorithms. With an input feature size of nine, there are 511
(29–1) different combination of features. Each of these combinations was used to run
the different classification algorithms explained in the next section.
TABLE I. EXTRACTED FEATURES

Feature Quantity
x1 Time of Flight
x2 Amplitude
x3 Energy
x4 PSD peak
x5 PSD rate
x6 PSD change
x7 TOF/PSD Figure 3. Experimental sensor data. In blue is
x8 PSD/TOF the actuation signal, in red the sensed signal,
x9 Amplitude/TOF the S0 mode is boxed, amplitude and Time of
Flight (TOF) are shown.
CLASSIFICATION ALGORITHMS
Machine learning techniques provide a way to learn a classifier (or model) from
experimental data (training data) and use this model to estimate the class (type) of a
new data point (test data) [13]. Different supervised learning methods based on
different assumptions were implemented, and are briefly described below. It is
important to clarify that algorithm development is not the objective of this research,
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but the focus is to assess the implementation, accuracy and limitations of these
techniques in distinguishing whether matrix micro-cracks or delamination are present
in a given diagnostic path of the composite laminate. These techniques are also very
helpful in defining which sensor signal features are useful in the classification task,
and could aid on further understanding the physics of Lamb wave interaction with
different damage types in composite plates.
Figure 4. A sample schematic of how supervised learning algorithms work.
Logistic Regression
Logistic Regression (LR) is a well known and widely used classifier. It is
conceptually similar to linear least squares regression, but the function to be regressed
is the sigmoid function. The sigmoid function is what makes the regression a
classification since the function takes on values of zero or one [14]. Stochastic
gradient descent is used to estimate the sigmoid function parameters.
Naïve Bayes
Naïve Bayes (NB) algorithms are very simple yet a powerful method [13]. As its
name states, is constructed from Bayesian networks, assuming feature independence.
With the training data, the conditional probability of each feature given its class is
estimated via maximum likelihood estimation. To make a classification it applies
Bayes rule to get the conditional probability of a class given the feature values [13]. In
order to implement the Naïve Bayes algorithm the experimentally extracted features
were discretized into 100 bins of equal size, and Laplace smoothing was used to avoid
probabilities of zero.
Gaussian Discriminative Analysis

Gaussian Discriminant Analysis (GDA) learns the conditional probability of the
feature given the class, assuming that this probability has a multivariate Gaussian
distribution. Through maximum likelihood estimates it estimates the parameters of
this distribution, and by applying Bayes rule it can classify a new data point by
computing the conditional probability of a class given the new feature values. This
method was implemented in two different forms. First assuming that features share the
same covariance with the two classes, and then this assumption was relaxed so that
features had different covariance matrices dependent on the class [15].
Support Vector Machines

Support Vector Machines (SVM) approach finds a boundary between the
different classes (e.g. 0 or 1). It optimizes the boundary location by maximizing
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distance between the boundary and the training data. The constraint optimization
can be set up as a convex quadratic programming (QP) problem. This method is
very good when there are many features, i.e. high dimensionality. It works around
high dimensionality by mapping these dimensions into a hyper-plane using a kernel
mapping function [13].
The SVM classification was implemented using the SVM light source package
provided by [16]. It implements a fast optimization algorithm to solve both the
classification and regression problem. The software supports various other features
and the details can be found on (http://svmlight.joachims.org). The source code
written in C language was patched with MATLAB using the MATLAB-MEX
interface to SVMlight from [17]. This provided the seamless capability to perform the
SVM-classification on the data set from a MATLAB user interface. The
classification was performed using a linear kernel, polynomial and sigmoid
hyperbolic tangent kernels. The test error measured by 75% − 25% hold -out
validation using the linear kernel was found to be the least.
Algorithm performance was measured by computing the test error via hold-out
cross validation; randomly selected 75% of the experimental data were used as
training data and the remaining 25% for testing. Training and testing errors,
precision and recall values were also computed. Training errors are computed by
running the learned model with the same data used to find the model parameters.
Testing errors are the result of misclassifying the new data.
First, all the data from eight composite samples, two of each layup, was pre-
processed and merged into one data set. Each algorithm was run with all nine
features. Figure 5 presents a bar plot comparing training and testing errors. Training
errors are on the same order as the test error which implies there is high bias. The
algorithm with the highest accuracy was the GDA with different covariance
matrices with a 20% test error, followed by GDA with shared covariance matrix
with a 21% test error. NB and SVM had a 25% test error, and logistic regression
resulted in 64% misclassification.
On the same data set, the 511 different combinations of features were used to
train and test the different algorithms. For each combination of features the test
error, precision and recall were the measures of performance. Table II and Figure 5
present the results from the feature combinations that produced the best
performance for each algorithm. GDA with different covariance again had the best
performance with a 19% test error using TOF, amplitude, energy content and PSD
peak as features. From these results we can conclude that the data seems to be
distributed as a multivariate Gaussian distribution, and that features are not related
to delamination or matrix micro-cracks the same way, hence the need for different
covariance matrices. It is important to note that TOF and PSD are present in all the
feature combinations that produced the best classification, which is in agreement
with previously studied trends with delamination and matrix micro-cracks,
respectively [11-12].
196
g p
0.7
Train Error - ALL 9 features
Test Error - ALL 9 features
0.6 Lowest Test error (different features)
0.5
0.4
Error
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
LR NB GDA (shared Cov) GDA (different Cov) SVM
Figure 5. Train and test errors from different learning methods used. The third columns are the best
performance for each method.
TABLE II. FEATURES FOR BEST PERFORMANCE

Method Feature Set Test Error
GDA(different Cov) [x1,x2,x3,x4] .191
NB [x1,x3,x7,x9] .202
GDA (shared Cov) [x1,x2,x3,x4,x6,x7,x8,x9] .205
SVM [x3,x4,x9] .207
LR [x1,x3,x5,x7,x8] .343
The next question that arises is how sensitive are these algorithms to layup
configuration. Different layups consists of different ply orientations as well as stacking
sequences; these affect laminate strength, damage mechanics, and Lamb wave
propagation. It is important to know how sensitive a classification algorithm is to these
changes in order to know its applicability. The data for each layup configuration was
processed separately, and the GDA algorithm with different covariance matrices with
the four features shown in Table II was implemented. A 75%-25% hold out cross-
validation was performed. Results show that Layup 2 ([0/902/45/-45/90]s) test error
decreased by 3%, Layup 1 ([02/904]s) by 1% and Layup 3 ([902/45/-45]2s) increased by
0.5%. These small changes in accuracy suggest that the GDA algorithm implemented
is robust to layup configuration.
To further study the robustness of the algorithm, each of the six samples were
investigated separately. The GDA algorithm was trained using all data available
excluding data for the sample being investigated, as shown in Table III. Table III
presents the average prediction error for each of the samples. It was found that test
errors for different samples are very consistent, which solidifies the robustness of the
algorithm to layup configuration. Figure 6 presents an example of how damage is
being classified per sample at a given point in time per diagnostic path; the training set
did not include data from this sample. The figure presents results for a Layup 2 sample
after 150,000 cycles; out of 36 paths, 6 where misclassified. The X-Ray image shows
the delaminated areas and matrix micro-cracks. The classification algorithm predicted
delamination correctly (labeled 1) for the paths shown in red, matrix micro-cracks
correctly (labeled 0) for the paths shown in white. The paths shown in dashed yellow
where misclassified as matrix micro-cracks only when delamination was present as
well. The misclassification, in general, was observed to be in paths where mid-
laminate plies have delaminated. This implies that delamination depth plays an
197
important role on Lamb wave propagation that was not taken into account in this
study.
TABLE III. TEST ERRORS

Sample tested Training Set Prediction
Samples error
1 : Layup 1 [2,3,4,5,6] .175
2: Layup 1 [1,3,4,5,6] .175
3: Layup 2 [1,2,4,5,6] .187
4: Layup 2 [1,2,3,5,6] .174
5: Layup 3 [1,2,3,4,6] .180
6: Layup 3 [1,2,3,4,5] .203
Figure 6. X-ray of Layup 2 (sample #2) after 150,000 cycles. Six out of 36 (16%) diagnostic paths
were misclassified, shown in dashed yellow, paths shown in white were those predicted as matrix
micro-cracks, and paths shown in red were predicted as delamination. Data for this sample was
not used during training (see Table III).
SUMMARY AND FUTURE WORK
Fatigue experiments on composite laminates with surface mounted piezoelectric

sensors were carried out and data were analyzed. Sensor data were extracted at every
50,000 cycles and X-ray images provided the information on damage types present.
This paper investigated the implementation of supervised machine learning methods to
classify damage in composite laminates into two types: matrix micro-cracks and
delamination from changes in sensor signal parameters. Gaussian Discriminant
Analysis with different covariance matrices was the best classification method
implemented with a 19% classification error. A sensitivity study to layup
configuration was performed that suggests that GDA classification is robust to layup
configuration changes. Four sensor signal parameters were found to produce the best
results, which are in agreement with previous studies.
The algorithms implemented are simple algorithms that have been used in many
applications, but serve to demonstrate their use for Structural Health Monitoring. The
198
question that needs to be answered is if a 19% classification error is acceptable, and if
implementation of more sophisticated learning methods would reduce this error.
Future work will focus on answering these questions as well as linking this damage
classification algorithm with damage quantification algorithms to provide prognostics
with the needed information to achieve the development of intelligent structures.
ACKNOWLEDGEMNT
The authors would like to acknowledge the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) for supporting this work under grants ARMD/AvSafe NRA-07-
IVHM1-07-0061, NRA-07-IVHM1-07-0064, Space Act Agreement SAA2-402292, and the
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) MURI FA9550-09-1-0677. We would
like to thank Richard W. Ross (NASA LaRC) and Dr. Les Lee as the program monitors of the
grants, as well as Kai Goebel and Abhinav Saxena (NASA Ames, PCoE) for assistance with
experimental planning and support in interpretation of the data. Special thanks to Prof. Andrew
Ng from Stanford University for his Machine Learning class notes. The authors are also
grateful for Acellent Technology’s assistance with the active sensing system.
REFERENCES
[1] Mueller, I., Larrosa, C., Roy, S. and Chang, F-K. An integrated diagnostic to prognostic SHM technology for
structural health management. The 7th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, 2009.
[2] Su, Z., Ye, L. and Lu, Y. (2006). Guided Lamb waves for identification of damage in composite structures: a
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[7] Beaumont, P.W.R, Dimant, R.A. and Shercliff, H.R. (2006). Failure processes in composite materials: getting
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[8] Jeong-Beom Ihn, Fu-Kuo Chang (2004). Detection and monitoring of hidden fatigue crack growth using a built-
in piezoelectric sensor/actuator network: I.Diagnostics. Smart Materials and Structures, 13, 609–620.
[9] Toyama, N., Yashiro, S., Takatsubo, J. and Okabe, T. (2005). Stiffness evaluation and damage identification in
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[10] Seale, M.D., Smith, B.T. and Prosser, W.H. (1998). Lamb wave assessment of fatigue and thermal damage in
composites. Journal of Acoustical Society of America 103 (5) 2416-2424.
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Airworthiness and Sustainment Conference 2011. 2011: San Diego, CA. p. 1-10.
[12] Saxena, A., Goebel, K., Larrosa, C., Janapati, S., Roy, S. and Chang, F-K. (2011). Accelerated aging
experiments for prognostics of damage growth in composite materials. The 8th International Workshop on
Structural Health Monitoring.
[13] Kotsiantis, S.B. (2007). Supervised machine learning: A review of classification Techniques. Informatica 31
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[14] Kleinbaum, D.G., Klein, K., and Pryor, E.R. (2010). Logistic regression: a self learning Text. Springer 2010.
[15] Webb, A.R. (2002). Statistical Pattern Recognition. John Wiley and Sons, 2002.
[16] Joachims, T. (1999). Making large-scale SVM learning Practical. Advances in Kernel Methods-Support
Vector Learning, MIT-Press.
[17] Anton, S., MATLAB-MEX interface to SVMlight. Software version provided by antonsc at Microsoft.com
199
Identifying Scatter Targets in 2D Space Using
In Situ Phased-Arrays for Guided Wave
E. B. FLYNN, M. D. TODD, S. S. KESSLER and C. T. DUNN
ABSTRACT
Guided Wave Structural Health Monitoring, GWSHM, involves exciting high

frequency mechanical waves in plate, beam, or rod-like structures and sensing the
scattered response in order to detect, localize, and characterize damage. Through a
process of phase-coherent delay-weight-sum similar to that used in some sonar and
radar applications, time-domain scattered responses measured at several closely
spaced discrete piezoelectric array elements can be transformed into a single two-
dimensional signal representation of amplitude (usually strain or voltage) versus
distance and look direction. In this two dimensional representation, a single waveform
pulse scattered from a single damage target has a predictable approximate shape which
is a function of the pulse wavelength and window, and the geometric layout of the
sensing array. The full response of an array, including all primary and secondary
reflections (or echoes) from damage, can then be approximated by a superposition of
shape functions corresponding to a finite set individual scatter targets. In this paper,
following a review of the spatial domain transformation process, we describe how one
can estimate the amplitude, arrival time, and bearing (arrival direction) of each
discrete target through matching pursuit.
INTRODUCTION
One of the most significant challenges in GWSHM is the separation of primary

wave scattering due to damage from secondary reflections, or echoes, following
Eric B . Flynn, Seth S. Kessler, Ch ris T . Dunn, M etis De sign Co rporation, 10 Ca nal P ark,
Cambridge MA, 02141, USA
Michael D. Todd, University of Califo rnia, San Di ego, 95 00 G ilman Dr, La Jolla, CA,
92093-0085, USA
200
subsequent interaction with structural features such as boundaries and connection
joints [1-3]. Such echoes have the tendency to corrupt GWSHM images by indicating
false locations of damage. This study works to address this challenge in three ways: 1)
Constructing radial scans, which provide both range and bearing information of
potential (true or echoed) scatter sources, through the use of phased transducer arrays,
2) Using matching pursuit to pinpoint discrete scatter targets, and 3) Reducing and
eliminating false targets through matched filtering based on the structure geometry.
SENSOR HARDWARE AND INTERROGATION PROCESS
In this study, we specifically consider a structure instrumented with an array of

Metis Design MD7 transducer nodes. Each node consists of a single central
piezoelectric transducer for actuation encircled by six piezoelectric sensing
transducers spaced approximately 7 mm from the center and at 60 degree intervals.
One at a time, each MD7 node actuates a series of narrow-band, ultrasonic mechanical
pulses using its central actuation transducer. These pulses propagate through the
structure, reflect and scatter at geometric features as well as potential damage, and are
then sensed by the six sensing transducers on the node. This is repeated for each MD7
node on a structure.
While we specifically consider the use of the MD7 node in the study, the approach
we present is relevant for most GWSHM instrumentation involving sets of closely
spaced transducer elements. This type of configuration enables one to estimate both
the relative range(s) and bearing(s) of potential damage in the structure using only a
single tight group of transducers (or node).
TIME DOMAIN PROCESSING
Filter
In order to reduce the influence of both mechanical and electronic noise sources,
the waveforms are band-pass-filtered about the actuation frequency. This filtering is
performed by passing the signals through a standard digital filter in the forward
direction and then again in the reverse direction. This forward and reverse filtering
eliminates the signal phase distortion introduced by the filter.
Complex Envelope
Next, the complex envelope is calculated according to:

yCE  t   y A  t  exp   j 2 fC t  (1)
where y A  t  is the analytic signal of the filtered waveforms and fC is the excitation
frequency.
Downsample
Since the complex envelope is narrowband, it can be down-sampled to twice the

bandwidth of the narrowband excitation pulse without loss of information. The down-
sampling substantially reduces the computation and memory requirements for the
subsequent processing.
201
Whiten
Processing of the waveforms is simplified by first transforming the data such that
it is approximately zero-mean, complex-normal distributed when damage is not
present. This transformation, commonly referred to as whitening, follows the form
yW   yCE  μ  C 1 ,
H
(2)
where μ and C are the mean and covariance (both complex) of the measurement
waveforms and usually are estimated using sets of “baseline” waveforms acquired
when the structure is in a known-to-be-undamaged state. Note that care must be taken
when inverting the estimated covariance matrix, especially when limited baseline
waveform samples are available [4].
SPATIAL DOMAIN PROCESSING
Spatial Transformation
The next step is to convert the time-domain measurement waveforms yW  t  into

spatial domain waveforms w  d  . In other words, the waveforms will be represented
as a function of distance travelled, d , rather than time, t . When using narrowband
excitation, and in the presence of minimal dispersion, this can be done by simply
scaling the time vector by the wave group velocity at the primary excitation frequency.
In the presence of dispersion, however, the wave velocities are a function of
frequency, so the waveforms must be transformed through dispersion compensation.
This can be achieved by transforming the time domain signals to the frequency
domain through a discrete Fourier transform, using the dispersion curves and
interpolation to convert from the frequency domain to the wave-number domain, and
taking the inverse discrete Fourier transform to obtain the dispersion-compensated
spatial domain signal [5].
Coherent Beamforming
In casex where the distance between sensing transducers satisfies the spatial
Nyquist sampling criterion [6], the delayed waveforms can be combined coherently,
without enveloping, which is referred to as coherent beamforming [7]. The spatial
sampling criterion is usually satisfied with a sensor-to-sensor pitch of less than one
half the wavelength of the sensed wave of interest. If we represent the whitened spatial
domain waveform from each transducer pair m according to the complex signal
wnm  d  , then a test statistic for the coherent detector for damage at x reduces to
M
I  C  x    a   x  w  d  x  
m 1
m
C
m m (3)
where d m  x  is the total travel distance from transducer pair m to x (from the
actuator to x to the sensor) and am  x  is a weighting function which we assign to be
uniformly equal to one for this study. Coherent beamforming is ideal since the
summation of the delayed waves tend to destructively combine at all locations except
the true location of damage. However, the transducers generally must be very closely
202
spaced, limiting their coverage of the structure. In practice, for narrowband signals, the
time delays are achieved through computationally faster phase shifts.
Incoherent Beamforming
When implementing sparse transducer arrays, the envelopes of the waveforms are
usually summed together in order to eliminate the dependence on phase. This
effectively shifts the signal wavenumber down so that the spatial sampling criterion is
met. The test statistic for the incoherent (“phase ignorant”) detector for damage at x
reduces to
M
I  I   x    am I   x  wm  d m  x   (4)
m 1
where again am I   x   1 for this study. Sparse arrays are effective at covering large
areas of a structure at the cost of reduced imaging resolution.
Hybrid Beamforming
Each MD7 sensor node involves a single actuating transducer surrounded by six
sensing transducers. The sensors in each node satisfy the sampling criteria for the
excitation frequencies and wave modes of interest, allowing for coherent
beamforming. From node to node, however, the criterion is not met and as such the
measured signals must be combined incoherently. This hybrid approach enables both
effective imaging through coherent beamforming within each node as well as effective
coverage of large areas through the placement of multiple nodes. If we represent the
sensed and processed waveform from transducer pair m on node n as wnm  d  , then
the hybrid beamforming test statistic takes the form
N 6
I  H   x    an I   x   am C   x  wnm  d nm  x   (5)
n 1 m 1
Figure 1 shows an example of the imaging of a 8 mm disc diameter magnet on a one

meter square plate using incoherent and hybrid imaging with one and three nodes.
In practice, it is more efficient to use local polar coordinates to represent the image
generated from a single node. The test statistic image, which now can be thought of as
a radial scan, is represented as I C  rn ,  n  , where the radius rn and bearing  n are
relative to the centroid of node n . The image can be formed directly from the analytic
signals in a manner analogous to (3)
M
I n C  rn , n    w  d  r ,   .
m 1
nm nm n n (6)
With respect to a given node and for uniformly spaced coordinates, the polar form
more accurately reflects the effective resolution of an image than the Cartesian form.
This enables more efficient storage and data transfer. More importantly, however, the
polar scans provide a natural coordinate domain for further processing, as discussed in
the next section. The final processed scans from multiple nodes are then combined on
common Cartesian coordinate system through interpolation.
203
Fig
gure 1: Incoherrent and hybriid imaging usin
ng one node (AA, B) and threee nodes (C, D) on a one
meter square
s plate.
Mattching Pursu
uit for Identtifying Poten
ntial Scatterr Targets
The
T purposee of the matcching pursuiit algorithm is to decom
mpose the radial scan
from
m each node into a sum of
o similarly sh
haped wave reflection paackets, so it tthey may
be ap
pproximated
d according to
o
I   r ,     Ai K (r  Ri ,  , i ) (7)
i
where Ai , Ri , annd i are estimates of the amplitudde, range annd bearing oof the i th
largeest scatter “target”
“ and K  r ,  , i  is the wavee reflection shape functtion. The
wavve reflection shape funcction depend ds on the sshape and w wavelength(ss) of the
excitation pulse as well as the
t layout an nd weightinggs of the sennsing array elements
with
hin each nod de. The shappe function for a Gaussiian-windoweed sinusoid takes the
apprroximate form m
 r 2 
K  r ,  , i   exp
e  2  B  , i  (8)
 2 
where  2 is thee width paraameter of thee excitation and B  , i  is the beaamformer

response function for steer beearing i andd measuremeent bearing  [6].
Figure
F 2 shoows the shappe function for the six--sensor MD77 node withh uniform
weigghting and a wavelength h of 30 mm. Note that thhe beamshappe for arrayss that are
closee to radial-sy
ymmetric (suuch as the MD7)
M is prim
marily a functtion of the ddifference
betw
ween the steeer and measu urement beaaring, i.e. B  , i   B   i , 0  . Onne of the
sign
nificant advan ntages to working in the polar domaiin is that is aallows one too separate
the radial
r and anngular dependdence of the shape functioon.
Figure 2:
2 Normalized
d beamshape fo
or MD7 array and wavelenggth of 30 mm.
204
Figure
F 3: Origiinal MD7 scan (left) and recoonstructed scaan using ten maatching pursuiit wave
packetss (right). Scan radius equal tto one meter.
The
T amplitud des, ranges, and bearingss of the wavee packets aree estimated aaccording
he following matching pu
to th ursuit algorith
hm:
1) Identify range, beariing, and am
mplitude corrresponding tthe global m
maximum
of the rad mage
dial scan im
Ri ,i   arg max I  r ,  , Ai  I  Ri , i  (9)

r ,
2 Subtract the reconstrructed wave packet from

2) m the radial sscan image
I  r ,    I  r ,    Ai K  r  Ri ,   i  (10)
3 Repeat until
3) u or the betweeen the origiinal image aand the reconnstructed
the erro
nimum
image reeaches a min
2
 P

POptimal g min   I  r ,     Ai K  r  Ri ,  , i  
 arg (11)
P r ,  i 1 
ure 3 shows an original radial
Figu r scan for MD7 node aand the reconnstructed
f a single M
ge using ten discrete refleection packetts.
imag
Mattched Filteriing for Elim

minating Falsse Targets
A is the case in active so

As onar and radaar, false targeets, which arre most frequuently the
resu
ult of sensing g secondary reflections, or “echoes””, from the true target, have the
poteential to seveerally corruptt reconstructeed images, aas is the case in the scan in Figure
3. To reduce the influence off these false targets,
t we aapply a matchhed filter to tthe target
meaasurements. Matched
M filteering consistts of multiplyying the amp
mplitude of eaach wave
packket by the relative expectted amplitud de, as measurured by each node, if a taarget was
truly
y present in thhat location.
PRO
OOF OF CO
ONCEPT
Exp
perimental Setup
S
T structuree used in thiss study, show

The wn in Figure 4, consists oof a 183 cm bby 91 cm
by 6 mm alumin num plate with two bolteed doublers aand two largge structural through-
holees, each of which
w is en
ncircled by a ring of tw welve bolt hholes. The pplate was
205
instrumented with four MD7 nodes. Two damage modes were introduced
simultaneously by loosening of one of the doubler bolts to finger-tight and the adding
a 3 mm notch to one of the encircling bolt holes. This type of structure is can be
especially troublesome with respect to secondary echos as waves have a tendency to
become “trapped” within the boundaries of the doubler, reflecting back and forth a
number of times before being sensed. In the GWSHM images, this leads to what
appear to be multiple instances of damage in a line on the opposite side of the doubler
from a node.
Procedure and Results
The node actuators were driven with a 60 KHz Gaussian-windowed sinusoid

approximately 5.5 cycles in length. The received signals were processed according to
procedure outlined above. In the present test, we chose not to presume anything about
the potential damage modes and their wave scattering behavior. As such, the matched
filter weighting is based primarily on attenuation due to radial beam spreading,
interaction with the doubler boundaries, and line of sight. For example, the
contribution to identification of a target by a node on the opposite side of the doubler
will be significantly scaled down and likely eliminated through thresholding.
Figure 5A shows the raw image generated through hybrid beamforming and
Figure 5B shows the reconstructed hybrid image following matching pursuit target
identification. As the figure demonstrates, the natural wave reflection shape functions
leave a large degree of ambiguity in the target bearing. When the responses from
multiple nodes are combined, this leads to significant error in the target localization.
To remedy this, the radial scans can alternatively be reconstructed using the same
estimated target amplitudes, ranges, and bearings, but with a narrower shape function,
as shown in Figure 5C. Here, the precise locations of the potential reflection targets
can be more readily identified. Finally, Figure 5D shows the reconstructed image after
false target elimination through matched filtering and thresholding of the targets. With
the significant reduction in secondary echoes, the two damage modes can now be
easily and uniquely identified.
CONCLUSION
The statistical effectiveness of the presented approach has yet to be determined. At

worst, it provides a useful qualitative tool for visualizing GWSHM images. At best, it
produces a set of nearly-sufficient, very low-order statistics in the form of discrete
scatter targets. A more thorough treatment of the problem would involve the
determination of statistically optimal beamforming weights and target rejection
thresholds. The utility of such an approach is likely highest for the simultaneous
detection and localization of multiple damage modes, where common delay and sum
approaches suffer from unintentional coherent addition of overlapping damage
indicators (as was the case in Figure 5B). Finally, it is possible that the estimated
target properties, such as the relative perceived amplitude from different nodes, could
aid in the classification of damage when combined with anticipated scattering profiles.
206
Bolted Dou
ubler MD7 Node
e
Struc
ctural
Through-HHoles Loose Bollt
3mm Notch
N
Fig
gure 4: Experim
mental setup on
o 183 cm × 91
1 cm × 6mm alluminum platee with four MD
D7 nodes
Fiigure 5 A) Raw w ultrasonic im

mage, B) Reconnstructed imagge using match hing pursuit-id dentified
targets (diam
monds), C) Reconstructed im mage with redu uction in shapee function sizee, D)
Reconsstructed imagee with false tarrget rejection tthrough match hed filtering.
REF
FERENCES
S
1. Flynn EB, Tod dd MD, Wilcox x PD, Drinkwatter BW, Croxfo ford AJ. Maxim mum-likelihood estimation
of damage locaation in guidedd-wave structuraal health monittoring. Proceeddings of the Royyal Society
A: Mathematiccal, Physical and Engineering Science.
S 2011;
2. Croxford AJ, Wilcox
W PD, Driinkwater BW, Konstantinidis
K G. Strategies ffor guided-wavee structural
health monitorring. Proceedinngs of the Royaal Society A: M Mathematical, P Physical and E Engineering
Science. 2007 Nov
N 8;463(208 87):2961 -2981..
3. Zhao X, Gao H,H Zhang G, Ay yhan B, Yan F,, Kwan C, et all. Active healthh monitoring off an aircraft
wing with emb bedded piezoellectric sensor/aactuator networrk: I. Defect ddetection, localiization and
growth monitoring. Smart Maaterials and Stru uctures. 2007 A Aug;16(4):12088-1217.
4. Twede DR, Hayden
H AF. Refinement and generalization
g of the extensioon method of covariance
matrix inversioon by regularizaation for spectrral filtering opttimization [Inteernet]. In: Shenn SS, Lewis
PE, editors. Im
maging Spectrommetry IX. San Diego,
D CA, USA A: SPIE; 2003. p. 299-306.
5. Wilcox PD. A rapid signal processing
p tech
hnique to removve the effect oof dispersion frrom guided
wave signals. IEEE Transsactions on Ultrasonics,
U Feerroelectrics aand Frequencyy Control.
2003;50(4):419 9–427.
6. Van Trees H. Optimum
O array processing. Neew York: Wileyy-Interscience; 2002.
7. Holmes C, Driinkwater BW, Wilcox
W PD. Poost-processing oof the full matrrix of ultrasonicc transmit–
receive array data
d for non-desstructive evaluaation. NDT and E Internationall. 2005;38(8):701–711.
207
Reference-Free Damage Identification Using
Statistical Modeling
A. MEDDA and V. DEBRUNNER
ABSTRACT
This work proposes a reference-free damage identification technique based on the
statistical modelling of vibration signals. This technique does not require a reference signal
to identify damage, but uses the information embedded on the signal at the sensor location.
The vibration signal statistical distribution is modelled using Gaussian Mixture Models
(GMM) for density estimation, from which indicators such variance, skewers, kurtosis,
energy and entropy are computed. Using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), the
deviation from the mean value of the first and second principal components is used as
indicators of damage. This approach is validated on a simulated Finite Element (FE) model
of a simply supported beam, where structural damage is simulated as a reduction of local
stiffness. The ability to detect damage efficiently is first investigated by modelling directly
the time vibration signal. Furthermore, a frequency approach is considered, where the
vibration signal is first decomposed into frequency subbands and then the estimated signal
density is used in each subband to compile a space-frequency error map. Simulation results
highlight the superiority of the frequency based approach over the time domain one.
INTRODUCTION
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques for civil engineering applications have
lately attract much attention in the research community [1,2]. SHM consists in the
development and implementation of algorithms and procedures to detect, locate, assess
and forecast structural damage. This damage can be the result of long term degradation
such as corrosion, cracks and delaminations and short term events like earthquakes and
other catastrophic events. Damage can be defined as a change in the system that negatively
affects the future behaviour of the system and its dynamic properties [3], which in
vibration-based SHM techniques [4] result in changes in the statistical characteristics of
the measured acceleration histories. Therefore, traditional SHM techniques detect damage
by comparing damage indicators obtained from the structural vibration signals before and
after damage has occurred. Moreover, traditional techniques are categorized in model-
based methods, which require an expensive computational model and non model-based
methods, which are easier to implement but do not provide a quantitative assessment of the
damage. In addition, most classical damage detection techniques are global in nature, i.e.
they focus on the variations in the modal parameters such as natural frequencies and mode
shapes, which are not sensitive enough for early detection and prevention, as they cannot
predict or assess the fault undergoing in the structure until it is considerably large [5].In
208
recent work conducted from the same authors, an alternative approach to localized damage
detection based on adaptive arrays and wavelet packet analysis was presented [6,7]. This
approach achieves spatial and time-frequency selectivity with optimal convergence rates
and good robustness to noise, using broadband environmental excitation from time
histories collected “far enough” in time such that noticeable differences can be detected.
This is the case with long term monitoring of already instrumented structures, where there
exists a database of archived time histories for reference and analysis. The problem arises
when monitoring a structure with already some amount of damage and on which the
undamaged state is unknown or cannot be acquired experimentally. Also, the requirement
for a baseline signal is an obstacle when monitoring structures only for short periods of
time, such as for quick evaluation of structural integrity after a natural disaster or a large
impact event.
The objective of this study is to propose a statistically based reference-free approach
for damage detection. Two approaches based on the statistical modelling of vibration
signals using GMM are presented. The first approach is based on the modelling of the
acceleration time histories of an array of sensors, while the second approach considers the
acceleration signal decomposition into narrow frequency bands that create a space-
frequency map of the vibration signal characteristics.
GAUSSIAN MIXTURE MODELING FOR DENSITY ESTIMATION

This section provides a brief review of GMM for the estimation of probability density
functions. More details on this approach are found in recent work from the same authors
[8,9] and in the work of McLachlan & Peel [10]. A Gaussian mixture with components
is defined as following
; ; (1)
where are the estimated mixing weights satisfying the condition ∑ 1 with
0. The quantity ; is the Gaussian density with dimensionality , given by the
following equation
1
; / (2)
2 /
with parameter vector , , where is the -dimensional mean vector and is

the covariance matrix. The problem of estimating the density for a -dimensional
input vector is then reduced to the estimation of the parameter vectors , 1, … ,
and the estimation of the number of mixture components . A classical approach to this
problem is the use of the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm [11], which provides
a sequence of mixture models with increasing log-likelihood on the data. This approach
presents several problems, some of which are the possibility for the EM algorithm to
converge to local minima and the necessity to set a priori the number of components .
This can lead to over/under-modelling and instability problems. The approach adopted in
this work is presented in [8], and uses a greedy learning approach to the learning of the
mixtures with a goodness-of-fit estimation of the number of components . The algorithm
is summarized in Tab. I, and uses a non-parametric reference density to guide the learning
process.
209
Table I. Summary of the goodness-of-fit (GOF) algorithm for the learning of Gaussian Mixtures
-3
x 10
8
Gaussian Mixture
Original Density
6
0
-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
Figure 1. Example of density estimation on a six-modal test density of 600 data points.
FE MODEL SIMULATION OF A SIMPLE STRUCTURE

The results presented in this work are obtained from simulated data generated with a
FE model of a girder, modelled as a simply supported beam with two fixed points at the
end. The beam is divided into equal length elements, where the dynamic response is
generated by exciting the structure with a three-axial vehicle of equivalent weight of
40,000 lb. The velocity and acceleration of the vehicle approaching the beam can be
accurately controlled and multiple vehicles are allowed. The FE model of this system is
implemented using Matlab, and the structural equations are obtained from the Galerkin
discretization of the Newton equation of motion for a multi degree-of-freedom (DOF)
linear elastic system. More details on the implementation of this model can be found in [6].
The simulated beam is 100 ft in length and 12.5 ft in height, with a total of 500 elements,
with an element size of 2.4 inches, cross section of 1500 m2, mass density of 150 lb·ft-3
and modulus of elasticity (E) of 3·106 lb·in-2. The response of the beam is obtained using a
simulated vehicle with constant speed of 50 mph, while a structural damage is located at
780 inches from the left corner of the beam, corresponding to element 325. This damage is
210
simulated as a reduction of local stiffness at different levels of severity, by reducing the
modulus of the product EI between the modulus of elasticity E and the principal moment
of inertia I. The simulated damage starts at 0% reduction in the EI modulus, corresponding
to the undamaged structure, to 1%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 50%, 60%, 70%, and 80% reduction in
EI. To maintain a high spatial resolution throughout the analysis, the acceleration time
history from each element of the FE model is collected, equivalent in having a sensor
every 2.4 inches underneath the beam.
DAMAGE DETECTION USING ACCELERATION TIME HISTORIES

The ability to detect damage using only the time histories of the damage structure is
investigated considering two approaches, a first one that considers the probability density
estimated of the entire time history at each sensor, and a second one that considers a
filterbank decomposition of the acceleration time histories. The first approach assumes that
the vibration signals coming from structure are almost stationary, so that theirs statistical
properties do not change over time and it is therefore reasonable to estimate the probability
distribution of the signals. Figure 2 shows an example of the probability density estimated
for a signal collected at the location 320, obtained considering one dimensional data and a
two component mixture.
-3
x 10
12
10
8
density
0
-0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6
data
Figure 2. Estimated density computed for the signal collected at location 320. This density is obtained using
the GOF algorithm for the learning of the mixture using one dimensional data and it is comprised of two
components, with mean 0.021, 0.001 , variance 0.235, 0.020 and mixing proportions
0.01, 0.990 .
The damage detection strategy is implemented estimating the probability density at

each sensor location using the algorithm described in Tab. I, then computing a set of
density indicators like variance, skewness, kurtosis and entropy and using PCA to isolate
the component that most contributes to the signal variability. A formal definition of this
approach is derived here. The signal density is estimated using the GOF algorithm
described in Tab. I, and it is indicated with . The indicators on this density are defined as
following
: (3)
: (4)
/
: (5)
211
: (6)
where ∑ , with 1,2, … , and the resolution of the

estimated . Then, the feature vectors are defined as
T T
, ,… , ,…
T T (7)
, ,… , ,…
and . The PCA representation of is obtained considering the covariance

matrix defined as , with , where the eigenvalue
decomposition of is given by
(8)
with the diagonal matrix of eigenvalues and with the matrix of eigenvectors.
Moreover, by reordering the eigenvectors in the order of descending eigenvalues, an
ordered orthogonal basis with the first eigenvector having the direction of the largest
variance in the data is created. The transformation matrix is defined as
, , and (9)
with 1, … . The projected data is then obtain computing . Figure 3
shows the first and second principal components for 80% damage severity at location 325,
around the location of interest, where both the indicators appear to identify the damage,
which is recognized as a positive or negative spike going from location 324 to location
325. In Fig. 4, a study of the sensitivity of the first principal component identifies the
minimum damage level as a deviation from the average behavior. This result suggests that
the minimum detectable damage using this approach is for a 50% reduction of EI modulus,
which indicates that this damage indicator is not sensitive enough to detect damage
developing in an early stage, where the variation induced from the damage is still small.
This is not surprising when considering the vibration signal stationary, therefore not
accounting for local resolution and sensitivity deriving from time-frequency changes. A
way to increase the sensitivity of the technique is to consider the vibration a broadband
signal and use a narrow frequency band filter in order to produce an almost stationary
signal at the output. A second approach based on these observations was implemented, and
it is explained in the following.
-15 4.6
4.55
-20
4.5
-25
4.45
second PCA component
first PCA component
4.4
-30
4.35
-35
4.3
4.25
-40
4.2
-45
4.15
-50 4.1
300 305 310 315 320 325 330 335 340 345 350 300 305 310 315 320 325 330 335 340 345 350
Element Element
(a) (b)
Figure 3. First (a) and second (b) PCA component for a damage of 80% severity at location 325.
212
10
-5
0% EI
1% EI
-10 5% EI
10% EI
20% EI
30% EI
-15
50% 40% EI
50% EI
60% EI
-20 70% EI
80% EI
-25
300 305 310 315 320 325 330 335 340 345 350
elements
Figure 4. Comparison of different damage severities for the first principal component.
Let us consider a filter bank implemented using the complementary notch filter obtained
inverting the notch defined by DeBrunner and Torres [12], with resulting transfer function
defined as
1 1
(10)
1 1
2πf
where α cos F , f is the notch frequency and F is the sampling frequency.
The parameter is related to the filter bandwidth by the relationship
BW 2 cos . Because of the intense computational cost deriving from
implementing this analysis, only results obtained in the 30 Hz to 100 Hz range, and from
sensor 300 to 350 are presented. The center frequencies of each filter are spaced 1 Hz
apart, with a resolution of about 3Hz at -3dB from the peak. An example of a filter bank
realized using this approach is shown in Fig. 5, where for clarity of representation only one
of every three response is shown. The obtained filter bank signals are then processed
following the steps highlighted in eq. (3) to eq. (9), and the first principal component is
used as a representative damage index. Figure 6 shows the results of this analysis on the
previously obtained acceleration signals, displayed as a tridimensional surface and as a
contour plot. These results are obtained for a damage level of 50%, assuming no noise at
the sensors and clearly show the distortion introduced by the damage in the space-
frequency surface represented by the damage indicator. The damage appears as a negative
ridge localized in space at sensor 325, location that corresponds with the simulated damage
location. Also, frequency localization is such that the maximum absolute damage is
reached between 60 Hz and 70 Hz, as clearly detailed by the contour plot in Fig. 6.
Another advantage of this analysis is the ability to represent the damage indicator as a
contour plot, making it possible to automate the search for the damage location using
image processing techniques. A detailed sensitivity analysis revealed that using this
approach is possible to detect damage as low as 30% reduction in EI, compared to a 50%
reduction of the previous approach. Moreover, if noise contamination is present at the
sensor location, as it is expected in every real application, the second approach is able to
detect damages as low as 35% reduction of for 30 dB noise, while a similar analysis for
the first approach resulted in even lower sensitivities.
213
0
-2
-4
Magnitude (dB)
-6
-8
-10
-12
-14
-16
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Frequency (Hz)
Figure 5 – Notch filter bank obtained using the complementary notch described in (11), with 3 Hz
bandwidth and 1 Hz spacing, showing one every three frequency responses for clarity of view.
-40
-60
90
-80
80
-100
70
-120
Frequency
60 -140
-160
50
-180
40
-200
30
300 305 310 315 320 325 330 335 340 345 350
Elements
Figure 6 – Damage indicator obtained using the complementary notch filter bank approach for a damage
level of 50%. The damage index is visualized as a tridimensional surface (top) and as a contour plot
(bottom). The damage appears as a distortion of this surface and it is localized in space and frequency.
CONCLUSIONS
This work follows the approach presented by the same authors for a localized damage
detection method and defines a reference free method using a statistical approach. The
system is simulated using a FE model of a girder, and acceleration signals are obtained for
a 40,000 lb truck travelling at constant velocity. The acceleration time histories are
214
modelled using GMM for the estimation of the probability densities, and then PCA is used
on a set of statistical indicators obtained from these densities. The modelling of the time
histories as stationary signals resulted in a damage indicator that detects damages at a
severity level of 50% of more. The sensitivity and resolution of this approach are improved
when using a complementary notch filter bank, where the densities and feature vectors are
computed from the subband signals. This approach improved the minimum detectable
damage to a 35% severity level, when considering a 30dB noise at the sensors. Throughout
the analysis, the damage features are obtained without a direct comparison with a baseline
signal. This represents an advantage in comparison to other methods that require a
reference undamaged signature to operate, but the drawback is in the loss of resolution and
sensitivity obtainable when doing a direct damage versus undamaged comparison. In this
regard, the results obtained by the same authors for the full referenced technique described
in [6] showed that damages as low as 1% could be detected. As a future work, an
integration of the work described on [6] with the one presented in this paper is required to
have a fully functional and deployable technique.
REFERENCES
[1] Chang, F-K., ed., 2005, 2007, 2009. Proceedings of the 5th, 6th, and 7th International Workshop on
Structural Health Monitoring, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, CRC Press, NY.
[2] Sohn, H., Farrar, C. R., Hemez, F. M., Shunk, D. D., Stinemates, S. W., Nadler, B. R. and Czarnecki, J.
J. (2004). A Review of Structural Health Monitoring Literature form 1996-2001. Los Alamos National
Laboratory report LA-13976-MS.
[3] Farrar, C.R. and Worden K. (2007). An introduction to structural health monitoring. Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society A, 365: 303–315.
[4] Figueiredo, E., Park, G., Figueiras, J., Farrar, C. and Worden, K. (2009). Structural Health Monitoring
Algorithm Comparisons Using Standard Data Sets. Los Alamos National Laboratory Report, LA-14393.
[5] Farrar, C.R., Doebling, S. W. and Nix, D. A. (2001). Vibration-based structural damage identification.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 359: 131-149.
[6] Medda, A. and DeBrunner, V. (2009). Near-field sub-band beamforming for damage detection in
bridges. International Journal of Structural Health Monitoring, 8(4): 313-329.
[7] Medda, A. and DeBrunner, V. (2009). A localized vibration response technique for damage detection in
bridges. ICASP09, IEEE 2009 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing,
1337-1340, Taiwan.
[8] Medda, A. and DeBrunner, V. (2011). Minimum model order estimation for Gaussian mixture models.
IEEE Trans. Signal Processing (Correspondence). Submitted.
[9] Medda, A. and DeBrunner, V. (2010). CDF resampling for dataset expansion in Gaussian mixture
models. ACSSC 2010 - 44th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, 1781-1785.
Pacific Grove, CA, Nov. 2010.
[10] G. McLachlan and D. Peel (2000). Finite Mixture Models. In Wiley Series in Probability and
Statistics, ed. New York: Wiley and Sons.
[11] Dempster, A. P., Laird, N. M. and Rubin, D. B. (1977). Maximum likelihood from incomplete data
via the EM algorithm. J. Roy. Statistical Society, 39B(1): 1–38.
[12] DeBrunner V. and Torres S. (2000). Multiple Fully Adaptive Notch Filter Design Based on Allpass
Sections. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 48(2): 550 – 552.
215
Infrared Thermography and Piezoelectric
Patches for Impact Damage Detection
in Composite Structures
G. M. CARLOMAGNO, C. MEOLA and F. RICCI
ABSTRACT
This study is motivated by the need for an efficient tool to accurately analyse an
impact event on composite structures, localize the impact position and estimate its
severity. The behavior of a carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite during
low velocity impacts is analyzed and impact damage mechanisms are evaluated using
both numerical prediction tools and experimental measurements. Numerical
predictions are carried out using finite element models supported by progressive
failure analysis tools. To perform the numerical tasks, the explicit finite element code
LS-Dyna is used. Impact tests are carried out with a modified Charpy pendulum. Two
experimental techniques are used to monitor the impact event: infrared thermography
and bonded piezo patches. A good agreement between numerical predictions and
experimental measurements, regarding the onset and the extension of the damage with
increasing impact energy, is found.
INTRODUCTION
Fibre reinforced composites offer several advantages over metals, mainly in terms
of strength over weight ratio [1,2]. However, due to their low interlaminar strength,
these materials are susceptible to delamination, often resulting in considerable loss in
compression strength, and possibly leading to catastrophic failures in-service. Due to
the high probability of impact-damaging composite materials during manufacture,
service and maintenance, it is very important the knowledge of the material behavior
under impact and the availability of techniques able to discover the damage in its
incipient stage. The impact damage in composites is a very complex mechanism
involving matrix cracking, surface buckling, delamination, fibre shear-out and fibre
rupture [3,4] and then it is receiving great attention from both academic and industrial
communities.
_____________
Giovanni Maria Carlomagno, Carosena Meola, Fabrizio Ricci
Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Naples Federico II
Via Claudio 21, 80125 Napoli, ITALY
216
The research work is driven towards two main topics regarding the development
of even more effective non-destructive evaluation techniques and the comprehension
of the impact load dynamics. The latter was mainly addressed numerically with only
few attempts to on-line monitoring. In fact, to reduce costs, computer simulation is
preferred by industries for design and development; however, test validation is in
general compulsory.
Numerical simulation in composites is performed with the primary objective to
predict the delamination threshold load (DTL) [5]. An impact event is accompanied by
complex phenomena which depend on several factors mainly the target geometry [6]
and the impactor shape [7]. Attempts were made for real time monitoring through self
sensing methodologies [8] such as embedded glass fibers, or through acoustic
emission (AE) [9]. A technique which proved usefulness in monitoring an impact
event and for non-destructive detection of impact damage is infrared thermography
(IRT); in particular, IRT was recently [10] used to acquire information about onset and
propagation of impact damage in glass fiber reinforced polymer.
In this work infrared thermography is used coupled with piezo patches for
monitoring the behavior of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) to low-velocity
impact. The obtained results are compared with numerical predictions.
DESCRIPTION OF THE MATERIAL
The test article is a cross ply CFRP plate [0°/90°]4, which is 555mm long, 250mm
wide and 2.5 mm thick. An aluminum fixture is used to clamp the plate on two
opposite edges for impact tests, reducing the effective plate dimensions to 300mm x
70mm. Four disk shaped piezo patches (10mm in diameter and 0.2 mm thick) are
bonded on one surface of the plate to monitor the elastic waves propagating from the
impact point. Figure 1 shows a sketch of the plate with the piezo sensors location and
a photo of the plate in the Charpy pendulum. The material in-plane moduli and
allowables are collected in Table I. The other mechanical properties necessary for
numerical modeling are estimated on the basis of previous analyses carried out on
coupons of the same material but of different lay-up.
TABLE I. THE FABRIC LAMINA MECHANICAL PROPERTIES

E1 E2 G12 νxy ρ X1t X1c S12
[GPa] [GPa] [GPa] [kg/m3] [MPa] [MPa] [MPa]
45.35 45.35 3.87 0.17 1870 508.3 400.4 99.9
217
Figure 1. Sketch of the CFRP panels with the piezo positions (left) and the plate in the Charpy
pendulum lodge (right). Dimensions are in millimeters.
NUMERICAL PREDICTION
A numerical analysis is carried out using the explicit finite element code LS-Dyna.
Moreover, a material failure model able to perform the progressive failure analysis is
used. However, the uncertainty on some material properties, which were just estimated
from previous tests, does not allow a correct simulation of the damage progression
during the impact event. Figure 2 shows a sketch of the FE model. Four locations,
corresponding to the areas where the disk shaped piezo patches are bonded, are
selected to calculate the plate response to the elastic waves propagating from the
impact point.
Figure 2. The finite element model of the CFRP plate under investigation
218
EXPERIMENTAL TESTS
Impact tests are carried out with a modified Charpy pendulum. Two techniques are
used to achieve information about the impact damage formation and propagation:
infrared thermography and piezo patch sensing. In Fig.3 are shown the details of the
Charpy pendulum as well the position of the infrared camera.
Infrared thermography
Infrared thermography is used with a twofold purpose:
• Surface temperature mapping when the specimen is being impacted.
• Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of specimens before and after impact.
The used infrared camera is the SC6000 (Flir systems), which is equipped with a
QWIP detector array working in the 8-9 µm infrared band with a field of view (FOV)
of 640x512 pixels full frame and a windowing option linked to the frequency frame
rate. NDE is performed with lock-in thermography (LT) by optical stimulation [11];
results are shown as phase images. A phase image taken, before impact, at the heating
frequency f = 0.1 Hz is shown in Fig.4; the lighter stains indicate the position of the
piezoelectric transducers which are sealed on the specimen opposite surface.
impactor
impactor
Specimen
lodge
Infrared
camera
a) front side b) rear side

Figure 3. Setup for impact tests with the Charpy pendulum
Figure 4. Phase image taken at f = 0.1 Hz; before impact.
219
During impact tests, the side opposite to impact is viewed by the infrared camera
(Fig.3). Sequences of thermal images are acquired with starting and ending times set
so as to include the whole surface temperature evolution. In fact, on the surface
opposite to the hammer’s contact, the material undergoes first cooling down due to
thermo-elastic effects and then heating up because of the dissipation of the impact
mechanical energy. In this paper, the attention is mainly focused on the heating phase
since detection of the heat generation loci is important for the comprehension of
initiation and propagation of the damage mechanisms. Some images, extracted from a
sequence taken at 96 Hz, are shown in Fig.5 (it is shown the specimen surface
opposite to impact). The first image (Fig.5a) displays the temperature map over the
specimen surface (which is at ambient temperature) before the impact. The other
images show the temperature decrease due to thermoelastic effect and the sudden
temperature increase caused by local heat dissipation in the impact zones (Fig.5b-c),
which is followed by a successive cooling down (Fig.5d-f). As can be seen, 4 s after
the impact (Fig.5f) the rear specimen surface has almost recovered its initial ambient
temperature apart from in a smaller zone (lighter zone) which has entrapped air as a
consequence of the damage, which was caused by the impact.
To better account for the thermal behavior, the first image (t = 0) of the sequence
i.e., the specimen surface temperature before the impact is subtracted to each
subsequent image so as to generate a map of the temperature difference ∆T.
In Fig. 6 are reported ∆T images taken, after impact, at different energy values. As can
be seen, for E < 2 J a small zone is interested by slight temperature rise (Fig.6a-c), as
the energy value increases (Fig.6d) an increase in temperature value as well in
extension is observed. For E = 2.3 J a strong temperature increase (about 20 degrees
above the ambient) occurs along the vertical direction (Fig.6e); to a further increase E
= 2.8 J, the temperature rise occurs along both vertical and horizontal directions
forming a cross (Fig.6f). The local temperature rise is proportional to the amount of
heat dissipated there, which depends on the damage induced by the impact.
Non-destructive tests, after impact, were carried out with lock-in thermography.
The phase image, for an impact of 2.3 J, taken at f = 0.1 Hz is shown in Fig.7; this
image has to be seen rotated by 90° counter clockwise with respect to the thermal
image of Fig.6e and by 180° with respect to the phase image of Fig.4.
19,9 °C 24,1 °C 37,8 °C
24
35
22
30
19
25
20
20
18,3 °C 18,2 °C 18,3 °C
a) img. 131 (before impact) b) img. 132 c) img. 133

34,6 °C 25,4 °C 21,2 °C
21
24
30
20
22
25
20 19
20
18,4 °C 18,3 °C 18,4 °C
d) img. 134 e) img. 185 f) img. 530

Figure 5. Some thermal images taken during an impact of E = 2.3 J.
220
0,1d C 0,2d C 0,2d C
- 0,3 dC - 0,1 dC - 0,2 dC
a) E = 0.5 J b) E = 0.8 J c) E = 1.2 J

0,5d C 17,0 dC 17,0 dC
15 15
10 10
5 5
0
0 0
- 0,2 dC - 0,5 dC - 0,5 dC
d) E = 2.0 J e) E = 2.3 J f) E = 2.8 J

Figure 6. Thermal images with varying the impact energy
Figure 7. Phase image taken at f = 0.1 Hz; after impact at E = 2.3 J.
The detected damage, encircled in figure, matches the central stripe in Fig.6e. The
longitudinal thin hot extremities in Fig.6e may be caused by a very thin delamination,
which tends to close up once the load is removed, and is almost undetectable with
non-destructive inspection.
Analysis with piezo patches

The passive impact detection technique using piezo patch bonded to the specimen
surface consists in the analysis of the signals collected by an array of piezo sensors
capable to detect the elastic waves propagating through the structure from the impact
point. The analysis of such signals might give important information on the impact
event, and in particular on the impact location as well as on the extension and severity
of the impact damage. A comparison between numerical and experimental signals for
the 2J impact test is showed in Figure 8. There is not a full agreement between
experiments and simulations. This is probably due to the uncertainty to the out of
plane material properties, as already said.
221
40
Piezo #3, E=2.0J EXPERIMENTAL

30
20 Piezo #3, E=2.0J FEA
10
Signal [V]
0
-‐10
-‐20
-‐30
-‐40
-‐0,015 -‐0,005 0,005 0,015 0,025 0,035 0,045 0,055 0,065
Time [s]
Figure 8. Comparison between experimental and

numerical signals during the 2.0J impact
40 40
30 30 Piezo #3, E=1.2J

Piezo #3, E=0.5J
20 20
10 10
Signal [V]
Signal [V]
0 0
-‐10 -‐10
-‐20 -‐20
-‐30 -‐30
-‐40 -‐40
-‐0,015 -‐0,005 0,005 0,015 0,025 0,035 0,045 0,055 0,065 -‐0,015 -‐0,005 0,005 0,015 0,025 0,035 0,045 0,055 0,065
Time [s] Time [s]
a) E=0.5J b) E=1.2J
40 40
30 Piezo #3, E=2.0J 30 Piezo #3 E=2.8J
20 20
10 10
Signal [V]
Signal [V]
0 0
-‐10 -‐10
-‐20 -‐20
-‐30 -‐30
-‐40 -‐40
-‐0,015 -‐0,005 0,005 0,015 0,025 0,035 0,045 0,055 0,065 -‐0,015 -‐0,005 0,005 0,015 0,025 0,035 0,045 0,055 0,065
Time [s] Time [s]
c) E=2.0J d) E=2.8J
Figure 9. Response of piezo #3 for different impact energies.
In the following Figure 9 (a-d) it is possible to observe how the signals collected by
the Piezo#3 have a similar quasi-smoothed shape up to the impact energy of 2.0J, with
the amplitude increasing with the impact energy. The 2.8J impact, instead, produces a
very noisy signal due to the impact damage that generates multiple acoustic emissions.
DISCUSSION OF RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
Two different experimental techniques were used in the present work to detect
the damage, which may occur during a low velocity impact event: infrared
222
thermography and bonded piezo patches sensing. Although the techniques are based
on very dissimilar physical principles, a very good agreement is found concerning
their ability to detect impact damage on CFRP. Moreover, the simulation of the impact
carried out with LS.Dyna demonstrates a good provisional tool as far as the elastic
wave propagation is concerned. A more detailed analysis is required on the material
mechanical properties, in order to apply more efficiently the progressive failure
analysis with the finite element code LS DYNA.
REFERENCES
1. Jones, R.M. Mechanics of composite materials, Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, New York,
1975.
2. Hull, D. and Clyne, T.W. An introduction to composite materials, Cambridge University Press
1996.
3. Richardson, M.O.W. and Wisheart, M.J. 1996. Review of low-velocity impact properties of
composite materials. Composites Part A, 27: 1123-1131.
4. Shyr, T.W. and Pan, Y.H. 2003. Impact resistance and damage characteristics of composite
laminates. Composite Structures, 62: 193-203.
5. Elder, D.J., Thomson, R.S., Nguyen, M.Q. and Scott, M.L. 2004.Review of delamination predictive
methods for low speed impact of composite laminates. Composite Structures, 66: 677-683.
6. Cantwell, W.J. 2007. Geometrical effects in the low velocity impact response of GFRP. Composites
Science and Technology, 67: 1900-1908.
7. Mitrevski, T., Marshall, I.H., Thomson, R., Jones, R. and Whittingham, B. 2005. The effect of
impactor shape on the impact response of composite laminates. Composite Structures, 67:139-148.
8. Kister, G., Ralph, B. and Fernando, G.F. 2004. Damage detection in glass fiber-reinforced plastic
composites using self-sensing E-glass fibres. Smart Mater Struct, 13: 1166-1175.
9. Caneva, C., De Rosa, I.M. and Sarasini, F. 2008. Monitoring of Impacted Aramid-Reinforced
Composites by Embedded PVDF Acoustic Emission Sensors. Strain, 44: 308-316.
10. Meola, C. and Carlomagno, G.M. 2010. Impact damage in GFRP: new insights with Infrared
Thermography, Composites Part A, 41: 1839-1847.
11. Meola, C. and Carlomagno, G.M. 2010. Infrared Thermography in Non-Destructive Inspection:
Theory and Practice; in: Recent Advances in Non Destructive Inspection (C. Meola Editor) Nova
Science Publisher Inc. ISBN 978-1-61668-550-8.
223
An Integrated Structural Intensity Based
Damage Detection Approach for Nonlinear
Behaving Damage
F. SEMPERLOTTI, S. C. CONLON and E. C. SMITH
ABSTRACT
An overview of an integrated Structural Health Monitoring approach based on

Structural Intensity (SI) measurements is presented. The performances of the
integrated system are evaluated by presenting numerical and experimental results
concerning the different levels of detection, i.e. existence, extent and localization.
Experiments are conducted on an aluminium stiffened panel, typical of many
aerospace structures, where the damage is introduced in the form of loosened bolts.
The characteristic nonlinear signature of this type of damage combined with SI
measurements allows defining a new damage metric. This metric is able to address the
different levels of detection using a single integrated approach and without requiring a
quantitative baseline.
INTRODUCTION
The ability to monitor or assess the status of a mechanical system in order to predict
possible malfunctions and remaining operating life is regarded as a key factor to
reduce maintenance costs and to enhance the performance of future mechanical and
aerospace systems. Structural intensity has been used for several decades as a tool to
design optimal vibration and noise control systems [1,2]. In recent years [3-5],
Structural Intensity (SI) was extended to the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM)
field, showing it to be a powerful metric for performing damage evaluation and
monitoring. SI is a vector field described by magnitude and direction which identifies
the energy flow in a vibrating structure. SI sensing inherently produces more
information rich features, and offers significant improvements over traditional
acceleration or strain (only) based sensing. SI is very sensitive to changes in loading,
boundary conditions, and sudden changes in impedance, like those caused by
structural damage. Although very sensitive to changes in loading conditions and
structural parameters, SI based techniques in the linear domain require the use of a
baseline to perform the damage assessment and provide limited information about the
damage location [6]. Also, SI was proven not to vary monotonically with the damage
size (similar to the majority of vibration based metrics) which makes the damage
assessment more challenging even when baseline datasets are available. Only recently,
SI was extended to the nonlinear domain in order to exploit the characteristic
_____________
F. Semperlotti, Research Associate, Mechanical Engineering Dept., University of Michigan,
2271 G.G. Brown Laboratories, Ann Arbor, MI 48105; fabios@umich.edu
S. C. Conlon, R esearch Associate, A pplied Re search Laboratory, The Pe nnsylvania S tate
University, P.O Box 30, State College, PA 16804; scc135@arl.psu.edu
E. C. Smith, Professor, Aerospace Engineering D ept., The P ennsylvania S tate University,
231D Hammond Building, University Park, PA 16802; ecs5@engr.psu.edu
224
nonlinear features proper of certain types of damage, such as cracks and loose joints.
The integration of Contact Acoustic Nonlinearity concepts into the SI based SHM
technique allowed formulating two new quantities denominated Nonlinear SI [7]
(NSI) and Nonlinear SSI [8] (NSSI). These new quantities varied monotonically with
the damage size and allowed performing damage assessment and localization without
using a quantitative baseline.
In this paper, the current state of the art of the SI based SHM technology for
locally nonlinear damaged structures is reviewed. Particular attention is given to the
ability of nonlinear SI based techniques to address the different steps of the damage
assessment that is identification, localization and sizing. Numerical and experimental
results are presented to show how SI based metrics have the potential to provide a
unified basis for the development of future integrated baseline-free SHM systems.
LINEAR VS. NONLINEAR DAMAGE CHARACTERISTICS
In many SHM applications the damage is typically taken into account as a reduction
of the nominal mechanical properties (e.g. stiffness, mass etc.). Nevertheless,
certain damage types at their incipient stage exhibit nonlinear characteristics which
make the dynamic response of the host structure intrinsically nonlinear. Damage
such as breathing cracks, closing delaminations in composite materials, and
loosened (riveted) joints are examples of damage types that can exhibit nonlinear
dynamic response. The main source of nonlinearity is induced by a physical
mechanism known as Contact Acoustic Nonlinearity [9] (CAN), which takes place
when a contact interface is excited by high frequency elastic waves. The periodic
opening and closing (clapping) of the contact interface induces periodic changes in
the local stiffness which becomes a function of both time and spatial coordinates.
One of the most noticeable effects of CAN is the generation of nonlinear harmonics
[9] over a broad frequency band, including super-harmonics, sub-harmonics and
combination tones. The generation of these harmonics is the direct result of an
energy exchange mechanism between the main driving frequency and the nonlinear
harmonics which are now coupled through the nonlinear response of the damage
interface. This mechanism is therefore a very suitable indicator of the damage
existence and of its characteristics.
LINEAR AND NONLINEAR SI: ANALYTICAL FORMULATION
SI is a vector field, described by magnitude and phase, indicating the path and the
amplitude of the mechanical energy flowing through a vibrating structure. This section
provides only the fundamental equations while full derivations can be found in
[1,2,3,8]. In a thin vibrating plate, the total intensity is due to the combined action of
shear (Qx and Qy), bending (Mx and My), and twisting waves (Mxy). In the time domain,
the mechanical power can be expressed as the time averaged product of the force with
the in-phase component of the velocity in the direction of the force [10]. In Cartesian
coordinates, the x component of the structural intensity can be expressed as:
(1)
225
where the superscripts s, b and t represent the shear, bending and twisting components,
indicates a time averaged quantity, h is the thickness of the plate, and are
the transverse and angular velocity. The component can be similarly derived. In
thin plates, the shear and bending terms can be expressed using the second and third
order spatial derivatives of the transverse displacement as follow:
(2)
For practical applications, it is very convenient to rewrite (1) by expressing the spatial
derivatives through Finite Difference (FD) approximations. Using a 13 point FD
scheme and converting the equations into the frequency domain [10], the x-component
of the structural intensity due to shear waves will take the following form:
(3)
where is the imaginary part of the quantity between brackets, is the

acceleration cross-spectrum between two generic points n and m on the plate, Δx and
Δy are the FD grid unit cell sizes, η is the material loss factor and ω is the excitation
frequency. The remaining intensity components can be written in a similar fashion.
The SI formulation described by Eq. (3) provides a very convenient method to
estimate, either numerically or experimentally, the SI on thin plates by using as only
input the acceleration cross-spectra between pairs of points. The total intensity
can then be written as . An additional quantity which, combined with the SI
maps, provides further insight in the structural dynamic behavior as well as the
location of the energy sources (i.e. input energy) and sinks (i.e. output energy) is the
divergence of the SI. The divergence of the SI is a scalar quantity defined as:
(4)
where a positive value indicates an energy source and a negative value indicates an
energy sink. The combined use of energy maps and divergence plots provides a clear
assessment of the energy path, sources and sinks in the whole structure. In damaged
plates exhibiting CAN effects, the input vibration energy is redistributed at multiple
nonlinear harmonics other than the excitation frequency. The amount of the energy
exchanged with the nonlinear harmonics is a key parameter to evaluate the presence,
location and extent of the damage. Therefore, the contribution to the different
harmonics must be considered separately. In the time domain, the contributions of
different harmonics can be evaluated as follows [7,8]:
(5)
226
where the index k represents the component associated with a specific harmonic.
Eq. (6) describes the x component for the k-th harmonic of the SI for damaged
structure with local contact nonlinearity, which is denominated Nonlinear Structural
Intensity (NSI). It should be noted that SI (as nonlinear SI), requires the knowledge
of the governing equations and the use of a large number of measurement points.
This aspect limits the practical use of SI for damage detection on complex
structures. A possible solution was proposed by Pavic [3] which introduced the
concept of Structural Surface Intensity (SSI). SSI represents the discrete counterpart
of SI and can be estimated virtually on any type of structure. A detailed description
of SSI can be found in [3]. Following a similar approach to what previously
described in this paragraph, the SSI can be combined with CAN to formulate the
Nonlinear Structural Surface Intensity [8] (NSSI). NSSI is defined by:
(6)
where εx, εy and γxy are the in-plane axial and shear strains, vx and vy are the in-plane
velocities at the measurement point, G is the shear modulus, υ is Poisson’s ratio, k
is the order of the nonlinear harmonic, and (...) indicates a time averaged quantity.
The y component (ISy)k can be similarly defined.
INTEGRATED NONLINEAR SI DAMAGE DETECTION APPROACH
As previously stated, the main objective of this paper is to show how a nonlinear
structural intensity based approach can be successfully used to perform the main steps
of the damage assessment. To demonstrate the performance of this approach a test bed
represented by a stiffened aluminum panel (Figure 1) was selected. The stiffener was
connected to the plate through equally spaced bolts. The plate was excited in the out-
of-plane direction through an electromagnetic shaker. The damage was introduced in
the form of loose bolts.
Figure 1. (Left) Schematic of the 13 point FD Scheme for SI evaluation on thin plates; (center)
stiffened aluminum panel selected as test bed; (right) detail of the instrumentation on the rear
side of the plate; (inset a) detail of the SSI sensor suite; (inset b) detail of the stiffener-panel
bolted connection.
227
The loose interface excited by the high frequency excitation behaves as a nonlinear
contact generating multiple nonlinear harmonics. In the following sections it will be
shown how a combined use of different nonlinear SI measurements can provide
information about the damage existence, extent and location without requiring any
quantitative baseline data.
Nonlinear Structural Intensity: Damage Identification and Visualization
NSI measurements were used to perform damage identification and localization. The
experimental response of the plate was acquired for different excitation frequencies
and damage configurations using a scanning laser vibrometer. Three different
conditions were considered: healthy, one row of bolts removed and two rows of bolts
removed. The interrogation signal was set at f=706Hz. NSI results are presented in the
form of NSI divergence maps (Figure 2) for the different damage configurations. The
results at the driving frequency are shown for reference in Figure 2a. In the healthy
configuration, the stiffener was firmly connected to the structure and CAN effects
were not generated. The corresponding map shows the typical trend of the linear
where the only energy source is represented by the external excitation. The
divergence map at the first super-harmonic frequency (2f=1412Hz) is also provided
for reference (Figure 2b) to show that in the healthy structure there were no sources of
nonlinear energy with the only exception of the Harmonic Distortion (HD) affecting
the shaker driving signal [7]. The damage was introduced in the form of one row of
loose bolts (row #1 in Figure 1). The NSI divergence map at 2f (Figure 2c) shows
clear evidence of the damage and of the nonlinear energy transfer mechanism
occurring at the damage location due to CAN effects. The map is also able to provide
a clear localization of the damage distinguishing the presence of other nonlinear
sources such as the HD at the driving location. By increasing the damage size to two
rows of bolts (row #1 and #2 in Figure 1) the damage signature in the divergence map
(Figure 2d) becomes more pronounced with a significant increase in the divergence
amplitude. These results also suggest that the nonlinear SI is able to track the
evolution of the damage extent overcoming one of the main limitations of linear SI,
that is the non-monotonic dependence on the damage size. This aspect will be further
clarified in the next section.
Figure 2. Experimental divergence maps. (a) healthy structure at the driving frequency f; (b)
healthy structure at the first super-harmonic frequency 2f; (c) 1-row damage at frequency 2f;
(d) 2-rows damage at frequency 2f.
228
Nonlinear Structural Surface Intensity: Damage Sizing
Structural Surface Intensity and its nonlinear counterpart were introduced to extend
the use of SI energy based methods to complex systems where the governing
equations are not available and strain and velocity measurements can be acquired only
at discrete locations. The performance of NSSI on complex mechanical systems was
demonstrated either on a stiffened-plate test bed [7] (Figure 1) or on representative
airframe structural components [11]. In the following, we summarize the results from
the stiffened panel for direct comparison with the NSI results presented in the previous
section. The stiffened plate was instrumented with three discrete SSI sensors (labeled
r1, r2, and r3 in Figure 1 center) located on the rear side of the plate. Each sensor
consisted in a rectangular strain gauge rosette and a bi-axial accelerometer. The test
was conducted according to the procedure described for NSI, but the excitation
frequency was set to 2.2kHz in order to generate nonlinear response at subharmonic
frequency (not contaminated by harmonic distortion). The strain and acceleration input
data used for the evaluation of NSSI are shown in Figure 3. The response peak values
are plotted versus the characteristic damage size dc for each sensor location and for
each selected subharmonics. The induced nonlinear response mainly results in the first
three subharmonics (i.e. f/2, 3f/2 and 5f/2). The experimental results (Figure 4) are
shown in the form of NSSI versus the characteristic damage size (i.e. the length of the
loose joint section). The main observation concerns the monotonic trend of the NSSI
with the damage size. Results confirm the initial hypothesis that the integration of the
damage nonlinear behavior in the detection approach allows for the development of a
new metric which varies monotonically with the damage size. NSSI also shows high
sensitivity to changes in the damage extent, with relative increments up to 20dB for
the specific configuration. NSSI is a direct measurement of the energy transferred at
nonlinear frequencies through the impact mechanism at the damaged interface. The
energy released in an impact is proportional to the area of the impacting surfaces [12].
Future work in this area will concentrate on converting this metric into an absolute
damage size.
Figure 3. Strain and acceleration input data for the calculation of NSSI. Data are shown for the
first three nonlinear subharmonics and for each SSI sensor. The characteristic length dc=0
represents the healthy configuration.
229
Nonlinear source identification: damage localization
NSSI allows implementing the nonlinear SI concept in a discrete form and,

“virtually”, on any complex structure. Nevertheless, by using discrete measurements
the damage location can no longer be retrieved, as previously done by using NSI
divergence maps. To overcome this issue a different approach is presented. Strain data
at two different locations can be used to
localize the damage by applying principles of
nonlinear energy source localization [13]. The
location of an unknown acoustic source in a
thin plate can be obtained using a triangulation
algorithm based on strain wave measurements
[14]. By combining these two concepts, we
explore the possibility of using the triangulation
algorithm along with CAN to determine the
location of the defect. This technique relies on
the assumption that the elastic impacts,
occurring at the damage interface, produce
strain waves at nonlinear frequencies whose
principal direction can be exploited to localize
the nonlinear source, i.e. the damage. Given the
rectangular rosette in Fig. 5 and following the
Figure 4. NSSI versus the damage size.
principal strain theory [15], the principal strains
for a generic harmonic of order k can be easily obtained. The principal angle θk can be
estimated from each higher order harmonic components k as:
(7)
where and are the longitudinal and shear principal strain

components associated with the k-th order harmonic. The second set of equations in
(7) can be used to evaluate the crack location. In Eq. (7), xd and yd are the Cartesian
coordinates of the estimated crack location based on the k-th order harmonic. Details
on the formulation and data-processing can be found in [16]. Here we report
numerical results to show the performance of the localization technique. The approach
was validated on a thin plate model where the damage was introduced in the form of a
breathing crack [13], which is one of the possible damage types exhibiting CAN
effects. The strain time histories of the nonlinear structure at the rosette locations were
obtained by using a FE model. Results were fed in Eqs. (7) to estimate the damage
location. Figure 5 shows a summary of the results comparing real and estimated
locations. Overall, the localization algorithm is able to reconstruct the damage position
based on the nonlinear harmonic signals. Nevertheless, some damage configurations
show considerable errors between the real and the estimated location. It can be
observed that non symmetrical (with respect to the sensors) damage locations are
associated with the largest error. This is mainly due to the effect of the boundary
reflected waves which cannot be entirely filtered out [14].
230
Figure 5. (Left) Schematic of the rectangular rosette and corresponding equations for
principal strains evaluation; (Right) summary of the numerical results for damage
localization.
In the linear domain, the first wave arrival can be extracted (by using time or
frequency based techniques) and used to locate the damage even when situated very
close to the boundaries. Extracting the first arrival of a nonlinear harmonic signal is
generally a more challenging task. Nonlinear harmonics in damaged structures are
typically fully developed after the steady state response at the driving frequency is
reached. Therefore, waves at nonlinear frequencies are often associated with
precursors which make the identification of the first arrival more challenging and
prone to error. Currently, new data processing techniques aiming to increasing the
accuracy of the localization approach are under evaluation.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper presented an integrated structural health monitoring approach based on the
combined use of Structural Intensity and Contact Acoustic Nonlinearity in damaged
structures. The performance of the technique was tested on an aluminum stiffened
panel where the damage was represented by a loosened joint. Nonlinear SI
measurements were used to show that the nonlinear behaving damage acts as an
energy exchange mechanism between the driving and the higher order harmonics. For
practical applications on complex mechanical systems NSI cannot be implemented
and its discrete counterpart, denominated NSSI, must be used. Experimental results
showed that, as predicted, NSSI varied monotonically with the damage. This
confirmed that NSSI is a metric directly related to the nonlinear energy exchange
mechanism and, therefore, to the damage size. Finally, it was shown that the strain
data collected by the SSI sensors could also be used for damage localization.
Nonlinear energy source localization concepts were combined with the measurements
of the principal angle associated with the strain waves at nonlinear frequencies.
Overall, results showed that intensity based measurements provide a promising basis
to develop an integrated SHM system able to address, with the use of a single metric,
the different levels of the damage identification (i.e. existence, extent, and
localization).
231
Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research,
Development and Engineering Center, Aviation Applied Technology Directorate under
Contract Number W911W6-08-0036. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not
necessarily reflect the views of AATD or the U.S. Government.
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232
Experimentation and Detection Characters
of Lamb Wave Phase Array on a Large
Thin Aluminium Plate
D. GAO, Z. WU, M. LIU and Z. WANG
ABSTRACT
Base on the principles of phase array of piezoelectric sensors, experimentation of

lamb wave phased array in large thin aluminium plate was processed by an S0 mode
Lamb wave resulted from high frequency narrow bandwidth signal. Different
locations on large thin-wall structural were effectively focused through adjusting the
signal transmission delay phase of elements. The concept of dead zone of phase array
is further clarified and several measures to reduce the dead zone detection were given,
which was favorable to improve signal-to-noise ratio of Lamb wave detection.
Keyword: Structural Health Monitoring; Lamb waves; Phased Array; Phase delay;
Dead zone
INTRODUCTION
Ultrasonic Lamb wave testing technique is widely used in Structural health

monitoring of large thin-wall structure because of its long energy propagation distance,
fast detection speed, strong wavefronts plasticity[1]. Although the ultrasonic Lamb
wave testing technique have many advantages, its intrinsic characteristics such as low
signal-to-noise ratio is still obstacles for them to be used widely. The Introduction of
the lamb phase array technology into ultrasonic Lamb wave testing technique will
effectively improve signal-to-noise ratio. A lot of work on lamb phase array
technology has been done by many scientists. The functional relationship between
sensor size, adhesive properties, excitation frequency and the stress wave in structure
has been investigated by Victor Giurgiutiu, and the damage scanning and imaging
method for lamb phase array has been given[2]. Joseph L. Rose has researched the
control of guided wave phase array mode and the application of guided wave phase
array to aircraft detection[3].
_____________
Dongyue Gao,Zhanjun Wu,Minjing Liu ,Zhi Wang, State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for
Industrial Equipment Faculty of Vehicle Engineering and Mechanics, School of Aeronautics and
Astronautics Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, P.R. China
233
In this paper, the effective focusing on the different positions of the large thin-
walled structures and identification of unknown wave source location were achieved
based on the control of the beam direction and focus position by adjusting the signal
transmission delay time of elements. The concept of dead zone of lamb wave phased
array is further clarified. The measure method to reduce the dead zone was
investigated in detail.
PRINCIPLE OF PIEZOELECTRIC TRANSDUCER EXCITATION LAMB

WAVE
The elastic wave will produce in the structure and reflect, superimpose between
the upper and lower boundaries when the structure was excitated by the external
energy perturbation. The longitudinal wave (P) and vertical shear wave (SV) mixed
into Lamb waves and the Rayleigh–Lamb dispersion equations is shown as follow:
tan pd 4k 2 pq 1
 [ 2 ] (1)
tan qd (k  q 2 )2
Where the index (+1) and (-1) are symmetric mode antisymmetric mode,
respectively. The dispersion curves of different modes were described according to
equation (1) and the dispersion curve of Lamb wave in the aluminium plate is shown
in Figure.1.
Figure.1. The dispersion curve of Lamb wave in the aluminium plate [4]
According to the dispersion curve, the Lamb waves of different modes with same
frequency have different velocities. The different waves are difficult to identify
because of the superimposition of the waves of different modes due to the reflection
and scattering of waves through damage position. Therefore, the excitation frequency
was controlled in order to get a single lamb wave mode when Lamb wave is excited.
An S0 mode lamb wave resulted from high frequency narrow bandwidth signal
was employed in this work. When the transformation frequency of sensors used in this
work was 240 kHz, strain produced from A0 mode was effectively inhibited and
single S0 mode lamb was obtained.
234
UL TRASONIC LAMB WAVE PHASE ARRAY
The phase array was composed of 8 sensor elements. Here, the coordinate of ith
element was (XiJ!i), and the coordinate of focal point and polar coordinator were (Xd,Yd)
and (P,()), respectively. The journey of lamb wave between nth sensors to focal point
was dn =~(xd-xni+(Yd-Yni.
p
()
x
(Xl'Yl) (X 2'Y2) (X3'Y3) 0 (Xi-l'Yi-l) (xi,Y;)
Figure.2. Sketch map of element position of ultrasonic lamb wave phase array
Signal delay time of adjacent sensors was I'1ti=ti-ti-1=(di-di-1)1c, here c is wave speed.
The sensor was excited according to delay time, so as to ensure that the lamb waves
simultaneously arrived preconceived focus, (the time was numerically equal to t1),
which was the transformation process of phase array technology.
According to Huygens principle, if there is scatterer on the focal position, guided
wave with high amplitude will be reflect after lamb focusing. Based on Huygens
principle, the location of wave source or damage was distinguished. The position of
the wave peak after the signal re-delay of each sensor element was superposed was
wave source or damage. This is the receive process of phase array technology, specific
process is shown in Figure.3.
(a) (b)
Figure.3. The delay of each element of phase array.
(a) Focusing process of phase array (b) The receive process of phase array
In summary, the process of Lamb wave phase array inspection is shown in Figure.4.
235
Excite element Adjust transmitter phase
Receive Analyse reflect signal ,get
with simultaneous of elements, focus on
reflect signal location of scatterer
signal the suspicious location
Signal
superposition
.--1 Estimate Attribute
and degree of
scatterer
Adjust phase delay
of each signal
1. ._ . . . , Receive reflect
signal(2)
FigureA. The process of Lamb wave phase array inspection.
EXPERIMENT RESEARCH OF LAMB WAVE PHASE ARRAY

TECHNOLOGY
EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEMS
Experimental system used in this work is shown in Figure.5. Size of thin

aluminium sheet islmmxlOOOmmxlOOOmm, size of cycle-piezoelectric sensors is
d=0.45mm, tjJ=8mm, and distance of element is 9mm; the adhesives is isotropic
conductive adhesive.
Sensors array
Figure.5. Macrograph of sample and sensor systems.
INVESTIGATION ON FOCUSING OF LAMB PHASE ARRAY
As shown in Figure.5, the eight sensors as a simple linear excitation array were
placed in the center of a thin aluminium plate and the several sensors located in other
positions on the aluminium plate were arranged as the receiving sensors. The location
coordinates of the sensors are listed in Table 1.
TABLE I THE LOCATION COORDINATES OF THE SENSORS

No. Location (p,9) No. Location (p,9) No. Location (p,9) No. Location (p,9)
1 (-31.5,180) 5 (4.5,0) 9 (200,90) 13 (400,60)
2 (-22.5,180) 6 (13.5,0) 10 (300,90) 14 (200,0)
3 (-13.5,180) 7 (22.5,0) 11 (200,60) 15 (400,0)
4 (-4.5,180) 8 (31.5,0) 12 (250,60) 16 (408,50)
236
In order to verify focusing effect of phase array, the position of the sensors was
focused by controlling the Beam. The two waveforms (same phase and delay phase
superposition waveforms) were received by the sensor. All array elements were
simultaneously excited and the waveform Vi was obtained by superimposing receiving
sensor signals. The position of the receiving sensors was respectively focused by
adjusting the delay time of each array element and the focusing signals Vi΄ was
collected by the receiving sensors.
4
4 x 10 4
x 10 x 10
2 2
2
A m p（m V ）
A m p（ m V ）
1
Amp（ mV）
0 0
0
-1
-2
-2 4
-2
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
0x 10 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 time(s) -4
x 10
2 4 time(s) -4 4
-4 x 10 x 10 x 10
A m p（ m V ）
x 10 2 2
Amp（ mV）
A m p（ m V ）
0
0
0
-1
-2
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 -2
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
-2
time(s) -4 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 time(s) -4
x 10
x 10 time(s) -4
x 10
(a) (b) (c)
Figure7. The signals of same phase and phase array
(a) Signal at 200mm, 300mm in the direction of 90º (b) Signal at 200mm, 400mm in the direction of
60º (c) Signal at 200mm, 300mm in the direction of 0º
It could be seen from Figure.7 that the focusing effect of the phase array in the
direction of 60º and 0º was more obvious than it on the direction of 90º, which
revealed that the focusing effect in the direction of 90º is clear.
IDENTIFICATION OF UNKNOWN SIGNAL SOURCE
Signals are transmitted from 16th sensor in an unknown location (γ16, θ16), and the
location of the wave source was identified by calculating time delay. According to the
time delay of the array element and peak position, the direction and distance of the
wave source was identified. The received signals of elements in array are shown in
Figure.8.
Figure8. The received signals of elements of the unknown location in array.
237
According to these signals, the polar coordinates of the wave source were
calculated to be 409.25, 51 and this position was focused by the method described in
3.3 section. The signals received by 16th sensor are shown in Figure.9. The obtained
results were compared with the actual position and the error between the obtained
results and the actual position was less than 3%. Based on this method, the positions of
the wave source for 9~15th sensors were respectively identified and the results are
listed in Table 2. These errors listed in Table 2 indicated that this method of
identifying damage location is reasonable.
Figure.9. Focusing signals at 51, 409.25
Table 2 The identified and actual positions of the wave source.

Position Identified Position Identified
No. Error No. Error
(γ, θ) position (γ, θ) position
9 (200, 90) (204.5, 85) 2.25% 13 (400, 60) (400.7, 58) 0.17%
10 (300, 90) (302.6, 85) 0.87% 14 (200, 0) (202.7, 0) 1.35%
11 (200, 60) (205.85, 59) 2.92% 15 (400, 0) (403.85, 0) 0.97%
12 (250, 60) (253.1, 58) 1.24%
DEAD ZONE OF ULTRASONIC LAMB PHASE ARRAY
No identification of the damage and the greater error of the wave source location
were present in the lamb wave phased array focusing technique and recognition
algorithms and these zones were called as dead zone. There are two reasons for the
presence of the dead zone: first, the feedback signals at near-field of the array were
annihilated by electromagnetic coupling signals resulted from between the signal
boards. Such zone was called as electromagnetic coupling dead zone. The similar
results have been reported elsewhere [5]. Furthermore, the detection accuracy of the
lamb phase array at the different positions on the same structure was different, which
resulted in the presence of the detection dead zone. The focusing effect was not
obvious when the angle between focus direction and array normal was small. It could
be obtained from Table 2 that the error between the identified and actual positions of
the wave source in the direction of 90° was obvious. The identification experiment
238
was carried out between 0° -5° and the results revealed that the error between the
identified and actual positions of the wave source increased as the angle between focus
direction and array normal decreased. The result error was attributed to the smaller
phase shift between adjacent sensors because the accuracy of recognition algorithms
increased as the phase shift increased. In addition, the focusing effect was not obvious
when the displacement of the waveform was not obvious and these zones were called
as angle error dead zone.
P  2  f  min( n , 0  n  i ) (11)
As shown in equation (11), the focusing effect was not obvious when time delay
between adjacent sensors was 4.1667e-008 s, namely, the phase shift was 3.6°. In
other word, the zone with angle of below 3.6° between the adjacent sensors is angle
error dead zone of lamb wave phased array detect technology. Draft angle error dead
zone of 1000*1000mm aluminium plate is shown in Figure.10 and Gray Level is
phase shift of adjacent sensors.
Figure.10. The sketch map of angle error dead zone.
In order to reduce or eliminate angle error dead zone, the several methods were used,
such as the increase in the number of sensors, the use of mobile sensor array elements,
change sensor arrays arrangement, and so on. In the present work, the change of the
array arrangement was used to reduce the angle error dead zone and the four sensors
were added in the normal of original array, the positions the added four sensors are
shown in TABLE 3.
TABLE.3. THE POSITIONS OF ADDED FOUR SENSORS
No. Location (γ, θ) No. Location No Location No. Location
17 (31.5, 90) 18 (13.5, 90) 19 (-13.5, 270) 20 (-31.5, 270)

The crisscross array was composed of the added four sensors and the original array,
9 and 10th sensors were re-focused in the direction of 90° and the results are shown in
th
Figure.11.
239
4
x 10
4
Delay superposition signal
Superposition signal
2
Amp（ mV ）
0
-2
-4
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
time(s) -4
x 10
4
x 10
4
Amp（mV） 2
-2
-4
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
time(s) -4
x 10
Figure.11 Focusing effect of the crisscross array.
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, Lamb wave phased array detect technology was investigated
experimentally and theoretically, based on the low signal-to-noise ratio of Lamb wave
phased array detect technology. Different locations on large thin-wall structural were
effectively focused through adjusting the signal transmission delay phase of elements.
The concept of dead zone of phase array is further clarified and several measures to
reduce the dead zone detection were given, which was favorable to improve signal-to-
noise ratio of Lamb wave detection, such as the increase in the number of sensors, the
use of mobile sensor array elements, change sensor arrays arrangement, and so on.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded

Project (20100481220) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
Universities (3014-852001 and DUT10ZDG05) and the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (51002019and 91016024).
REFERENCES
1. W.J.Staszewski, C.B., Geof Tomlinson, 2004, “Health monitoring of aerospace structures: Smart
sensor technologies and signal processing” New York: Wiley,1-6.
2. Giurgiutiu, V, 2002. “Lamb Wave Generation with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors for
Structural Health Monitoring,” presented at the 8th Annual International Symposium on NDE for
Health Monitoring and Diagnostics, March 2-6,2002
3. Rose, J.L.J.L., 2001 “Implementing Guided Wave Mode Control by Use of a Phased Transducer
Array,”IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, vol. 48: 761-768.
4. Jennifer Puri Andrews, First Lieutenant, 2007, “Lamb wave propagation in varying thermal
environment.”Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio: Air Force Institute of Technology: 36.
5. Lingyu Yu , V.G., 2008, “In situ 2-D piezoelectric wafer active sensors arrays for guided wave
damage detection,”[J]Ultrasonics, 48: 117-134.
240
Damage Detection of Composite Structure
Using Independent Component Analysis
R. HAJRYA, N. MECHBAL and M. VERGÉ
ABSTRACT
This paper studies the application of independent component analysis (ICA) to

structural health monitoring (SHM). The ICA technique is used to extract features
from measurement sensors of a smart composite structure. To enhance information
about damage, we propose a new damage detection methodology, based on the
analysis of a symmetric matrix obtained from the mixing matrix. The subspaces
associated to the symmetric matrix are used to define a damage index (DI).
Furthermore, we propose a bound associated to this DI and decision on the state of the
structure is taken. Experimentation on a composite smart structure shows the
performance of the proposed approach.
1 INTRODUCTION
In recent years, techniques based on multivariate statistics have been applied in

structural health monitoring (SHM). These techniques serve two purposes, namely
order reduction and feature extraction by revealing structure hidden in the
measurement, (1). There are two major multivariate techniques in SHM, principal
component analysis (PCA) and independent component analysis (ICA). By applying a
PCA to the sensor time responses, (2) have developed a damage index based on angle
between subspace to detect and locate damage. Using independent component analysis
combined with artificial neural network, (3), have used a mixing matrix which is
extracted from ICA to detect and locate damage.
The paper is organized as follows: in section 2, the experimental test is presented.
In section 3, the basis theory of ICA technique is briefly described. In section 4, our
methodology for damage detection is presented. In section 5, the proposed damage
detection scheme is applied on an experimental laboratory test bench. Conclusions and
further directions will be drawn in section 6.
___________
Rafik HAJRYA, Nazih MECHBAL, Michel VERGÉ, Process and Engineering in
Mechanics and Materials Laboratory (PIMM), Arts et Métiers ParisTech,
151 Boulevard de l'Hôpital 75013 Paris, France
241
2 EXPERIMENTAL TEST BENCH
The structure employed consists of a piece of composite fuselage; it was
The structure consists of a carbone-epoxy composite plate with dimensions: 400

manufactured by INEO DEFENSE which is a partner in the MSIE research program.
300 2mm and it is made up of 16 layers. Using a modal approach, we have
with dimensions 30 20 0.2mm. Figure 1 shows the smart composite structure
performed in a previous work, (4), an optimal placement of ten piezoceramic patches
with ten PZT. It is to be noted that in our work, only nine PZT are used (PZT 6 is not
taken into account in the damage detection methodology).
The composite plate structure shown in figure 1 was used as baseline for damage
detection. To develop a damage detection methodology, we have used a second
composite plate with the same dimensions and PZT (at the same location). But, in this
plate, impact damage was produced throwing a ball at high velocity: the damage is
located at the middle of the plate.
The input excitation and the data acquisition were made using a commercial
Signals were acquired with sampling frequency

100 , time duration was
system dSPACE ®. The input excitation consists in a signal pulse with 1ms width.
0.65 and 2 time samples were recorded for each channel: one
corresponding to the excitation applied to the PZT actuator and the others concern the
measurements collected by the PZT sensors. Figure 2 shows the time response of
sensor PZT 7 in the case of the healthy and damaged plate while PZT 10 as actuator
(path PZT 10 - PZT7): only the 512 first samples are displayed.
3 INDEPENDENT COMPONENT ANALYSIS (ICA)

Given a set of multivariate measurements, the purpose of ICA is to find latent
variables that are mutually independent in complete statistical sense, (5). The basis
In practice, the data are discretized in time, let be a discretized measurement
theory of ICA theory outlined in this section, is derived from (5; 6).
vector at instant from PZT sensors which are glued in the composite smart
structure:
$
… !" #
The measurement matrix % & '!" ( gathering samples 1, … , is
(1)
defined as follows:
% 1 #

In our case, 8 sensors and 2 samples for each sensor, + . The
(2)

observed variables in the matrix % has been centered. Using matrix notation, the ICA
model is as follow:
% ,·. (3)
242
where , & '!" !" is an unknown matrix, called the mixing matrix and . & '!" / is
the independent components data matrix which variable 01 are the latent variables.
The basic problem of ICA is to estimate , and . from the measured data matrix %
without any knowledge of , and ..
The ICA algorithm finds the matrices , and . by maximizing some measure of non-
The first step in ICA is to pre-whiten the data matrix %. By a linear transformation, we
Gaussianity. This algorithm will now be described briefly:
produce a new data matrix 2 whose elements are mutually uncorrelated and all have
unit variance. The whitening transformation is expressed as:
23·%
with 4 52 · 2$6
7!" , where 4 is the expectation operator and 7!" is the identity
(4)
The whitening matrix 3 is obtained using principal component analysis, (5), and it is
matrix.
given by:
3 89% : ;$
where 89% is a diagonal matrix which contains the eigenvalues of the data covariance
(5)
matrix 9% 4 5% · % $ 6 and ; is a matrix with the corresponding eigenvectors of 9% .

According to this, the matrix 2 & '!" / is expressed as:
2 3·% 3·,·. <·.

where < & '!" !"
(6)
is an orthogonal matrix, as verified by the following relation:
452 · 2 $ 6 < · 45. · .$ 6 · < $ < · < $ 7!"

The second step is to define a separating matrix < that transform the matrix 2 to
(7)
matrix . whose variables are non-Gaussian:
. <$ · 2 (8)
There are two commons measures of non-Gaussianity: kurtosis and negentropy.
Kurtosis is sensitive to outliers, (5), so we consider negentropy, which is based on the
Entropy of random variable 01 is interpreted as the degree of information that the

information theory of entropy.
random variable 01 gives, it is defined as, (5):
=01 > ? @ A01 B · log A01 B FB (9)
variance; the negentropy G=01 > is defined by:

A Gaussian variable has maximum negentropy among all random variables with equal
G=01 > =H> ? =01 >

where H is a Gaussian random variable with the same variance as 01 . Negentropy is
(10)
non-negative and measures the departures of 01 from Gaussianity.
243
Estimation of the negentropy using eq.(10) requires an estimate of the probability
density function. To avoid the estimation of this probability, we approximate the
negentropy as follows, (5):
G=01 > I J4KL=01 >M ? 4KL=H>MN

O
where L is a non-quadratic function. In the present study, the following function was
(11)
selected, (5):
1
L01 log cosh P 01
P
(12)
where 1 T a T 2.
According to this, we calculate <:
Each column V1 is initialized and then updated using fixed-point algorithm, (7), to
maximize non-Gaussianity of the independent components 01 VW1 Z.
Once we have obtained < and the independent components 01 , we calculate the
mixing matrix according to eq. (6):
, 3 : · < (13)
To applied the ICA algorithm, we have used the FastICA Matlab package developed
by (8). The independent components (ICs) were calculated from measurements of the
healthy smart structure. In order to enhance the non-Gaussian nature of independent
component, we have performed a quantile-quantile plot (QQ plot) to compare the
distribution of the first independent component IC1 to a Gaussian distribution. One
can see in figure 3 that the distribution of IC1 (-- dashed blue line) deviates completely
from the straight line (in red) of the Gaussian distribution.
4 DAMAGE DETECTION METHODOLOGY
The presence of damage in the structure cause change in the stiffness and mass
measurement sensor and the matrix measurements %, see (9) for the demonstration.
matrices. Consequently, damage will introduce change in the response of the
Consequently, the mixing matrix , and the matrix of independent components . are
also modified. Figure 4 compares the first independent component of the healthy and
We note by .0 the independents components obtained from the study of healthy

damaged structure and one can see that there is a significant difference.
smart structure and by .X the independents components obtained from the unknown
decomposition (SVD) of matrices .0 and .Y We define the following damage index

smart structure. To define a damage index, we may use the singular value
[:
Z7
DI c _O e_sin f
[ ^_sin b c _O
d d
(14)
244
where bc is the angle vector between the left singular vectors of . and .X , fc is the
X g·g
angles vector between the right singular vectors of . and . ,

h is the Frobenius
norm.
In their work, (10), show that the ICA algorithms are stochastic, i.e., their results
the matrix of independents components . obtained from a healthy smart structure

change in different runs of the algorithm. In the context of our work, this means, that
changes for different runs of the algorithm. This remark concerns also the matrix .X .
Then the damage index DI [ defined in eq. (14) is not reliable. To circumvent this
problem, we propose in the following subsection a damage index based on the study
of symmetric matrix obtained from the mixing matrix.
4.1 Damage index
Let i j , i X & '!" !" be respectively the mixing matrices of the healthy and unknown
structures. Define two symmetric matrices k & '!" !" and kX & '!" !" by:
k i j $ · i j , kX i X $ · i X
The symmetric matrices k and k admit an eigenvalue decomposition which is
(15)
X
defined as follow:
k ;j · 8kl · ;j $ , kX ;X · 8km · ;X $ (16)
where ; n nj n! " # & '!" !" is the orthogonal matrix of eigenvectors of
k and 8kl & '!" !" is the diagonal matrix of its eigenvalues,
;X nX nX nX!" # & '!" !" is the orthogonal matrix of eigenvectors of kX and
8km & '!" !" is the diagonal matrix of its eigenvalues.
To detect damage, we compare subspace between ; j and ; X . We define the angle
between nj and nX as, (11):
$
rn snX t wn x · nX
|cos p | q qv v
un u · unX u un u · unX u
y
(17)
p cos : |cos p |, p & 0, #

2
$
According to this, we define the angle vectors z by: z p p p!" # ,
O
DI usin zu
We propose the following new damage index DI:
d
(18)
DI is null, but if the unknown state is damaged, the damage index is not null.
Theoretically, when the current state of the structure is healthy, then the damage index
In order to improve the damage detection methodology under experimental conditions,

we define in the next subsection a bound associated to the DI which is based on the
work of Wedin, (12).
245
4.2 Definition of a bound for the damage index
Wedin,(12), have studied the perturbation of matrices using subspaces. Our
contribution here is to extend the theoretical work developed by Wedin in the case of
Define first a new mixing matrix i { & '!" !" which is obtained from new matrix
experimental SHM system.
{ its symmetric matrix:

measurements of the healthy smart structure, and let define |
{ =i
| { >$ · i
{ (19)
{ is related to k by:
The matrix |
{ | j e δ| l
|
Where δ|0 & '!"!" is a matrix which reflects the effect of noise in an experiment.
(20)
According to subsection 4.1, the eigenvalue decomposition of |j and | { are defined

as follow:
{ ;
k ;j · 8 kl · ;j $ , | { j · 8|{} · =;
{ j >$ (21)
Let zj the angle vectors between the eigenvectors of the orthogonal matrix of
eigenvectors ;j and ;{ j (healthy smart structure), these angle vectors are calculated
According to (12), we define a residual matrix ~ as:

using eq. (17).
~ | · ; j $ ? ;j · 8|{ } (22)
Given, the aforementioned definitions, Wedin’s theorem sates:
If 0 such that min 8|{} and let g~gd , then usin zu T

Theorem
d
According to this theorem, we define a bound as:

In order to improve the bound , we make experimental tests of the healthy smart
(23)
!
1
structure and we calculate the mean of the bound:

(24)

If DI then the unknown structure is declared in healthy state,

The detection procedure is as follow:
Else the unknown smart structure is in damaged state.
5 APPLICATION TO THE COMPOSITE SMART STRUCTURE
The damage detection methodology described previously is applied to detect the

impact damage of the composite plate presented in section 2. In the first step of our
application, we were interested by using PZT 10 as an actuator while the others PZT
are sensors (PZT 6 is not taken into account here). Following the damage detection
246
methodology developed, we have performed seven measurements for the healthy
composite plate and one measurement for the damaged composite plate. Using these
independent components . and mixing matrix T for each healthy and damaged state.
measurement matrices, the ICA algorithm was applied to obtain the matrix of
Using the seven experiments of the healthy composite state, the mean value of the
bound defined in eq. (24) was calculated: . . The damage index between
the healthy and damaged composite plates defined in eq. (19) is: Z7 . .
Following this results, we see that the DI is upper than the mean value of the bound,
then the impact damage is detected.
In order to illustrate the efficiency of the damage detection methodology in term of
strictly independent from the others done previously, in this case, Z7 . and it
false alarms, we have done another experiment of the healthy structure which is
is lower than . and no false alarms were detected. In second step of our
obtain 0.0717. The damage index between the healthy and damaged composite
application, we have used PZT 7 as actuator, according to the same methodology, we
plates is: DI 2.6677, we see following this result that the DI is upper than the mean
value of the bound. No false alarms were detected.
6 CONCLUSION
In this paper, an ICA damage detection methodology was developed to reveal the
presence of damage. This methodology is based on the calculation of a new damage
index which consists on comparing subspaces of the healthy and damaged state of
symmetric matrix of the mixing matrix calculated from the healthy and damage state
of a smart structure. This DI was associated with a bound. The efficiency of the
proposed approach was successively applied to detect impact damage in the composite
smart plate. The proposed method presents a cheap computational cost and seems to
be well adapted for structural health monitoring in semi real time application. For the
work under progress, we are investigating the localization of the impact damage in a
composite plate.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the MSIE-ASTech Paris Région of the French
governmental research program and the authors gratefully acknowledge them for
providing the composite structures.
REFERENCES
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orthogonal decomposition for dynamical characterization and order reduction of mechanical
systems: An overview," Nonlinear Dynamics, Vol. 41, No. 1-3, 2005, pp. 147-169.
2. De Boe, P. and Golinval, J. C., "Principal component analysis of a piezosensor array for damage
localization," Structural Health Monitoring, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, pp. 137-144.
3. Zang, C., Friswell, M. I., and Imregun, M., "Structural damage detection using independent
component analysis," Structural Health Monitoring, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2004, pp. 69-83.
247
4. Hajrya, R., Vergé, M., and Mechbal, N., "Active Damage Detection and Localization Applied to a
Composite Structure Using Piezoceramic Patches," Conference on Control and Fault-Tolerant
Systems.Nice, France, 2010.
5. Hyvarinen, A., Karhunen, J., and Oja, E., Independent component analysis, Wiley, New York,
2001.
6. Widodo, A., Yang, B. S., and Han, T., "Combination of independent component analysis and
support vector machines for intelligent faults diagnosis of induction motors," Expert Systems with
Applications, Vol. 32, No. 2, 2007, pp. 299-312.
7. Hyvarinen, A., "Fast and robust fixed-point algorithms for independent component analysis," IEEE
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8. Gavert, H., Hurri, J., Sarela, J., and Hyvarinen, A.. FastICA Matlab Package. 2005. Laboratory of
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Health Monitoring," IEEE International Conference on Communications, Computing and Control
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11. Golub, G. H. V. L. C. F., Matrix computation, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1983.
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Figure 1 Healthy composite plate bonded with Figure 2 Impulse response of the healthy and
ten PZT patches damaged smart structures path: actuator PZT 10
- sensor PZT7
Figure 3 QQ plot of an independent component Figure 4 Comparison between independent

component of the healthy and damaged structure
248
Rapid Localization and Ultrasonic Imaging of
Multiple Damages in Structural Panel with
Piezoelectric Sensor-Actuator Network
G. K. GEETHA, V. T. RATHOD, N. CHAKRABORTY,
D. R. MAHAPATRA and S. GOPALAKRISHNAN
ABSTRACT1
Rapid localization of multiple damages and non-intrusive imaging of these damages

can greatly help in reducing the inspection time for guided wave based NDE and in
integrated SHM. A circular array of sensor-actuator network was employed for
scanning a panel type structure for quantitative damage detection besides non-
intrusive imaging with the help of the available reduced number of measurements and
a mathematical model. This method employs Lamb waves with a narrow frequency
band of excitation. What is advantageous in the proposed method is that, a circular
array of sensor-actuator network with a very small physical area of coverage is
sufficient to construct the virtual image of an entire panel without physically scanning
using the actuators or the sensors. By employing this technique, surface breaking
cracks on either inaccessible or accessible face and of size as small as 3 mm in a
typical aircraft structural panel are detected with a relatively low frequency band of
100-250 kHz. The coordinates of the damages are estimated from the experimentally
obtained signals using triangulation technique. Change in the wavelet coefficient with
respect to a baseline signal is used to construct a quantitative relationship with damage
size parameters. A damage index is then estimated by integrating the corresponding
wavelet coefficient over the frequency scales of interest and over the time window of
interest according to the group velocity dispersion. The magnitude of the damage
index shows the severity of damage. Further correlation of these quantities with failure
mechanisms and prognosis remain an open area of research.
Keywords: Structural health monitoring, circular array, multiple damages, damage

detection, imaging, wavelet, damage index, Lamb wave.
INTRODUCTION
Structural panels are used in various aerospace applications. They are widely used
as the skin of aircraft wings and fuselage. Due to cyclic loads, impact loads and
continuous exposure to the corrosive environment, aircraft structural parts are likely to
develop cracks and corrosion damages. Occurrence of multiple damage sites in
1
Authors’ Address: Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
560012, India. Corresponding Author: D. Roy Mahapatra, e-mail: droymahapatra@aero.iisc.ernet.in
249
structural panel is very common. These damages can be of same type or of different
types. These damages should be detected and localized in their early stages of
development in order to prevent catastrophic failure and to increase the useful life of
the components. To identify and locate these damages and differentiate them without
visual inspection, as the situation demands in a vehicle integrated SHM system, is a
highly challenging task.
Scanning an entire structural panel using techniques like pulse-echo and pitch-
catch methods is time consuming and it has a limitation that the inspection of damages
in the hidden parts or sub-surfaces is not straightforward. At least an elaborate
through-thickness type NDE is required. Therefore, fast, low-cost and integrated SHM
systems are needed with efficient use of accurate modeling and design of various
parameters to overcome the shortcomings of the current inspection paradigm. Elastic
waves in the form of Lamb waves which can travel relatively long distances and
through the entire thickness of the material with little amplitude loss is considered for
damage detection in the present method. One of the advantages of Lamb waves is that
a relatively large structure can be investigated using a small number of transducers
integrated to the structure as posed to physical scanning.
Details of the methods to launch Lamb waves and the type of wave modes in a
plate can be found in ref. [1]. Efficient method to analyze the Lamb wave modes and
its interaction with various types of damages can be found in ref. [2]. Frequency
domain spectral finite element method for wave propagation analysis and damage
diagnosis considering multiple delaminations, transverse crack and strip inclusions has
been reported in [3, 4]. The capabilities of the embedded/bonded Piezoelectric Wafer
Active Sensors (PWAS) for in-situ non-destructive evaluation using Lamb waves in
ageing aircraft were demonstrated by Giurgiutiu et al. [5, 6]. Zhao et al. [7] developed
a reconstruction algorithm for inspection of defects using arrival time and distance
information using a circular sensor/actuator network.
Parametric identification and localization of corrosion and hole using Lamb wave
based triangulation in a plate with circular array of PWAS have been discussed in refs.
[8, 9]. Lamb wave based identification of plate-stiffener debonding by employing
circular array of sensor-actuator network has been discussed by the authors in ref.
[10]. Several literatures on the quantification of damage using ultrasonic wave and
wavelet transformation can be found in literature [11, 12]. Gangadharan et al. [13]
used wavelet transform and Hilbert-Huang transform to quantify the damage
parameters like damage size and material degradation factors. Wavelet based damage
index to analyze the severity of crack and corrosion type damages in plate structure
can be found in ref. [14]. Staszewski et al. [15] have shown the nature of interaction of
fundamental Lamb wave modes with a rectangular slot in an aluminium plate and the
effect of sensor position on the amplitude and time of flight of the Lamb waves. A
comprehensive methodology to locate and determine the extent of straight cracks
isotropic plates based on the time-of-flight analysis has been described in ref. [16].
Rose et al. [17] discussed about some of the imaging approaches in Structural Health
Monitoring using ultrasonic guided waves.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND SPECIMEN DETAILS
The plate specimen is a 1100 mm x 550 mm rectangular aluminium plate of 3 mm

thickness (see figure 1(a) ). The sensor-actuator network consists of an actuator at the
250
centre and surrounded by 8 sensors which are placed circumferentially with a diameter
of 100 mm to form a circular array. Since all the sensors are at equidistant from the
central actuator, the time of arrival of first incident packet for both the S0 and A0
modes is same for all sensors. The details of the damages are given below.
Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) wafer patches of 10 mm diameter and 1 mm
thickness are used as sensors and actuators. PWAS wafers were bonded to the
specimen using a removable polymer bonding, so that they are firmly attached during
experiments, but could be removed afterwards to recover them for future tests. Both
actuation and signal acquisition were performed simultaneously using a Data
Acquisition System (DAQ). A Labview-Matlab interface code was created for this
purpose, which launches a programmed waveform (e.g., a tone-burst signal with
known frequency content and amplitude). To remove the unnecessary noises in the
signal, a band-pass filter was used.
Damage Configurations
Four different types of damages were introduced in the plate (see figure 1(b)). D1, D2,
D3 and D4 represent these four damages which were introduced in the plate sample.
a) D1: A 0° crack of 5 mm length and 1.5 mm width, located at a distance of 150
mm from centre of circular array and along the line joining A-S1.
b) D2: Through-thickness hole of diameter 5 mm, located at a distance of 150
mm from the centre of circular array and along the line joining A-S3.
c) D3: Corrosion damage of diameter 5mm, located at a distance of 180 mm
from the centre of circular array and along the line joining A-S6.
d) D4 - 90° crack of 5 mm length and 1.5 mm width, located at 150 mm from
centre of circular array and along the line joining A-S8.
(a) (b)
Figure 1: (a) Experimental setup showing sensor-actuator network and damages. (b) Enlarged view of
four different types of damages and the circular array.
DAMAGE DIAGNOSIS USING WAVELET COEFFICIENT
Prior to processing the sensor signals, first the wave dispersion curve (group
velocity Cg vs. frequency-thickness fd) of the plate is obtained experimentally using a
pair of the sensor-actuator of the same network. The optimal frequency of excitation is
chosen based on the experimentally obtained dispersion curve. The desired
frequencies have curve segments with least dispersion (minimum dC g / df ) and
maximum separation among the S0 and the A0 modes. Figure 2(a) shows the
excitation signal and time history response obtained with and without through-
251
thickness hole. Interpreting the location, size and severity of damage by direct
comparison of healthy and damaged signals using time domain signals is difficult. For
the purpose of identifying and comparing the effect of the signature due to damage
wavelet coefficients are computed, which gives information both in time and
frequency domain.
Fourier Transforms does not give any information regarding the time at which the
desired frequency spectral components appear and hence it is not suitable for non-
stationary signal localization study. In case of Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT),
the window is of finite length, which covers a portion of the signal which causes the
frequency resolution to be poor. In order to overcome this resolution problem,
continuous Wavelet Transform (WT) of the signal is taken. The wavelet analysis is
done by multiplying the signal with a window function. The window function which
can be translated and scaled along the time domain is called mother wavelet. Here b
represents time shift or translation and a is a scaling or dilation variable that represents
frequency. The continuous wavelet transform W(a,b) of a signal f(t) is given by
∞
W (a, b) = ∫ f (t )ψ (a, b, t )dt (1)
−∞
where Ψ(a,b,t) is called child wavelet and it is given by
1 t −b
ψ (a, b, t ) = ψ  (2)
a  a 
The wavelet transform of the signal is a 3D graph with its axes representing
amplitude, translation (time) and scaling (frequency). The wavelet coefficients are thus
obtained by summing the amplitudes of the signal at all frequencies at a particular
time domain. Thus the wavelet coefficient is obtained for the entire time domain of the
signal. Defining the wavelet coefficient of signals due to healthy and damaged plates
as WH and WD, respectively, the absolute difference in wavelet coefficient is
computed as |WH-WD|. The absolute difference in wavelet coefficient |WH-WD | is
computed for various sensor-actuator pairs. The time difference (∆t) between the time
of actuation and the time of first local maxima in |WH-WD | for the corresponding
frequency band of the actuation signal is estimated. The path length for wave to travel
from actuator to damage and from damage to sensor is estimated using the Eq. (3) (see
table 1).
Lp = ∆tC g (3)
The absolute difference in the wavelet coefficients (|WH-WD|) for hole is shown in
figure 2(b). The signature of the damage in time domain signal can be clearly
distinguished as local maxima in the graph showing |WH-WD | against time history.
Using the obtained local maxima for various sensor actuator pairs the path length from
the actuator to damage and from the damage to sensor is estimated using Eq. 3.
Different types of damages were chosen with an objective to compare the
severities of these damages and to rapidly localize and distinguish these damages at
the same excitation frequency. The diameter/length parameter for all the damages is a
constant. Circular array of sensor-actuator network detects damages based on the
reflected signal from the damage. These damages can be distinguished based on the
252
strength of the reflected signal. The strength of the reflected signal is directly
proportional to severity of the damage/damage index.
(a) (b)
Figure 2. (a) Comparison of sensor signals for healthy and damaged plate and (b) absolute difference in
wavelet coefficients (|WH-WD|) for a signal frequency of 250 kHz for a through-thickness hole.
With the known coordinates of the actuator and the sensors, the coordinate of the
damages is determined using triangulation technique (see figure 3 (a)).The coordinate
of the damage was determined by identifying the angle and radial location of the
damage as a point. Using the experimentally obtained signals the path length
measured from the actuator to the damage and from the damage to the sensor is
estimated. Maximum error in the estimated path length is 6.8%. The error in the
coordinates of various different damage estimated using triangulation technique is
given in table 1.
A suitable damage index is one that quantifies with some correlation the extent or
severity of damage(s). Here we use a damage index which has been derived by
integrating the wavelet coefficient over the scales of interest and over the time window
of the interest according to the group velocity dispersion. Giridhara et al. [9] used
damage index to monitor the progressive corrosion damage for various sensor-actuator
pairs in the circular array. Damage index (J) is given by
1 ω2 2
t
J= ∑ WH (t ) − WD (t ) 2 dt
t 2 − t1 ω1 ∫t1
(4)
where t2-t1 is the time window of the region of reflected wave packet being considered
in the time frequency plane. The range [ω1, ω2] describes the frequency band used for
the FIR filter applied for the sensor signals. WH(t) and WD(t) represents the healthy
and damaged wavelet coefficients which are functions of time history of the signal
response.
Figure 3(b) shows the variation in the damage index J for different types of
damages of same diameter/length at 250 kHz excitation signal. Damage index gives an
insight into amount of the energy lost due to presence of structural discontinuity. The
damage index is maximum for a through-thickness hole compared to a gradual
material degradation like corrosion damage. In case of through-thickness hole the
propagating wave encounters a sudden structural discontinuity which causes
significant loss of energy. While in case of corrosion damage the propagating wave
encounters a gradual material degradation due to which gradual decay of energy takes
place. The size of both 90° crack and 0° crack are of same dimension. In case of 90°
crack the propagating wave encounters a discontinuity which is equal to the length of
crack. In case of 0° crack the propagating wave encounters a discontinuity which is
253
equal to the width of the crack. As the width of crack is small compared to the its
length, the magnitude of damage index for 90° crack is more when compared to 0°
crack. The structural strength and failure can be interpreted based on the damage
index. The vicinity of the damage which corresponds to high damage index is more
prone to structural failure. Based on the severity of these damages the prognostic of
the structural component can be made.
(a) (b)
Figure 3: (a) Damage localized using triangulation technique and (b) damage index J for various
different types of damages of same diameter/length at 250 kHz excitation signal.
Table 1: Percentage error in the estimated coordinates of various different types of damages using
triangulation technique.
Damage 0º crack Hole Corrosion 90º crack
% error in locating damage 2 5.3 7.5 6.8
Ultrasonic Imaging of Damages with the Circular Sensor-Actuator Network
The entire plate sample is divided into a large number of grids or pixels to form
the image. At each pixel the image intensity is given by the reconstructed wave
amplitude as experienced by the particles in the pixel in an average. It is successfully
shown that the circular array of sensors which has a very small physical area of
coverage is sufficient to construct the image of the entire panel with a shorted radius to
the boundary. Here the damage is considered as a source from where the (reflected)
wave front originates. The time continuous signal is transformed into a spatial map
along propagation paths (among the central actuator, the sensors and the structural
boundaries) by using group velocity information. The image reconstruction algorithm
is given below. Reconstruction of the images at each time stamp has been successfully
done using this algorithm. The virtual images obtained at various time stamps are
shown in figure 5.
Image Reconstruction Algorithm

Step 1: Identify the plate geometry, coordinates of boundary, number of sensors and
actuators, coordinates of sensors and actuators.
Step 2: The coordinates of damage is identified at an optimal frequency using
triangulation technique.
Step 3: The experimentally obtained time signal is converted to spatial amplitude
distribution using group velocity information.
254
Step 4: For a particular time instant t, (a) If r < R0 + h1 , then r = tCg , forward fringe
pattern is mapped. For each pixel find the distance (Dp) from actuator. If D p < r , plot
corresponding signal amplitude V(t) at that pixel. (b) If r < R0 + h1 and r > D1 ,
then r = tC g − D1 , forward fringe pattern along with damage coordinate is mapped. For
each pixel find the distance (Dp) from damage location. If D p < r , plot corresponding
signal amplitude V(t) at that pixel. (c) If r > R0 + h1 , then r = tC g − ( R0 + h1 ) , backward
fringe pattern is mapped. For each pixel find the distance (Dp) from shortest boundary.
If D p < r , plot corresponding signal amplitude V(t) at that pixel.
Figure 4: Schematic diagrams showing the parameters and spatio-temporal conversion used in the image
reconstruction algorithm.
(a) (b) (c)

Figure 5. Lamb wave imaging snapshot at (a) 60 µsec (b) 75 µsec (c) 100 µsec.
CONCLUSION
In this paper using a circular array of sensor-actuator network damage detection

and full-field image reconstruction of an entire panel with multiple damages have been
demonstrated. The absolute difference in the wavelet coefficients |(WH-WD)| for
through-thickness damage was studied. Based on the experimentally obtained path
lengths the coordinate of the damages were identified using triangulation technique.
Maximum percentage error in localizing the damages using triangulation technique at
250 kHz is 7.5%. A wavelet based damage index comparison was carried out for
different damages. The magnitude of the damage index gives a broader insight
regarding the intensity/severity of damage and a clear differentiation among various
types of damages in terms of their Lamb wave scattering behavior. A new algorithm
has been developed to reconstruct rapidly a virtual full-field image of the entire plate
panel with single/multiple damages as hot-spots. This approach is well amenable
255
within the anticipated framework of Integrated Vehicle Structural Health Monitoring
(IVSHM).
Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support under the

PARC 3, NPMASS Program, Govt. of India.
REFERENCES
[1] Rose, J. L. 1999. “Ultrasonic Waves in Solid Media,” Cambridge, U.K, Cambridge Univ. Press.
[2] Gopalakrishnan, S., A. Chakraborty and D. Roy Mahapatra. 2007. “Spectral Finite Element
Method: Wave Propagation, Diagnostics and Control in Anisotropic and Inhomogeneous
Structures,” Springer, Berlin.
[3] Roy Mahapatra, D. and S. Gopalakrishnan. 2004. “Spectral Finite Element Analysis of Coupled
Wave Propagation in Composite Beams with Multiple Delaminations and Strip Inclusions,”
International Journal of Solids and Structures, 41:1173-1208.
[4] Kumar, D. S., D. Roy Mahapatra, and S. Gopalakrishnan. 2004. “A Spectral Finite Element for
Wave Propagation and Structural Diagnostic Analysis of Composite Beam with Transverse
Crack,” Finite Element in Analysis and Design, 40:1729-1751.
[5] Giurgiutiu, V. 2003. “Embedded NDE with Piezoelectric Wafer-Active Sensors in Aerospace
Applications”, Journal of Materials (JOM), online special issue on Nondestructive Evaluation.
[6] Giurgiutiu, V., A. Zagrai, and J. J. Bao. 2002. “Piezoelectric Wafer Embedded Active Sensors for
Aging Aircraft Structural Health Monitoring,” International Journal of Structural Health
Monitoring, 1:41-61.
[7] Zhao, X., H. Gao, G. Zhang, B. Ayhan, F. Kwan Yan, and J. L. Rose. 2007. “Active Health
Monitoring of an Aircraft Wing with Embedded Piezoelectric Sensor/Actuator Network: I.
Defect Detection, Localization and Growth Monitoring,” Smart Materials and Structures, 16:
1208–1217.
[8] Rathod, V. T., D. Roy Mahapatra, and S. Gopalakrishnan. 2009. “Lamb Wave Based
Identification and Parameter Estimation of Corrosion in Metallic Plate Structure Using a Circular
PWAS Array,” Health Monitoring of Structural and Biological Systems, 4-7 May 2009,
Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 7295, 72951C.
[9] Giridhara, G., V. T. Rathod, S. Naik, D. Roy Mahapatra, and S. Gopalakrishnan. 2010. “Rapid
Localization of Damage using a Circular Sensor Array and Lamb Wave Based Triangulation,”
Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 24:929-2946.
[10] Rathod, V. T. and D. Roy Mahapatra. 2010. “Lamb Wave Based Monitoring of Plate-Stiffener
Debonding Using A Circular Array of Piezoelectric Sensors,” International Journal On Smart
Sensing and Intelligent Systems, 3(1):27-44.
[11] Quek, S., Q. Wang, L. Zhang, and K. Ang. 2001. “Sensitivity Analysis of Crack Detection in
Beams by Wavelet Techniques,” International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 43:2899–2910.
[12] Douka, E., S. Loutridis, and A. Trochidis. 2004. “Crack Identification in Plates using Wavelet
Analysis,” Journal of Sound and Vibration, 270:279–295.
[13] Gangadharan, R., D. Roy Mahapatra, S. Gopalakrishnan, C. R. L. Murthy, and M. R. Bhat. 2009.
“On the Sensitivity of Elastic Waves due to Structural Damages: Time–Frequency based
Indexing Method,” Journal of Sound and Vibration, 320:915–941.
[14] Rathod, V. T., M. Panchal, D. Roy Mahapatra, and S. Gopalakrishnan. 2009. “Lamb Wave based
Sensor Network for identification of Damages in Plate Structures”, 50th
AIAA/ASME/ASCE/AHS/ASC Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Conference,
Palm Springs, California, USA, 4-7 May 2009, pp. 2328-2338.
[15] Lee, B. C., and W. J. Staszewski. 2007. “Lamb wave propagation Modeling for Damage
Detection: II. Damage Monitoring Strategy,” Smart Materials and Structures, 16:260-274.
[16] Tua, P. S., S. T. Quek, and Q. Wang. 2004. “Detection of Cracks in Plates using Piezo-Actuated
Lamb Waves,” Smart Materials and Structures, 13:643-660.
[17] Yan, F., R. L. Royer Jr, and J. L. Rose. 2010. “Ultrasonic Guided Wave Imaging Techniques in
Structural Health Monitoring,” Journal of Intelligent Materials Systems and Structures, 21:377-
384.
256
Damage Assessment of CFRP Stiffened Panels
by Electro-Mechanical Impedance Method
N. J. FERREIRA, J. M. SILVA, R. J. GUIMARAES, P. J. ANTUNES,
M. A. BAPTISTA, J. C. VIANA and G. R. DIAS
ABSTRACT
In this work, a portable electro-mechanical impedance, EMI, analyser is designed

and developed, allowing a frequency range of 0.1-100 kHz and 10000 points per scan.
Piezoelectric active patches were bonded on the surface of a stiffened CFRP plate. The
optimal sensor location was determined by computer simulations using finite element
analysis code ABAQUS. EMI method was used for the identification of damage on
the plate, adopting a damage metrics based on the Correlation Coefficient Deviation,
CCD. Damage location was varied with respect to the PZT sensor position. The
damage metric is able of detecting damage on the plate. However, its localization
depends upon the distance from damage point to the PZT sensor and upon the position
of the PZT with respect to the Z-shape stringers. The portable and cost-effective EMI
analyser is a valuable tool for damage assessment in composite components.
INTRODUCTION
The EMI is an emergent method for structural health monitoring (SHM) and non-
destructive evaluation (NDE) of structural components [1]. In this technique a
piezoelectric patch (typically a lead zirconate titanate, PZT) is attached to the structure
and excited by an alternate electric field that induces small deformations on the PZT.
This mechanical energy is transferred to the structure through elastic wave
propagation. The mechanical response of the structure is then transferred back to the
PZT that responds with an electrical signal. The EMI refers to the ability of the sensor
to measure mechanical impedance (the ratio between force and velocity) via the
electrical impedance (the ratio between input voltage and output current). A high
degree of mechanical coupling between the PZT and the structure is therefore
required. In the presence of damage in the structure, the response of the elastic waves
that are reflected back to the PZT is different. Damage detection is normally done by
comparing the undamaged (baseline) with the current state of the structure by a
convenient damage metric [2, 3]. Damage location has been performed by wave
_____________
Ferreira, N.J., Silva, J.M., Guimaraes, R.J., Antunes, P.J., Baptista, M.A., Viana, J.C.,
Dias, G.R., Critical Materials, SPINPARK - Centro Inc. base tecn.AVEPARK - Zona
Industrial da Gandra, PO. BOX 4152, 4806-909 Guimarães, Portugal, www.critical-
materials.com
257
propagation techniques in the time domain [4]. The selection of the frequency range
depends on the damage severity to be detected, its distance to the PZT, and the data
acquisition system. The impedance signatures are normally acquired at frequencies
superior than 30 kHz in order to detect damage at early stages [2, 5]. Decreasing the
frequency range allows detecting larger damages over larger distances. Wave
attenuation depends on material and frequency range. Attenuation is higher for
polymer composites and for high frequencies. In these cases, the PZT sensing area is
reduced. Furthermore, impedance measurements are very sensitive to temperature [3].
A temperature increment causes the decrease on the magnitude and a left-shift on
frequencies on the impedance spectra. EMI technique is cost-effective, easily
automated and precise and requires relative simple data processing. It is highly
effective for detection of damage (e.g., due to accidental loading, material aging) or
internal flaws (e.g., due to manufacturing) on CFRP. In this work a portable, cost-
effective EMI analyser was developed and used to detect damage in a CFRP plate.
ELECTRO-MECHANICAL IMPEDANCE ANALYSER
In the EMI technique, a piezoelectric device acts simultaneously as actuator and

sensor, i.e., as a self-sensing actuator (
Figure 1). PZT is used to excite the structure over a frequency range, , and also
used to measure the changes in its impedance.
Electric potencial PZT

Brass
Brass
PZT
Displacements
Host
structure
Figure 1. PZT device: simulation of the piezoelectric effect.
The coupling between the structure mechanical impedance and the electrical
impedance of the PZT is given by (structure as one degree of freedom system)[6]:
  
Y w   iwa   33T 1  i  
Z s ( w)
d 3 x 2Y xx 
 Z s ( w)  Z a ( w) 
(1)
where Y is the admittance (inverse of impedance), Za the PZT material´s mechanical


impedance, Zs the host structure mechanical impedance, Y xx the PZT complex
Young´s Modulus (at zero electric field), d3x the piezoelectric coupling constant in the
x-direction (at zero stress), ε33 the dielectric constant (at zero stress), δ the PZT
dielectric loss tangent, and a is a geometric constant. A variation on the PZT electric
258
impedance spectra indicates a change on the structure frequency response function that
can be due to damage (
Figure 2). The comparison between the undamaged baseline and the damage
impedance signatures allows the calculation of a damage metrics.
damage damage 5
baseline
structural
Impedance, Z
component
Frequency, f
bonded PZT
Damage metric
device
EMI analyser
damage 5 baseline
Figure 2. PZT bonded in a structure and impedance signature. The comparison with a base line response
allows the identification of damage on the structure.
In this work, a portable impedance analyser (CMT-IA) was developed (Error!

Reference source not found.), which is connected to a personal computer. It allows a
frequency range between 0.1-100 kHz, the acquisition of 10000 points per scan, and
impedances up to 106 . Error! Reference source not f ound.a) shows the CMT-IA
(size of a computer transformer) and Error! Reference source not f ound.b) the low
cost PZT bonded on the CFRP plate. The CMT-IA data are compared and validated
with the results of a high precision impedance analyser, Agilent 4294A.
a)
b)
c)
Figure 3.a) CMT Impedance Analyzer; b) PZT bonded on the surface of the Z-plate; c) Z-plate
instrumented with PZT devices for electromechanical impedance measurements.
In order to position the PZT patches in the CFRP plate, a proprietary algorithm
was adopted.a) The sensor placement methodology is based on the combination of
vibration modes in a given frequency range. PZT are positioned in the regions that are
more sensitive to the most important vibration modes, enabling a more accurate
monitoring of the dynamic behaviour of the structure. The sensor location was
determined by computer simulations using finite element analysis code ABAQUS.
259
CASE STUDY
The measurements of the CMT-IA are presented in a case study (Figure 3c). The
structure is a square flat plate of 100 cm of side with two Z-shaped stringers of 8 cm of
height and base of 5 cm. The Z-shape stringers are 50 cm apart and equally spaced
from edges. The thickness is of 3 mm. The Z-plate is produced in a CRFP laminated
composite (an epoxy resin and a plain weave carbon fibre fabric) by vacuum assisted
infusion moulding. The flexural properties of the Z-plate are: flexural moduli (1%) at
0 and 90º are both of 46 GPa, the maximum flexural stress of 780 MPa; at 45º, the
flexural modulus is 14 GPa and the maximum flexural stress of 320 MPa. The Z-plate
was fixed in one of its edges as cantilever (Figure 3c). Small PZT active patches of 35
mm diameter were bonded on the surface of the CFRP at four distinct locations.
The Z-plate was divided into small squares of 20 cm of side, in a 5x5 matrix
(Figure 4a); the small numbered squares are the finite element mesh of the Z-plate).
Each 20x20 cm square is a macro-element with the reference (x,y) shown.
a) b)
Figure 4. a) Element numbering scheme and correspondent macro-elements (5x5 matrix); b)

Combined normalized displacements map, showing the PZT sensor locations.
The PZT were placed in 4 positions as depicted inFigure 4b). This Figure shows
the combined normalised displacement map for location of the sensors on the Z-plate.
The sensors should be placed at the middle of the free edge parallel to the fixed
boundary condition between stiffeners or at the corners and at the lateral edges,
avoiding the positioning of PZT in zones with low dynamic response. The PZT were
located at positions (5,1), (3,5), (2,3) and (1,5) according to Figure 4b) and as shown
in Figure 3c). The location (1,5) was chosen due to the expectable low dynamic
response of the structure. Different measurement scenarios were created, each one
corresponding to a PZT location and several damage positions. Damage was simulated
by adding a small mass of 10 g in distinct macro-elements (Figure 4a). A total of 20
different measurements were performed (5 damage locations x 4 PZT positions).
The correlation between baseline and simulated damage was done by:
 x 
n
i ,b  xb xi ,m  x m 
1 i 1
CCD  1 
n  b m
(2)
260
where xi,b is the value of the baseline on point i, xi,m the actual value read from the
system response on point i, e the mean values of the baseline and the actual
response of the system, σb and σm the respective values standard deviation, and n the
number of points. CCD (equal to (1-R), where R is the Pearson correlation coefficient)
is a measure of the linear correlation between two signals (CCD varies from 0 to 2;
values of CDD higher than 1 means a negative slope of the linear correlation).
This study consists on the analyses of the response of PZT bonded on the surface of
the Z-plate. Four scenarios were created, which one with a PZT at a different position.
These locations were selected based on the sensor placement algorithm: (2,3), (3,5)
and (5,1) at maximum sensitive positions and (1,5) at a low vibration response point.
For scenario 1, PZT at (2,3), the measurements were performed with both equipment:
the CMT-IA and the Agilent Precision IA, in the low frequency range of 100 Hz up to
1700 Hz. A total of four spectra were acquired by measurement and averaged.
RESULTS
Figure 5 shows the comparison between CCD values (phase component of the
impedance spectra) measured by CMT-IA and A-4294A IA, respectively, for scenario
1: PZT at (2,3) and different damage locations.
0,4
0,3
A‐4294A IA
CCD comparison CMT IA A‐4294A IA

BaseLine 0,0036 0,0002
0,2 D(1,1) 0,0080 0,0029
D(3,1) 0,0086 0,0046
D(1,3) 0,3298 0,2397
0,1 y = 0,682x
D(3,3) 0,3301 0,2104
R² = 0,99
D(3,5) 0,0225 0,0146
D(5,5) 0,0182 0,0084
0,0
0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4
CMT IA
Figure 5. Comparison of CCD values assessed at different damage locations for PZT at (2,3) and
measured by Agilent high precision IA and portable, low cost CMT-IA.
CCD measured by the two IA are different. The Agilent equipment is of high
precision, with a better reproducibility, as revealed by the low CCD of the baseline. In
general, the CCD of the different damage locations measured by the Agilent IA are
lower than measured with CMT-IA. Nevertheless, the damage sensitivity is identical,
as indicated by the linear dependence between both measurements with a coefficient
of correlation of R2 = 0,99. CCD of the CMT-IA are 68% lower consistently. Two
consecutive baselines are collected with an error of 0,36%! These results are
extremely encouraging for a portable (low size) and low cost IA. We are now working
further on the improvement on the precision of the measurements and on the
enhancement of the robustness of measured data (e.g., reducing temperature effects).
261
The reproducibility on the impedance magnitude and phase of the CMT-IA is
shown in Figure 6. Baselines 1 and 2 were measured consecutively, and baseline 3
was recorded after all the measurements of scenario 1. The temperature of the
integrated circuit (IC) of the CMT-IA and of the environment was monitored (Figure
6). The reproducibility of the measurements is quite good. The increase on the
temperature leads to a reduction of the magnitude and phase of the impedance
spectrum, being the phase component less sensitive to temperature variations. In the
following only the phase components measured by the CMT-IA are presented.
Figure 6. Magnitude and phase impedance spectra for three baselines (undamaged Z-plate)
measurements with CMT-IA. In the legend are reported the IC and environment temperatures.
Figure 7 shows the phase responses for distinct damage locations for PZT at (2,3).
Damages originate variations on magnitude and also frequency shifts. Damages at
(1,3) and (3,3) show the most significant differences with respect to the baseline.
Figure 7. Typical phase responses of a PZT bonded on the Z-plate at scenario 1, PZT at location (2,3),
for the baseline and the distinct simulated damage locations.
262
Figure 8 shows the CCD for all simulated damage cases in the Z-plate as (5,5)
matrix (Figure 4a): the bold horizontal line is the boundary condition and the vertical
lines are the Z-shaped stringers. Each matrix corresponds to a different sensor location
(shown at the top left corner). CCD values are shown at the respective damage
positions. The cells highlighted with a dark background show the highest CCD.
baseline CCD
S(2,3) 0,0036
S(3,5) 0,0091
S(5,1) 0,0042
S(1,5) 0,0063
Figure 8. CCD shown in a (5x5) matrix for every damage location and different PZT locations. In dark
cells are shown the highest CCD. The insert table shows CCD for consecutive baselines.
Considering the four scenarios of PZT positions, the following comments are
relevant: the highest CCD are for damages positions closed to the PZT; for each
scenario, the maximum CCD are closed to the PZT, but limited in the vertical
direction between the Z-stringers; outside this area, the values of CCD are very small.
The presence of the Z-stringers appears to affect considerably the mechanical wave
propagation in the Z-plate, which travels with lower energy outside the stringer
boundaries (acting as barrier to the travelling of the mechanical wave).
Considering each scenario individually, the following remarks can be made:
 Scenario 1 - PZT bonded on position (2,3)

All the damages can be detected, but D(1,3) and D(3,3) with the highest CCD;
these values are similar due to the same distance PZT-damage; CCD of the
left and right side of the Z-stringers are different, the former being the lowest;
All the damages can also be detected, but D(3,5) and D(5,5) with higher
differences; CCD values decrease with the PZT-damage distance;
All the damages are also detected, but D(1,3) and D(3,3) with the highest
CCD; this scenario shows the lowest values of CCD among all the highest
CCD; the CCD values are related to distance PZT-damage;
D(3,5) and D(5,5) are the damage positions with the highest CCD; D(1,1)
could not be identified because CCD is smaller than the baseline (0,0063); it is
worthy to note that this PZT was bonded on a point with small sensitivity to a
range of vibrations modes (as indicated by the sensor positioning algorithm);
this scenario also shows the highest CCD, which may be a consequence of the
positioning of the PZT close to the boundary condition; nevertheless, CCD
decreases with the PZT-damage distance.
263
Resuming, the maximum values of CCD are closed to the PZT, but limited by the
area between the Z-stringers, and CCD values are related to distance PZT-damage,
decreasing with it. In Figure 9 are plotted the highest values of CCD for all scenarios
(values in the dark cells of Figure 8) as function of the (shortest) distance from each
PZT to the damage location. CCD values decrease with the distance to the damage.
The two rectangular markers (top curve) correspond to the scenario 4 where the PZT
is located at (1,5) close to the boundary condition. These highest CCD may be a
consequence of the positioning of the PZT close to the boundary condition. These
values were isolated from the others. The effect of the boundary condition on the
response of the PZT should be further investigated.
1,0
0,8
0,6
y = 1,1021x-0,130
CCD
0,4
0,2 y = 0,678x-0,125
R² = 0,86
0,0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
distance sensor-damage (mm)
Figure 9. Variation of CCD with the distance PZT-damage. Rectangular markers are from scenario 4.
CONCLUSIONS
The developed CMT impedance analyser is portable, sufficiently precise and

reproducible, and cost-effective for SHM. A case study is shown where simulated
damages in a CRFP flat plate reinforced with two Z-shape stiffeners are investigated.
PZT patches were placed in different locations for damage assessment. Damage
causes variations on the magnitude and frequency shifts on the impedance spectra.
The damage metric is based on the CCD for the phase component, which is less
sensitive to temperature variations. For all the studied cases, the highest CCD are
located in the area formed by the PZT and the Z-stringers, being very small outside
this zone. The Z-stringers appears to affect considerably the impedance measurements.
CCD decrease with the distance between the PZT and the damage.
REFERENCES
1. Yolken, H.T., Matzkani, G.A., 2009, Recent trends in structural health monitoring techniques, The
AMMTIAC Quarterly, 3 (4), p.3-6, http://ammtiac.alionscience.com/quarterly
2. Rickli, J.L., Camelio, J.A., 2009, Damage detection in assembly fixtures using non-destructive
electromechanical impedance sensors and multivariate statistics, Int. J. Adv. Manuf. Technol.,
42:1005-1015
3. Park, G., Inman, D.J., 2007, Structural health monitoring using piezoelectric impedance
measurements, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, 365, 373-392
264
4. Ostachowicz, W., Kudela, P., Malinowski, P., Wandowski, T., 2009, Damage localisation in plate-
like structures based on PZT sensors, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 23, 1805–1829
5. Yan, W., Chen, W.Q., 2010, Structural Health Monitoring Using High-Frequency
Electromechanical Impedance Signatures, Advances in Civil Engineering, Article ID 429148
6. Park, G., Inman D.J., 2004, Impedance-based structural health monitoring, report LA-UR-04-5721
265
Optimal Sensor Fusion for Structural
Health Monitoring of Aircraft Composite
Components
S. COSTINER, H. A. WINSTON, M. R. GURVICH, A. GHOSHAL,
G. S. WELSH, S. L. BUTLER, M. R. URBAN and N. BORDICK
ABSTRACT 1
An integrated sensor system that continuously monitors the structural integrity of

an aircraft’s critical composite components can have a high payoff by reducing risks,
costs, inspections, and unscheduled maintenance, while increasing safety. Hybrid
sensor networks combine or fuse different types of sensors. Fiber Bragg Grating
(FBG) sensors can be inserted in layers of composite structures to provide local
damage detection, while surface mounted Piezoelectric (PZT) sensors can provide
global damage detection for the host structure under consideration. This paper
describes an example of optimal sensor fusion, which combines FBG sensors and PZT
sensors. Optimal sensor fusion tries to find the optimal number and location of
different types of sensors such that their combined probability of detection (POD) is
maximized. Optimal hybrid sensor networks can be more robust, more accurate,
and/or cheaper than networks consisting only of homogenous sensors.
INTRODUCTION
Due to increased use of composites in advanced rotorcraft structures, there are

strong needs for integrated health monitoring systems for damage tolerance assurance
S. Costiner, United Technologies Research Center, East Hartford, CT; Email: costins@utrc.utc.com
H. A. Winston, United Technologies Research Center, East Hartford, CT; Email:
winstoha@utrc.utc.com
M. R. Gurvich, United Technologies Research Center, East Hartford, CT; Email:
gurvicmr@utrc.utc.com
A. Ghoshal, U.S. Army Research Laboratory; Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD; Email:
anindya.ghoshal@us.army.mil
G. S. Welsh, United Technologies Research Center, East Hartford, CT; Email: welshgs@utrc.utc.com
S. L. Butler, United Technologies Research Center, , East Hartford, CT; Email: butlersl@utrc.utc.com
M. R. Urban, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, Stratford, CT ; Email : murban@sikorsky.com
N. Bordick, Army Aviation Applied Technology Directorate, Fort Eustis, VA ; Email :
nate.bordick@us.army.mil
1
This research was partially funded by the US Government under Agreement No. W911W6-08-2-0002.
The US Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes
notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon. The views and conclusions contained in this document
are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either
expressed or implied, of the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) or the US Government.
266
of these components [1-6]. A system that continuously monitors structural integrity
can have a high payoff by reducing/eliminating inspections and unscheduled
maintenance while increasing safety [1-15]. For example, optical Fiber Bragg Grating
(FBG) sensors can be used as embedded strain sensors [9, 10] for in-situ structural
health monitoring (SHM) of composite structures. In addition, significant work has
been done in the area of computational modeling [7-9] and experimental testing [10-
15] of embedded and surface mounted sensors in composites. A hybrid combination
these sensors can provide accuracy, robustness, cost, and risk reduction advantages.
A core problem is how to combine information from different sensor types to
improve damage detection. This paper proposes a generic sensor fusion approach that
combines probabilities of detection (POD) of damage. A related problem is how to
place sensors to maximize a fused POD - a complex global optimization problem [16,
17]. This paper demonstrates an approach based on efficient decoupled optimizations
of FBG and PZT networks. The results are then combined probabilistically in POD
maps. The accuracy of the solutions is evaluated by computing upper bounds of the
objective. The paper is structured as follows: the physical setup and the optimization
of PZT sensor networks by a greedy algorithm are described first. This PZT
optimization is similar to the FBG optimization described in [1]. These two
optimizations are combined in an optimal sensor fusion approach. POD maps and
applications of the optimization are discussed in the last section.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PHYSICAL SETUP
This section describes the damage detection model. A helicopter composite

flexbeam is composed of a set of plies or layers. The flexbeam is a safety critical
component that is highly loaded and susceptible to cracks. In this study, it is
assumed that cracks can only develop at ply drop locations (i.e., at the ends of plies
that terminate in the interior of the structure), as shown in Figure 1. There are Np
plies in the sample labeled with an index
Cracks: A crack c = (xc, yc, α) is defined by its coordinates (xc, yc) and length α. Here,
(xc, yc) is the location of the beginning of the crack, where xc is the radial coordinate
down the length of the flexbeam, and yc is the transverse coordinate through the
thickness of the flexbeam. A set of possible cracks or delaminations is denoted by C =
{(xc, yc, α)}. It is assumed that all cracks have the same size α = 1.5 inches. We
assume that |C| equals the number of plies that terminate at ply drops. P(c) denotes the
probability of having a crack c = (xc, yc, α) and was assumed to be 0.035.
Figure 1. Flexbeam Cross Section;

Ply Drops (red crosses) are Possible Crack Locations.
267
It was also assumed that the sum of all P(c) values is less than or equal to unity.
Although, in principle, multiple damage sites can exist in a component, in this paper it
is assumed that either no cracks or only a single crack exists in a flexbeam.
Loading: The sensor network was optimized for a static load generated by a flexbeam
tip deflection d of 3.00 inches. For simplicity, the fixed crack length α and tip
deflection d are implicit in the rest of this paper.
Sensors: PZT sensors are positioned on the surface of the component. FBG sensors
are positioned on fibers inside the component along plies.
PZT SENSOR OPTIMIZATION
The goal of PZT optimization is to find surface-mounted sensor positions that

maximize the probability of detecting interior cracks. This optimization is similar to
FBG sensor optimization described in [1]. PZT devices are positioned on the surface
of the sample along the length of the flexbeam. The position of a PZT device is
denoted by the x coordinate of the beginning (i.e., left-hand side) of that device. Given
two PZT devices positioned at x1 and x2, the device at x1 acts as an actuator that sends
a signal into the sample that is received by the device at x2 > x1. For a given crack c =
(xc, yc, α), the probability of detecting this crack by the PZT device pair (x1, x2) is
denoted by P(x1, x2, c). P(x1, x2, c) is computed from an analytic model created by
fitting data from acoustic wave propagation simulations where reflected amplitude
maxima were monotonically mapped to probabilities of detection.
The length L of the flexbeam is divided into equal-sized elements. Each PZT
actuator or receiver is located at one of these elements and occupies a whole number
λPZT of elements. A PZT sensor consists of an actuator and a receiver separated by a
fixed distance d0. Hence, the POD P(xi, xj, c) = P(xi, c) is only a function of the
actuator location xi. The minimum distance between two consecutive PZT sensors is
specified as a given number of elements d min.

The probability that a set of PZT sensors, located at x (x1,, x n ) , detects a crack
c is given by:

POD PZT (x, c) [1 (1 P(xi , c))] P(c) (1)
i 1,n
For a given set of cracks C, the optimization objective is given by:

 
POD PZT (x, C) POD PZT (x, c) (2)
c C
This is the average probability of detecting a crack in C. It is referred to as the exact

objective or exact probability of detection PODPZT to distinguish it from approximate
objectives denoted by POD’PZT. The sensor optimization problem is to find a set of n

PZT sensor locations x * ( x1* ,, x *n ) such that:
 
x* arg max POD PZT (x, C) (3)
x
| xi xj | PZT d min ; i, j 1,..., n, i j 0 xi L- PZT ; i 1,..., n
268
The above is a complex global optimization problem that has many local maxima.
The next section describes an efficient greedy algorithm for finding good initial
solutions using an approximate objective POD’ PZT. These approximate solutions can
be evaluated by the exact objective. If the value of the exact objective POD PZT is not
satisfactory (e.g., it is not sufficiently close to 1 or to a computed upper bound), then
the approximate solution can be further improved by continuous local optimization.
Greedy Algorithm
The optimization problem, defined by Equation 3, can be solved by a greedy

algorithm that is similar to the procedure used to optimize FBG sensor networks in [1].
The approach is to first define an approximate objective for each element location xi as
an average probability of detecting all the cracks in C with a PZT sensor at that
position.
POD' PZT (x i ) P(x i , c)P(c) (4)

c C
The first PZT sensor is positioned at x1* - the location of the largest value of POD’ PZT.
x1* argmax POD 'PZT ( xi ) (5)

xi
The second sensor is positioned at the location of the next largest feasible value of
POD’PZT, such that | x1 x 2 | PZT d min . This procedure continues positioning
additional sensors in the same way and was used to determine the seven optimal PZT
sensor positions shown in Figure 2. The numbers denote the order in which the
sensors were placed, and the vertical lines show the locations of the ply drops. The
exact objective PODPZT was evaluated for one to ten sensor greedy algorithm
solutions. The results are shown in Figure 3. As expected, the detection probability
increases with the number of sensors. For six or more sensors, the POD curve
saturates because additional sensors would have to be positioned in regions where
POD’PZT vanishes, as seen in Figure 2.
Figure 2 (left). Approximate Objective POD’PZT and a 7 PZT Sensor Greedy Solution (Ply 12).
Figure 3 (right). Exact Objective PODPZT Applied to Greedy Solutions vs. Number of PZT Sensors
in Ply 12 (blue curve).
269
HYBRID SENSOR FUSION
This section defines a hybrid sensor fusion formulation using POD objective

functions. Assume that there are n PZT sensors at locations x and m FBG sensors at

locations g . Analogous to the FBG greedy optimization problem, the combined POD
of the two sets of sensors is given by the exact objective function:
 
PODFBGx PZT(x, g, C) P(c) [1 (1 P(x i , c)) (1 P(g j , c))] (6)
c C
i 1,n j 1,m
This objective function can be approximated by a separable objective POD sep

FBGxPZT
given by Equation 7. (PODFBG is given by an equation similar to Equation 1.)
   
POD sep
FBGxPZT (x, g, C) 1 (1 POD PZT (x, C) ) (1 POD FBG (g, C) ) (7)
The separable objective POD sep

FBGxPZT was used because PODFBG and PODPZT could
be evaluated independently. This enabled the PZT and FBG optimizations to be
decoupled. The formulation of Equation 7 can be extended to other types of sensors
for which a POD can be computed. It can also be extended to any number of different
types of sensors.
POD Bounds and Error Estimates
The above objectives have computable upper bounds. For example, denoting by
N the total number of elements xi on which PZT sensors can be located, and by M the
total number of elements gi on which FBG sensors can be located, the inequality in
Equation 8 holds for any n and m.
PODFBGxPZT ((x 1 ,..., x n , g 1 ,..., g m ), C) c C

[1 (1 P(x i , c)) (1 P(g j , c))] P(c) U bd
i 1, N j 1, M
(8)
 
If (x * , g * ) is a global maximum of PODFBGxPZT(x, g, C) , and (x, g) is a solution obtained
by any other procedure, then the bounds in Equation 9 hold:
   
Lbd PODFBGxPZT(x, g, C) PODFBGxPZT(x* , g* , C) Ubd (9)
Equation 9 provides upper and lower bounds of the global optimum of the exact
objective PODFBGxPZT. Hence, the difference Ubd – Lbd provides an error estimate of
the global optimum. For example, the upper bound Ubd is represented by the horizontal
black line, and the lower bound is represented by the blue curve in Figure 3. Here, the
number of FBG sensors is 0 because only PZT sensors were used. Note that, in some
cases, the upper bound Ubd can be less than one.
Complete Problem Formulation
The complete hybrid sensor optimization problem is expressed by Equation 10.


The problem is to find n PZT sensor locations x * ( x1* ,, x *n ) and m FBG sensor
270

locations g * ( g1* ,, g *m ) that maximize PODFBGxPZT(x, g, C) . Solutions must satisfy
feasibility bounds and constraints (i.e., the FBG sensors cannot be positioned at
locations where they could be damaged by peak strain fields). Here, λ FBG is the FBG
sensor size, and bmin is the minimum distance between FBG sensors.
   
(x, g) * argmax PODFBGxPZT (x, g, C) (10)

x, g
| xi xj | PZT d min i, j 1,..., n i j

| gi gj | FBG b min i, j 1,..., m i j
0 xi L - PZT i 1, ..., n
0 gi L - FBG i 1, ..., m
Approximate solutions to this problem can be found by independently optimizing

the PZT and FBG sensor networks with greedy approaches. These solutions can then
be evaluated with the separable objective function POD sep
FBGxPZT and the exact objective
function PODFBGxPZT. If the computed POD values found by such a procedure do not
meet engineering requirements, the solutions can be improved either iteratively or by
local optimization. If the exact objective PODFBGxPZT is close to 1 or to the computed
upper bound Ubd, then the solution can be considered to be close to a global optimum.
The results shown below were obtained by this approximate optimization procedure.
Example Solutions
Objective functions for combined FBG and PZT sensor networks are shown in
Figure 4 (separable) and Figure 5 (exact). These are referred to as optimal POD maps
and are similar in this case. The relative difference between the separable and exact
PODs is shown in Figure 6 and is defined as (PODFBGxPZ – PODsepFBGxPZT)
/PODFBGxPZT. The relative difference approaches 0 as the number of sensors increases.
Note that the maximum POD FBG ~ 0.55 and the maximum POD PZT ~ 0.8, while the
hybrid solutions give a maximum PODFBGxPZT ~ 0.9. Hence, the combination of the
two types of sensors gives a higher POD than a network with only one type of sensor.
This can be understood from objective function distributions. In particular, although
not shown, the PZT objective function has large values in the center of the flexbeam
where the FBG objective values vanish.
APPLICATIONS OF OPTIMAL SENSOR FUSION
Combined PZT and FBG optimal POD maps can be used to answer three main
classes of problems. (1) For given numbers of FBG and PZT sensors, what sensor
configuration(s) achieve the maximum attainable POD? For example, with seven PZT
and seven FBG sensors in ply 12, a lower bound of the maximum value of
PODFBGxPZT is 0.9, as shown in Figure 5. (PZT solutions that give this POD are shown
in Figure 2.) In general, these solutions are not unique. (2) How many PZT and FBG
sensors are needed to achieve a given target POD? What are the corresponding sensor
configurations? For example, for a target POD of 0.85 in ply 12, six FBG and five
PZT sensors or five FBG and six PZT sensors would be sufficient (Figure 5). These
271
solutions can be obtained by selecting the best five or six sensor positions from the
approximate PZT objective curve in Figure 2 and a corresponding FBG approximate
objective curve. (3) What is the minimum number of sensors that give the maximum
(or a given) POD? For example, six PZT and six FBG sensors provide the maximum
POD value of 0.9 in the case illustrated in Figure 5.
CONCLUSIONS
A generic sensor fusion approach that combines the POD(s) of heterogeneous

sensors was described. In particular, an optimal sensor fusion approach was defined
and demonstrated on hybrid FBG and PZT sensor arrays. Computable lower and
upper error bounds of a POD objective function were determined. The optimization
approach combines the optimization of FBG networks with the optimization of PZT
networks. PZT sensor network optimization uses a greedy algorithm that is combined
with an analytical model that computes delamination detection probabilities for pairs
of PZT devices. The optimization approach can be used to distinguish situations
where hybrid heterogeneous sensor networks are better than homogeneous sensor
networks.
Figure 4 (left). Separable Objective Map of Greedy Solutions for PZT and FBG Sensors (Ply 12).
Figure 5 (right). Exact Objective Map of Greedy Solutions for PZT and FBG Sensors (Ply 12).
Figure 6 (bottom). Relative Difference between Separable and Exact Objectives (Ply 12).
272
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Optimization and Its Applications). Springer, 2006
273
Impact and Damage Location Detection on
Plate-Like Structures Using
Time—Reversal Method
C. CHEN, Y. LI and F.-G. YUAN
ABSTRACT
Based on time-reversal (T-R) concept, a technique for identifying both impact and
damage location is developed in this paper. For the T-R method being an optimal self-
focusing technique, the back-propagated wave-field which is reconstructed through
the transfer functions and signals from sensors converges toward the location. Low
velocity impact experiment on a flat aluminum plate with four piezoelectric sensors is
performed to demonstrate the capability of T-R method for impact localization. The
plate is first calibrated by transfer functions with discrete spatial spacing. A two-step
search algorithm is proposed to rapidly trace the impact location. The effect of the
spacing of the calibrated transfer functions on the accuracy of the detected impact
location is discussed. The location of the damage is detected followed by the impact
location detection technique, considering the damage as a “virtual source” when the
structure is excited by the known impact source. A flat plate is employed by finite
element method to generate synthetic data to verify this T-R method for locating the
damage. The results show that damages with various locations and sizes can be
detected successfully by exciting the force at various calibrated points. This potential
of applying this technique for complex damages is also discussed. Transfer functions
of the structures without damage can be used in both impact location identification and
damage location detection, thus T-R method is suitable for structural health
monitoring.
1. INTRODUCTION
Structural health monitoring techniques have being investigated widely to improve

the safety and reliability of aerospace structures, and to reduce the maintenance cost.
With the identified impact source, the associated damages caused by the impact and its
residual strength can be conducted by on-ground testing databases. The estimation the
_____________
Chunlin Chen, School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an,
Shanxi, 710072, PR China; Yulong Li, School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical
University, Xi’an, Shanxi, 710072, PR China; Fuh-Gwo Yuan, Department of Mechanical
and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
274
impact location by triangulation method is often based on the time of first-arrival of a
given wave mode and its velocity information [1]. However, it is rather difficult to
obtain the time-of-flight and wave velocity information accurately in practice,
especially for noisy signals, complex structures with joints and stiffness, and the wave
velocity being directionally dependent in composites. Recently wavelet analyses have
been utilized to obtain the arrival time accurately [2]. Kundu et al. [3] extended the
triangulation method for locating impact point in anisotropic composite plate by
minimizing objective functions. Park and Chang [4] developed an impact location
detection method by mapping the power distribution over the entire structure with
uniformly distributed sensors, thus requiring many sensors. Markmiller and Chang [5]
then improved this method by optimizing the number and the locations of sensor
based on a genetic algorithm. Artificial Neural network [6] can be used to solve this
class of the problem for its versatility, yet it may require a large amount of training
data. An impact source identification method based on T-R method was developed by
the authors [7]. Based on transfer functions, both the impact location is recovered and
impact loading time-history is reconstructed by a T-R procedure. The T-R method also
has been used widely in damage detection for its self-focusing characteristics and its
reconstruction capability. Wang et al. [8] have developed a T-R imaging method for
structural health monitoring. Xu and Giurgiutiu [9] studied the capability of Lamb
wave T-R method with piezoelectric wafer active sensors for structural health
monitoring. Combining a T-R process and subsequent analyses, a baseline-free
damage diagnosis technique has been investigated by Sohn et al. [10]. In this paper,
the T-R method for impact location identification is verified by the impact
experiments. The critical issue of transfer function spacing in impact location
determination by T-R method is investigated. This T-R technique is further developed
to detect the damage by considering the damage as a “virtual source” when the
structure is excited by the known impact source. The detection of the damages with
various sizes and locations by the excited force at various calibrated points are
discussed. Finally, the potentiality of T-R method for complex damages is studied.
2. T-R METHOD FOR LOCATION DETECTION
In the T-R concept, the waves generated by the excited source are recorded as
time-series signals from a number of sensors, and then they are back-propagated (or
time-reversed) back into the medium. The time-reversed signals then focus at their
original source due to constructive interference. For T-R method being a self-adaptive
optimal focusing technique, waves precisely retrace all the traveling paths and arrived
at the source location simultaneously. In a previous simulation study, the impact
source on plate-like structure can be identified successfully by T-R method [7]. To
identify the impact source on plate-like structure by T-R method, the transfer functions
are attained in calibration procedure first. After the plate is impacted, the impact
response at sensor locations and transfer functions are computed in T-R process. The
information of the impact location is retrieved in the reconstructed signal at each
calibration location. Viable methods to determine the impact location will be
discussed as follows. It is noted that no knowledge of material properties or boundary
conditions is required in experiments.
The transfer (Green’s) function which represents the relationship between the
calibrated impact force and the strain response at a sensor location are calibrated in
frequency domain by
275
Si ( )
Gi (ξ,  )  (1)
F (ξ ,  )
where F(is calibration force at the location , Si() is the summation of the in-
plane strain response (x+y) proportional to the output voltage measured by the ith
piezoelectric sensor. The plate is calibrated by discrete calibration points (locations),
evenly spaced within the enclosed sensor area.
Transfer functions between any two arbitrary points in the plate are reciprocal
based on its spatial reciprocity. Mathematically the T-R procedure can be realized
through transfer functions derived from Equation (1), the T-R procedure in frequency
domain can be expressed by
fi (ξ,  )  Gi* (ξ,  ) si ( )  Gi (ξ,  ) si* ( ) (2)
where fi (is the reconstructed signal contributed by the strain si (),the superscript
(*) denotes the complex conjugate of the variable. The shape of impact loading time-
history at any point in the structure from all the sensors can be reconstructed in the
time domain as
n
F (ξ, T  t )   fi (ξ, T  t ) (3)
i 1
where n is the number of sensors, T is the time duration of T-R process. Proper choice
of T and n has been discussed in [7].
2.1 Impact location detection.
The T-R method is an optimal temporal and spatial focusing technique, the
maximum peak amplitude of reconstructed signals will refocus at the impact location
at the time of the impact. Thus in theory the impact source can be identified by
selecting the maximum peak amplitude of the reconstructed signals during entire time
at each point in the plate. Since it is not practical to attain the transfer function at every
point in the plate, the critical issue is then to select appropriate spacing  for
calibrating the structure. An adaptive two-step search algorithm has been developed
to trace the impact location. The plate is conveniently divided into small square areas
by evenly spaced calibration points. An initial detection will be performed to roughly
estimate the impact location by selecting the maximum peak amplitude of the
reconstructed signals among calibration locations. The peak amplitude of the
reconstructed signals P(xij ) is defined as
P ( xij )  Max [F ( xij , T  t )] (4)
at all times
The first approximate impact location, denoted by x̂ , is determined by
Q (xˆ )  Max[ P (xij )] (5)
Then the impact location is further searched in the neighboring four potential
impact square areas. The impact area is then chosen by the maximum peak amplitude
at a calibration point and three other relatively high peak amplitudes constituting the
squared area. In the next search step, the impact location is estimated in terms of the
centroid of the peak amplitude of the reconstructed signals at four calibration
locations. The centroid, xˆˆ ( xe , ye ) , is considered to be the finer impact location
determined by
276
4 4
 xi P( xi , yi )  yi P( xi , yi )
i 1 i 1
xe  4
, ye  4
(6)
 P( xi , yi )  P( xi , yi )
i 1 i 1
where P(xi ,yi) is the peak amplitude of the reconstructed signal at calibration locations
(xi ,yi), which enclose the impact source.
2.2 The method for damage localization
A damage detection method based on T-R procedure for impact force
identification is developed in frequency domain. Stress waves are disturbed by the
damage when the structure is excited by external source. Thus damage on plate-like
structure can be considered as “virtual source” excited by the known impact force. To
detect the damage, the plate is excited by impact force at the known calibrated
location. Both the excited force and strain response are measured. The difference
between the measured strains and the ones predicted by the force and transfer
functions are computed, which are induced by the damage on the plate. Then the
strains components from the damage scattering are processed with transfer functions
in T-R procedure. The back-propagated wave-field converges toward the “virtual
source”, damage location. Similar to that of impact location identification, the location
of the damage can be searched.
3. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS
3.1 Impact experiment on aluminum plate
The impact localization experiment was implemented on a flat aluminum plate.
Figure 1 shows the experimental setup. The plate of dimension 914.4mm×914.4mm
×3.1mm was fixed on a steel frame by eight crews around the edges of the plate. Four
piezoelectric sensors (diameter: 7mm; thickness: 0.3mm.) were mounted near the
corner of the plate by 60mm from each side. The impact responses from sensors were
recorded by a Digital Phosphor oscilloscope
(model: DPO 2024; manufacturer: Tektronix).
The impact force of the hand-held instrumented
hammer (model: 086C02; manufacturer: PCB
Piezotronics) was recorded by a data acquisition
system (model: PicoScope 3206; manufacturer:
Pico Technology). The sampling rate was 50
kHz. The time duration of the measurement is
100ms. The in-plane strain response and the
impact force are proportional to the output
voltage of the piezoelectric sensor and
instrumented hammer respectively. The
measured voltage signals were processed
directly to demonstrate the T-R method for
impact localization. It is noted that all the
impact forces are normal to the plate surface Figure 1 Impact experimental setup
and there are no induced impact damage on the
plate after impact.
The resolution of impact localization depends on how dense the calibrated
transfer function is over the plate. Obviously more information of impact source
identification can be obtained when the calibration locations are denser. However, the
277
time spent in computation for impact localization will increase dramatically with the
increase of the density of the calibration locations. It is also impractical to obtain the
transfer functions at every single point of the plate. Thus, the spacing of calibration
location is a critical factor for impact localization. To find the appropriate spacing of
calibration locations on the flat aluminum plate, the square area (240mm×240mm) at
the center of the plate was calibrated with the spacing 40mm in tentative experiments.
Thus this square area was divided into 6 × 6 small square areas by calibration
locations. In each small square area, the load was impacted at the center of the area.
The results showed that all the impact locations can be detected at the right impact
area successfully when the spacing of the calibration location was 40mm and 80mm
respectively. In the following, the spacing of the calibration on the entire plate started
from 80mm. In tentative experiments, the time duration of T-R process was 40 ms and
the truncation frequency was 1.5 kHz. The selection about the time duration of T-R
method and the truncation frequency had been discussed in the simulation work [7].
The precision of the transfer functions increases with the increase of calibration times
at each calibration location. On the entire plate, each calibration location was impacted
twice and the transfer functions were obtained from the averaged value. It is noted
herein that the unit for the dimension is mm.
The spacing of the transfer function calibration locations was selected from
80mm. To determine the appropriate spacing of calibration location and the relation
between the impact localization and the density of the transfer function calibrations,
uniformly distributed impacts points are detected under various calibration spacing,
80mm, 120mm, and 160mm. When the spacing is 80mm, the entire plate was divided
into 9×9 small impact areas. 81 impact events were located at the center of each
impact area once. Most of impact events, 75 out of 81, can be detected at the right
impact area, and the remaining events were detected at the neighboring impact areas.
The average error of the impact location detection was 3.5mm if detected at the right
impact area. When other events were detected the neighboring impact areas, the sum
of peak value of the four reconstructed signals in detected impact area and true impact
area are very close to each other. Figure
2 shows the result of an impact location
detection, the detected impact locations
were (161.0, -238.8) and the true impact
location was (160, -240). The maximum
peak value of the reconstructed signal is
at (200,-200). For other impact events
which were detected at neighboring
impact areas, the results were similar.
Among 81 impact events, all the
maximum peak value of reconstructed
signals occurred at the one of four right
calibration locations which was nearest
Figure 2 Contour line of peak value of the
to the true impact location. Table 1
reconstructed signals for impact location
show the average error of impact detection, where the true impact location is
location detection and the possibility of (160, -240) mm and the estimated impact
right impact area detection under location is (161.0, -238.8) mm, the spacing of
various spacings. As expected, the calibrated transfer functions is 80 mm.
impact localization error increases with the decrease of the transfer function density. It
278
is noted that the possibility of right impact area detection increases with the increase of
the density of calibrated transfer functions from 80mm to 160mm.
Table 1 Impact location detection results Calibrated point Unit: mm

Spacing (mm) 80 120 160
Error (mm) 3.5 6.7 10.4 A4(-60,-120) A3(-40,-120)
Accuracy of impact area 75/81 8/9 7/8
3.2 Numerical experiment for damage localization B4(-56,-130) B3(-50,-130)

A finite element method (FEM) is Damage area
employed to model the plate for generating
synthetic data to verify the T-R method for B1(-56,-134) B2(-50,-134)
damage localization. The dimension of the

aluminum plate is 420mm×420mm×1mm and A1(-60,-140) A2(-40,-140)
the four sensors are mounted near the corner of Figure 3 Dimension and location of
the plate by 40mm from each side. The plate is a rectangular damage enclosed by a
calibrated area
simply supported on all edges. The mechanical
properties of the aluminum are E = 72GPa, = 0.3, = 2700Kg/m3. To simulate the
damage, the Young's modulus of the material in damaged area retains one percent of
the pristine material. It is noted that the FEM is merely used to generate data to
validate the T-R method; the synthetic data can be readily replaced by sensor data in
practice. Figure 3 shows the dimension and the location of a rectangular damage
enclosed by a calibrated area, where the origin of the coordinates is located at the
center of the plate. Figure 4 (a) shows the results of damage localization for the
rectangular damage where the force is excited at (-80,-80) and excited force is a half-
sinusoidal wave with time duration of 1 ms and amplitude of 40 N. The result of
damage localization is similar to that of impact localization. The maximum peak
amplitude of the reconstructed signals occurred at the calibration location (-60, -140)
which is closest to the damage. It is noted that the excited forces used for damage
localization herein are the same except excited at various locations. Due to the
symmetry of the plate, only the damage at a quarter of the plate is modeled.
As discussed in previous section, the resolution of localization by T-R method
(a) ⊿=20mm (b) ⊿=40mm

Figure 4 Contour line of peak value of the reconstructed signals for damage detection, where the
damage area is shown in Figure 2 and the location of excited force is (-80, -80) mm
279
strongly depends on the spacing of transfer functions. The damage can be successfully
located when the transfer function spacing is as small as 20mm. For the spacing of
40mm with the same excited force, Figure 4(b) shows that the maximum peak
amplitude of the reconstructed signals is still at the nearby calibrated point. However
the damage area is not enclosed by four calibration points with higher peak amplitude
of reconstructed signals as that of results when the spacing is 20mm. When the
spacing is 60mm, it can not be detected near the true damage area. The accuracy of
damage localization decreases with the increase of transfer function spacing as impact
localization.
The damage can be successfully located when the known force is excited at
various calibration points. By altering the excited location from (-80,-80) to other
locations (-60,-140), (-60,-100), (-60,-60), (-140,-100), (-20,-20), the damage location
can be also identified. Any calibrated point can be selected as the excited location in
damage localization in this method, and the resolution of the damage localization will
enhance at the damage area if the plate-like structure is excited more times at various
calibrated points.
To investigate the robust capability of T-R method for locating the damage, the
size of the damage area B1B2B3B4 in calibrated area A1A2A3A4 shown in Figure 3 is
shrunk or increased three times. Both sizes of the damage are detected successfully
when the excited force is loaded at (-60, -100). The results are similar to that of the
damage B1B2B3B4. Table 2 shows the maximum peak amplitude of the reconstructed
signals for various damages, where they are normalized by the result of smallest
damage. The maximum peak amplitude of the reconstructed signals at the calibrated
points increases with the increase of the damage size under the same excited
condition. This conclusion may be used to identify the size of damage area in damage
detection in the future.
Table 2 Maximum peak amplitude of reconstructed signals for various damages.
Normalized damage size Normalized maximum peak
1 1
3 2.1
9 2.7
In practice, the damage may occur anywhere in the plate. One damage area near
the center of the plate whose coordinates are (-16,-40) (-8,-40) (-16,-36) (-8,-36) and
the other close to the corner of the plate with coordinates (-150,-154) (-144,-154) (-
150,-146) (-144,-146) are positioned. Both of damages are successfully located (not
shown in a figure), similar to the one in previous discussion. For the damage at the
center, the detected damage location is (-20, -40) and (0,-40) when the spacing is
20mm and 40mm respectively. The detected result of the damage at the corner is (-
140, -140) and (-160,-160) when the spacing
is 20mm and 40mm respectively. Thus,
damages with various sizes and locations can
be detected well by T-R method.
Lastly, a study is conducted to
investigate if the T-R method can
simultaneously locate multiple damages.
Figure 5 show the result of damage detection,
where the coordinates of the two damages
areas are B1B2B3B4 shown in Figure 3 and (-
112,-56) (-104,-56) (-104, -48) (-112,-46).
Figure 5 Results of two damages detection
280
The calibrated point (-120,-40) with maximum peak amplitude of the reconstructed
signals is close to the larger damage, and another one (-40, -120) with lower peak
amplitude corresponds to the smaller damage. Two damages are successfully located
though they are not detected at the calibrated points which are nearest to them as that of
damage localization. For the characteristics of damages, such as the number, location and
size are related to the results T-R processing for the component in strain response caused
by damage, T-R method may be used to trace the evolution of the damage in structures.
4. CONCLUSION
The T-R method for impact localization has been verified by the impact
experiments on a square aluminum plate. The effect of the calibration location spacing
on the accuracy of the impact location has been examined in detail. Most impacts were
detected at the right impact area except a few of them were detected at neighboring
impact area when the spacing of transfer functions is 80mm, 120mm, and 160mm.
The accuracy of impact localization increases with the increase of calibration locations
density. The T-R method is also developed to detect the damage location by
considering the damage as the “virtual source”. Multiple damages with various
dimensions and locations can be located successfully. The spacing of transfer function
is also very important for damage localization. The results of the damage localization
will be enhanced if the plate-like structure is excited few times. It is noted that only
transfer functions and strain response measured by four sensors are needed for both
the impact location detection and the damage location detection. For the transfer
function of the structure without damage can be used both for impact force
identification and damage detection, the T-R method is suited to monitor the health
state of plate-like structures.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mr. Chen is appreciated by the support from the National 111 project “The center for Mechanical
Behavior of Advanced Structures and Materials” in Northwestern Polytechnical University. This paper
is partially supported by the AFOSR Grant No. FA9550-09-C-0140 through Acellent Technologies Inc.
on STTR Phase I effort and the National Science Foundation Grant No. CMMI-0654233.
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281
Fatigue Crack Detection Using Guided Waves
and Probability-Based Imaging Approach
M. LU, X. LU, L. ZHOU, Z. SU, L. YE and F. LI
ABSTRACT
The application of ultrasonic guided waves has shown great potential for real-time
monitoring of fatigue crack in metallic structures. This paper demonstrates that a
probability-based imaging approach in terms of a signal feature Time of Flight (ToF)
is used for estimation of presence and location of a fatigue crack in a steel plate based
on guided waves generated by an active piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT)
transducer network. The propagation of guided waves in a 10mm-thick steel plate is
complicated due to wave dispersion and boundary reflection, which bring diverse
interference to the identification of fatigue crack position. Thus, a fatigue crack model
is established in virtue of finite element method (FEM) for simulating the propagation
of guided waves in the presence of a fatigue crack in this structure. The characteristics
of guided wave signals are extracted from the wave energy spectrum with the aid of
Wavelet transform. Both the simulation and experimental results show that a fatigue
crack can reflect guided waves by reason of discontinuous contact of crack surfaces
under cyclic fatigue loading, and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed
method for real-time monitoring of fatigue cracks in metallic structures.
Keywords：guided waves, fatigue crack, metallic structures, imaging approach
INTRODUCTION
Structural failure of components in engineering frame works is an extremely

exhaustive expenditure which has catastrophic consequences. Among all the modes of
failure in metallic structures, fatigue crack under cyclic loading is the most common
_____________
Mingyu Lu, Limin Zhou, Zhongqing Su, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong
Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR
Xi Lu, Fucai Li, State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, Shanghai Jiao
Tong University, Shanghai 200240, P. R. China
Lin Ye, Laboratory of Smart Materials and Structures (LSMS), Centre for Advanced Materials
Technology (CAMT), School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, The
University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
282
pattern due to longer actual fatigue loading life suffered in service relative to assumed
design calculations. In order to avoid redundant cost caused by maintenance of these
structures, it is necessary to employ continuous assessment of circumstance of
structures. Apparently ultrasonic testing technique is most acceptable in industrial
applications. This technology relies on scattering of high frequency ultrasonic bulk
wave’s propagation through the thickness of structures. Applications of guided
ultrasonic waves for damage detections in metallic and composite structures have been
in progress recent years [1]. And Lamb waves which are elastic waves propagating in
traction-free thin plates, are the most widely employed guided ultrasonic waves for
damage detection as summarized in [2]. For Lamb wave-based technology, various
types of transducer can be used to excite and access Lamb wave signals also including
different types of laser and optical based method [3]. Around all the transducers can
be employed, PZT elements deliver excellent performance in Lamb wave excitation
and acquisition, in virtue of their neglectable mass/volume, easy integration, excellent
mechanical strength, wide frequency responses, low power consumption and acoustic
impedance, as well as low cost, which are particularly available for integration into a
host structure as an in-situ transducer [4]. Resultingly, applications of PZT transducers
to Lamb wave generation and reception for damage identification purpose are
numerous [5, 6]. And PZT transducer-based guided wave method has been verified
effective for weld detection [7] and welded tubular steel structures [8]. The
comparison about their practicability is extremely clear in terms of usage in the
framework of complicated structures [9]. While, PZT transducers have to be used
under some restrictions such as maximum voltage applied on a PZT, without
depolarising it, is 250–300 V/mm [10], that a PZT element. Thus the voltage used in
our experiments is usually less than 80V according to specific experimental setup.
Therefore, as the most common failure happens in applications, it is thus of
practical interest to investigate the wave propagation characteristics through fatigue
crack in metallic structures and whether the same techniques used before can address
fatigue defect in different types of structures [11].
The aim of this study is to demonstrate the application of a probability-based
imaging approach in terms of guided-waves for fatigue crack detection in a steel plate.
Specifically, a fatigue crack was introduced into a 10mm-thick steel plate. The
dispersion characteristics and mechanisms of Lamb waves in such kind of structures,
mode selection for this structure, signal generation and collection by an active PZT
transducer network based on sensor network technology, fatigue crack modelling and
simulation, signal processing/interpretation combined with imaging approach are
addressed.
GUIDED WAVE GENERATION BY PZT TRANSDUCERS
A steel plate of 555mm×200mm×10mm in size was designed as shown in Figure

1(a). The material properties of the specimen are detailed in our previous studies [7].
Considering that most fatigue crack in this kind of structure initiates and propagates
from edges between adjacent facets, an artificial notch of 20mm long and 5mm wide
was induced in one longer edge of the specimen to initiate a fatigue crack. As shown
in Figure 1(b), seven circular PZT transducers with the same dimensions of 6.9 mm in
283
diameter and 0.5 mm in thickness were surface-mounted to the plate to function as an
(a) (b)
Figure 1(a) Specimen used in experiments, (b) PZT sensor network
active senor network. The consideration for installation of this kind of sensor network
is to generate an available and isolated wave component and escape effect from
intricate boundaries.
The excitation signal was generated in MATLAB® software and downloaded to
an arbitrary waveform generator (HIOKI® 7075) in which D/A conversion was
performed. Subsequently, the analog signal was amplified by an amplifier (PiezoSys®
EPA-104) to 80 Vp-p which was then applied on each PZT transducer in turn to
activate the guided waves. When a PZT transducer was activated, the rest were
regarded as sensors to monitor propagations of guided waves in the steel plate using
an oscilloscope (HP® Infinium 54810A) at a sampling rate of 10 MHz.
According to the dispersive properties of guided waves in steel and in order to
avoid emergence of higher order guided wave modes which complicate the signal
representation and make it hard to extract signal features, the excitation frequency of
guided waves should be restricted at low frequencies. However, low frequencies result
in comparatively long wavelength and accordingly low time resolution of signal.
According to our previous studies [8], the PZT actuators were excited at 150 KHz by a
series of burst signals comprising five cycles of sine wave with the Hanning window
envelope in experiments. Based on the situation mentioned above, the key points of
location definition of the fatigue crack are in brief a suitable sensor network, an
outstanding dominant wave component and a useful set of signal post-processing
methods.
For this experiment, the steel plate used was clamped (shown in Figure 1(a)) in the
250kN MTS fatigue-testing machine in the force-controlled mode via a MTS Load
Unit Controller. The fatigue test was implemented under a series of tension-tension
tests in the interest of initiating and growing a fatigue crack along the notch. The
dynamic cyclic loading of 5kN-50kN was adopted in the fatigue tests. A fatigue crack
was introduced into the specimen, which was formed by creating an initial notch
before cyclically loading the plate. The length of the fatigue crack is 15mm after the
fatigue test. The crack was located along the sharp angle of the notch and was oriented
in parallel to the shorter edges of the plate as shown in Figure 2.
284
GUIDED WAVE PROPA GATION IN STEEL PLATE WITH FATIGUE
CRACK
In order to clarify the wave propagation characteristics in the steel plate with a
fatigue crack, finite element model for the specimen was employed to simulate the
guided wave propagation. The fatigue crack was modelled by deleting elements about
0.1mm in width along the tip of the notch. Figure 3 shows time history output of the
simulation results which represent the process of wave propagation before and after
going through the fatigue crack. The major feature which can be observed is that the
wave can be reflected by the fatigue crack. Additional wave scattering and attenuation
effects can be observed due to interactions with the notch and boundaries. From
simulation results, the arrival of the incident and fatigue crack-reflected dominant
wave package can be read, from which the flight distance can be computed using the
wave velocity from the time of the incident energy peak.
Figure 2 A fatigue crack introduced into the steel plate
285
Figure 3 Wave propagation in steel plate with fatigue crack
FATIGUE CRACK DETECTION
According to simulation results, appropriate and high-grade signal processing

methods present imperative application for wave signal discriminance and wave
characterisics extraction. In terms of advanced signal processing algorithms
prevailing nowadays, in this study, discrete wavelet transform (DWT) was applied
for processing the acquired signals. Wavelet analysis can be used to transfer the
guided-wave signals from time domain into time-frequency domain. In numerical
functional analyses, a DWT is any wavelet transform for which the wavelets are
discretely sampled as a preconditioning for data compression, defined as formula (1)
and (2) [12],
+∞
xm (t ) = ∑ akψ m , n (t ) (1)
−∞
ψ m ,n (t ) = 2 ψ (2 m t − n)
m/2
(2)
where n, m and ak are the dyadic time-scale integers and wavelet amplitudes. The
DWT decomposes and rebuilds the signal at separate levels of frequencies with multi-
resolution analysis by the Mallat algorithm, to reduce redundant coefficients of equal
magnitude.
One typical signal obtained from experiment by the actuator–sensor path P12 (No.1
as actuator and No.2 as sensor) in the time domain before and after the introduction of
the fatigue crack is displayed in Figure 4. It is clearly shown that the fatigue crack
Figure 4 Original signal derived from path P12
286
Figure 5 Compression result of signal from path P12
in the plate is difficult to be identified directly from this signal. In order to get useful
information for fatigue crack detection, raw signals was decomposed into multiple
frequency segments by the DWT procedure (shown in Figure 5), and the
corresponding level including the excited frequency of 150KHz was selected, filtering
the outside noises from other frequency bands. In the present study, the key point to
detect fatigue crack is to identify the difference caused by guided wave interactions
with the fatigue crack when incident guided waves propagate through it. According to
wave scattering rule, there must be a different wave component compared with
benchmark, which represents the signal scattering from the fatigue crack of collected
signal from the sensor network. The arrival time of the wave component which is
different with benchmark can be used for locating the fatigue crack. The reflection and
possible mode conversion of the dominant mode are monitored practically for fatigue
crack identification due to its high wave energy. In this study, the velocity of dominant
wave of 3249m/s obtained by experiment was employed for subsequent calculations.
For this damage detection case, with the ToF obtained from experiment, effort
was focused on determining damage presence probabilities (DPPs) of all positions
of the steel plate rather than defining exact location of fatigue crack. An imaging
algorithm was adopted to represent DPP values for every positions of the steel plate,
expressing the result in an intuitional manner. In order to keep consistent with our
previous studies and without loss of generality, most of the definitions were
inherited except the geometries [8]. For the fatigue crack with up and down tips at
(300mm, 37mm) and (300mm, 22mm), the DPP result from a single path pair is
shown in Figure 6. In this image, DPP values vary within the range of [0, 1] with
two extremes standing for lowest and highest DPP, i.e., 0% and 100%, respectively.
The lighter the image appears, the greater the DPP of this grid is.
However, it’s insufficient to determine the damage location from such an image
because all grids on the locus will be of the same highest DPP value. Therefore,
images contributed by all available paths in the active sensor network were fused to
figure out the common estimations of the location of damage. After employing all
the PZT path pairs, the location of the fatigue crack can be clearly seen from the
two-dimensional DPP image as shown in Figure 7. The evaluated location is about
(299mm, 25mm).
287
Figure 6 DPP image obtained from path P12
Figure 7 DPP image of damage location derived by all sensor paths
CONCLUSION
This study can lead to an understanding of propagation behavior of guided waves in

steel plate with a fatigue crack. Experiments based-on guided waves obtained via
PZT actuators and sensors are presented, which confirmed that the guided wave-
based methodology is capable of detecting and locating fatigue crack in metallic
structures. DWT processing method combined with DPP approach based on ToF
were applied to define the crack location. Additionally, 3D finite element models
were employed to verify the experimental results. From results for estimation of
fatigue crack location, it can be concluded that, although the fatigue crack located
with the notch and near the original edges of the plate, making damage evaluation
much more difficult, acceptable estimation results of fatigue crack location can still
be gained by applying the proposed approach.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
288
The authors are grateful for the support received from Research Grant Council of
the Hong Kong Special Administration Region and National Natural Science
Foundation of China (grants: PolyU5333/07E and N_PolyU532/10) and The Hong
Kong Polytechnic University (grants: G-U204 and 1-BBZN).
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using scanning laser vibrometry: III. Lamb waves for fatigue crack detection,” Smart Mater. Struct.,
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Lamb wave analysis by multiresolution processing,” Smart Mater. Struct., 10: 504–511.
289
Adaptive Fuzzy-based Approach for
Classification of System’s States
H. ALJOUMAA and D. SOEFFKER
ABSTRACT
Despite the considerable development of analytical model-based methods to

design fault diagnosis of systems during the last years, these methods usually need
an exact model of the considered system to design appropriate fault detection
systems. For diagnostic purposes additionally more information is needed for
classifying and distinguishing faulty states etc. In order to avoid this problem and
to develop approaches allowing distinguishing more operational states (usually
those which can not be modeled easily like different operational states for
condition monitoring systems etc.), qualitative model-based and also signal-based
methods have been developed based on different principles. The idea of this
contribution is to combine qualitative model-based methods using fuzzy logic and
statistical approaches describing and using signal properties. The developed data
mining technique is used to design the knowledge base as base for a new type of
condition monitoring systems based on available suitable signals, related
measurements, and also initial information about the classification related
states/conditions of the system. The automatic extraction of a related set of
distinguishable features to the states/conditions of the system is the novel keystone
of this technique. The practicability as well as validation of the proposed approach
is achieved by using experimental results from a test rig to study friction and wear
processes of a metal surface allowing the distinction of different wear states. The
developed method gives promising results to distinct related states of wear and also
to determine the quality of resulting model based on a proposed quality-oriented
parameter.
INTRODUCTION
Since many years the domain of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems
has been grown. Recent tendency is to design systems based on computational
intelligence (CI) modeling techniques because of growing developments areas
within the following techniques:
Automated collection of information and data,
Robust and in-situ storage of information and data, and
_______
Hammoud Aljoumaa, Dirk Soeffker, Chair of Dynamics and Control, University of
Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg, Engineering Faculty, Lotharstr. 1-21, 47057 Duisburg,
Germany.
290
Power and capacity of computers [1].
Over years, increasing researches has been developed various structures of
SHM systems based on the different techniques of CI such as Artificial Neural
Networks (ANNs), Genetic Algorithms (GA), K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN),
Genetic Programming (GP), and Support Vectors Machine (SVMs) [2,3,4,5].
Practically, these techniques lacked the properties of interpretation associated with
the human perception for events and their related phenomena. Whereby the human
monitoring does not determine the related phenomena, but also provides an
attempt to interpret and model these events. The human perception of events
includes generally the specification of linguistic representation and a specification
of gradual affiliation. The specification of related linguistic representations
indicates a conversion of associated phenomena and conditions into a group of
linguistic expressions such as small, large, etc. The gradual affiliation specification
indicates that any event can be simultaneously assigned to different and conflict
areas of associated phenomena but with the different related degrees, which are
called membership values. The Structure Health Monitoring (SHM) systems could
be designed to include these specifications in order to reach mechanisms as close
as possible to imitate human perception and decision. To achieve this goal, a
theoretical framework based on membership functions based on fuzzy logic is
developed [6,7]. Therefore the ANNs, SVMs, and GA techniques have been
combined with fuzzy logic technique to build new techniques being able to
introduce SHM systems with interpretable results and with advantages of learning,
generalization, fast convergence, and high accuracy [8,9]. But the combination
process results in an appearance of some disadvantages due to the complexity of
system’s structure, large computational time. In order to avoid these disadvantages,
this contribution suggests a new approach according to the following
assumptions/key features:
Initially human classification for the training phase for building the
knowledge base containing related information about the related states
is used.
The structure of the suggested classification approach is based on a
suitable number of automatically generated and selected features. Thus
the learning phase is used only to define useful features set but not as
an optimization process of parameters.
The proposed approach includes an automatic fuzzy mapping process.
The suggested approach uses a quality-oriented parameter to determine
the quality of the evaluation’s results based on the designed model.
Streamed data can be evaluated.
Adaptive fuzzy-filtering algorithm
In the context of this contribution the following terms are used as stated:
State S: This term is understood as a linguistic expression or
description distinguishing different conditions or operating states of the
system to be considered. The related states are usually achieved by
human classification or statements based on observations, study, and
analysis of the operation system. So the expression "fault-free"
represents the situation of regular operation of system and the status of
operation in abnormal state can be expressed by "faulty". The total
number of the related states of the considered system is denoted by m.
291
Feature F: This term is understood as a synonym of attribute or an input
variable to be able to highlight important relationships and underlying
representations inside the raw signals with the related states in the best
possible form of interpretation [10,11].
Distinguishing ability ω AD : This term indicates the amount of matching
between the actual states of considered samples and their states based
on the results of the designed model based on each suggested feature.
Initial set: This term indicates a set of n features including candidates
for building the classification model.
Main set: This term indicates a set of p features to be used to build the
classification model.
Quality’s amount ℜCMfinal : This term indicates to what degree the
results of classification model can be trusted to represent the states of
the system to be analyzed. This term also refers to any degree, where
the knowledge base of resulting needs change.
Disable set Pdis : This term indicates a subset of the main set being
unable to evaluate the state of considered sample. Its size and its
components will be different related to the considered sample.
Sensitivity parameter αd : This term indicates how fast a membership
value of considered sample should be changed according to spacing
between considered sample and a center of considered state.
Hybrid: This term denotes that the output of the algorithm consists of
several types or different quantities of features [11].
General structure
The structure of the proposed approach is illustrated in Figure 1. This structure

consists of three stages described in the next subsections.
Figure 1. General procedure of the proposed fuzzy-filter algorithm.
292
Figure 2. Sliding window-based feature constructor.
The first stage of suggested approach represents a processing process of the

generated signals to be suitable as input of the suggested approach. Also this stage
includes the process the identification of m states related with the conditions
operation, namely supervised training data, based on a predefined classification.
The representation of data based on its original space can not enlighten the key
aspects to highlight important relationships and underlying representations inside
the raw data to interpret the different operational states. Therefore this
representation is changed to build a new representation based on a feature space.
The changing process, which is called the feature extraction consisting of feature
construction and feature selection [10], the data from original space of into the
feature space represents the second stage of suggested approach. The suggested
mechanism of this changing is explained in the next subsections.
The proposed mechanism of feature construction, as illustrated in Figure 2, is
used to build a vector of n features. The key element within this procedure is a
sliding window with s elements data being able to scan a defined streamed data
vector of f elements length continuously by shifting one value at equal times to
generate n features vector, so-called hybrid system state vector [11].
The proposed feature construction mechanism generates n features for the m
related states; therefore it is necessary to relate a range of each feature according to
the ranges of the related m states for building a corresponding fuzzy sub-classifier.
The suggested partition is a fuzzy partition process based on the new and
suggested fuzzy membership function as illustrated in Figure 3.
For generation of the main set the following procedure is proposed:
Building a suitable fuzzy sub-classifier for each feature in the initial set
Calculation of ω AD of considered feature based on the supervised data
Adding of sub-classifiers with predefined value of ω AD to main set
Building fuzzy classifying model using fuzzy sub-classifiers of main
set
Calculation of ℜCM of each fuzzy sub-classifier using
293
1− x − CSK αd1 : x ∈( A,CS1 ), k =1
1− x − CSK αd 2 : x ∈(CS 2,CS 2 ), k =1,2
μ k ( x ) = 1− x − CSK αd3 : x ∈(CS 2,CS3 ), k = 2,3
1− x − CSK αd 4 : x ∈(CS3, B), k = 3
0 : otherwise
Figure 3. Graphical and mathematical representation of fuzzy sub-classifier.
100 * ω ADj
ℜCMj = p
(1)
∑ω
j =1
ADj
Calculation of quality’s amount of fuzzy classifying model

p
ℜ CMfinalT = ∑ℜ
j =1
CMj (2)
Analyzing of samples of the considered data using the fuzzy classifying model,
the p*m membership values are generated in the usual, well known algorithmic
procedure. The desired goal here is to fuse these values to one value expressing the
state. Therefore the procedure of fusion, which represents the third stage, is
developed as follows:
Transformation of considered signals into feature space with p
dimensions using the feature filter (Figure 2)
Calculation of membership value of related sample for m states by
using p fuzzy sub-classifiers (Figure 3)
Calculation of a final membership values of considered sample for each
state using
μ final (xik ) = ∑ μ k (x ji )∗ ω ADj ,
p
(3)
j =1
where ω ADj is a weight of each feature, and

Definition of a final state of the considered sample using the equation
S final ( xi ) = S (max(μ final ( xik ))) (4)
Calculation of ℜCMfinal of considered sample according to the size of

Pdis
Pdis
ℜCMfinal ( xi ) = ℜCMfinalT − ∑ ℜCMl (5)
l =1
294
The suggested method the calculation of the trust’s amount, here so-called
quality-oriented parameter ℜCMfinal , takes into account all the space of hypotheses,
as well as the pre-defined values of parameters and the number of features used to
build the classifying model during the process of calculation the value ℜCMfinal , the
value ℜCMfinal introduces a proper indicator to achieve the following tasks of robust
decision making based on the evaluation results, and an improvement of the
performance the designed classifying model based an adaptation process of its
knowledge base.
Validation and experimental results
In order to test the performance of the proposed approach, an experimental

data set is used. A test rig was designed for studying friction and wears processes
related to changes of conditions of operation such as changes of lubrication and
temperature, etc. based on the analysis of pressure, force, and acceleration signals
to select a best signal to express about the states of surface conditions. Then these
signals are used to build the classifying model to distinguish an erosion rate of the
metal surface. The parameters values of learning and modeling, namely the first
three stages in Figure 1, and its output are specified as in Table 1, Table III, and
Figure 3, respectively.
To verify the suggested algorithm the two previously classified datasets are
used as input of the third stage in Figure 1:
In the first one, the erosion rate increases with the continued operation.
In the second one, the erosion rate is within regular operation range.
The related colors of three states the regularity disappear gradually and the
related colors of the two states of abnormal gradually appear (see first five rows of
Figure 5). Additionally, an approximate and continuously transition of the
regularity states to abnormal states in the state space (see last row in Figure 5)
appears. The values ℜCMfinal of the first dataset are illustrated in Figure 6. The
related colors of three states the regularity are dominating in feature space and state
space (see Figure 7). As it is observed in Figure 8 the maximum value of ℜCMfinal is
about 60%. This result can indicate that the classifying model needs to be modified
by adding these changes contained in second dataset to its knowledge base.
Table I. Parameters of learning and modeling phase

Name of parameter Value of parameter
Best signal Pressure
Size of initial set n=17 (statistical features)
Number of related states m=5 (details in Table II)
Predefined value of relevance 0.7
Table II. Surface conditions

Number of Linguistic Color Human
state expression representation classification
1 Regular 1 Green Stable operation
2 Regular 2 Cyan Stable operation with minor changes
3 Regular 3 Blue Stable operation with acceptable changes
4 Abnormal 1 Yellow Abrupt changing surface conditions with
acceptable changes
5 Abnormal 2 Red Abrupt changing surface conditions with
non-acceptable changes
295
Table III. Values of parameters ω AD and ℜCMfinal of features
Features F1 F2 F3 F4 F5
ωAD 0.76 0.72 0.86 0.72 0.82
ℜCMfinal 20 18 23 18 21
Figure 4. Fuzzy sub-classifiers of features of main set.
Figure 5. Results of the evaluation for the test dataset 1. Figure 6. Quality of evaluation results for the test
dataset 2 based on quality-oriented parameter.
Figure. 7. Results of the evaluation for the test dataset 2. Figure 8. Quality of evaluation results for the test
dataset 2 based on quality-oriented parameter.
296
Summary and conclusions
This contribution introduces in detail the development of a new classification

approach. The proposed approach uses the combination of qualitative model-based
methods based on fuzzy logic and signal-based methods using statistical methods.
The goal of this combination is to convert automatically raw data into a new
presentation achieving automatic classification tasks based on given classification
of learning data. The main idea of the approach uses the automated selection of
dataset describing features with automated calculation of related membership
parameters. The approach also provides a new definition for automated setting of
triangular fuzzy membership function parameters depending on the suggested
parameter αd . The proposed evaluator allows introducing a pragmatic and
systematic decision maker of the overall state based on the automated generated
model. The suggested approach gives the possibility of indicating the question of
“What is an amount of confidence about the result of evaluation of considered
data based on the proposed algorithm”. The experimental application shows that
the proposed approach can be used to classify complex material processes, here
indicating the state of the surface erosion rate.
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297
Image Processing Technique for
Vibrothermographic Field Tests
M. SZWEDO, L. PIECZONKA and T. UHL
ABSTRACT
The paper investigates the aspects of image processing in vibrothermographic
measurements applied to the inspection of composite plate and carbon steel weld test
specimens. A carbon epoxy prepreg plate with barely visible impact damage and
carbon steel weld test specimens have been tested with use of a handheld ultrasonic
excitation device. Due to varying contact pressure and misalignment between the
sonotrode and the test piece the intensity of excitation is fluctuating with time.
As a solution to this problem the authors propose the image processing technique
based on a two dimensional Fourier transform of the infrared images. The technique
allows to increase the quality and readability of the results coming from
a vibrothermographic measurement with poor ultrasonic excitation
INTRODUCTION
Thermographic techniques form an important branch of nondestructive testing
(NDT) methods. They allow for fast inspection of large areas of monitored structures.
Typically in the context of damage detection only the active thermographic techniques
are taken into account. These methods require either external or internal excitation that
has to be introduced into the inspected structure. The former often uses halogen
or flash lamps to heat up a surface of a structure. The latter utilizes ultrasound
or inductive heating for internal heat generation. Active thermographic techniques
include: pulsed thermography (PT), lock-in thermography (LT) and
vibrothermography (VT), to name the most popular [1], [2], [3]. Temperature
distribution measured on the surface of a structure is a derivative of many factors.
In case of techniques with external excitation it is typically the interaction of thermal
wave with defects and material non-homogeneities. In case of techniques with internal
excitation it is the interaction of ultrasonic elastic waves with discontinuities that cause
frictional heating and thermoelastic effect.
Mariusz Szwedo, Lukasz Pieczonka, Tadeusz Uhl - AGH University of Science and
Technology, Department of Robotics and Mechatronics, Al. Mickiewicza 30,
30-059 Krakow, Poland.
298
In order to derive a valuable diagnostic information the temperature distribution and
temperature evolution is recorded at regular time intervals by an infrared camera.
Thermal image processing in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications
requires special care in case of field measurements. In this type of measurements
excitation parameters cannot be precisely controlled and often there is the problem of
non-homogeneity of excitation. This problem arises when handheld excitation device
is used and in this case advanced techniques of the thermal image processing should
be applied to achieve acceptable damage detection results. In the article the authors
presents a solution to this problem by means of the image processing technique based
on a two dimensional Fourier transform of the infrared images.
Theoretical background of vibrothermography

The phenomenon that is analyzed is the rise of temperature in the location
of structural defects in the test structure as a result of the applied vibration. There is no
agreement in the literature of the problem as to the underlying physics of this
phenomenon. Among different possibilities there are three main aspects that are
the most important - thermoelastic effect, thermoplastic effect and frictional heat
generation. During dynamical loading, the temperature of the material is influenced by
two main heat generation mechanisms: thermoelastic effect which is reversible and
thermoplastic effect which is irreversible. Additionally if structural defects like cracks
or delaminations are present in the material a second mechanism of irreversible heat
generation appears namely the frictional heat generation. The heat that is generated
inside the structure by means of one of the three mechanisms propagates to the surface
where it can be measured with an infrared camera. Subsequent analysis of surface
temperature distributions allows for the detection of structural defects in the structure.
Thermoelastic effect is the relationship between the temperature and the applied
stress in an elastic material. It has been shown that there exists proportionality between
the change of stress and temperature in a material exposed to elastic deformation.
A change of temperature is proportional to the change of the first stress invariant.
As stated above the equation is only valid if adiabatic loading conditions prevail.
This is obtained by exposing the analyzed structure to dynamical loading at frequency
above a certain limit. This limit is also dependent on the thermal conductivity and
the thickness of the material considered.
Thermoplastic effect appears if during a test the stress in the material exceeds the
yield limit. The irreversibility of plastic flow causes an increase in the amount of
entropy in the body and the inelastic work is dissipated into heat.
The rate of frictional energy dissipation is given by the product of the frictional
stress and the slip rate. The amount of this energy released as heat on each surface in
contact is assumed to be equal.
Measurement with handheld ultrasonic excitation device

Vibrothermography has been applied for damage detection in a carbon epoxy
prepreg plate with barely visible impact damage and carbon steel weld test specimen.
A prototype ultrasonic excitation system and a thermographic camera (Cedip Silver
420M) were used to monitor the composite plate (with impact damage) and carbon
steel weld test specimens (10mm thickness, with root crack and lack of root fusion
defects). The excitation was applied outside the field of view of the camera.
299
Figure 1 Handheld ultrasonic device.
No coupling has been used between the sonotrode and the test components which was
motivated by the low operating power of the prototype ultrasonic device and therefore
no risk of surface damage. The infrared camera was recording temperature evolution
at the bottom surface of the components i.e. in the composite plate the side opposite to
the impacted. The excitation were applied to the structure with handheld ultrasonic
device which were prototype designed by authors.
The use of handheld ultrasonic excitation devices is required in case of field
measurements where portability of the measurement system is of importance.
An exemplary design of a portable ultrasonic excitation device is depicted in.
The device is composed of the ultrasonic assembly the holder. The ultrasonic
assembly comprises three elements: (1) converter that has a high power and
narrowband frequency operation; (2) booster used to clamp the assembly and to
amplify vibration amplitude; (3) sonotrode - an element that comes into contact with
inspected structure and further amplifies vibration amplitude. The holder may be as
simple as the one depicted in or may comprise additional spring clamp or positioning
rods that, however, make the design less universal and portable. There are certain
measurement issues related to this type of excitation. In case of the stationary test
stand the measurement parameters as for example the contact pressure and alignment
of the sonotrode on the test sample can be precisely controlled. In contrast, in case of
the handheld excitation device, there may be a problem of non-homogeneity of
excitation. Due to varying contact pressure and misalignment between the sonotrode
and the test piece the intensity of excitation is fluctuating with time. This results in
fluctuating and possibly non-monotonic thermal responses from the structure.
As a result the localization of damage and estimation of its size may be impaired.
IMAGE PROCESSING AND ANALYSIS PROCEDURE FOR ULTRASONIC

THERMOGRAPHY BASED DEFECT DETECTION
Thermal contrast-based techniques are the most common approaches of processing
thermal images. There are various thermal contrast definitions [11]. One of the quite
often used is the thermal contrast ΔT(t) defined as:
(1.)
where T(t) is the temperature at time t, Td(t) is the temperature of a pixel g(x,y). Such
simple thermal image processing techniques are useful in systems used in laboratory
300
where measurement parameters can be easily and precisely controlled. In case of
systems with handheld excitation the intensity of that excitation may fluctuate due to
varying contact pressure and misalignment between the sonotrode and the test piece.
This results in modulated thermal response from the structure that is acquired by the
infrared camera Such modulated temperature time history from a selected point on
delamination on a composite plate is presented in . As can be seen in the figure the
fluctuation of temperature and measurement noise in the acquired thermal response
prevents the identification of damage in the component. As a solution to this problem
the authors propose the image processing technique based on a two dimensional
Fourier transform of the infrared images. The technique allows to increase the quality
and readability of the results coming from a vibrothermographic measurement with
poor ultrasonic excitation.
In the first step of the algorithm, selected image frames are processed to estimate
background information. The most common method of background estimation is to
select a region around every pixel g(x,y) and compute the background from this area.
In presented processing algorithm a rectangular mask is applied around each pixel to
identify a set of pixels containing as many true background pixels as possible and
as few foreground pixels as possible.
In the second step adaptive noise removal filter is applied to the sequence
of infrared images in order to decrease fixed pattern noise (FPN), bad pixels and
vignetting effects. A badpixel can be defined as an anomalous pixel behaving
differently from the rest of the array. For instance, a dead pixel remains unlit (black)
while a hot pixel is permanently lit (white).
In any case, badpixels do not provide any useful information and only contribute
to deteriorate the image contrast. A map of badpixels is generally known from the
FPA manufacturer or they can be detected manually or automatically, the value at
badpixel locations is then replaced by the average value of neighboring pixels. Fixed
pattern noise (FPN) is the result of differences in responsivity of the detectors to
incoming irradiance. It is a common problem when working with focal plane arrays
(FPA). FPN for a particular configuration can be recovered from a blackbody image
for later subtraction from the sequence of the thermal images. Vignetting is another
source of noise on thermographic images that causes a darkening of the image corners
with respect to the image center due to limited exposure. Vignetting depends on both
pixel location and temperature difference with respect to the ambient.
7410
7400
7390
Digital level [DL]
7380 Background
Delamination
7370
7360
7350
7340
7330
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
Frame (frame rate: 50Hz)
Figure 2 Measured temperature evolution : background (blue) and delamination (red) areas, estimates
from raw data acquired by the infrared camera for the composite plate
301
Used in the experiments Cedip Silver 420M infrared camera where calibrated
to compensate FPN and vignetting patterns for each acquired frame by internal camera
FPGA. Internal compensation didn't solve all of the patterns. On the acquired images
salt & pepper like noise could be observed. To remove this noise from acquired
thermographic images adaptive noise removal filtering has been used. In this method
estimate of the local mean and variance around each pixel is computed based on the
following formulas:
(2.)
(3.)
where η is the N by M local neighborhood of each pixel in the image g. Then

pixelwise Wiener filter [12] is created using these estimates:
(4.)
where ν2 is the average of all the local estimated variances.
Figure 3 Selected frame from original acquired thermal images (left),

selected thermal image after adaptive noise removal filter - mask size 5 (right).
In subsequent steps maps of temperature changes on the surface of the test piece
are computed after background subtraction from each acquired and preprocessed
image frame. Image data for the next step of the algorithm is added to the scaled
logarithm intensity image from previously processed frame to decrease intensity
pulsing effect.
Figure 4 Three dimensional representation of the responses in frequency domain described high-pass
(left) and low-pass (right) filter.
302
Adding the scaled logarithm images from previously processed image boost intensity
in the areas where the local change of the irradiance from the surface increase or didn't
change its value over time. In the next step a two dimensional Fourier transform is
computed with band-pass filtration. Two dimensional discrete Fourier transform is just
like in continuous signals, the 2-D FT is a rather straightforward extension of the 1-D
transform. Mathematically, the 2-D DFT is defined as:
(5.)
where u and v are frequency axes in which G(u,v) is described. To apply the
frequency domain filters on a digital image, first the DFT (5.) of the original image
G(u,v), is computed and then the DFT of the original image is multiplied (6.) by the
impulse response function of the frequency domain filter H(u,v) shown in Figure 4.
This gives the DFT of the filtered image Q(u,v).
(6.)
H u, v   1 
1
2 1 DHP / D u ,v 2 n
(7.)
N - filter order, DHP - filter radius
H u, v   1 2 1D1u ,v / D 2 n
LP (8.)
DLP - filter radius
Du, v   u 2  v 2 , n  1,2,... (9.)
The calculation of the IDFT of Q(u,v) gives the filtered image in the space
domain. A band-pass filter is formed using the linear combination of low-pass (8.) and
high-pass (7.) Butterworth filter [13]. For thermal images filtration a second-degree
Butterworth filter shape has been selected. Applying this type of filter allows reduce
the oscillations in brightness near to the edges which are the negative effect of using
the ideal band-pass filter [14] in which the cutoff is exact and abrupt. Ideal band-pass
filter produce useless data over the proposed algorithm. Cut-off values of the band
pass filter are chosen experimentally to achieve the best image contrast and high
difference between the background and the damaged area. After applying the designed
filter on the image the inverse transformation, the 2-D IDFT, defined as (10.)
is performed on the image. Which in result gives the filtered out thermal image.
Figure 5 Results of the proposed thermal image processing techniques (left),

C-scan image of damaged area (right).
303
0.9
0.8 Delamination
Background
0.7
Digital level [DL]

0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600
Frame (frame rate: 50Hz)
Figure 6 Time history of the temperature on selected points: background (blue) and delamination (red)
areas, estimates after proposed thermal image processing technique.
Results of this process are taken into the gray-level histogram analyzing and the image
segmentation using a “first tentative” threshold value. This allow for clipping the areas
with increasing thermal responses from the background (where the temperature rises
with lower gradient). Analysis of segmented images gives information about the
localization and size of the defect in the investigated component. Obtained damage
parameters have been compared with the results from a laboratory test rig for
vibrothermographic inspections and with a C-scan image of damaged area.
(10)
The visual comparison of the results (Figure 5) coming from the C-scan (right)
and from the proposed thermal image processing algorithm (left), shows that the area
and shape of the defect in investigated carbon epoxy prepreg plate is in good
agreement. In temperature time history for the same point like in the but after
applying the proposed by authors image processing algorithm is presented. Second
investigated example was a carbon steel weld specimen. In the weld test specimen two
different defects: root crack and lack of fusion has been diagnosed after the standard
ultrasonic inspection. The vibrothermography test has been prepared and carried out
by authors with use the handheld ultrasonic excitation device with the same method
like described in previous chapter. After applying the proposed image processing
algorithm on the acquired thermal images result presented in Figure 7 has been
obtained.
Figure 7 Example of crack detection with UT on carbon steel weld test specimen.
Root crack and Lack of Root Fusion has been detected.
304
CONCLUSIONS
Results that have been obtained show that it is possible to enhance a low quality
infrared image sequence, caused by poor ultrasonic excitation, to obtain satisfactory
damage detection results. The proposed image processing technique can be
successfully applied to improve the post processing of infrared images acquired from
vibrothermographic field test with handheld excitation device.
As can be easily seen findings gives relatively better diagnostic information and
could be used in health monitoring systems for increasing the quality of thermal
images acquired by the systems where the dynamic of excitation is hard to control.
Also the thermal image results obtained with the proposed algorithm brings more
accurate and better quality information about the tested components health due to low
quality initial data.
Acknowledgments
Presented research was financed from the Polish research project: “Monitoring of
Technical State of Construction and Evaluation of its Lifespan” acronym MONIT
made in the scope of the European Union Operational Programme - Innovative
Economy 2007-2013.
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Sons ed., New York, 684 p., 2001
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wave activated thermography”, in Proceedings of International Conference on Thermal Sensing and
Imaging Diagnostic Applications (Thermosense XXIII), Orlando, Florida, 2001.
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a pipe using ultrasound exited thermography", Nuclear Engineering and Technology, Vol.39, No.5
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6. Balageas D., Fritzen C.P., Guemes A., (Ed.)- Structural Health Monitoring, ISTE, London,
Newport Beach, 2006.,
7. Staszewski W., Boller C., Tomlinson G., (Ed.), Heath Monitoring of Aerospace structures, Smart
sensors and signal processing, Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 2003,
8. Inman D J, Farrar C.R., Lopes V., Valder S., (Ed.) Damage Prognosis for aerospace, civil and
mechanical systems, Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 2005.
9. Farrar C.R., Worden K., An introduction to structural health monitoring, Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society A, vol. 365, no. 1851, 2007, str. 303- 315.
10. Maladague X.P.V, Theory and practice of infrared technology for nondestructive testing, Wiley, &
Sons, New York, 2001.
11. X. P. V. Maldague, Theory and Practice of Infrared Technology for NonDestructive Testing, John
Wiley-Interscience, 684 p., 2001
12. Lim, Jae S., Two-Dimensional Signal and Image Processing, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall,
1990, p. 548
13. Kayvan Najarian, Splinter Robert, "Biomedical image processing", CRC Press, 2006
14. Russ John C., "The Image Processing Handbook", CRC Press, 2006
305
An Optimal Image-Based Method for
Identification of AE Sources on Plate
Structure
G. YAN and L. ZHOU
ABSTRACT
This study proposes an innovative method for identifying the locations of multiple
simultaneous acoustic emission (AE) events in plate-like structure from the view of
image processing. A synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) in frequency
domain for dispersive flexural wave in isotropic plate is employed to produce image
displaying the locations of AE sources. Since the locations and initiation time of the
AE events are unknown (namely, the length of wave signals used for SAFT is
unknown), a series of images are produced by the AE wave signals with different
assumed initiation times. An optimal criterion using minimum Shannon entropy is
adopted to pick up the image with the locations of the AE sources and initiation time
mostly approximate the actual ones. Numerical studies on an aluminum plate are
performed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed optimal image-based AE
source identification method.
INTRODUCTION
The increasing emphasis on integrity of critical structures such as aircrafts urges

the needs to monitor structures in-situ and real-time to detect damages at an early stage
[1]. In general, an effective online structural health monitoring system should consists
of two major components: active monitoring and passive monitoring. The active
monitoring needs both sensors and actuators to evaluate the damage of a structure. The
passive monitoring uses only sensors to ‘listen’ to the AE signals emitted by internal
or external sources such as propagating cracks or impacts [2].
This study deals with passive monitoring to determine the sources of AE events
where possible damages exist. AE has been studied for several decades, and advances
have given rise to an enhanced understanding of AE wave propagation in terms of
guided acoustic modes. The approach, designated modal acoustic emission (MAE),
_____________
Gang Yan, College of Aerospace Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China. Email: yangang@nuaa.edu.cn
Li Zhou, College of Aerospace Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China. Email: lzhou@nuaa.edu.cn
306
offers the potential to depart from the traditional reliance on statistical analysis and
significantly improve the structural monitoring capabilities of AE [3]. In thin plate-like
structures, the AE signals can be characterized into Lamb waves which contain
symmetric modes (extensional waves) and anti-symmetric modes (flexural waves).
Traditional AE localization methods are based on signal processing. Most of these
localization algorithms developed utilize the time differences of arrival (TDOAs) of
the AE signals recorded by different sensors. With the known distance between the
sensors and the velocity of AE signals, the location of the AE sources can be
determined by triangulation or solving a set of nonlinear equations [4,5]. The problem
arising form the TDOA-based method is that, when the AE wave is dispersive, the
location error will increase since the dispersion effect distorts the wave shape. Wavelet
transform (WT) has been introduced to the time-frequency representation of transient
waves propagating in a dispersive medium for its good resolution both in the time and
frequency domain [6]. It makes the determination of time of arrival at each local
frequency more accurately, increasing the accuracy of source localization.
The objective of this study is to develop a new method for identifying the locations
of multiple simultaneous AE events on plate-like structures. Unlike previous work on
localization of AE sources using signal processing method, the method developed in
this study is based on an imaging algorithm and an optimal image processing method,
providing a new tool for passive AE monitoring.
IMAGING THE AE SOURCES
Figure 1 shows a plate with a linear sensor array. In this study, we put our attention
on AE events, thus these sensors act in a passive mode. When damage occurs in the
plate, elastic waves, namely AE waves, will be sent in all directions. Each sensor in
the array will be triggered to collect a trace of AE wave. SAFT in frequency domain is
employed to back-propagate the AE waves to their sources and generate images
containing the locations of the sources.
In frequency domain, SAFT is a computational technique based on the angular
spectrum method of the scalar diffraction theory [7,8]. By employing the fast
algorithm of Fourier transform ‘FFT’, SAFT processing can be performed nearly in
real time, significantly increasing the computational efficiency. As illustrated in figure
1, when damage occurs, a set of AE wave signals can be recorded by the sensor array,
named as S(x, y = 0, t), in which x and y are the abscissa and ordinate of each sensor,
respectively. Apply two-dimensional Fourier transform to S(x, y = 0, t) respect to x and
t, a superposition of a set of plane waves with wavenumber kx in x-direction and
circular frequency ω can be obtained as
∞ ∞
Si (k x , y = 0, ω ) = ∫ ∫ S ( x, y = 0, t ) ei ( kx x −ωt ) dxdt (1)
−∞ −∞
In frequency domain, reversing the wavefield along y-direction only needs to

multiply equation (1) with eik y y as
Si (k x , y, ω ) = Si (k x , y = 0, ω )e y
ik y
(2)
307
in which ky is the wavenumber in y-direction. Since k = k x + k y , it yields
2 2 2
Si (k x , y, ω ) = Si (k x , y = 0, ω )ei
k 2 − k x2
y
(3)
A summation over the frequency range can be performed to utilize all the
components as
S (k x , y ) = ∑ Si (k , y, ω )
ω∈Ω
x (4)
in which Ω is the frequency range of the AE waves. Performing an inverse Fourier

transform with respect to kx returns a function B(x, y) as
1 ∞
B ( x, y ) = ∫ S (k x , y )eik x x dk x (5)
2π −∞
in which B(x, y) is the reversed AE wavefield that can be used to indicate the AE
sources by exhibiting amplitude peaks.
x x
Sensor array Sensor array
y y
AE waves AE waves
Damage source Damage source
Plate structure Plate structure
(a) forward propagation (b) back propagation

Figure 1 Illustration of localization AE source using SAFT
While the damage-induced AE wave in plate structure consists of flexural waves

and extensional waves, their dispersive nature should be included in the SAFT
algorithm. For simplicity, this study only considers the fundamental flexural waves to
image the AE sources. Mindlin plate theory is used to establish the wavenumber-
frequency relationship of fundamental flexural wave [9]. The wavenumber k given by
Mindlin plate theory can be written as
⎡ ω 2 ⎤ 6 (1 − v ) ω
2
ω2
2
k (ω ) = + ⎢ 2 2⎥ + (6)
2κ 2 cs2 ⎣ 2κ cs ⎦ h 2 cs2
308
E
in which cs = , κ 2 = π 2 /12 , E is the elastic modulus, v is the Possion’s
2 (1 + v ) ρ
ratio, ρ is density, h is the thickness of the plate. Then equation (3) is modified as
Si (k x , y, ω ) = Si (k x , y = 0, ω )ei
y k (ω )2 − k x2
) (7)
OPTIMAL IMAGE CRITERION
Since the initiation time of the AE events is unknown, different signal length will
produced different images. A serious problem arising from the imaging method is how
to determine the initiation time and which image contains information of the AE
sources that mostly approximate the actual situation. Derveaux et al. proposed an
optimal method to determine the time at which the back propagated field will focus on
the defects using a time-reversal technique [10]. The basic idea of their study is
employed in this study. A series of images are produced by the signals with different
assumed initiation times. An optimal criterion using minimum Shannon entropy is
adopted to pick up the image with the AE source locations and the initiation time
mostly close to the actual ones.
When the AE waves focus back to the sources, it is expected to produce an image
with a sharp peak near the actual locations. A way to characterize focused images is to
measure them with norms that are small in that case and large otherwise. After the
reversed waves in equation (5) is obtained, an image displaying B(x, y) in a discrete
form B(xi, yi) (i, j = 1,2,…,Nd) (Nd is the pixel number in each direction, assume the
image is in a square shape) can be produced. The pixel value B(xi, yi) is designated as
Bij for convenience. The Shannon entropy of this image is computed to evaluate the
image. Shannon’s definition of the entropy of a pixelized image is a measure of the
sparsity of the histogram of the gray levels of the image. The histogram of gray levels
of the image is defined by counting the number of pixels contained in each gray level.
The Shannon entropy of the image is the Boltzmann entropy of that probability
distribution, defined by
N c −1
⎛ h ⎞ ⎛ h ⎞
Sh( Bij ) = − ∑ ⎜ k2 ⎟ log 2 ⎜ k2 ⎟ (8)
k =0 ⎝ N d ⎠ ⎝ Nd ⎠
where hk is the histogram of gray levels, and Nc is the number of gray levels of the
image. The entropy quantifies the amount of information needed to encode an image
and is often given in bits per pixel.
NUMERICAL STUDIES
To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, numerical studies for an

isotropic plate are performed. A square aluminum plate with following properties is
considered: E = 72 GPa, v = 0.3, ρ = 2730 kg/m3, h = 3.2 mm.
309
An explicit finite difference method is employed to generate the synthetic AE
waves [11]. The size of the aluminum plate studied in this study is 500×500 mm2. A
200×200 finite difference mesh with uniform square grid space Δx = Δy = 2.5 mm is
superimposed on the plate region. The time step for calculation is set as 0.1 μs. The
spatial and time discretizations are chosen to ensure minimum grid dispersion and
numerical stability. The coordinate system as illustrated in figure 1 is used in this
simulation study except that the origin of the coordinate system is set at the center of
the plate. A linear array with 17 sensors are located at y = -100 mm and -200 ≤ x ≤ 200
mm with equal spacing of 25 mm.
In this study, an impulse force is applied on the plate to simulate an AE event. The
width of the impulse is 10 μs, and its initiation time is 80 μs as illustrated in figure 2.
The highest frequency of the impulse is below the cut-off frequency of the second
flexural mode, thus the AE signals only contain fundamental flexural wave. In the
simulation, three case studies are performed, i.e., (I) single AE event at (-90, 110) mm;
(II) two simultaneous AE events at (-90, 110) mm and (50, 150) mm, respectively; and
(III) two simultaneous AE events at (-90, 110) mm and (-40, 110) mm, respectively.
Compared to case II, the two sources in case III are much closer to each other, adding
difficulty to localize them accurately. Figure 3 shows the simulated AE wave signals
at five sensor positions when a single AE source exists at (-90, 110) mm in case I.
1
X = 20 cm
8
0.8
Normalized displacement
X = 10 cm
6
0.6
Force (N)
X = 0 cm
4
0.4
X = -10 cm
2
0.2
X = -20 cm
0
0
0 100 200 0 100 200 300
Time (μs) Time (μs)
Figure 2 Impulse force Figure 3 Received AE wave signals
Applying the SAFT method to the AE waves, the waves will focus back to show
the information about the sources of the AE events in the spatial domain. However,
since the initiation time of the AE events is unknown, how long of the AE signals
should be used to perform the SAFT process is a problem. In this study, a series of
images are produced by the signals with different assumed initiation times. An optimal
criterion using minimum Shannon entropy is adopted to pick up the image with the
locations of the AE sources and initiation time mostly approximate the actual ones
from the view of image processing. Figure 4 shows the produced AE images using
SAFT with different assumed initiation time t0 in an interval of 30 μs in case I. From
the figures, it can be clearly seen that by SAFT, the AE waves recorded by the linear
sensor array are successfully back-propagated, the back-propagated waves focus to
different locations. The image displays the source location mostly approximate the
actual one will be determined by the optimal minimum Shannon entropy criterion.
310
Figure 5(a) shows the variation of Shannon entropy values of the images with
different assumed initiation times in case I. The entropy value decreases nearly
monotonically before reaches a distinct minimum with assumed initiation time of 85
μs (the actual one is 80 μs), and then it starts to increase again. Combined with figure
4 it can be seen that the smaller the Shannon entropy, the clearer of the image, the
closer the AE waves focus to the actual AE source location. Figure 5(b) shows the
optimal AE image with the identified AE source location in the highest pixel value.
The actual simulated AE location is also highlighted by a cross for comparison. From
the figure, it can be clearly seen that the SAFT successfully reversed the AE waves
back to its source. The identified location agrees the actual one very well.
-10 -10
-5 -5
0 0
Y-coordinate (cm)
Y-coordinate (cm)
5 5
10 10
15 15
20 20
25 25
30 30
-20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20
X-coordinate (cm) X-coordinate (cm)
(a) t0 = 0 μs (b) t0 = 30 μs
-10 -10
-5 -5
0 0
Y-coordinate (cm)
Y-coordinate (cm)
5 5
10 10
15 15
20 20
25 25
30 30
-20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20
(c) t0 = 60 μs (d) t0 = 90 μs
-10 -10
-5 -5
0 0
Y-coordinate (cm)
Y-coordinate (cm)
5 5
10 10
15 15
20 20
25 25
30 30
-20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20
(e) t0 = 120 μs (f) t0 = 150 μs

Figure 4 AE images with different assumed initiation time
311
2.35 -10
2.30 -5
2.25 0
Y-coordinate (cm)
Shannon entropy
2.20 5
2.15 10
2.10 15
2.05 20
2.00 25
1.95 30
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20
Assumed initiation time (μs) X-coordinate (cm)
(a) entropy vs initiation time (b) optimal image

Figure 5 Results of source localization in case I
2.40 -10
2.35 -5
0
2.23
Y-coordinate (cm)
Shannon entropy
5
2.25
10
2.20
15
2.15
20
2.10 25
2.05 30
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20

Figure 6 Results of source localization in case II
2.30 -10
-5
2.25
0
2.20
Y-coordinate (cm)
Shannon entropy
2.15 10
15
2.10
20
2.05
25
2.00 30
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20

Figure 7 Results of source localization in case III
For multiple simultaneous AE sources, similar images and results can be obtained.
Figure 6(a) and 7(a) show the variations of Shannon entropy values of the images with
different assumed initiation times in case II and III, respectively. Figure 6(b) and 7(b)
show the optimal AE images in case II and III, respectively. In both optimal images,
the identified locations are well in agreement with the actual ones, demonstrating that
the proposed method has the capability of localizing multiple simultaneous AE
sources.
312
CONCLUSIONS
This study proposes a new method for identifying the locations of AE sources in
plate-like structure from the view of image processing. SAFT imaging algorithm in
frequency domain is employed to produce images containing the AE sources
information, and an optimal criterion using minimum Shannon entropy is used to
determine the image with the AE sources and initiation time mostly approximate the
actual ones.
Numerical simulation studies on synthetic AE waves generated by a finite
difference method demonstrate that the proposed optimal image-based method has the
capability of localizing multiple simultaneous AE events. The minimum Shannon
entropy provides a good criterion to determine the optimal image to identify the AE
locations and the initiation time of the AE events. The SAFT technique combined with
the optimal image criterion can be further extended to the application of passive AE
event monitoring and active damage identification, providing a versatile tool for
structural health monitoring.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China

under Grant No.10572058, by the Science Foundation of Aeronautics of China under
Grant No. 2008ZA52012, by the NUAA Research Funding under Grant No.
NS2010027.
REFERENCES
1. Giurgiutiu, V. and Cuc, A. 2005. Embedded NDE for structural health monitoring, damage
detection, and failure prevention. The Shock and Vibration Digest, 37(2): 83-105.
2. Kirikera, G. R. Shinde, V. Schulz, M. J. and et al. 2007. Damage localisation in composite and
metallic structures using a structural neural system and simulated acoustic emissions. Mechanical
Systems and Signal Processing, 21(1): 280-297.
3. Gorman, M. R. 1991. Plate wave acoustic emission. J. of the Acoustical Society of America, 90(1),
358-364.
4. Tobias, A. 1976. Acoustic-emission source location in two dimensions by an array of three sensors.
Non-destructive Testing, 9(1): 9-12.
5. Maji, A. K. Satpathi, D. and Kratochvil, T. 1997. Acoustic emission source location using Lamb
wave modes. J. of Engineering Mechanics, 123(2): 154-161.
6. Hamstad, M. A. Gallagher, A. O. and Gary, J. 2002. A wavelet transform applied to acoustic
emission signals, part 2: source location. J. of Acoustic Emission, 20: 62-82.
7. Sicard, R. Goyette, J. and Zellouf, D. 2002. A SAFT algorithm for lamb wave imaging of isotropic
plat-like structures. Ultrasonics, 39(7): 487-494.
8. Stepinski, T. 2007. An Implementation of synthetic aperture focusing technique in frequency
domain. IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, 54(7): 1399-
1408.
9. Rose, L. R. F. and Wang, C. H. 2004. Mindlin plate theory for damage detection I: source solutions.
J. of the Acoustical Society of America, 116(1): 154-171.
10. Derveaux, G. Papanicolaou, G. and Tsogka, C. 2007. Time reversal imaging for sensor networks
with optimal compensation in time. J. of the Acoustical Society of America, 121(4): 2071-2085.
11. Lin, X. and Yuan, F. G. 2001. Damage detection of a plate using migration technique. J. of
Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, 12(7): 469-482.
313
Structural Health Monitoring System Based on
Electromechanical Impedance Measurements
M. ROSIEK, A. MARTOWICZ and T. UHL
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a Structural Health Monitoring system utilizing measurements

of the electromechanical impedance for damage assessment. The architecture and
main hardware components of the system are described. The results of laboratory
damage detection experiments performed for different types of mechanical structures
are shown and discussed. On the basis of obtained findings remarks and guidelines for
the further exploitation of the SHM system are proposed.
INTRODUCTION
Catastrophic failures of civil, aerospace, marine and other mechanical structures in

the past decades show that continuous monitoring of their condition becomes
a necessity. To prevent such events a variety of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM)
techniques have been recently developed. One of the emerging local damage detection
methods bases on the measurements of electromechanical impedance, an electrical
response of the piezoelectric transducer placed on the monitored object, which can be
used for the evaluation of structure integrity. This work demonstrates SHM system
taking advantage of the mentioned monitoring technique which has been developed at
the AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland.
DEFINITION OF ELECTROMECHANICAL IMPEDANCE
Discussed SHM method utilizes piezoelectric transducers (mainly made of PZT

material) as sensors located in the critical locations of the structure. Due to the
electromechanical coupling present in PZT, measured electrical impedance of
transducers contains the information about mechanical properties of the system and is
called electromechanical impedance [1,2,3,4]. Presence of the damage changes the
stiffness and damping of the structure and directly affects its dynamical response.
_____________
Mateusz Rosiek, Adam Martowicz, Tadeusz Uhl
AGH University of Science and Technology, Department of Robotics and Mechatronics
Al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland
314
a) b)
Figure 1. Point (a) and Transfer (b) Frequency Response configuration
Tracking changes in the measured impedance plots may indicate alteration of the
structural integrity of the monitored object. To interrogate the mechanical system it
has to be excited to vibrate at high frequency range, which enables detection of small
damages [5,6,7]. This allows for the examination of local area in the vicinity of the
transducer and measurements are insensitive to the low-frequency operational loads of
the structure [8].
This method incorporates two ways of measuring electromechanical impedance.
In the first case, one PZT transducer is treated as an actuator and a sensor and Point
Frequency Response Function of the impedance is being measured (Fig. 1a). The
second way is to determine Transfer Frequency Response Function between two
points of the structure using separated actuators and sensors (Fig. 1b).
To infer about the presence of damage in the structure and to quantitatively
describe the changes of the impedance the following damage metrics can be
introduced:
n
ReZ 0,i   ReZ i 
W1   (1)
i 1 ReZ 0,i 
 ReZ 0,i   ReZ i  

2
n
W 2     (2)
i 1  ReZ 0,i  

n
ReZ 0,i   ReZ i 
W3   (3)
i 1 ReZ 0,i 
q

  
ReZ 0,i   Re Z 0 ReZ i   Re Z   
n



1 i 1


W 4q  1  (4)
 n 1 s0 s 
 
 
where: Z 0,i and Z i are respectively referential and current value of impedance for
i -th frequency, Z 0 , s0 and Z , s are mean values and standard deviations of
referential and current impedances, n is the number of considered frequencies and
q is the order of the damage metric.
315
DESCRIPTION OF THE DEVELOPED SHM SYSTEM
Based on the theoretical assumptions a SHM system utilizing the

electromechanical impedance measurements have been elaborated. The main
hardware elements of the system are data acquisition units (DAU) which work as
sensor nodes and are mounted on the monitored structure (Fig. 2a). The DAU has the
ability to measure the impedance using sixteen sensors in the frequency range up to
100 kHz and is capable to register temperature and humidity (factors which mainly
influence the impedance plots). System is designed to allow for measurements of both
Point Frequency Response Function using one PZT (self-sensing actuation) and
Transfer Frequency Response Function between two locations on a structure in an
arbitrary configuration of the transducers. Sensor nodes can operate independently or
may be combined in a network. The communication between system components is
realized using three different wireless techniques (ZigBee, WiFi-Ethernet and GSM).
There is also a possibility to use wire connection (Ethernet). Approximated power
consumption of the DAU during communication and time of the transmission of one
data package (2112 bytes) for each communication medium are presented in Table 1.
Information gathered by the DAU is transmitted to the Base Station (Fig. 2b) or
directly to the system server and can be stored in a SQL database. A dedicated
software provides access to the collected data and allows for remote configuration of
the DAU and triggering of the measurements. System is well protected against
environmental conditions (compliant with IP66 protection level) and is suitable to
work in industrial applications in wide temperature range from -40°C up to +85°C
(from -20°C up to +50°C for the system equipped with additional high capacity
batteries). To extend the working time of the system, DAU can be fitted out with
external energy harvesting devices (photovoltaic cells).
a) b)
Figure 2. Data Acquisition Unit (a) and Base Station (b)
TABLE I. POWER CONSUMPTION AND DATA TRANSMISSION TIME

Communication medium Power consumption Transmission time
WiFi-Ethernet 5.5 W <1s
ZigBee 1W 60s
GSM-GPRS 3W 5s
Ethernet (wire) 4.5 W <1s
316
DAMAGE DETECTION IN EXEMPLARY MECHANICAL STRUCTURES
Developed SHM system was used to check its abilities to detect damages in
different types of mechanical structures. One of the tested object was aluminium plate
panel equipped with four piezoelectric patches. Failure was induced in the structure in
three locations shown in Figure 3a. Damage was represented by an additional mass
and stiffness. Three types of thin steel washers of different sizes were placed in each
damage location to locally disturb the dynamical properties of the structure. Figure 3b
shows the experimental setup - a freely suspended aluminium plate.
The frequency range for the measurements was selected from 20 to 52 kHz with
relatively small frequency step equal 10 Hz. Both Point and Transfer Frequency
Response Functions for all possible actuator and sensor configurations have been
evaluated. Exemplary impedance plots registered for the damage location 1 are shown
in Figure 4. With presence of the damage changes in amplitude and frequency of the
resonance peaks can be observed. According to the fact that only relative changes of
the impedance are compared in the described method, presented plots were calculated
using raw measurement data without calibration and there are no units on the ordinate
axels.
a) b)
Figure 3. Locations of the sensors and damage (a) and view of the tested object (b)
a) b)
Figure 4. Point (a) and Transfer (b) Frequency Response Functions measured for the aluminium
plate panel
317
Figure 5. Damage indexes calculated on the basis of Point Frequency Response Functions
Figure 6. Damage indexes calculated on the basis of Transfer Frequency Response Functions
318
On the basis of the received measurement results four previously introduced
damage indexes have been calculated. Figures 5 and 6 presents exemplary damage
metrics evaluated respectively for the Point Frequency Response configuration
(damage location 2) and Transfer Frequency Response configuration (damage location
1). For most cases a monotonic relation between the growing damage size (washer
size) and the index value has been obtained. The statistical damage index W4
appeared to be the most sensitive to changes of the monitored object properties. Metric
W4 was characterized by the greatest increments of its value for the increasing
damage size and the smallest initial levels for the undamaged structure. It has been
found that the measurements of the Transfer FRF configuration had better
repeatability than the Point FRF experiments.
The second examined object was a section of a pipeline shown in Figure 7. It was
chosen to verify capability of the system to detect a loosening of a screw in the bolted
joint. The monitored structure was equipped with different types of piezoelectric
transducers, including Macro Fibber Composite (MFC) transducers bonded on the
both pipes and (Fig. 7a) and PZT patches bonded on the steel washers placed between
bolt heads, pipe flanges and nuts (Fig. 7b) [9].
a) b)
Figure 7. Section of the pipeline with bonded MFC transducers (a) and mounted steel washers with
PZT patches (b)
Figure 8. Transfer Frequency Response Functions measured for the pipeline section
319
Figure 9. Damage indexes calculated on the basis of Transfer Frequency Response Functions
Firstly, all four screws connecting the pipeline elements have been tightened to
a torque equal 20 Nm. This case was treated as a baseline configuration for which the
initial values of the damage indexes have been evaluated. Subsequently one of the
bolts has been loosened and retightened to 15 Nm, which has corresponded to the first
damage case. The procedure has been repeated for the torque equal 10 Nm (second
damage case). For all tested configurations Point and Transfer Frequency Response
Functions have been measured. Exemplary Transfer FRF of the electromechanical
impedance are presented in Figure 8. It can be observed that occurrence of the damage
causes substantial shifts of the resonance peaks towards the lower frequencies and
alteration of their amplitude. Corresponding damage metrics are shown in Figure 9.
A considerable increase of the damage metric value have been obtained for the
impaired structure.
In addition to measurements described above in the text a simple experiment has
been carried out to found out if it is possible to detect damage of the piezoelectric
transducer. For a small aluminium beam with a properly bonded PZT patch a Point
FRF has been registered and afterwards a 50%-disbond has been introduced to the
structure (Fig. 10).
Figure 10. Real part of the impedance for the properly bonded and disbonded PZT transducer
320
It can be seen that for the disbonded transducer resonance peaks in the impedance
plot are barely visible. This can lead to conclusion that significant decrease of the
damage metric value can indicate fault of the PZT sensor. That feature can be utilized
when developing a self-diagnostic procedure for the SHM system.
CONCLUSIONS
This work presents conception of the SHM system based on the electromechanical
impedance measurements and results of its laboratory testing. Performed experiments
have proven that the system is capable of monitoring local changes of structural
properties and can be utilized to detect various types of damages in different
mechanical constructions. Nevertheless, a long-time operational use is necessary to
determine the influence of the environmental conditions to the impedance plots.
Further work concerns development of the frequency range selection procedures
and guidelines for setting the threshold levels of the damage metrics, as well as
elaboration of more sophisticated damage detection algorithms.
REFERENCES
1. Giurgiutiu, V., Zagrai, A. 2001. Electro-Mechanical Impedance Method for Crack Detection in
Metallic Plates. SPIE’s 8th Annual International Symposium on Smart Structures and Materials
and 6th Annual International Symposium on NDEfor Health Monitoring and Diagnostics, 4-8
March 2001, Newport Beach, CA.
2. Inman, D.J., Farrar, C.R., Lopes V. Jr. and Steffen V. Jr. [ed.] 2005. Damage prognosis. For
aerospace, civil and mechanical systems. John Willey & Sons, Ltd., Chichester, England.
3. Park, G., Farrar, C. R., Rutherford, A. C. and Robertson, A. N. 2006. Piezoelectric Active Sensor
Self-Diagnostics using Electrical Admittance Measurements. ASME Journal of Vibrations
Acoustics 128 (4): 469-476.
4. Park, G.and Inman, D. J. 2007. Structural health monitoring using piezoelectric impedance
measurements. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 365: 373-392.
5. Ayres, J.W., Lalande, F., Chaudhry, Z. and Rogers, C.A. 1998. Qualitative impedance-based health
monitoring of civil infrastructures. Smart Materials and Structures 7: 599–605.
6. Naidu, A.S.K. and Soh, C.K. 2004. Damage severity and propagation characterization with
admittance signatures of piezo transducers. Smart Materials and Structures 13: 393–403.
7. Yan, W., Lim, C.W., Chen, W.Q., and Cai, J.B. 2007. A coupled approach for damage detection of
framed structures using piezoelectric signature. Journal of Sound and Vibration 307: 802–817.
8. Sun, F.P., Chaudhry Z., Liang, C. and Rogers, C.A. 1995. Truss structure integrity identification
using PZT sensor–actuator. Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 6: 134–139.
9. Mascarenas, D.L., Park, G., Farinholt, K.M., Todd ,M.D. and Farrar, C.R. 2009. A low-power
wireless sensing device for remote inspection of bolted joints. Proceedings of the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers, Part G: Journal of Aerospace Engineering, 223 (5): 565-575.
321
Damage Monitoring Based on Wave
Illumination of Structures
Y. LIU, N. MECHBAL and M. VERGÉ
ABSTRACT
In this communication, we present a non destructive damage (e.g. static load on

the surface) detection method based on the diffraction of Lamb waves. A0 mode Lamb
waves are transmitted in permanence by piezoelectric transducers into a mechanical
structure such as a thin finite copper plate, to “illuminate” the structure. We suppose
that when damage is produced, the illumination propriety changes according to the
position and the nature of damage. It is due to the reflection of acoustic waves
occurring at the damage point. Therefore we consider damage as a diffraction source.
With this consideration, we have developed a novel method for the detection of
damage position. This method is based on the pattern recognition of reference
diffraction signals.
To test the feasibility of developed method, an experimental set-up is designed,
and an absorbent object made with silicone hammer is used to provide a source of
acoustic diffraction signal. Two transducers are used for transmitting the Lamb waves,
and one transducer is used as wave receiver which can measure the change of
illumination propriety of discussed structure. The main advantage of presented method
is to generalize the different damage types by diffraction source. The experimental
results show that our process can measure not only the position of the calibrated
silicone hammer but also other different damage.
INTRODUCTION
A large number of sonic and ultrasonic techniques exist for structural health
monitoring. These techniques exploiting surface acoustic waves (SAW) or guided
waves in plates, shells, or tubes like structures to localize acoustic sources or damages.
In recent years, new structural health monitoring (SHM) methods using acoustic
waves are developed. They may be based on the thermosonics [1], or on a low power
guided waves system [2]. An interesting research presents the use of a probability-
based imaging algorithm for damage detection with Lamb wave signals [3].
Y. Liu, N. Mechbal and M. Vergé are with PIMM (CNRS 8106), Arts et Métiers ParisTech, 151
Bd de L’Hopital, 75013 Paris, France.
322
Using the typical "impact" detection methodologies, static contact is not
considered as damage, since it will not create acoustic emission signals. However,
static contact, especially in the case if the objects come into contact are adhesive, may
bring the incertitude to the system. For example a chewing gum on the front window
of a vehicle will bring obstruct for the function of wiper. A few investments have been
made on the detection of material loss [4]; however, the system requires relatively
complex system. Further studies are required, that why this paper is focused on the
damage monitoring of static contacts.
Since the contact may bring surface condition changes or local deformations to the
structure, the contact can be considered as damage, some of these techniques have
been diverted from structure health monitoring to tactile techniques. A first
commercial system using Rayleigh waves to make a touch screen is developed by R.
Adler in 1972 [5]. As the technique requires to work under very high frequency (> 4
MHz), the electronic is relatively complicated. Thus, the triangulation technique using
Lamb waves is developed [6]. This technique is often applied to the first Lamb modes
for detecting and locating mechanical impacts or simple contacts. The localization
principle relays mainly on the direct path analysis of acoustic waves. These techniques
require the understanding of physical conditions of the structure for the calculation of
position, and suffer from being sensitive to boundary conditions.
RELATED WORKS
Recently, a new technique based on the correlation of waveforms is proposed to

identify and localize the impact [7]. It may apply to plate like structures of any
composition and boundary conditions. After knowing the impulse responses of an
array of predefined acoustic sources uniformly distributed over a given area, it is
possible to relocate any further impact on the surface inside the characterized area.
The preliminary knowledge of the impulse responses of the characterized area requires
a learning stage in which the material is excited about a thousand times to acquire all
the impulse responses from the characterized area.
This technique has been improved by making the localization process less
sensitive to the time excitation function of the acoustic source [8]. The sensitivity of
the correlation technique is good enough to localize the damage.
The correlation technique is applied to localize the formation of cracks, or AE
(acoustic emission) source [9]. The impulse responses are acquired along a contour
line that runs along the area of inspection. Internal impulse responses to the area are
calculated using a wave superposition method. The detected acoustic waves mainly
correspond to bending waves (A0 mode) through the assembly of nonsymmetrical
piezoelectric plates. Acoustic waves are generated by fracturing a 0.5 mm diameter
HB pencil lead on the surface of the plate (Hsu-Neislen source).
While the correlation technique can localize an impact or an AE source, it cannot
identify static or quasi-static damage which exists already in the structure or which
happens during maintenance. The structure is considered as healthy state before the
implantation of the correlation technique.
In this paper, we propose a novel correlation technique relays on the recognition of
wave diffraction patterns for the damage monitoring during maintenance. The process
is also based on the correlation of waveforms, but with permanently emission of
selected non-resonant Lamb waves into the structures. It is based on a different
323
physical phenomena [10]: damage bring modifications (diffractions) to the
propagating Lamb waves, the modified signal is then compared with waves signal
measured with healthy structure to deduce the position of damage.
EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP
To measure the diffracted acoustic signal in case of damage, approximated by a

contact between silicone hammer and the surface of object, a test bench has been
designed. Considering a thin copper plate in irregularly sharp attached with wave
transmitters and receivers, as shown in Figure 1. It has dimension 75×100 mm. The
copper plate with 450 µm thickness is in irregular sharp.
E2
R2
50
75
E1
R1
75
100
Figure 1. Placement of the four piezoelectric transducers on the copper plate. E1 and E2 are Lamb
waves transmitters, R1 and R2 are receivers.
The system architecture can be presented by figure 2. It may contain a function

generator Tektronix 3012 as the DAC and amplifier. The emitted signal is amplified to
+- 10V. A data acquisition board Pico ADC 212/50 is used to measure the received
Lamb waves from R1 and R2. In the PC environment, Matlab is used for the signal
processing and demonstration of results.
PC
MC
DAC
ADC ADC
E R1 R2
Figure 2. System architecture. E is the Lamb waves transmitter(s) and R1 and R2 are receivers. MC
is a microcontroller.
The proposed process has been tested with a thin copper plate, with dimension
75×100 mm. The copper plate with 450 µm thickness is in irregular sharp, as shown in
figure 2 to test the robustness of monitoring process on the objects with irregular
324
forms. Four piezo-ceramic transducers (Pz27 by Ferroperm) with thickness 0.5 mm
and surface 25 mm2 are used; two as transmitters (E) and two as receivers (R) of
Lamb waves. They are bonded to the objects with conductive glue Circuitworks
CW2400, mounted at arbitrary positions as in Figure 3. We avoid putting them on the
axis of symmetry, which may introduce confusions in the localization process:
different points may bring similar diffraction signals if the distance between the
contact point and the transmitters/receivers are the same. The thin cooper plate keeps a
compact form, with a thickness of entire object less than 1 cm.
LAMB WAVES ILLUMINATION
Lamb waves are elastic waves propagating in solid media. Since the 1990s, the
understanding and the application of Lamb waves has advanced significantly,
especially in the domain of non-destructive testing. Considering now an example of a
thin finite copper plate or shell, with Lamb wave transmitters and receivers on its
edges, some features of Lamb waves’ propagation can be analytically known, such as
group velocity and phase velocity. Following some approximations in [11],
corresponding to the case k×h << 0.5, where k is the angular wave number and h the
half thickness of the plate, below 100 kHz, an A0 mode Lamb wave packet can reflect
up to 10 times at the boundaries in 1 ms, when its propagating group velocity is equal
to 1000 m/s for the presented copper plate. It means that a 1 ms excitation signal is
enough to establish a stable interference figure.
Once stable wave interference is established on the plate or shell, it will be
monitored by wave receivers. In case of damage, diffraction signals will be observed
in real time by the receivers. If the diffraction signal has a bijective relation with the
damage position, we can then use a pattern recognition process to identify the damage.
One can consider the transmitters points and the object as a cavity that is filled
with the energy emitted, it is a notion of flow. In transient regime, this cavity is not
filled homogeneously in the same way. After a certain number of reflections on the
edges, some areas will be more exposed than others. In the case of this method, we can
say that the emission of waves in the object from a source point generates a
distribution of vibration energy, which depends not only on the shape of the object,
but also on the excitation frequencies.
The presence of the damage on a thin plate or shell introduces an obstacle in the
middle of the propagation and then completely change the way the plate is
illuminated. The purpose of this method is therefore to create figures of illumination
with different excitation frequencies and recording a reference array of figures
disrupted by damage and then to monitor and localize it to one of the points previously
recorded.
Following this consideration, several questions have been raised. The first is if
there is sufficient diffraction signal for monitoring, the second is if there is a
dependency between the diffraction signals and the damage. Also, as the plate is
permanently excited with acoustic waves, we should study how to keep its efficacy in
a non-destructive way.
To respond to these questions, we have proposed a damage monitoring method
using non-resonance acoustic waves composed of several (>20) frequency
components. The monitoring process relays on the identification of waves diffraction
patterns. This process is also called an Amplitude Disturbed Diffraction Pattern
325
(ADDP) process which is based on the following physical phenomenon: damage on a
thin finite plate or shell, such as a silicone hammer in contact with the objects affects
the acoustic wave propagation in the solid. These disturbances depend on the hammer
position and the frequency of excited signal. With analysis and a calibration procedure
of this variation, we can locate precisely the contact position.
Figure 3 illustrate several ADDPs with different frequencies. At each frequency,
the observed object is excited with a sinusoidal signal and followed by 80×60
sequentially contacts on the surface with an interval of 1 mm. The contact, considered
as damage on the object, is realized with silicone hammer. The recorded signals are
compared with the original signal obtained without contact, which means the object in
sane state. Images reveal different contrast features
Figure 3. Relative amplitude variations according to the contact positions. (a)With an emission
signal at 23 kHz; (b) with an emission signal at 50 kHz; (c) with an emission signal at 120 kH; (d)
photo of the plate.
As discussed in the precedent section, the Lamb wave diffraction pattern method
requires a calibration process, described in figure 4. For each possible damage
position, discrete points are defined a priori on the surface. An acoustic signal
signature measured in the calibration step associated with one discrete point, is
considered as one pattern. A contact between hammer and the object in the
localization step will give a diffracted signal of the propagating Lamb waves. The
localization involves a pattern recognition or classification process. As described in
figure, at each reference position, a designed silicone hammer touches the monitoring
surface; it is controlled by a 3-D robot arm with a 2 µm precision. We measure the
diffracted acoustic signals from two or more PZT receivers independently for each
point, these signals could be described as:
r
(
Pm ref ( xi , y j ) = A1m ref , A2 m ref , L ANm ref ) (1)
Here m is the index of Lamb wave receiver, typically we use two receivers. Aimref
is the amplitude of one frequency.
326
Send the excitation
signal to the structure.
Carry out a flaw event on

the surface of structure.
Measure the diffracted acoustic signal

Predefine flaw positions (x, y) on the and with receivers R1 and R2.
structure.
Send the excitation signal to the object and Find out Find out
let the Lamb waves propagate. the nearest to . the nearest to
Carry out a flaw event in a predefined Position localized by R1. Position localized by R2.
position (xi, yj).
Measure the diffracted acoustic signal with No

Identical?
the receivers.
Yes
Collect the measured signals associated
with contact positions in an indexed array. Flaw position localized.
Figure 4. Calibration Steps. Figure 5. Localization Steps.
The localization steps are described in figure 5. After calibrating all predefined
contact points, we can monitor the damage. Using the same measurement system, we
obtain a disturbed vector of propagating Lamb waves, when a contact event happens.
This vector can be described as:
r
Pm = ( A1m , A2m , L ANm ) (2)
The localization steps consist in finding the nearest ADDP to the measured vector.
We have used the nearest neighborhood searching algorithm with a Manhattan
distance (dm) :
r r n
( ) ∑A −A
d m Pm , Pm ref = i i ref (3)
i =1
After calculating all the distances from reference signals to the measured one, we
can visualize the contact position on a figure representing the distances with an
amplitude scale. The contact position could be observed from the contrast figure of
these distances. The contact position appears in black. Neighboring points have small
distances, prove the dependence between the distance Di,j and the position Pi,j.
During the localization steps, we use two wave receivers independently to localize
the contact point. If the two receivers find different positions, it means that an error
has happened; the identification result will be rejected. We call it a double-validation
check: one position localized is trustworthy if and only if the closest reference signals
327
found by both receivers are identical. If an operation of localization is not validated,
the process starts again and the test bench measures the diffracted signals one again.
We have realized 1000 consecutive measurement with Lamb wave receiver R1,
while a subject’s hammer is placed at the centre positionH ( xu
9 , y7 ) to provide a source of
damage. 924 measures detect the right position, while the rest 76 measures detect a
neighboring positionH ( xu
9 , y6 ) . After using the double-validation check, the localization
performance grows up to reach a 100 % accuracy rate. However, during the measure
step, the position of the hammer is given at the predefined positions, which means the
localization process is able to return only discrete positions as results.
The localization performance is illustrated in a monitoring display program in
Matlab environment. The response time of the whole loop is roughly 15 ms including
the time for data acquisition and its transfer, calculation and processing. This time
depends mainly on the CPU specification and the number of calibrated points. The
more calibrated points are used, the more calculation time it takes, a compromise
between the resolution and response time should be made.
To prove the performance and advantages of presented method, an ordinary 8.9
inches glass plate (thickness 0.5 mm) is also tested with the Lamb wave diffraction
method. The plate is calibrated with 17×13 predefined contact points with a spatial
grid of 10×10 mm. Each predefined point is associated with a reference vector, obtain
by the measurement system, and calibrated with a silicon finger. The sensitive surface
is 170×130 mm2.
The transducers are shaped in irregular forms, as shown in figure 6, to illustrate the
robustness of presented method.
170 mm
P(x1, y1)
…
…
130 mm
135 mm
…
R1 P(x17, y13)
R2
…
E
180 mm
Figure 6. Placement of the transducers on the tactile glass plate. E is the Lamb waves’ transmitter,
R1 and R2 are receivers. And the demonstration video of localization process.
Using a recognition process described in figure 5, we can find out the contact
position by receivers R1 and R2 independently in the localization step. With the
double-validation check, the glass plate can localize a calibrated hammer-contact with
accuracy up to 100%, and a response time inferior than 15 ms.
CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVES
In this paper, we proposed a damage monitoring method based on the Lamb wave
diffraction patterns, and tested it on a thin copper plate. Damage was provided by
hammer’s contact on the object. With only four piezoelectric transducers as Lamb
328
wave transmitters and receivers, the detection of hammer’s contact position has good
accuracy.
In this process we deliberately decided to excite the structure with non-resonance
frequencies, to overcome the problems associated with the instability of resonance
patterns. Very thin object is chosen, whether it is plate or shell, homogeneous or
inhomogeneous, to illustrate the performance of the process. Since there is no more
resonance materialized on the surface of the object, to help the localization of damage
or a touch on the plate, the developed process suggests replacing resonance patterns
with figures of illumination.
Here we use a metaphor: it is easier to be localized in the “mountains” than in “the
middle of a forest”. In other words, the method presented in this study proposes to
create pattern which is not dependent on the resonance modes with high selectivity,
but on the way how waves propagate through the plate.
Following the experimental results, we have observed that the precision of
localization depends on the contact force, the hardness of touching object and also the
surface of contact. With double-validation check, the localization process has good
accuracy but the response time is affected. In the next future, different areas and
pressures will be calibrated; other kinds of damage will also be studied. Identification
of various situations will be investigated.
The feasibility of damage monitoring by Lamb wave method is proved, however,
this method is still a discrete process, which means we can only localize damage to
reference points. Interpolation of reference points should be implanted to provide a
continuous localization process.
REFERENCES
1. Chang, F.-K., and Beard, S. 1997. Active damage detection in filament wound composite tubes
using built-in sensors and actuators. J. of Intelligent Material, Systems and Structures, 8: 891-897.
2. Barden TJ, Almond DP, Pickering SG, Morbidini M, Cawley P. 2007. Detection of impact damage
in CFRP composites by thermosonics. Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation, 22(2): 71-82.
3. Kim JK, Zhou D, Ha D, Inman DJ. 2009. A practical system approach for fully autonomous multi-
dimensional structural health monitoring. Proceeding of SPIE 2009.
4. Lu Y, Ye L, Wang D, Wang X, Su X. 2009. Lamb Wave Signals for Damage Detection Using a
Probability-Based Imaging Algorithm. Proceeding of the 8th International Workshop on Structural
Heath Monitoring.
5. Hay TR, Royer RL, Gao HD, Zhao X, Rose JL. 2006. A Comparison of Embedded Sensor Lamb
Wave Ultrasonic Tomography Approaches for Material Loss Detecion. Smart Materials and
Structures, 15: 946-951.
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7. Nilolovski JP, Devige F, French patent FR0008372. 2000.
8. Ing RK, Quieffin N, Catheline S, Fink F. In solid localization of finger impacts using acoustic time
reversal process. 2005. Applied Physics Letters, 87(204104): 1-3.
9. Ing RK, Cassereau D. Contactless dependance interactive object. 2007. Fortschritte der Akustik
DAGA.
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Workshop on Structural Heath Monitoring.
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disturbed diffraction pattern method. Applied Physics Letters, 95(251904): 1-3.
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method using amplitude disturbed ultrasonic wave diffraction patterns. Sensors and Actuators A,
162: 394-399.
329
ADVANCED MONITORING FOR
LOAD/ENVIRONMENTS
331
Design of a Self-powered Load Monitoring
System for Hot Spot Applications
Y. LIN, M. TAYA* and J. B. IHN
ABSTRACT
A new structural health monitoring (SHM) system, which consists of a drive

unit made from lead zirconatetitanate (PZT) ceramic and sensor unit made of
different thicknesses PZT thin film, is proposed. For a given level of dynamic
loading, the drive unit generates charges and induces voltage which will be passed
to sensor unit connected to the power unit in an electrically parallel manner.
Because of variable thicknesses of the sensor thin film units, each sensor unit feels
different level of electric field. It is noted that any piezoelectric film subjected to
cyclic electric filed induces electric fatigue phenomenon which can be seen as the
relation between the remnant polarization (Pr) and number of electric cycles (N).
Checking the Pr value of each daughter sensor unit, we can determine the number
of mechanical loading cycles of the mechanical stress amplitude that were applied
to the drive piezoelectric sensor mounted on the structure. Therefore, we can
monitor the history of mechanical loading of only critical magnitudes by the
proposed self-powered SHM system if we design the optimum threshold voltage
values applied to daughter sensor units at and above which the electric domain
switching takes place. A diagnosis tool of how to determine the numbers (N1,
N2…Nm) of mechanical loading with given high stress amplitudes (1, 2, …,m) is
also proposed.12
YihYan Lin and Minoru Taya, Center for Intelligent Materials and Systems, Mechanical
Engineering, University of Washington, Box 35200 Seattle, WA 98195
J.B. Ihn, Boeing Research & Technology, 9725 East Marginal Way South, Mail Code 42-25,
Seattle, WA 98108
333
INTRODUCTION
Wakabayashi et al [1] proposed a new SHM system which consists of a

piezoelectric drive unit and several piezoelectric thin film sensor units made of
different thicknesses, see Figure 1. For a given level of dynamic loading, the drive
piezoelectric unit generates charges and induces voltage which will be passed to
several sensor units electrically connected to the drive unit in a parallel manner.
Because of variable thicknesses of the piezoelectric sensor units, each sensor unit
feels different levels of electric field and only a larger electric field (typically larger
than 3V/m, thickness dependent, named as threshold electric field) induces the
crystal domain-switched and the cyclic threshold electric field electrically weakens
remnant polarization (Pr, defined as ½×(Pra−Prb) in Figure 2(a)) of the thin film
piezoelectric sensor unit, which can be recorded as the relation between the Pr and
number of electric cycles (N) [3]. Figure 2(a) shows the hysteresis (P-E) loop is
getting shorter and shorter with more numbers of cycles for the cyclic E-field, and
Figure 2(b) shows Pr against N [3]. Therefore, the thicker sensor units pick up larger
stress levels on the structural component, which induce larger electric field from
drive piezoelectric unit mounted on the structure. Checking the Pr value of each
sensor unit in Figure 2(b), we can determine the number of mechanical loading
cycles of the mechanical stress amplitude that were applied to the structure.
Therefore, the new system is self-powered by the piezoelectric drive unit and
regardless of the mild stress level, it only records critical stress levels, which
depends on the thicknesses of the sensor units. Therefore, we can monitor the
history of mechanical loading of only critical magnitudes by the proposed self-
powered SMH system if we control the thickness-dependent threshold voltage
applied to sensor units at and above which the electric domain switching takes
place.
Drive Mother PZT Unit Sensor Daughter PZT Units
A(x,y)
2 No.1 No.2 No.3 No.4

3
1
Figure 1 Structure health monitoring system
Figure 2 (a) Hysteresis loop of PZT, and (b) PZT’s fatigue behavior under cyclic domain switching
334
Drive and Sensor Units Analysis
Suppose a four piezoelectric-sensor-unit system sorted by thickness (No.1> No.2>
No.3> No.4 in thickness) electrically connected to a piezoelectric drive unit shown
in Figure 1. The structure component drive unit mounted is subjected to a external
bending stress. The output voltage of the drive unit can be modeled as a Norton
equivalent circuit shown in Figure 3, where C is the equivalent capacitor, R is the
equivalent resistor of the piezoelectric drive unit, and output current from the drive
unit depends on the electric displacement D3 yields ∯ [2][4].
Figure 3 Equivalent circuit of a piezoelectric drive unit
The electric displacement on the piezoelectric drive unit can be determined by

the piezoelectric constitutive equation , where e31 is the piezoelectric
constant, and S1 is the strain in 1-direction on the top surface of the PZT [2] [3].The
output voltage from the drive unit yields
. (1)
Once the drive unit is connected to the sensor unit, the closed-circuit output voltage
yields
, (2)
∑
Where Ad and dd is the area and thickness of the drive unit, respectively; Asi and dsi
is the area and thickness of the ith (i=1~4) sensor unit, respectively. The electric
field applied Esi on the ith sensor unit yields
(3)
If the electric field Esi is larger than the domain-switched electric field, 3V/m
typically, the sensor unit is induced to electric fatigue. Table I and Figure 4 show an
example of the one drive unit and four-sensor unit system [5].
TABLE I Dimensions of sensor units and their sensed stress
Driver PZT:
1cm×5cm×0.1mm *3 pieces PZT C-5 by Fuji Ceramic mounted on the cantilever beam)
Sensor PZTs Array:
Sensed stress Thickness Diameter Domain-switched voltage
#1 30MPa 10.0μm 1.0mm 30.0V
#2 15MPa 5.0μm 1.0mm 15.0V
#3 6MPa 2.0μm 1.0mm 6.0V
#4 3MPa 1.0μm 1.0mm 3.0V
335
35
Output voltage of drive PZT (V)

30 #1 sensor domain switches
25
20
15 #2 sensor domain switches

10
5
#3 sensor domain switches
#4 sensor domain switches
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Stress on the Structure (MPa)
Figure 4 Linear relationship between maximum stress on the structure and output voltage from the
drive unit to the sensor units
MEASUREMENT SYSTEM
The measurement system (shown in Figure 5) controlled by the NI LabVIEW

program and data acquisition system (NI-6221 BNC controller) is composed of
fatigue mode and measurement mode. The relays are switched ON and OFF by the
truth table and the flow chart of the LabVIEW program is shown in Figure 5. The
system keeps applying cyclic electric field on the sensor daughter PZT, except for
some specific cycles when the program switches to the measurement mode to
collect the hysteresis loop.
After the fatigue mode, the relays are switched to the measurement mode. The
measurement waveform is sent by a data acquisition (DAQ) device to the Sawyer
Tower circuit [6] and the voltage corresponding to electric field E and polarization
P are collected by DAQ device. This data can be sketched as a hysteresis loop and
the number of cycles N, and remnant polarization Pr are recorded to draw fatigue
curves when the measurement is done.
336
Figure 5 Automatic measurement system for electric fatigue test
337
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The experimental result of different stress levels applied on sensor units

(manufactured by AIST, Japan) with the same dimensions: 1.0mm in diameter and
1.0μm in thickness (the threshold voltage for this dimension is Vth= 3.0V, i.e. Vth =
3.0V/μm ×1.0μm) is shown in Figure 6 [5]. The experimental results show that in
the sensor region, the slope of fatigue curves is getting larger and larger in
logarithmic scale and the corner cycles move to the left when we apply larger
electric field on the sensor unit.
100
0.6×Vth (2.0V)
Normalized Remnant Polarization
90
80
0.8×Vth (2.5V)
Pr/Pr,max*100%
70
1.0×Vth (3.0V)
60
50 1.3×Vth (4.0V)
40 1.7×Vth (5.0V)
30 2.0×Vth (6.0V)
20
4.5×Vth (13.5V)
10
1 10 100 1000 10000 100000 1000000
Number of Cycles, N
Figure 6 Fatigue behavior of various output voltage from drive mother PZT unit
(Apply on 1.0mm in diameter and 1.0μm in thickness daughter sensor PZT unit)
DETERMINATION AND DEMONSTRATION FOR NUMBER OF CYCLES
For a four-sensor-unit SHM shown in Figure 1, for example, the fatigue curves
for each sensor unit are shown in Figure 7. The slope of the steeper linear region mij
means apply jth sensor unit’s threshold voltage (3V/m × thickness of jth sensor
unit) on ith sensor unit. For example, in No.3 sensor fatigue curves, slope m32 means
we apply cyclic voltage with No.2 sensor unit’s threshold voltage (3V/m ×
thickness of No.2 sensor unit) on No.3 sensor unit. The slope of the segments is
getting steeper if we apply stronger electric field on the same sensor unit because
larger voltage induces more serious electric fatigue. It is noted that the fatigue
curves for each sensor unit can be measured by the automatic measurement system
which we already established shown in Figure 5. The fatigue mode in the
measurement system applied cyclic voltage on the sensor unit while the
measurement mode measures the hysteresis loop of a certain number of cycles N
and records the Pr and N. The flow chart of the measurement is also shown in
Figure 5. After completing the measurement process, a single fatigue curve can be
plotted. Since the plateau is less sensitive, we apply the cyclic voltage to reach the
corner cycle to pass the plateau region for each sensor unit, named as the pre-
338
conditioning process and record the Pr0 value when we reach the corner cycle.
Therefore, the sensor unit performed in the sensor region shown in Figure 8.
Figure 7 Fatigue curves for No.1~No.4 sensor unit (sorted by thickness, No.1> No.2> No.3> No.4 in
thickness)
Figure 8 Preconditioned Fatigue curves for No.1~No.4 sensor

(sorted by thickness, No.1> No.2> No.3> No.4 in thickness)
Once we take off the sensor units and measure Pri (i=1~4) values of each sensor
unit after operation, the measured Pr is reached by the linear combination of several
linear fatigue curves. The numbers of cycles for each stress levels Ni (i=1~4) is
determined by Eqn.(4).
Pr   m N  Pr 0 , (4)
 Pr1   m11 0 0 0   log N1   Pr 0,1 
P    log N  P 
where P    r 2  , m  m21
 
m 22 0 0 ,
N    2  , and
 P  
 r 0, 2  .
 
m31 
r r0
 Pr 3  m32 m33 0  log N 3  Pr 0,3 
 Pr 4    log N 4   Pr 0, 4 
m 41 m 42 m 43 m 44 
Demonstration system performance by random loading
We design a two daughter sensor PZT unit (No.1: 1.5 mm in diameter, 5.0 µm
in thickness; No.2: 1.5 mm in diameter, 2.7 µm in thickness) connected to a drive
mother PZT unit to demonstrate the system. The thickness of the two sensor
daughter PZTs are determined by the relationship between the drive unit output
voltage V (volt) and the thickness of the sensor unit ds (µm): V = 3.0 × ds. For
example, a sensor PZT of thickness 5.0 µm requires an output voltage of 15 volts to
be domain switched. The thinner sensor PZT is chosen as half the thickness of the
thicker one. Sensor thicknesses of 2.7 µm and 5.0 µm are ultimately chosen because
their threshold voltages of 16V and 8V, respectively, could be produced by the
drive PZT. After an initial Pr-N curve that shows the sensor PZTs not being rapidly
fatigued, we increase the output voltage to 16 V and 8 V for the 5.0 µm and 2.7 µm
sensor PZT respectively. The fatigue curves for No.1 and No. 2 sensor units built
up by the measurement system (Figure 5) is shown in Figure 9. The slope of each
curve in sensor region, corner cycles and the initial normalized Pr of each sensor
339
unit can be determined by these fatigue curves. Therefore, according to Eqn.(4),
the matrix form of the two-sensor unit system becomes
 Pr1    12.15% 0   log N1   Pr 0,1 
    , (5)
Pr 2   31.20%  10.42% log N 2  Pr 0, 2 
where Pr1 and Pr2 are normalized remnant polarization of 5.0µm and 2.7µm thick
sensor unit measured after a series of cyclic loading, Pr0,1 and Pr0,2 are initial
normalized remnant polarization which are both 95% for No.1 and No.2 sensor
units, and N1 and N2 are numbers of cycles which the stress on the vibration
structure are over 6.3MPa and 12.6MPa on the top of the structure (6.3MPa and
12.6MPa on the structure generate 8V and 16V from drive mother PZT in the
current case) in strain. By this matrix form, we can determine the number of cycles
over a dynamic loading applied on a structure.
Figure 9 Fatigue curves for No.1 (5.0m in thickness, 1.5mm in diameter) and No.2 (2.7m in
thickness, 1.5mm in diameter) sensor unit
In order to demonstrate the performance of the new SHM system, we use

LabVIEW to program random amplitude signal and send this random signal to the
Intron 8521S universal test machine. The Instron machine transfers the random
signal to random amplitude dynamic loading, applies the dynamic loading on a
four-point-bending beam, and drives piezoelectric unit as well. The LabVIEW
program records the output voltage from drive unit as shown in Figure 10 for
example , and counts the number of cycles if the signal is above the threshold
voltage for each sensor unit (No.1: 12.6MPa on the structure sent out 16V from the
drive unit; No.2: 6.3MPa on the structure sent out 8V from the drive unit). The
counted number of cycles is compared with the calculated N by measuring Pr1 and
Pr2 (see Eqn.(5)). Three sets of random dynamic loading are applied to the four-
point-bending beam and the real number of cycles counted by the LabVIEW
program and calculated number of cycles measured by the system and calculated by
Eqn.(5) is shown in TABLE II.
340
Figure 10 No.1 Random dynamic loading in TABLE II applied on the structural component and the
corresponding output voltage from drive unit (N1=12, N2=33 in the enlarged screen)
TABLE II Experimental results for random dynamic loading
SUMMARY
This paper presents a new design of SHM system and establishes an automatic
measurement system to build up a fatigue curves of the sensor units. We also
develop an algorithm to diagnosis the health of the structural component (numbers
of cycles over a critical stress loading) and demonstrate the performance of the two-
sensor unit prototype by applying random dynamic loading on the structural
component. A further test for full scale SHM system will be demonstrated.
ACKONOWLDGEMENTS
This was supported by mainly the research contract from Tokyo Electric Power
Company, and partially by the research contract from Boeing Company. We are
thankful to Dr. T. Iijima of AIST, Tsukuba who processed daughter sensor units.
REFERENCES
1. C. Wakabayashi, H. Sato and M. Taya, 2008, “Design of a new structural health

monitoring based on piezoelectric sensors for detection of various strain
amplitudes”, Behavior and Mechanics of Multifunctional and Composite
341
Materials 2008,edited by Marcelo J. Dapino, Zoubeida Ounaies, Proc. of SPIE
Vol. 6929, 69290I, (2008)
2. IEEE, 1987. Standard on Piezoelectricity, IEEE, New York.
3. Kenji Uchino, 2000. Ferroelectric Devices, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York,
USA
4. A. Erturk and D. J. Inman 2009. “An experimentally validated bimorph
cantilever model for piezoelectric energy harvesting from base excitations,”
Smart Mater. & Struct.,18(2009) 025009.
5. M. Taya and Y-Y Lin, 2011, “Structural health monitoring system based on self-
powered piezoelectric sensors”, Final Report to Tokyo Electric Power Company,
March 15, 2011.
6. C.B. Sawyer and C.H. Tower, Phys. Rev. 35, 269, 1935
342
A Robust Impact Force Determination
Technique for Complex Structures
I. MUELLER, K. VONNIEDA, S. DAS and F.-K. CHANG
ABSTRACT
Real-time impact monitoring is widely acknowledged as important key

technology within an integrated health management concept for composite airframe
structures. To achieve the goal of efficient and reliable impact monitoring systems
novel approaches are discussed in this contribution which allow to mitigate or to
overcome stability and accuracy issues of ARX models used for real-time impact
monitoring.
According to theory of inverse problems and model fitting, it will be shown that
these low-order ARX models are highly dependent on the signal window which has to
be chosen carefully for each specific application to utilize the meaningful part of the
acquired signals before the analysis. For this purpose, an optimization approach will
be introduced to achieve the ARX models with the highest quality within an
automated process which will be applied during the offline training step. In addition,
the same approach was adopted to facilitate the selection of the most meaningful
sensor for the ARX training and the best model order. As shown by the results for the
analytically inverted ARX models this procedure clearly provides tremendous
improvements and allows to achieve high quality ARX models by selecting the best
possible inputs from acquired training data.
In extension of these innovations, a novel methodology based on direct inverse
identification models (DI-ARX) within a MISO framework will be presented which
attacks the improvement of stability, accuracy and speed of the load identification
process in a different way. The striking feature of this methodology is given by the
fact that the inversion of the ARX model is already performed during the training
process that no numerical inversion step, as a source of severe errors, is needed by any
matrix operation etc. In such a way, further improvements were achieved even for
those structures that could not be successfully handled with the traditional approach.
_____________
Ingolf Mueller1) / Samik Das2) / Kerstin Vonnieda1) / Fu-Kuo Chang1), 1) Structures and
Composites Laboratory, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford
University, Durand Building, 496 Lomita Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; 2) Acellent
Technologies Inc., 835 Stewart Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94085, USA
343
INTRODUCTION
Real-time impact monitoring is considered as one major SHM technique to
prevent ongoing degradation and failure of laminated composite structures after
occurrence of any adverse impact event. Current real-time impact monitoring systems
rely on local system identification models which must be inverted analytically in order
to instantly recover impact loads from point-wise passive sensor data. As commonly
acknowledged, reliable and accurate solutions of inverse problems require carefully
designed and conducted operations during the data acquisition, the data processing and
the inversion step. If these issues are not handled appropriately, unstable or strongly
erroneous solutions of the inverse problems are obtained as a result of the occurring
ill-posed nature which corrupts the inverse solution. For this reason, adequate data
contents and appropriate processing methods (as signal selection, windowing, filtering
etc.) need to be applied as well as reliable and fast inversion techniques need to be
adopted in order to achieve sufficient performance of the impact monitoring system
for all practical applications. In particular for structures of practical complexity with
complicated material properties and geometry it may be challenging to achieve
reliable inverse models for all cases.
Current real-time impact monitoring systems suffer from difficulties and
limitations with a respect to stability and reliability of the identification results. These
results, namely impact location and force history, obviously will have a huge influence
on the quality of the subsequent prediction of impact-induced damage (see [1]).
Therefore, it is crucial to overcome or to mitigate current shortcomings by novel
strategies and approaches as suggested in this contribution. In conclusion, the main
requirements of the algorithm consist in two basic abilities: a sufficient accuracy of
load identification and a fast performance to ensure real-time capabilities.
First, starting from the fundamental approach for real-time monitoring of impacts
based on system identification models (ARX models), problems of model order, signal
windowing and sensor selection will be addressed. It will be shown that the selection
of a suitable part of the sensor signal (windowing) is the key to achieve stable and
robust ARX models for the later inverse reconstruction of impact forces. A unified
approach for training of robust ARX models will be presented which takes advantage
of optimized windowing, automated selection of model orders and choice of best
sensors. As a result it is shown that once a reliable ARX model is achieved during the
training process, tremendous improvements in terms of stability and accuracy can be
expected for the later live application of load identification.
Second, in extension to these innovations, a novel methodology based on direct
inverse identification models (DI-ARX) will be presented which further improves
stability, accuracy and speed of the load identification process in many cases. In
contrast to the above approach a MISO framework is employed to construct the local
model. The striking feature of this methodology is given by the fact that the inversion
of the ARX model is already performed during the training process so that no
numerical inversion, as a source of large errors, is needed by any matrix operation etc.
For this purpose, the input (impact force) and output (sensor signals) are swapped.
Accordingly, an inverse assumption is already achieved during the training process in
such a way that the inverse ARX model is obtained directly. Following, no further
inversion is needed during the later life application which therefore excludes one of
the most severe sources of identification errors.
344
In a final step, the load monitoring system is interactively linked to a damage pre-
diction module based on numerical failure analysis. This module allows a prediction
of impact-induced damage after detection of any adverse impact event making infor-
mation available on developing degradation at the earliest possible state. Obviously,
the accuracy of results from the damage prediction step will strongly depend on the
inputs from previous steps of the impact localization and force reconstruction. In such
a way, the accuracy of impact monitoring becomes critical for the entire system of
integrated health management. Further details of the damage prediction module can be
found in [1].
FUNDAMENTAL APPROACH OF REAL-TIME IMPACT MONITORING

Passive sensing approaches rely on numerical models to reconstruct meaningful
information as impact location and impact load history from the point-wise sensor data
and to provide input for the subsequent damage prediction. A four-step strategy has
been developed and implemented to estimate, firstly, all impact quantities (location,
force history) and, secondly, the resulting degradation and future performance. The
following steps have to be conducted:
1. identification of the impact location,
2. reconstruction of the load curve,
3. refinement of the impact location,
4. prediction of impact-induced damage
One unique feature of this strategy is that all steps, and with this the entire
procedure, can be performed within real-time making this concept very beneficial for
any integrated health management technology. However, this particular study will
only focus on the reconstruction of the load curve (step 2). Further details about all
other steps can be found in [1].
DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM AND EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

The main component for the data acquisition system is Acellent's IMGenie (see
Figure 1 (left)), which is a diagnostic hardware particularly designed for impact data
acquisition that has been used in this study. It has a number of 64 single-ended input
channels and uses a default parallel sampling rate of 25000Hz at a 12-bit resolution.
During a sampling time of 0.012sec exactly 300 samples are acquired for each trigger
event (impact). The IMGenie can be operated in a real-time or alternatively in a data-
logger mode. Remote access and remote control is provided via Ethernet interface.
The device is battery-powered with re-chargeable battery and it is equipped with an
innovative hardware-trigger circuit to reduce the overall power consumption of the
system. It weighs less than 2 pounds, and measures 6.5”5”2.5” (LWH).
For the training step of the impact monitoring system an instrumented hammer
from PCB with a plastic tip has been employed to introduce impact excitation and to
measure resulting impact force history.
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Figure 1: Acellent’s IMGenie (left), experimental setup for system training (right).
FUNDAMENTAL APPROACH OF REAL-TIME IMPACT MONITORING

BY PASSIVE SENSING SYSTEMS
Generally speaking, recovering external impact loads using structural response
data works on the principle of an inverse problem. While the phenomenon of interest
(impact location and force history) may not be measured directly, there exists some
other variable that can be observed (sensor data of structural response), which is
related to the event of interest through the use of a data-derived computer model.
Depending on its mathematical representation, the properties of the adopted model,
and the sensor network configuration (number and location of sensors) the resulting
inverse problem may be subjected to the difficulties of ill-posedness. According to
HADAMARD [2], the ill-posed properties of the resulting inverse problem appear in
terms of stability, existence, and uniqueness of the solution and may cause severe
errors in the identification results. The effect of ill-posedness for the problem of
impact monitoring has been studied in [3], in particular with a view to the influence of
the sensor network configuration. In addition, this contribution will show how the
extent of signal data will affect the properties of the underlying inverse problem.
In particular for structures of practical complexity with material nonuniformity
and complicated geometry it will be a challenging task to achieve reliable inverse
models for all cases and a general approach is needed. This is considered as a key
step which must be elaborated to further establish impact monitoring for practical
applications.
Several models and techniques (e.g. see [1] for references) have been proposed in
the literature to identify impact events from passive sensor data. PARK and CHANG [4]
have proposed an advantageous methodology which is based on a linear system
identification model. This auto-regressive model with exogenous input (ARX) [5] is a
linear finite difference model which represents the dynamic response of a linear elastic
structure by a parametric approach as given by
n m
 ( k )   ai  ( k  i )   b j f ( k  j ) (1)
i 1 j 1
Here,  (k) and f(k) are a sequence of strain and impact force values at discrete
time instances. The parameters ai and bj are the ARX parameters of the model while n
and m represent the order of the model, respectively. A training step is needed to find
appropriate ARX parameters ai and bj based on the physical behavior of the structure.
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For this purpose, sets of training data in terms of impulse response are generated and
ARX parameters are derived.
After finishing the offline training step, the ARX model needs to be inverted for
force reconstruction during the live identification (see Fig. 2). One striking feature of
ARX based methods is that the inversion can be performed analytically by a state-
space transformation and appropriate matrix operations as shown by PARK [4]. Further
details can be found in [4], [1]. Due to this fact, real-time capabilities of impact
monitoring module are achieved.
Figure 2: Reconstruction of Impact Force by analytically inverted ARX models.
INCREASED RELIBILITY FOR INVERSE ARX MODELS

During the training step ARX models are determined to approximate the local
dynamic behavior for each selected structure point (training point). Training points are
located throughout the structure. In general, the training of ARX models is strongly
influenced by certain parameters which will affect stability and accuracy of the ARX
models. Major effects will be received from three parameters:
1. model order of the ARX model,
2. selection of an appropriate sensor for each ARX model
3. window for the selected sensor signal.
As previously discussed, the ARX model requires the selection of a model order
for input and output of the regression. This model order is expressed by the parameters
m and n (see Eqn. (1)), which basically represent the number of past instances of the
sensor and the force signal, respectively, introduced as terms of the linear combination
of the ARX approach. If the model order is too small, this would be called under-
parameterization and may result in poor model accuracy. In contrast, the opposite case
with a model order that is too large would be an over-parameterization and can lead to
unstable ARX models in the majority of cases. In general, for each local ARX model
the optimal model order may different. Nevertheless, the current impact monitoring
system uses the simplified assumption of a unified model order throughout the entire
structure. A good first estimate for an appropriate model order can be obtained by
Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) [6]. It is grounded in the concept to offer a
relative measure of the information lost, when a model is applied to describe real data.
The major assumption in model construction controlled by AIC criterion can be
described as a tradeoff between accuracy and complexity of the model. In the case of
the ARX models, the signals reconstructed by ARX models with different model
orders will be compared to the actually measured signals and the quality of the
347
reconstruction is assessed. A model order typically leading to reasonable results for
this application is [m,n]=[5,3].
For each ARX model only one signal of the sensor outputs plus the force signal of
the excitation is required for training which corresponds to a SISO assumption.
Therefore, it has to be decided, which sensor is used for a particular training point.
Different sensor signals, however, can be more or less appropriate for creating a good
ARX model. In fact, the selection of an appropriate sensor is crucial for the quality of
the achieved ARX model. Although assumptions were made for the sensors that have
to be selected for each training point, no systematic investigation has been conducted
regarding this problem, and still a procedure for automated sensor selection is missing.
Even more important is the determination of a suitable window for the sensor
signals to achieve sufficiently accurate ARX models as it is not useful to take the
complete sensor signal into account. Instead, only a short window has to be selected
that reduces the length of the signal to an appropriate duration. The sensitivity with
regard to the selected window is twofold: the data content will influence the fitting of
the ARX model as well as ill-posed properties of the inverse problem. Former research
already revealed that there is not a specific window working for the whole variety of
different signals and, therefore, a procedure has to be developed which discovers an
individual window for every single signal. At the same time, it is currently not known
in detail how such a window has to be designed to meet the requirements. Traditional
windowing approaches frequently deliver unstable or at least strongly erroneous ARX
models. Therefore, current efforts are aimed at developing and implementing a novel
approach for signal windowing.
For following study of the signal window a composite stiffener panel is considered
(see Fig. 3 (left)). The overall size of the panel is 1575mm by 533mm. It has three
parallel I-beam stiffeners and is equipped with a sensing network of 20 piezoelectric
sensors, which is mounted on the back of the panel.
Figure 3: Stiffener composite panel with integrated sensing network (right), Definition of window
parameters: starting point wS, length wL (left).
Obviously, the windows are defined by their starting point wS (the first sample
taken into account) and their length wL (number of samples from wS) (see Fig. 3
(right)). To understand the influence of different windows and, in an advanced step, to
automatically select the optimal window for a certain signal holds the key for reliable,
high quality ARX models for impact monitoring. Therefore, a systematic investigation
was conducted where every window in a certain range will be tested and assessed.
348
After a window is applied to the signals, the ARX model can be fitted and the
force history can be reconstructed based on this model. This estimated load curve can
then be compared to the measured curve coming from the instrumented hammer. To
get a measure for the quality of the reconstruction, an error function has been
implemented as given by Eqn. (2). The two major terms of this function compare the
shapes and the peak loads of the reconstructed f * and the measured force history f .
The number of samples within the selected window n  nU  n L and the peak
*
loads f max , f max are introduced to normalize the error value for appropriate comparison.
 nU  1
f i   f * i  
1
err     f max  f max
*  (2)
 nU  nL  f max
 i  nL

As a result of a systematic investigation of the window parameters wS and wL, a

matrix can be compiled containing the error values of all tested signal windows. If this
matrix is graphically displayed (see Fig. 4) areas of small (blue bricks) and large errors
(red bricks) can be distinguished easily and, in turn, appropriate window parameters
leading to high quality models can be discovered. Figure 4 shows the sensitivity of the
signal window with respect to the received ARX estimation for the training step. As
can be seen clearly, an appropriate choice for the signal window is crucial for the
quality of the ARX models. Consequently, the offline training step shall be based on
the window leading to the smallest error which needs to be discovered within an
optimization process. Therefore, this novel strategy of windowing will always deliver
the best possible signal part and may significantly improve the training results.
Figure 4: Sensitivity for accuracy of ARX models during training step using different signal windows;
data set acquired on center between sensors 7 / 8 / 12 /13 of the stiffener panel.
In a similar way, the question can be answered about the optimal specification of
the signal window during the later real-time identification. For the practical
application of this step a general approach is required, as error calculation (e.g. by
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Eqn. (2)) is impossible due to missing information. Only for purpose of evaluation
within a lab environment an assessment of the window quality can be obtained by
applying Eqn. (2) for live identification. For this purpose a different data set, acquired
at the same location, serves to mimic a real impact event. The remarkable result is that
the sensitivity of window parameters is not preserved as long as the optimal window
was applied during the previous training step. Stated another way, a good window
during training provides the basis for a successful identification later on where nearly
arbitrary window parameters can be used within certain ranges (see Fig. 5).
In summary it can be stated that the new windowing procedure leads to very
promising results. In general, far better performance as with traditional windowing is
achieved with a very high reliability and within an automated procedure where no
manual interference is required. The new procedure guarantees that the best possible
ARX model is achieved for a certain data set. In a similar way the optimal sensor and
the best ARX model order can be found which will not be discussed in detail here
Figure 5: Sensitivity for accuracy of ARX models during training and identification step using different
signal windows; data sets acquired on center between sensors 7 / 8 / 12 /13 of the stiffener panel.
INCREASED RELIBILITY USING DIRECT INVERSE ARX MODELS

The reliability and stability of ARX based force reconstruction can be further in-
creased by a considerable amount with the use of so-called direct-inverse ARX models
(DI-ARX) adopting a multiple input / single output (MISO) approach. In such a way,
even more complex structures or systems with complicated dynamics can be treated
successfully. Even though the force reconstruction is done using the ARX coefficients
like in the above single input / single output (SISO) method, it essentially circumvents
the problem of instability due to inversion by directly computing the force from the
impact sensor signal. If S(t) denotes the signal, F(t) denotes the force time history and
T  denotes the transfer function matrix, then the following equation can be written
S t   T   F t  (3)
Hence the transfer function can be obtained with a known set of force value and
the corresponding sensor signal data (time series data) within a training step. Here,
force-time history is the input and sensor signal is the output. As the model is deve-
loped using one input (force) with one sensor signal vector it is called single input /
350
single output. Following the above mentioned formulation the force time history for a
particular impact would require the inversion of the transfer function and multi-
plication with the sensor signal vectors. This problem can be avoided if the above
equation is written in a different way like the one shown below:
F t   T  S t  (4)
In this case transfer functions T , once obtained, can be directly multiplied with
the sensor signal vector to obtain the force time history and hence will not require any
inversion step. Hence this model can be referred as direct-inverse ARX (DI-ARX)
model. Here input and output are swapped in such a way that sensor signal is the input
and force is the output (see Fig. 6 (left)). This paradigm shift allows to directly obtain
the desired ARX model in an inverse form, contrary to the natural input/output
relation. For the real-time identification this direct-inverse ARX model can straightly
be applied to reconstruct the impact load with the input of the actually measured
sensor signal.
Now, the model can be even more robust and any interpolation can be avoided if
multiple sensor signals are used as input together with one output (force time history).
Hence, this method can also be referred to as multiple input / single output (MISO)
approach. Obviously, multiple data sets acquired by different sensors may carry more
information of the structural response and hence potentially more accurate results can
be achieved. Figure 6 (right) shows the concept of the MISO ARX approach where
exemplarily a number of four sensor signals is chosen to represent the system
response. As discussed above, the transfer functions T  are obtained directly from
those sensor data. Following, the ARX linear difference equations for this MISO
model are shown, where the numbers na and nb denote the orders of the regression
and the parameters ai and bjk are the ARX coefficients.
f(t) + a1f(t-1) + … + anaf(t-na) =

b11s1(t-nk) + b12s1(t-nk-1) + … + b1nbs1(t-nk-nb+1) +
b21s2(t-nk) + b22s2(t-nk-1) + … + b2nbs2(t-nk-nb+1) + (5)
b31s3(t-nk) + b32s3(t-nk-1) + … + b3nbs3(t-nk-nb+1) +
b41s4(t-nk) + b42s4(t-nk-1) + … + b4nbs4(t-nk-nb+1)
Figure 6: Concept of direct-inverse ARX models (left) and multiple input single output (MISO)
strategy (right).
The above MISO / DI-ARX approach has been validated on another stiffener
composite panel which is depicted in Figure 7 (left). A passive sensing network of 9
351
PZT sensors has been employed for the impact monitoring task. The sensor locations
and training points are also shown in Figure 7 (right). The experimental setup is kept
unmodified with respect to Figure 1 (right).
This stiffener panel of Figure 7 was selected as benchmark structure as it has a
challenging dynamic behavior mainly introduced by a complex support structure
(unilateral contacts may occur) and the rough texture of the surface (may lead to a
non-smooth force profile). Previous SISO ARX techniques were not able to generate
sufficiently accurate results.
Figure 7: Composite stiffener panel for MISO / DI-ARX benchmark: bottom view and sensing network
(left), sensor and training point locations (right).
A representative example for the achieved results using MISO / DI-ARX

algorithm is considered in the following. For this purpose, the panel was impacted by
the instrumented hammer in center between sensors 1, 2, 4 and 5 (compare Fig. 7)
very close to training point (1). The force was reconstructed using transfer functions
for the training point (1) and the sensor signals received from 1, 2, 4 and 5. Figure 8
compares the reconstruction of the impact force history with the measured curve from
the modal hammer. As can be seen, in contrast to tests with the classical SISO ARX
scheme in Figure 8 [a], the two curves of Figure 8 [b] are in excellent agreement with
respect to both peak amplitude and shape. Similar results could be found at different
other locations throughout the structure having a high repeatability.
[a] [b]
Figure 8: Representative test results for reconstruction of impact force time history:
[a] SISO / ARX approach, [b] novel MISO / DI-ARX approach.
Overall, it can be stated that MISO / DI-ARX provides a promising approach for
reliable real-time impact monitoring even for structures with a complex dynamic
behavior. However, these preliminary tests of this novel methodology provide just a
first insight rather than any final statement. Further studies, i.e. on the model order,
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number and location of utilized sensors and appropriate signal windows have to be
conducted which is beyond the scope of this contribution and subject of future work.
CONCLUSIONS
This work has addressed stability and accuracy issues of ARX models used for
real-time impact monitoring within a passive sensing SHM approach. It has been
illustrated and proven that the stability and accuracy of these low-order ARX models
are highly dependent on a number of parameters as sensor selection, model order and
windowing to select a meaningful part of the acquired signals before the analysis. Due
to shortcomings of the traditional windowing procedure, a novel approach for signal
windowing was developed and validated, which allows to discover the optimal
window for each data set individually. Along with a strategy for the best selection of
sensor and model order, the ARX model with the highest quality can be automatically
obtained and applied for identification purposes. In such a way, tremendous improve-
ments compared to traditionally fitted ARX identification model could be achieved.
As an alternative strategy the MISO / DI-ARX approach has been introduced and
evaluated on a benchmark structure. Those preliminary tests tell that the obtained
results are very promising in terms of accuracy and stability. However, there are still
control parameters in this algorithm (i.e. sensor selection, model order, filters) which
need to be explored in more detail to ensure high quality for all impact scenarios.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Administration (NASA) for supporting this work under grants NRA-07-IVHM1-07-
0061 and -0064. In particular, we would like to thank Richard W. Ross (NASA LaRC)
as the program monitor for his support. Acellent’s contribution and assistance on
passive sensing systems is gratefully acknowledged. Furthermore, Kerstin Vonnieda
wishes to express her gratitude for financial support of German Academic Exchange
Service (DAAD), Bonn and Erich Becker Foundation, Frankfurt am Main.
REFERENCES
1. I. Mueller, S. Das, S. Roy, V. Janapati, K. Vonnieda, D. Zhang and F.-K. Chang. 2010. “An
integrated health management system for real-time impact monitoring and prediction of impact-
induced damage on composite structures”, in Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 7650, pp. 76501D.
2. J. Hadamard, 1923. “Lectures on the Cauchy problem in linear partial differential equations”, Yale
University Press, New Haven CT.
3. I. Mueller and F.-K. Chang. 2009. “Model-based impact monitoring by inverse methods using
particle swarm optimization”, in Proceedings of IMAC XXVII.
4. J. Park, 2005. “Impact identification in structures using a sensor network: The system identification
approach”, Dissertation, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University.
5. A. Ljung, 1999. “System identification - Theory for the user”, PTR Prentice Hall, 2nd edition.
6. H. Akaike, 1973. “Information theory and an extension of the maximum likelihood principle”, in
Proceedings of 2nd International Symposium on Information Theory, B. N. Petrov and F. Csaki
(Eds.). Budapest, pp. 267-281.
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Analytical Formulation for the Determination
of Torsional Forces and Shear Stresses in
Hydraulic Steel Structures from Field
Experiments
Á. J. ALICEA-RODRÍGUEZ and G. RIVEROS
ABSTRACT
Nowadays great interest on the study of navigation steel structures has been
arising. This may be the effect of catastrophic disasters that has occurred in the past
due to the limited information available concerning these types of structures and the
loads to which they are subjected to. This research focuses entirely in the study of
miter gates structures subjected to the effects of torsional loading. A structural
analysis creating a finite element model was executed to The Dalles Dam Miter Gate
in Oregon after its failure. By means of this analysis a forensic study of the dam was
realized for determining the causes of some major cracks and fractures in the bottom
girders of the quoin block side and in the pintle. The deterioration in the extreme ends
of the structure is a major issue changing its boundary conditions and causing a
redistribution of forces whose components were directed to members for which that
kind of loading was not considered in the design process. In order to perform an
intelligent diagnosis of these types of structures an analytical formulation was
developed that determines torsion forces and shear stresses in hydraulic steel
structures from field experiments. Its main purpose is to provide a reliable tool for
real-time monitoring of the structure and anticipate any abnormal structural behavior
that may occur during its functional life. The formulation provides actual results that
will avoid failure or collapse of the structure resulting in longer functional life and
economical solutions for repairs and designs.
INTRODUCTION
In the last decades a great interest in the structural health monitoring (SHM) of
civil infrastructure has been gaining acceptance. In the specific field of navigation
steel structures, there is a great need for the study of the current state of old gates and
anchors within the dam systems. Throughout history many fatal disasters has occurred
_____________
Ángel J. Alicea-Rodríguez, University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez Campus, Mayagüez, PR,
00681-5000, U.S.A..
Guillermo Riveros, Engineering Research and Development Center – US ARMY Corps of
Engineers, Information Technology Laboratory, 3909 Halls Ferry Rd., Vicksburg, MS, 39180-
6199
354
due to the fact that there is limited information concerning the current state of that type
of structures, the design was not performed (at that time) to support many loads that
are known today that occur, or just have exceeded the design life. Actually, structural
analyses are executed creating finite element models of these types of gates as-built.
By means of these analyses, forensic studies can be executed for the determination of
the causes of some major cracks and fractures that emerged or that will emerge in the
structure as a consequence of the induced loadings to which it is subjected.
In addition to the different types of loading induced in the structure, deterioration
caused by aging and environmental factors can be accounted for in the analysis and
taken into consideration for obtaining more precise results and perform a better
assessment. This type of analysis is of great importance because the boundary
conditions can be easily changed due to this type of deterioration, causing in the
majority of cases a redistribution of forces in the structural system, maybe affecting
members that were not designed for that specific type of loading.
With this project it is intended to couple the advantages of numerical analysis and
field experimental data. The main purpose is to obtain the actual torsional moments
and shear stresses that are occurring in the existing structure in order to be able to
make comparisons with numerical analysis realized to the structural model as-built
assuming perfect design conditions. Localized normal warping stresses are taken from
field experiments by installing strain gages in the specified structural members that are
intended for monitoring or study. An analytical formulation was developed in order to
transform those experimental normal warping stresses into the desired actual torsional
moments and shear stresses. Those comparisons between field experiments and 3D
finite element analyses will be performed in order to validate the established failure
hypotheses, improve the structural assessment, and to perform an optimum repair
alternative and submit possible design changes to be included in the design codes.
CASES SELECTION
In order to simulate the torsional behavior of a steel hydraulic structure the right
boundary conditions and load cases should be selected and taken into consideration.
For structural steel members, the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC)
develops solutions to twelve representative cases that combine three different load
cases with four different boundary conditions for general structural members. Taking
into consideration the type of structure that we are studying and the type of load that it
is receiving, a specific behavior can be accurately predicted. If the structure as a
whole behaves in a certain way, it can be assumed that is structural components will
behave in a similar manner. Based on that behavior a correlation can be done between
our structure and the established cases in [1]. Following are the cases considered and
the relation they have with the structure:
Fixed Ends
These cases basically accounts for the stiffness of the structure. In this type of
structure the bracings and frames increases its stiffness so significantly that the
structure can be modeled as being fixed at both ends.
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CONCENTRATED TORQUES AT ENDS OF MEMBERS
When the structure is closed the resultant load of water in the upstream side of the
gate is acting in conjunction with the resultant load of water in the downstream side
which results in a force couple acting in the structure extreme ends. This type of
analysis considers the induced torsional moment effect that is exerted between gates in
the miter side and between the gate and the wall in the quoin side.
CONCENTRATED TORQUE AT Α = 0.1, Α = 0.3, Α = 0.5 ON MEMBER
The effects of hydrostatic pressure are taken into account when the structure is
closed. The resultant load of water in the upstream side of the gate acts in conjunction
with the resultant load of water in the downstream side resulting in a force couple
acting in the structure throughout its length. This force couple will induce torsional
effects in conjunction to shear stresses.
 Pinned Ends (α = 0.3, α = 0.5):
The effects of hydrostatic pressure are taken into account while the structure is
closed. This case models the gate as it is, assuming perfect boundary conditions with
no deterioration. The resultant load of water in the upstream side of the gate acts in
conjunction with the resultant load of water in the downstream direction resulting in a
force couple acting in the structure throughout its central length.
 Fixed-Free Ends (α = 0.1, α = 0.3, α = 0.5, α = 0.7, α = 0.9, α = 1)
This particular case is considered when it is desired to model the gate when it is
opening or closing. The structure behaves similar to a cantilever beam subjected to a
concentrated torque in any point throughout its length. This torque is caused by the
resultant load of water in the upstream side of the gate acting in conjunction with the
resultant load of water in the downstream side.
IDENTIFYING AND ESTABLISHING BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
When solving the differential equation for each load case a general solution is
obtained. By imposing the appropriate boundary conditions, the constants inside the
general equations can be evaluated for our specific cases. These torsional boundary
conditions specify mathematically the physical restraints at the member.
TABLE I: TORSIONAL BOUNDARY CONDITIONS FOR STRUCTURAL MEMBERS

Physical condition Torsional end condition Mathematical condition
No rotation Fixed or Pinned Ө=0
Cross-section cannot warp Fixed end Ө' = 0
Cross-section can warp
Pinned or Free Ө'' = 0
freely
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In members with several spans, the following conditions must be satisfied at a
support in over which the member is continuous or at a point of supplied torsional
moment:
EQUATIONS AND SOLUTIONS FOR SELECTED CASES WITH

RESPECTIVE DERIVATIVES
The type of loading to which the structure is subjected can be accurately

approximated as a constant torsional moment loading acting on it. This torsional
moment is decomposed in a resultant localized torsional force couple for analysis
reasons. The torsional moment resisted by the cross-section is the sum of Tt and Tw.
The first one is always present and it accounts for the resisting moment created due to
an unrestrained cross-section. The second term appears when the tendency of a cross-
section to warp freely is restrained and longitudinal bending results. Below is the
differential equation obtained after the terms substitution.
(1)
After determining the differential equation for a constant torsional moment the
specific boundary conditions that apply for each previously selected case should be
implemented in order to obtain the general solution representative for each case. The
following boundary conditions should be applied for the selected cases.
Fixed Ends
CONCENTRATED TORQUES AT ENDS OF MEMBER

o Left: Ө = Ө’ = 0
o Right: Ө’ = 0
CONCENTRATED TORQUE AT Α = 0.1, Α = 0.3, Α = 0.5 ON MEMBER

o Left: Ө = Ө’ = 0
o Right: Ө = Ө’ = 0
 Pinned Ends (α = 0.3, α = 0.5)

o Left: Ө = Ө’’ = 0
o Right: Ө = Ө’’ = 0
 Fixed-Free Ends (α = 0.1, α = 0.3, α = 0.5, α = 0.7, α = 0.9, α = 1)

o Left: Ө = Ө’ = 0
o Right: Ө’’ = 0
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For further development of the equations for each case and to obtain the respective
equations for Ө, Ө’, Ө’’, and Ө’’’ as a function of T please refer to the Appendix C in
[1].
DETERMINATION OF TORSIONAL MOMENT DUE TO EXPERIMENTAL

DATA
In order to determine the torsional moment induced in the structure, field data
should be compiled from experiments. In the case of study, the field data considered
is the Normal Warping Stresses generated in the structure. These stresses are direct
tension and compression stresses that result from bending of the elements due to
torsion. They act perpendicular to the surface of the cross section and are constant
across the thickness of an element of the cross section even though they vary in
magnitude along the length of the element.
Once these experimental stresses are obtained, it is a matter of substitutions in
order to determine the Torsion in the structure. With the now known values of the
normal warping stresses and the equation (eq. 2) it is possible to calculate the function
Ө’’.
(2)
(3)
After the function Ө’’ is calculated it is dispensable to select one of the study cases
presented above for the modeling the structure with the experimental data acquired.
Refer to the equations developed in part 4 and clear them for T in order to model the
structure and its members the equations for obtaining the torsional moment.
If desired, once the experimental values of the torsional moment are obtained they
can be used to calculate the values of Ө’ and Ө’’’. With these two values it is possible
to calculate the respective torsional components Tt and Tw induced in the structure.
(4)
(5)
DETERMINATION OF SHEAR STRESSES INDUCED BY TORSIONAL

FORCES IN THE STRUCTURE
Whenever a structure is subjected to torsion forces, the shear stresses are always
present. For that reason certain assumptions can be used in order to develop an
analytical formulation that can calculate the actual localized shear stresses in the
structural members. After the actual torsional moment is calculated for the desired
structural member it should be decomposed as a two force couple acting in each flange
of the structural member.
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Figure 1: Decomposition of the torsional moment calculated into a two force couple
By doing that, it is possible to assume that each flange in the shape acts as a
simply supported beam subjected to a localized force of T/h. Now it is possible to
take the sum of vertical forces in order to obtain the value of the shear force at any
point of the “beam”.
Figure 2: The flanges of the section are assumed to be simply supported beams
The following equation is the value of the shear force after the sum of vertical
forces is done:
(6)
Once the shear force is obtained by using basic static principles, it is possible to
calculate the shear stress induced in the specified location of interest. According to the
AISC [1], the following formula provides a precise approximation of the experimental
shear stresses.
359
(7)
TORSIONAL MOMENT FORMULATION FLOWCHART
The following is the flowchart developed to program the torsional moment

formulation in any programming language:
Figure 3: Torsional moment formulation algorithm flowchart
SHEAR STRESSES FORMULATION FLOWCHART
The following is the flowchart developed to program the shear stresses

formulation in any programming language:
360
Figure 4: Shear stress formulation algorithm flowchart
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The development of this analytical formulation provides engineers an excellent

tool for the monitoring and assessment of hydraulic steel structures, emphasizing in
miter gates. It is really a functional tool to be implemented in field inspections and
forensic studies. With this mathematical procedure it is possible to obtain the torsional
moments and forces that act in the structural members with its induced shear stresses
caused by the different external types and forms of loadings. With these results
engineers and scientists can prevent the failure of critical fracture members on
different related structures and can make the pertinent adjustments in order to
prolongate the life of the structure by minimizing future damages, influent structural
deterioration, and its possible collapse. The arrangement of the formulation makes it
able to be programmed and systemized in order to be capable of managing large
amounts of data. Algorithm flowcharts for the torsional moment and shear stresses
procedures are included to make easier the programming stage. It is recommendable
that the experimental results obtained with this formulation can be compared with
numerical analysis in order to calibrate 3D models of structures. In the future it may
be possible to couple real-time field experiments with numerical methods in a way
that leads engineers and scientists to better understanding of the structural behavior
and as a consequence better assessments will be obtained and design improvements
can be recommended and implemented.
REFERENCES
1. AISC. Torsional Analysis of Structural Steel Members. Steel Design Guides Series 9. American
Institute of Steel Construction. 1997
2. Estabrooks, Bruce G. . Combined Bending and Torsion of Steel I-Shaped Beams. University of
Alberta, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Structural Engineering Report No.
276. January 2008
3. Riveros, Guillermo A.. Numerical Investigation of Miter Gates. Navigation Systems Research
Program. US ARMY Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center. June 2009
4. Seaburg, Paul A. . Torsional Analysis of Structural Steel Members. Steel Design Guide. American
Institute of Steel Construction. October 2003
361
Experimental Evaluation of a Wavelet-Based
FEM and its Application to Load History
Identification
M. M. MOTA, L. PAHLAVAN and C. KASSAPOGLOU
ABSTRACT
In the present paper, the applicability of a 2D Wavelet-based Spectral Finite

Element Method (WSFEM) to Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has been
investigated from an experimental standpoint. The WSFEM resorts to the wavelet-
Galerkin method to solve in-plane wave equations using finite element discretization
of the space coordinates. In this research, the experimental evaluation resorts to the
application of the inverse problem to load history identification. To this end, Time
Reversal theory is employed, using a signal post-processing algorithm with multi-
resolution wavelet analysis. Results experimentally acquired at specific sensor
locations are windowed, denoised, and time-reversed; the impact load is reconstructed
via the numerical model as the confluence of the signals emitted from the sensors.
Furthermore, the performance of the model is verified for both 1D and 2D cases,
rendering a complete analysis of the 2D WSFEM. Test results show that WSFEM
accurately simulates wave propagation and the reliability of results establishes its
applicability to SHM.
INTRODUCTION
In an effort to ensure structural integrity, SHM has been introduced as a

multidisciplinary field which allows an online assessment. Reduction of aircraft
ground time and elimination of unnecessary maintenance checks are some of the goals
of this research area. To this end, several studies have been carried out in order to
determine methods and techniques that best fit the complex requirements of the
challenge at hand [1-3] The robust performance of methods using plate waves
propagation has resulted in great interest in SHM [1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10].
The necessity to portray reality in a reliable and time-efficient fashion has led to
the advent of numerous methods, such as the present Wavelet-based FEM, to solve
partial differential equations [6, 11, 12]. The Wavelet-based Spectral FEM (WSFEM)
in which this research focuses was developed by Pahlavan et al [6]. The latter resolves
problems introduced by the classic Finite Element Method (FEM) and Fast Fourier
Mariana Melo Mota, Lotfollah Pahlavan, Christos Kassapoglou, Delft University of

Technology, Kluyverweg 1, 2629 HS Delft, The Netherlands
362
Transform-based FEM (FFT-based FEM) by resorting to coarser meshes with high-
order shape functions, relieving numerical computation and enhancing accuracy.
Experimentally assessing this method allows further insight into its capabilities. The
inverse problem is carried out resorting to impact load identification using the Time
Reversal scheme.
Time Reversal theory has become an increasingly relevant technique in SHM; this
concept was first introduced by M. Fink [13]. It entails that it is possible to retrace the
paths of a source, converging at the latter, as if time was going backwards [13]. The
application of such theory to SHM has proven quite successful [8, 14, 15, 16],
resorting to Green's function to solve - with low computational effort - the problem.
However, the introduction of fast and reliable finite element simulation tools makes it
possible to not only identify the location of the load in a fast manner, but ultimately
extend the approach to detect loads varying in space and time.
This paper introduces the WSFEM used, followed by the inverse problem with the
use of Time Reversal theory and its application to load history identification. A brief
discussion of the signal post-processing counterpart is made, resulting in the
experimental procedures and results obtained.
WAVELET-BASED SPECTRAL ELEMENT METHOD
The Wavelet Transform (WT) emerged as a method to cope with lack of time
resolution presented by Fourier theory [17, 18]. In the past decades, WT became an
important tool for signal analysis and post-processing, image processing, data
compressing, and as of recently, solution of partial differential equations [6, 11, 12,
19].
Suggested by L. Pahlavan, the WSFEM [6, 20] uses the Wavelet-Galerkin method
to compute the 2D in-plane wave equations while employing the classic finite element
formulation for discretization of the space coordinates. An important feature of this
methodology is the possibility to enforce decoupling of the equations, allowing
parallel computation and hence significant reduction on the amount of computational
effort required.
TIME REVERSAL AND LOAD HISTORY IDENTIFICATION
Time Reversal (TR) is a concept in which M. Fink [13] identified the spatial
reciprocity and time reversal invariance of linear wave equations. In essence, a source
can be retraced by time-reversing the signal acquired at different locations by re-
emitting it in the direction of the former. This property has been therefore applied in
several fields, such as medicine and non-destructive testing, for instance.
Research into TR in SHM has recently intensified, with promising results.
However, most studies carried on force history identification have focused mainly on
reconstruction of the signal by means of the transfer function of the system [8, 14, 15,
16]. For the present research, however, this is employed by feeding the processed
experimentally collected data into the numerical model, thus pinpointing the location
of the load. Figure 1 demonstrates the procedures taken: the structure is inflicted with
an impact, the response of the structure is collected by sensors at known
363
10
10
5 Impact Location
Amplitude (V)
5
Amplitude (V)
0
0
−5
−5
0 1 2 3 4 5
Time (s)
0 1 2 3 4 5
Time (s)
PZT1 1
PZT2
1
0.8 0.8
Voltage (V)
0.6
Voltage (V)
0.6
0.4 0.4
0.2 0.2
0 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
Time(s) −4 Time(s) −4
x 10 x 10
Figure 1. Time Reversal applied to load history identification. An external force impacts the structure at
the load location, PZT1 and PZT2 acquire the response. Because PZT2 is closer to the source, the
traveling wave will reach this location first. Therefore, when time-reversed, PZT2 will be excited after
PZT1. Both time reversed signals, when fed into the numerical model, will reach the impact location at
the same time.
locations; following, the signals are properly windowed and denoised and, finally, the
resulting response is fed into the numerical model. By TR theory, confluence of the
waves generated at each sensor will occur at the impact location.
SIGNAL POST-PROCESSING
For experimental analysis, it is important to filter appropriately the data collected

in a scrutinized fashion. For signal post-processing, Wavelet theory was again
employed, based on its capability as a filtering tool [21]. The possibility to represent a
signal in its approximations and details, allows identification of frequencies pertaining
to noise, as well as isolation of the relevant tendencies of the signal.
For the specific case of impact load identification, however, the important
information of the signal is the instant, tini , at which the wave arrives at the sensor. In
the present study, the first half-cycle found on the response signal is considered to
identify the load location. An algorithm to enforce this requires, on a first level,
denoising resorting to properly pruning and thresholding the signal. The former entails
discarding unwanted frequencies; for this application, a decomposition of the signal
into a n set of approximations and details [21] allows discarding of all except for the
first approximation, the lowest frequency of the signal, the tendency of the response.
In other words, pruning is carried out by establishing a single-scale analysis,
analogously to what is employed in WSFEM.
Finally, the signal undergoes a proper windowing function:
 0 if t0  t  tini ,

f (t )   H if tini  t  t fin , (1)
 0 if t  t .
 fin
364
where t fin is the end of the first half-cycle. Note that tini is easily found with a simple
search for the first occurrence of a higher amplitude. This step can be carried out by
simply setting a threshold on the amplitude of the first half-cycle, therefore setting the
remaining signal to zero.
EXPERIMENTAL STUDY
An initial study was carried in order to establish the performance of the numerical
model with experimental results. An aluminum plate of 24.5x24x0.0005 m was
excited with a 30kHz 5-cycled tone-burst by a square (0.9cm) Piezoelectric Wafer
Active Sensor (PWAS) located on point 4 of Figure 2a. The results were collected
from PWAS 1, 2 and 3, also depicted on the same figure. Experimental results were
compared with the WSFEM simulations, as can be seen on Figure 3 for PWAS 3. Due
to the small size of the specimen, boundary reflections were expected at a quite early
stage. Nonetheless, a very good agreement between the experimental and numerical
responses was verified.
7
x 10
PZT4 1
Applied force (N)
−1
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
time (µsec)
8
x 10
3
FFT Amplitude
PZT1 PZT3
2
0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
frequency (KHz)
PZT2
(a) (b)
Figure 2. a) Geometry used; b) Excitation signal: 30kHz 5-cycled tone-burst.
0.05
Boundary
0.04 Experiment
WSFEM Reflections
0.03
0.02
Amplitude (V)
0.01
−0.01
−0.02
−0.03
−0.04
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Time (µs)
Figure 3. Experimental and WSFEM results for a 5-cycled 30kHz tone-burst.
365
Narrow Plate Analysis
The narrow plate test setup consisted of a 0.93x0.035x0.004 m aluminum

specimen with 6 Macro-Fiber Composites (MFC) built in. The latter perform in a
similar fashion to PWAS; however, because they mainly elongate along the fiber's
dimension, the system can be considered as a 1D problem. The MFCs were connected
to a buffer; for generating and acquiring signals, a NI PCI-6251 was used, interfacing
with LabView code. The structure was excited with a high-speed impact, where
MFC2, and MFC6 acquired the response of the structure.
The signals were windowed, denoised, and time-reversed according to the steps
discussed previously. The resulting signals were fed into the WSFEM code, and an
elementary imaging method was applied in order to detect the time frame at which
the impact occurred. This imaging method intends to behave similarly to a black
box; both MFCs are excited with the time-reversed signals and the resulting waves
generated will meet at the location where the load was applied. In other words, the
interference of both these waves will reach a peak at said location. By enforcing an
amplitude analysis of both signals applied at the MFCs and identifying the first
instance where both these amplitudes constructively interfere will yield the desired
location. Figure 4 illustrates the time frame at which there is complete unification;
Table I establishes an error of 5.33%, compared to the actual location where the
impact was applied, for a 30x10 mesh.
time = 0.57127 µs
0.02
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
(a)
time = 4 µs
0.02
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
(b)
time = 5.1416 µs
0.02
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
(c)
Figure 4. Load location for narrow plate case - experimental responses using WSFEM: a) Right-hand
PZT is triggered; b) Left-hand PZT is triggered; c) Load location.
TABLE I. LOCATIONS OF THE LOAD APPLIED FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS.

X load (m) X WSFEM (m)  x(%)
0.300 0.316 5.333
366
2D Plate Analysis
The 2D test setup used for experimental analysis consisted of a 0.75x0.50x0.001

m aluminum plate with 3 PZTs of diameter 0.9cm and a Honda Electronics actuator
with 50kHz frequency. A short pulse was inflicted on the structure by a signal
generator to simulate a high-velocity impact, and a PicoScope 3000 allowed
acquisition of data, interfaced with the respective software. The geometry of the
plate, as well as locations of the PZTs and the impact loads applied are depicted in
Figure 5. The received signals were windowed, denoised and time reversed; the
simulations were carried out using a mesh of 50x33.
For this analysis, the impact location could be determined as the point defined
by 3 arcs; the latter concerning the waves from PZT1, PZT2 and PZT3. In Figure
6a, this confluence is clear, demonstrating the computed location of impact point A.
The location of impact load B and C are depicted in Figure 6b and Figure 6c,
respectively. The actual impact locations versus the computed locations are
presented in Table II, yielding very good resolution of this method with a maximum
7% relative error.
CONCLUSIONS
An impact source identification scheme was presented based on the WSFEM and
Time Reversal. The WSFEM makes use of the wavelet-Galerkin method in order
spectrally formulate a finite element framework for solving plate wave equations. A
particular advantage of this method is that it retrieves accurate results with lower
computation time compared to commercially available FEMs.
A B
C
1 3
PZT
Impact Location
Figure 5. Geometry of the experiments carried out for the 2D specimen.
TABLE II. LOCATIONS OF THE LOAD APPLIED FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS.
Impact Point X ( m) X WSFEM (m)  x(%) Y (m) YWSFEM (m)  y (%)
A 0.370 0.379 2.676 0.450 0.439 2.422
B 0.500 0.513 2.600 0.450 0.419 6.822
C 0.370 0.379 2.432 0.250 0.2615 4.600
367
(a)
(b)
(c)
Figure 6. Load location for the 3 separate tests for the 2D plate case.
Furthermore, the parallel computation feature of this method allows further reduction
of computational effort and time. In order to strengthen this model's position in SHM,
however, experimental evaluation was required. Load history identification allowed
demonstration of the accuracy and reliability of the WSFEM. On a first instance, it
was possible to establish a good agreement between experimental results and WSFEM
by retrieving the response of a structure to a tone-burst excitation. As a second step,
experimental results collected from a narrow plate were treated and fed into the
numerical model. The location of the load was determined with high precision.
Finally, a 2D plate was impacted on 3 different locations; once again the model
368
showed very good performance retrieving accurately the location where the load was
applied for both x and y directions. It was possible to determine that the WSFEM
accurately simulates wave propagation, and can be used effectively for SHM
applications.
REFERENCES
1. V. Giurgiutiu, Structural Health Monitoring - with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors, Elsevier,
San Diego, 2008.
2. S. S. Kessler, Piezoelectric-Based In-Situ Damage Detection of Composite Materials for
Structural Health Monitoring Systems, Ph.D. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
2002.
3. J.-B. Ihn, F.-K. Chang, Detection and Monitoring of Hidden Fatigue Crack Growth Using a
Built-in Piezoelectric Sensor/Actuator Network: I. Diagnostics, Smart Materials and Structures
13 (2004) 609–620.
4. Y. Kim, S. Ha, F.-K. Chang, Time-Domain Element Method for Built-In Piezoelectric Actuator-
Induced Lamb Wave Propagation Analysis, AIAA Journal 46 (2008) 591–600.
5. W. H. Leong, W. J. Staszewski, B. C. Lee, F. Scarpa, Structural Health Monitoring Using
Scanning Laser Virbometry: III. Lamb Waves for Fatigue Crack Detection, Smart Materials and
Structures 14 (2005) 1387 – 1395.
6. L. Pahlavan, C. Kassapoglou, Z. Gürdal, Wavelet-based Finite Element Method for Crack
Detection in Plate Structures, World Congress on Computational Mechanics ’10 Sydney
(2010).
7. L. Pahlavan, C. Kassapoglou, E. L. Jansen, Z. Gürdal, Wave Propagation in
BoundedWaveguides Using Exact Values of Connection Coefficients of Wavelets, The 7th
International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (2009).
8. W. Qiang, Y. Shenfang, Baseline-Free Imaging Method Based on New PZT Sensor
Arrangements, Journal of intelligent Material Systems and Structures 20 (2009) 1664–1673.
9. P. Kudela, M. Krawczuk,W. Ostachowicz, Wave Propagation Modelling in 1D Structures
Using Spectral Finite Elements, Journal of Sound and Vibration 300 (2006) 88–100.
10. H. Peng, G. Meng, F. Li, Modeling of Wave Propagation in Plate Structures Using Three-
Dimensional Spectral Element Method for Damage Detection, Journal of Sound and Vibration
320 (2008) 942–954.
11. I. Christov, Wavelet-Gallerkin Methods for Partial Differential Equations, Technical Report,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003.
12. M. Mitra, S. Gopalakrishnan, Spectrally Formulated Wavelet Finite Element for Wave
Propagation and Impact Force Identification in Connected 1-D Waveguides, International
Journal of Solids and Structures 42 (2005) 4695–4721.
13. M. Fink, Time Reversal of Ultrasonic Fileds - PartI: Basic Principles, IEEE Transactions on
Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control 39 (1992) 555–566.
14. H.W. Park, H. Sohn, K. H. Law, C. R. Farrar, Time Reversal Active Sensing for Health
Monitoring of a Composite Plate, Journal of Sound and Vibration 302 (2007) 50–66.
15. C. Chen, F.-G. Yuan, Impact Source Identification in Finite Isotropic Plates Using a Time-
Reversal Method: Theorethical Study, Smart Materials and Structures 19 (2010) 1–11.
16. C. H. Wang, J. T. Rose, F.-K. Chang, A Synthetic Time-Reversal Imaging Method for
StructuralHealth Monitoring, Smart Materials and Structures 13 (2004) 415–423.
17. D. L. Hartmann, Objective Analysis - ATM S 552 Course Notes, Technical Report, University of
Washington, 2008.
18. C. Valens, A Really Friendly Guide to Wavelets (1999).
19. K. Amaratunga, J. R. Williams, Wavelet-Galerkin Solution of Boundary Value Problems,
Archives of Computational Methods in Engineering 4 (1997) 243–285.
20. L. Pahlavan, C. Kassapoglou, A. S. J. Suiker, Z. Gürdal, AWavelet-based Spectral Finite
Element Method for Simulating Elastic Wave Propagation, International Workshop on
Structural Health Monitoring ’11 (2011).
21. G. Strang, T. Nguyen, Wavelets and Filter Banks, Wellesley-Cambridge Press, Wellesley, 1997.
369
Application of Polarization-maintaining Fiber
Bragg Grating to Optical Frequency Domain
Reflectometry for Simultaneous Measurements
of Strain and Temperature Distributions
D. WADA, H. MURAYAMA, H. IGAWA, K. OMICHI

and K. KAGEYAMA
ABSTRACT
We have developed a distributed strain sensing system based on optical frequency

domain reflectometry (OFDR) using long-length fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), which
can measure strain distribution profiles along the FBGs with the high accuracy and the
high spatial resolution. If an FBG is inscribed into a polarization-maintaining and
absorption-reducing (PANDA) fiber, simultaneous strain and temperature
measurement can be performed. In this paper, we applied the simultaneous
measurement method to the distributed sensing system based on OFDR. We built the
OFDR sensing system with the FBG inscribed in the PANDA fiber and bonded the
FBG sensor part to a stainless plate. We applied bending loads as well as temperature
variations in an environmental chamber. We demonstrated the capability of the
simultaneous distributed strain and temperature measurement.
INTRODUCTION
Distributed sensing is one of the most promising capabilities of optical fiber

sensors for the purpose of structural health monitoring. The application of distributed
sensing for full-scale structures has been already demonstrated [1]. As a consequence,
it has been concluded that higher spatial resolution is essential for the accurate
structural assessment. We have developed a distributed strain sensing system based on
optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) using long-length fiber Bragg
gratings (FBGs) [2]. This system demonstrates the high strain measurement accuracy
of ±6  and the high spatial resolution of less than 1 mm. The distributed strain
measurement with 1500 mm long-length FBG based on the OFDR system has been
reported [3].
_____________
D. Wada, H. Murayama, K. Kageyama, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1
Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656 Japan
H. Igawa, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 6-13-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo, 181-0015
Japan
K. Omichi, Optics and Electronics Laboratory, Fujikura Ltd., 1440 Mutsuzaki, Sakura, Chiba,
285-8550 Japan
370
FBGs have dual sensitivity towards strain and temperature. The conventional way
to compensate the effect from temperature variations is to add another sensor which is
only sensitive to temperature. However, adding another sensor is not feasible
especially when the minor intrusion to a structure is demanded. When FBGs are
embedded in a material, for example, the sensors themselves could be a source of the
degradation of the structural integrity of the host material. In order to address this
problem, we employed polarization-maintaining and absorption-reducing (PANDA)
fiber. When FBGs are inscribed into a PANDA fiber (PANDA-FBGs), two Bragg
wavelengths appear corresponding to two polarization modes. Two Bragg
wavelengths have different sensitivities to strain and temperature. Therefore, two
measurands of strain and temperature can be calculated simultaneously from them [4].
In this paper, we applied the simultaneous strain and temperature measurement
method of PANDA-FBGs to the distributed sensing technique based on OFDR. We
bonded a PANDA-FBG to a stainless plate and set it in an environmental chamber.
We applied bending loads as well as temperature variations. Simultaneous distributed
measurement of strain and temperature were performed. Results showed the strong
correlations between the applied values and measured results, which demonstrated the
capability of this method.
MEASUREMENT SYSTEM USING PANDA-FBG BASED ON OFDR
The schematic of the OFDR system is shown in Figure 1. This system is similar to
the one proposed by Childers et al [5]. The system consists of a wavelength tunable
laser source (ANDO AQ4321), a PC with A/D converter (NI PCI 6115), 3dB couplers,
photodiode detectors, broadband reflectors and an FBG. We use low reflectivity FBGs
in this work, therefore the following approximate description of signals is sufficient
[5]. The tunable laser source sweeps the wavelength, , of the incident light, which is
split by couplers and proceeds towards Reflector 1, 2, 3 and FBG. The reflected lights
from Reflector 1 and 2 are observed by Detector1. The signal of Detector 1 is
expressed as
D1  cos2neff LR k , (1)
where k is the wavenumber given as k=2/, neff is the effective refractive index of the
fiber core and LR is the distance between Reflector 1 and 2. By triggering D1, we can
obtain the constant interval of the wavenumber, k, expressed as

k  . (2)
neff LR
We obtain the signal of Detector 2, D2, by the constant interval of k. D2 is expressed
as

D2   Ri k  cos 2neff Li k ,  (3)
i
371
where Ri represents the spectrum reflected at the location where the distance Li is away
from Reflector 3. The reflection characteristic of the FBG at a certain location, Ri,
wears an accompanying wave whose frequency is proportionate to the location of the
reflection. Therefore, we can demodulate FBG spectrums at arbitrary locations by
applying short time Fourier transform to D2.
A PANDA-FBG has two Bragg wavelengths in accordance with two polarization
modes, fast and slow mode, due to the birefringence built in the PANDA fiber. The
Bragg wavelengths of the fast mode, f, and of the slow mode, s, have different
sensitivities towards strain and temperature expressed as
  s   T   K K s  T 
   K     Ts   , (4)
 
 f



    K Tf K f   
where T and  represent temperature and strain changes, respectively, and the
components of the coefficient matrix, K, represent sensitivities. The first subscript of
K indicates temperature or strain, and the second indicates slow or fast mode. Once K
matrix is determined, a pair of observed Bragg wavelengths can determine two
measurands of strain and temperature by taking the inverse matrix of K and
calculating
     
   K 1  f  . (5)
 T    s 
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP FOR BENDING TEST
The setup of the experiment is shown in Figure 2. We inscribed a long-length 500

mm FBG into a PANDA fiber and bonded it to a SUS304 stainless plate. Strain
gauges and thermocouples were bonded to the plate for the reference. We used an
epoxy adhesive for bonding. We set the plate in an environmental chamber to apply
several steps of temperature variations. Temperature shifts from the room temperature
(17 °C) were 0, 33, 58 and 83 °C. We applied six steps of bending load at each step of
temperature variations. The steps of bending loads were varied from 0 N to 2000 N.
We performed 24 test cases in total. The strain distributes uniformly over the area
between two loading points and linearly over the side areas. Strain values were
calculated by the beam theory. Strain gauges and thermocouples were used for
verification of applied values.
Figure 1. The schematic of the measurement system based on OFDR.
372
Figure 2. Setup of the simultaneous distributed measurement experiment.
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Figure 3 shows examples of measured results of Bragg wavelength distributions.

The images are called spectrograms. The horizontal axis represents the wavelength,
which corresponds to strain and temperature variations, and the vertical axis represents
the location. The location corresponds to Li. Comparing two spectrograms, we can
observe the temperature variation from the area not bonded to the plate and strain
distribution from the bonded area.
Firstly, we determined the components of K matrix. We averaged Bragg
wavelengths over the FBG length located between loading points, which is where both
strain and temperature distributed uniformly. We expressed the average wavelength of
the fast mode for j th test case as  fj and slow mode as  sj (j=1,2,...,24). Through
measurements of all load and temperature conditions, we built an equation
  f1  s1 0 0   1 
   
 0 0  f1  s1   T1 
  k i 
  f2  s2 0 0     2 
 k ii  , (6)
 0 0  f2  s 2     T2 
  k iii  
         
  f 24  iv    
k
 s 24 0 0 
 
24
 
 0 0  f 24  s 24  
 24 
T
where j and Tj express applied strain and the temperature variations, respectively, at
j th case. ki, kii, kiii and kiv are elements of the inverse matrix of K expressed as
373
k k ii 
K 1   i  . (7)
 k iii k iv 
By taking a pseudo-inverse matrix, we calculated components of K-1 as

  f1  s1 0 0   1 
   
 0 0  f1  s1   T1 
 ki   
   f2  s2 0 0    2 
 k ii  
k    0 0  f2  s 2   T2  , (8)
 iii     
 
    

k  
 iv  
 f 24  s 24 0 0    24 
   
 0 0  f 24  s 24   T24 
and we determined individual components of K. The sensitivities were calculated as
K Tf  4.977[ pm / C ] K f  1.325[ pm /  ]
. (9)
K Ts  3.416[ pm / C ] K s  1.346[ pm /  ]
We calculated averaged strain and temperature over the area between two loading
points using  fj ,  sj , equation (5) and (9). The calculated strain and temperature are
shown in Figure 4. The measurement error of strain was from -117 to 122  and of
temperature was from -9.8 to 12 °C.
Secondly, we calculated strain and temperature distribution for the case of 720 N
and 83 °C. We picked up every pairs of fast and slow mode's Bragg wavelengths at an
arbitrary position over the FBG’s whole bonded part to the stainless plate and
calculated strain and temperature by equation (5). Figure 5 shows the results of this
simultaneous distributed measurement. The interval between each data point was 0.6
mm in this work. We can observe that errors are larger than those seen in Figure 4.
When it comes to the distributed measurement, minor errors of determining a pair of
Bragg wavelengths were thought to be amplified at solving equation (5). On the other
hand, the power of reflected FBG spectra at side parts of the bending was low,
especially for the slow mode, as seen in Figure 3 (right). This caused larger errors of
determining Bragg wavelengths, which resulted in far larger errors of strain
distribution results as seen in Figure 5 (a) (position: 4.79 - 4.84 m, 5.04 - 5.09 m).
This method of applying the simultaneous strain and temperature measurement
method using a PANDA-FBG to the distributed measurement system based on OFDR
demonstrated the capability of the simultaneous measurement when Bragg wavelength
distributions were averaged over the area where strain and temperature were
distributed uniformly, however, the improvement of the accuracy is to be a future
work for determining strain and temperature distributions simultaneously.
374
(a) 0 N and 0 °C are applied.
(b) 720 N and 83 °C are applied.

Figure 3. Spectrograms of the PANDA-FBG.
375
Figure 4. Simultaneous measurement results over the area between two loading points.
(a) Strain distribution.
376
(b) Temperature distribution.
Figure 5. Simultaneous distributed measurement results (720 N and 83 °C were
applied).
CONCLUSION
We inscribed a long-length FBG into a PANDA fiber to achieve the simultaneous

strain and temperature measurement. We applied the PANDA-FBG to the distributed
sensing system based on OFDR. Through experiments, simultaneous measurement
results showed good agreement with test conditions when Bragg wavelengths are
averaged over the area where strain and temperature were uniformly distributed. On
the other hand, the accuracy of determining strain and temperature distributions is to
be improved.
REFERENCES
1. Murayama H, Kageyama K, Naruse H, Shimada A and Uzawa K 2001 Application of fiber-optic
distributed sensors to health monitoring for full-scale composite structures J. Intel. Mat. Syst. Str. 14
3-13
2. Igawa H, Ohta K, Kasai T, Yamaguchi I, Murayama H and Kageyama K 2008 Distributed
measurements with a long gauge FBG sensor using optical frequency domain reflectometry (1st
report, system investigation using optical simulation model) J. Solid Mech. Mater. Eng. 2 1-11
3. Igawa H, Murayama H, Nakamura T, Yamaguchi I, Kageyama K, Uzawa K, Wada D, Ohsawa I,
Kanai M and Omichi K 2009 Measurement of distributed strain and load identification using 1500
mm gauge length FBG and optical frequency domain reflectometry Proc. of SPIE 7503 75035l-1-4
4. Sudo M, Nakai M, Himeno K, Suzaki S, Wada A and Yamauchi R 1997 Simultaneous
measurement of temperature and strain using PANDA fiber grating the 12th International
Conference on Optical Fiber Sensors. Technical Digest Series 16 170-3
5. Childers B A, Froggatt M E, Allison S G, Moore T C Sr, Hare D A, Batten C F and Jegley D C
2001 Use of 3000 Bragg grating strain sensors distributed on four eight-meter optical fibers during
static load tests of a composite structure Proc. of SPIE 4332 133-42
377
A System for Static and Dynamic Monitoring
of Ice Sport Arena
G. BOLDYREV and A. ZHIVAEV
ABSTRACT
The paper describes a monitoring system for assessing the current behavior
of a major Ice Arena, covered by 78m steel trusses. The system includes two
subsystems for independent assessment of static and dynamic behavior of
structures. It measures the levels of strains/stresses in the cover truss elements,
deflections of the cover trusses, vertical deviations of the frame columns and
frequency of the public stands bearing beams.
The hardware includes a main station, deformation sensors, inclinometers,
accelerometers and a cable network.
The deformation sensors are installed on the lower and upper belts of steel
trusses, inclinometers are located on the upper portions of bearing concrete
beams of public stalls.
The software performs stress-strain analysis with the help of the ANSYS
system and Geotek SHM monitoring system. The dynamic analysis is carried
out by Artemis Extractor Pro code. Analysis of the two-year long deformations
measurements has shown dependence on the environment.
INTRODUCTION
In June of 2010 a Federal Law "Technical Regulations on Safety of

Buildings and Structures" N384-ФЗ was enforced. As per Articles 15, 9 and
Articles 18 and 5, project design documents shall envisage environmental
measures to monitor a condition of grounds, the health of structures and utilities
during service life of buildings and structures.
Also State Standard GOST Р 53778-2010 [1] was enforced i.e., techniques
for evaluation of structural health of buildings during their construction and
further service.
The main requirements to automated monitoring systems (SHM) were
announced in other regulations, GOST 22.1.12-2005 [2] that was published in
2005.
These documents set up a normative base for broad application of SHM
systems in the Russian Federation.
__________________
G.G. Boldyrev and A.A.Zhivaev are with Research and Production Company
(NPP) Geotek Ltd., 440068, Penza, Centralnaja. 1, Russia
378
THE OBJECT OF MONITORING
The paper describes a SHM work project design, implemented in the city of
Omsk in 2008 on the Ice Arena structures with capacity of 15000 spectators.
The Ice Arena buildings occupy 148.2х88.2 m area (Figure 1). The height of
the cover top is 19.35 m. The frame consists of concrete columns, 31 to 78 m
span steel trusses sitting on them, concrete beams below stalls space, prefab and
cast floor plates. The 3D frame stiffness is ensured by vertical ties to columns,
stiffness diaphragms, vertical and horizontal ties on trusses and struts.
Figure 1. View of the building (a) and cover steel trusses (b)
SHM will be applied to assess the current technical condition of the main
bearing structures in service and the level of deformations/stresses in cover
trusses, their deflections, frame column tilts and dynamic parameters of concrete
beams of public stalls.
The SHM system will perform static and dynamic measurements.
In static measurements of strains will be done and the stresses in cover steel
frame units. Strain gauges will be installed within the areas of maximum
expected ANSYS analysis strains [3]. Column tilts will be measured by
inclinometers, installed on top of bearing columns have a maximum tilts. The
trusses span centers will be determined by measuring rotation angles of their
nodes.
Dynamic measurements include vibration frequencies of stalls bearing
beams. Displacement meters were installed on one of the beams to monitor the
width of cracks appearing in the beam. Dynamic parameters: natural
frequencies, deformation modes and damping decrement are determined with
the help of Artemis Extractor Pro software [4].
As per GOST 27751-88 [5] structures and grounds are analyzed as per the
limit states, and the main requirements are to ensure anomaly-free continuous
service. The limit states are broken down into two groups: the first one includes
limit states that result in complete service unfitness of structures and grounds (of
the whole buildings and structures) or in loss of bearing capacity thereof; the
second group includes limit states preventing normal operation of structures
(grounds) or reducing the service life of buildings (structures) as compared to
planned service life.
The general task of the SHM is the continuous simultaneous assessment of
two limit state occurrence. E.g., functionality of most concrete structures is
identified by their strength and deformability (deflections and tilts) and by limit
379
crack opening. Furthermore, crack opening is not allowed while corrosion could
be the major factor for stress-strain behavior.
Some construction regulations and rules in Russia [6, 7, 8] stipulate limit
values of parameters that restrict limit states. Such parameters include
deflections and tilts of structural elements of buildings as a whole (settlements
and tilts), as well as structural materials strength.
Meanwhile, the involvement factor could be different for each normalized
parameter. The involvement parameter is the ratio of an analyzed parameter
value in the current stress-strain state to its limit value. E.g., the involvement
factor for stress is equal to the ratio of the current stress value to the design
material strength. The involvement factor ( K ) equals to a value with 0 – 1
interval. If the factor exceeds unity than the structure looses its functionality.
The involvement factor could be applied to evaluation of the structure's health.
STATIC MONITORING HARDWARE SYSTEM
The static monitoring system includes the following components:

- PC with Geotek-SHM software installed, run by OS MS Windows XP;
- power units;
- units for sensor signals amplification and their conversion into digital
code, consolidated in mainlines;
- deformation sensors;
- crack opening sensors;
- inclinometers;
- thermometers;
- cablework.
Characterization of hardware
SHM hardware includes an industrial PC, 422/232 interface converter

GТ6.0.9, power units for +24V voltage lines, WCommScanCS5.06DB software
and MS SQL2005 database, GТ6.0.8 data acquisition units, deformation gauges
and inclinometers. The latter are powered by GТ6.0.8 units that have Analogue
Digital and Digital Analogue Converters, powered by +24V GТ6.0.9 units. The
measured data from sensor nodes are fed in PC via data communication line and
interface.
Gauges
Two types of gauges have been applied in this particular project: strain
gauges meters and inclinometers. The first ones are installed on the lower and
upper belts of steel trusses while inclinometers are positioned on the tops of
concrete columns and on truss lower belts.
Strain gauges
A Hall-effect based sensor is used. The gauge is equipped with an amplifier

and temperature fluctuation reducing devices. On top of it a thermocompenstor
is built-in the gauge i.e., additional magnetically isolated SS49E unit. SS49E
unit signals are fed to a differential amplifier, located on GТ6.0.9 unit. The
380
differential amplifier is programmed as per amplification factor and initial level
shift. The minimum amplification factor provides for the gauge deformation
measurement within ±75 μm range with ±0.04 μm.
Inclinometer
The inclinometer employs MEMS accelerometers. GТ5.4.3 inclinometer

employs one-coordinate ADXL103 accelerometer, Analog Devices, USA. The
unit has 1000 mV/g sensitivity. ADXL103 and additional voltage divider signals
are fed in differential amplifier that is programmed as per amplification ratio
and initial level shift. With a minimum amplification ratio, the sensor ensures
tilt angle count within ±3.5° range window (non-linearity ±0.5%) with
resolution ± 0.0018о and allows for the window displacement within ±25°
range.
Temperature sensors
These are specialized semi-conductor Analog Devices AD592 model

processors (–25… +105 °C), TMP17 (–40… +105 °C), AD22103
(0 …+100 °C), etc. ГТ6.0.8 unit uses AD22103 processor. Coincidence of the
processor power source and ADP reference voltage source eliminates voltage
source drift. Error ±2.5 °С, linearity ±0.5 °С.
DYNAMIC MONITORING SYSTEM
Vibrations of bearing concrete beams were monitored by Geo-SVK vibro-

seismic measuring complex of Geoacoustics company.
The complex includes:
- PC with installed GAZ4KAN code, run by OS MS Windows98;
- communication controller, connected to PC and to measurement units;
- measurement modules with connected accelerometers;
- one-coordinate A16 piezoelectric accelerometers with 0.1-100 Hz
operating range.
Autonomous dynamic monitoring system independent from the static
monitoring system. In both cases SHM data is fed to the same one database.
Dynamic vibrations measurements are used to determine the stalls beams
dynamic parameters and to check variations (stability) of dynamic parameters
versus time [9]. The dynamic parameters are frequencies, modes and natural
frequencies decay. These parameters are computed by Artemis Extractor Pro
software (www.svibs.com).
SHM SOFTWARE
SHM overall control is performed by the Geotek-SHM software that

automatically monitors the health of structural components on-site. The system
communicates structural health data to the dispatcher service via wire or
wireless data channels for further processing to evaluate, to prevent and to
eliminate the implications of destabilizing factors in real time.
381
The system forecasts and prevents emergencies by monitoring structural
elements condition and by evaluating deviations of their current values from
design values with the help of the involvement criterion.
Geotek SHM system software consists of modules for data acquisition from
various sensors, logical interaction module, the system core and a set of
dynamically connected modules. The set up is sequentially created from data
acquisition modules, assembled to the core and to its connected modules.
To assess a condition of structural modules in Geotek SHM system the
respective algorithms are used. The algorithms are classified as standard and
applied ones. A standard algorithm is a default one for each structural element
and is applied in case an applied algorithm is not available. A standard
algorithm can be applied for any structural element. An applied algorithm is
attached to a structural element, specifically during configuration. Applied
algorithms are based on particular structural elements types. Applied algorithms
for structural elements are assigned as per the structural element type.
In the process of SHM operation the data is acquired from deformation and
tilt sensors within a given time interval. The data from accelerometers is
processed and analyzed separately. The observed SHM elements include lateral
frames of the building, consisting of steel trusses and concrete columns. The
operator can opt to display diagrams on a computer monitor screen, showing
lateral frames of the building. This diagrams show locations of strain and tilt
sensors. Each of the truss bars is assigned a graphic card, showing it’s geometry
and sensor locations.
STRESS-STRAIN ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURES
There have been analyzed static and dynamic loadings, natural frequencies
and modes, the whole Ice Arena building stability ratio has been computed by
ANSYS [3].
The following types of finite elements were used for the FEM model:
BEAM188 for beams, SHELL43 for shells and MPC184 for ties, surface
elements SURF154 and SURF156 were applied for distributed loads, acting on
structural elements.
The analytical results of the first six natural frequencies are given in Table 1.
The first 24 natural frequencies of the sports center bearing structures stay
within 0.68 to 2.6 Hz range.
Table 1. Natural frequencies

Natural Natural frequency Natural Natural frequency
frequency Hz frequency Hz
number number
1 0.7404 13 2.5236
2 0.9478 14 2.5240
3 1.2272 15 2.5240
4 1.5441 16 2.5636
5 1.5452 17 2.5798
6 1.7520 18 2.5831
382
MONITORING DATA ANALYSIS
Below is analyzed the static monitoring system data for 2009 - 2010 periods.
The sensor data analysis for this period demonstrates the influence of some
factors on measuring channels readings that include sensors, electronic units,
power sources and cable lines. The ambient temperature and snow load were the
most influential factors.
Influence of temperature
The evident active factor, affecting all SHM measurement channels, is both
the external load, the structures proper weight and the ambient temperature.
Temperature daily fluctuations could be observed on strain gauges reading
profiles, from inclinometers and temperature proper. Therefore, evaluation of
measuring channels performance may be linked up with temperature daily
fluctuations i.e., if a channel is good then it reacts to temperature daily
fluctuations. Presence of daily oscillations can be assessed with the help of
spectrograms.
Figure 2. Spectrogram of the temperature measuring channel
The picture on Figure 2 is typical for all measuring channels. The color on
Figure 9 shows temperature fluctuations amplitude. Black color corresponds to
the temperature minimum while the white color to its maximum. The graph
horizontal axis marks time while the vertical one shows the temperature
fluctuations period. The graph demonstrates that the maximum of fluctuations
corresponds to 24 hours.
The variations of deformation measuring channels readings are negligible
while the maximum of fluctuations fit the 24-hour period that shows
dependence of readings on temperature.
383
Snow load
SHM continuously measures deformations of the cover of the truss element's

deformations during all seasons. The monitoring showed fluctuations in winter
time measurements.
Temperature
shedules
Deformation
shedules
Spring, summer, Spring, summer

Load 1 autumn 2009 Load 2 2010
Figure 3. Temperature sensors and strain gauges readings
Figure 3 shows registered variations of all strain gauges readings in areas

"Load 1" and "Load 2" while temperature sensors showed stable readings. These
follow winter periods. Meanwhile, during spring-summer-autumn periods the
sensors repeat temperature drifts. This shows that in winter there appears an
important factor, affecting the sensors (and structural elements as well) that the
temperature stop being the dominant factor, proving that the dependence on
Figure 3, obtained by forming up the column of mean values of readings of all
temperature sensors and subsequent analysis of this column correlation with all
strain gauges of the group within 90-day periods with 30 step (sliding window
technique). Thereafter a diagram was plotted with time markers as abscissa and
ordinate is temperature correlation median with the sensors within this interval.
Figure 4 shows that in winter the correlation versus temperature drops down
showing an external factor influence i.e., snow load.
CONLUSIONS
1. The experience of the developed system monitoring service demonstrates

the capability of automated systems application to continuous assessment of
structures technical condition.
384
Load 1 Load 2
06.02.2009
08.03.2009
06.07.2009
04.09.2009
03.11.2009
02.04.2010
07.04.2009
07.05.2009
06.06.2009
05.08.2009
04.10.2009
03.12.2009
02.01.2010
01.02.2010
03.03.2010
02.05.2010
02.07.2010
06.06.2010
Figure 4. Correlation strain gauges versus temperature
2. In-situ measurements analysis yielded several typical temperature-related

events. All such events affect strain gauges and inclinometers data. The air
heating-ventilation system of the Ice Arena is responsible for the maximum
impact on temperature variations.
3. In winter period the cover trusses are affected by an external factor i.e.,
snow load. This load does not exceed the safe margin. However, the sensor's
reading's trends show pronounced influence of the imposed load on the building
cover.
REFERENCES
1. State Standard P 53778-2010. Buildings and structures. Regulations for survey and
monitoring of technical condition. Moscow, Standardinform, 2010. 96 p.
2. State Standard Р 22.1.12-2005. Stucturized system of service lines monitoring and
management, 2005. 16 p.
3. Theory Reference for ANSYS and Workbench. Canonsburg: ANSYS Inc, 2008.
(www.ansys.com).
4. Artemis Extractor Pro. (www.svibs.com).
5. Safety of building structures and foundations. Principles of analysis. State Standard 27751-
88. Moscow, 1988. 9 p.
6. Standard 36554501-015-2008. Loads and actions. Moscow, 2009. 127 p.
7. Construction Code 2.03.01-84*. Concrete and reinforced concrete structures. Moscow,
2000. 77 p.
8. Construction Code 50-101-2004. Design and erection of foundations. Moscow 2005. 130 p.
9. Dynamic monitoring of nuclear building structures. Moscow, 2009. 3 p.
385
Wireless, Batteryless Distributed Strain
Sensing for Structural Health Monitoring
C. PALMER, A. GUTTERMAN, G. ARGENNA, V. INCLAN
and A. ZYUZIN
ABSTRACT
Accurate structural health monitoring and ‘remaining useful life’ estimation often
relies upon continuous data from sensors attached to critical areas of the structure of
interest. In this project, the authors demonstrated a scalable, low-cost wireless and
battery-less sensing network for enabling advanced health monitoring of structures
and other assets. In this phase of the effort, stand-alone strain sensors were driven and
read by an autonomous WISP-based (wireless identification and sensing platform)
“Computational RFID” node. Each WISP node is essentially an extremely low
powered microprocessor coupled with on-board data acquisition powered solely by
RF power harvesting.
To demonstrate the sensing concept, strain data from the WISP-based strain
sensors attached along a cantilever beam were transmitted through standard RFID
protocols to a commercial RFID reader connected to a computer. Tests that were run
included measuring the response to changes in static loads and recording temporal
response to dynamic loading (an oscillating beam). The effect of distance between the
sensor and the RFID antenna on the sampling rate was also explored.
The technology developed here can be extended to other sensing needs for health
monitoring applications. Initial efforts would include corrosion, humidity, and
temperature. The authors believe that the flexibility afforded by the wireless,
batteryless WISP-based sensing approach is a capability that the SHM community
should consider for applications where its fundamental ease of extendibility and
low/no maintenance benefits outweigh concerns related to presence of (standard) RF
emissions or having only moderate (>1Hz, <100Hz) sampling rates.
INTRODUCTION
Ships, submarines, planes, ground vehicles, and other structures undergo high
loads that can produce various types of structural damage. The resulting damage can
have detrimental effects on the overall platform strength and thus can compromise the
Carl Palmer, Adam G utterman, Garrett Argenna, Impact Technologies, LLC, 200 Canal View
Blvd., Rochester, NY 14623, (585) 424 1990
Valerie Inclan, Alexei Zyuzin, Illionix, LLC, Sammamish, WA
386
“mission” of the asset as well as human safety.
Unfortunately, performing non-destructive-examination/inspection (NDE) of
equipment at regular maintenance intervals is often impractical due to high cost,
manpower and logistical requirements. It is often difficult to access all the necessary
structural areas of the platform without teardown. Just as importantly, these
techniques also only give a single ‘snapshot’ of health. Useful information including
loading history (peak loads, overall time at load, dynamic/periodic loading profile,
combined load & temperature) cannot be fully captured by the snapshot NDE
techniques. Lastly, snapshot NDE methods cannot fully capture the system’s dynamic
structural response, which is often a critical indicator of structural health as well as a
potential diagnostic tool.
Because of these drawbacks to NDE techniques, there is a push to utilize systems
that can continuously monitor the health of a structure. For example, measuring strain
in-situ via strain gages is a traditional and well-accepted method for monitoring loads
in a structure. However, current strain measurement systems have drawbacks that
typically make them impractical for use on many platforms. These drawbacks
include: the costs of installation (One estimate says that the costs to install and run
wiring can increase the price of the measurement device up an order of magnitude
[1]); adequate processing; rugged wiring requirements; weight; installation difficulty;
electromagnetic interference (EMI) susceptibility; and inability to quickly update the
system to monitor ‘hot spots’. Some of these drawbacks also lead to a decreased
usefulness of the eventual data due to the introduction of inherent inaccuracies.
This paper describes a strain monitoring system based around ‘wireless’ and
‘batteryless’ (RF powered) strain gages that was developed to address the
aforementioned drawbacks of current wired strain gage measurement systems.
APPROACH OVERVIEW
The overarching goal of the program is to develop an integrated, easily scalable

network of ‘wireless’ and ‘battery-less’ sensors for structural health monitoring
(primarily for load). The WISDOM (acronym for “Wireless Distributed Strain Sensing
for Structural Health Monitoring”) system utilizes emerging “Computational RFID”
technology. CRFID is an enhancement to standard RFID technology (such as that
used at retail stores) that enables end sensors to be operated both wirelessly and
without an on-board battery.
In this program, the sensor network is comprised of unpowered autonomous
WISP-based CRFID sensor nodes from Intel Research [2] that utilize RF power
harvesting to run an extremely low powered microprocessor that drives the attached
sensor (Figure 1). The WISP transmits the sensor data via backscatter to RF ‘reader’
nodes/antennas that are connected (wired, but potentially unwired) to a network. These
nodes also provide the RF power to the sensors. The overall system concept is
illustrated in Figure 2.
This concept could enable near-ubiquitous continuous sensing of key structural
health parameters where (in the long term) the system can automatically recognize and
integrate multiple sensors of several types. This architecture allows maintenance
personnel to quickly add sensors of the appropriate types to structural areas that have
been identified as problematic.
387
Standard RFID
e.g. for inventory tracking
RF Power Plus Query
RFID Reader Return via backscatter
Static ID:
e.g. 0x1A2B34C5 RFID Tag
Computational RFID
e.g. for unpowered sensors
Power Plus Query
RFID Reader Return via backscatter Sense /

Compute
Results (in ID format):
e.g. 0x1234ABCD WISP CRFID Tag
Figure 1: Computational RFID (CRFID) Concept
Wireless Identification
and Sensing Platform
(WISP)
RF
Reader/
SG CS Antenna
T
SG RH
SG
SG SG
CS
SG
SG
SG
Possible W ISP-enabled sensors RH
SG – Strain gauge, CS – Corrosion,

T – Temperature, RH – Humidity…
Figure 2: Wireless Distributed Sensing System for Structural Health Monitoring
Extensibility Concept - Add Sensors to “Hot Spots” on the Fly without New Wiring
PROTOTYPE SYSTEM DESIGN
The Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP) is a programmable,

battery-free sensing and computational platform designed to explore sensor-enhanced
RFID applications. The generic WISP platform uses a 16-bit, ultra-low-power
microcontroller with Analog to Digital Converters (ADC) to perform sensing and
computation while operating exclusively from harvested RF energy. Sensors that have
been successfully integrated into the WISP platform in past projects include
temperature sensors, ambient light sensors, and accelerometers (see [3] for various
publications).
388
The WISP platform’s ADC measures voltage signals from a transducer/sensor. To
measure strain using the WISP, the resistive strain gauges must be biased and
balanced with a Wheatstone bridge. The differential signal output of the Wheatstone
bridge must be converted and amplified to a single sided, 0V to 1.8V compliant signal.
A 1000 ohm biaxial strain gauge was used. This large resistance reduces the power
required for strain sensing. Since the test setup (to be discussed) strains the beam
along one axis, one of the strain gauges was oriented to measure strain, while the
second strain gauge (offset by 90 degrees) compensated for changes in temperature. A
photograph of the mounted strain gauge with Wheatstone bridge & amplifier (analog
board), and WISP is shown in Figure 3.
The WISP platform and communications is compatible with any EPC Class 1 Gen
2 protocol RFID readers. A commercially available 6 dBi circularly polarized RFID
antenna was used (1W power output per antenna).
WISP platform
Antenna
Analog board
Strain gauge
Figure 3: Strain Gauge, Analog Board and WISP
EXPERIMENTS – DISTANCE BETWEEN SENSOR AND ANTENNA
Because the overall viability of the system depends on the ability of the WISPs to
gather enough energy to both power sensing and transmit data back to the RF antenna,
the development team carried out tests to determine the effects of antenna to sensor
distance on sampling and transmission rate. Note that these numbers are for the initial
prototype system, without any optimizations employed – i.e. This is essentially the
worst-case scenario.
The sample rates of five different WISPs were measured at varying distances from
a 1W reader antenna. A WISP was taped to a non-conductive stand while the reader
antenna was placed at the edge of a table. The WISP stand was then moved to
increase or decrease the distance between the WISP and the reader antenna.
In this configuration, the highest sample rate of the WISP was approximately 35
samples per second when programmed to take strain measurements. This maximum
sample rate is obtained when the distance between the WISP and the reader is below
15 inches. (Table I)
TABLE I: SAMPLING RATE FOR WIRELESS STRAIN SENSING WISPS

Distance (inches) 5 15 40 75 145
Average Sample Rate of 5 WISPs (samples/sec) 35.0 23.6 0 0 0
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The range is limited by the power that the strain gauge requires. As the WISP is
moved further away from the reader, it receives less power. At a certain distance, there
is not enough power to run the strain sensor continuously. This test shows that 1) the
concept works, but 2) the initial system put together needed improvement.
Numerous enhancements can be made to improve on these numbers. The first of
which is to allow the system to accumulate charge via a super-capacitor. With this
enhancement, the WISP performs well at distances greater than six feet (Table II).
Other enhancements that can potentially speed up the sampling rate or distance are
given in the future work section.
TABLE II: SAMPLING STRAIN SENSING WISPS WITH ON-BOARD SUPERCAPACITOR

Distance (inches) 5 15 40 75 145
Average Sample Rate of 5 WISPs (samples/sec) 40.7 40.0 24.4 35.4 4.73
SYSTEM DEMONSTRATION
In the WISDOM system demonstration, five strain gauges were placed six inches
apart along the centerline on each side of an aluminum cantilever beam (10 total
gauges). All five WISPs were attached to the top of the beam. A wire was run from
each WISP to the underside of the beam to another strain gauge on the bottom of the
beam (i.e. in this demo each WISP drove two sensors simultaneously). The RFID
antenna was mounted above the beam to wirelessly power and communicate with the
WISPs. The overall test setup (without the user interface computer, which can be
located a long way away) is shown in Figure 4.
Commercial RFID Antenna

-wired to RFID reader
Commercial RFID ‘Reader’

- wired to computer by
standard ethernet
Cantilever
beam (used to WISP ‘Sensor Node’
test sensors) -Completely unwired (except to
second strain gauge on bottom
of beam)
Figure 4: Test Setup
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The response of the highest stressed sensor to increasing levels of static load
applied to the end of the cantilever (weight hung on end) is shown in the software GUI
in Figure 5. Similar results were obtained from the other sensors.
3D Plot of current
beam stress
(interpolated)
WISP sensor list
Data from selected sensor

(Strain vs. time)
Figure 5: Sensor ‘Static’ Response
FFT showing
beam resonant
Dynamic response – frequency
oscillation decay
Figure 6: Sensor ‘Dynamic’ Response
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Figure 6 shows the dynamic response of the same sensor. Here the beam was
‘plucked’ at the end and allowed to vibrate. In this case, the update rate was 23
samples per second for the selected sensor. The interface also provides an FFT
calculation (lower right), which shows that the beam has a resonant frequency near 10
Hz. This is the value expected based on the beam geometry and material used.
Other key concepts that were demonstrated included:

 The ability of the system to automatically accept and remove sensors without
the need for manual re-calibration, adding wiring runs, or other sophisticated
setup.
 Utilizing the fact that all the sensors were going directly into the same back
end, so that one could easily cross-validate results. For example, in one
dynamic test, a second 3.5 Hz spectral peak was observed. However, as this
was observed by all the sensors, it pointed to a beam mounting issue that was
solved by tightening a clamp.
FUTURE WORK
The WISDOM system performance and applicability can be improved by working

on a number of different aspects:
-Straightforward on-platform firmware improvements:
 Range and sample rate are a trade-off on the WISP platform. This
optimization between desired sampling rate and achievable distance could be
configured for each application. For example, one can modify the firmware to
allow for a longer power recharge cycle. This would increase the range of the
WISP (at the cost of lower sampling speed).
 Altering the simple 1 measurement/1 transmission coupling that was used in
the concept demonstration. Given that SHM data is rarely used
instantaneously, the WISP tags could be programmed to sample more
frequently, and send a ‘burst’ communication with a summary of the data on a
less frequent basis.
-Optimization of the basic electronics. The following test demonstrated there is room
to improve here:
 When the WISP is programmed to return only the static ID without making
sensor readings, (similar to the capabilities of commercial RFID tags) the
WISP can work up to 13 feet away from the reader. Commercial RFID tags
(non-WISP) are able to return the static ID up to 32 feet away from the reader.
The power consumption of the WISP is higher than commercial RFID tags
because the tags are comprised of a specialized microchip, whereas the WISP
is currently made of non-optimized off-the-shelf discreet components. In the
long run, if the system is redesigned so it only uses one specially made
microchip, it would dramatically cut the parasitic inside the hardware.
-Optimization of the antenna:
 Antenna designs could include using a ‘meandering line’ dipole (which makes
the ‘tag’ more compact.
-Ruggedization:
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 Of course, as the system is intended for SHM applications, it will by definition
need to operate in a harsh environment. All component pieces (sensor
electronics, antennas, readers, etc.) need to be ruggedized, packaged and
certified for that environment.
CONCLUSIONS
This project demonstrated that a scalable network of WISPs can be used to gather
strain measurements wirelessly and without batteries. This phase showed the
feasibility of this SHM technology; however, the range, sample rate, and size of the
sensor/WISP package would need to be improved and optimized for the end
application. At the current time, the authors believe that the system is most
appropriate for SHM applications where:
1) Moderate or lower frequency sensing is needed. For example, this system is
not appropriate for sensing very high frequency vibration.
2) There are not issues related to using RF for powering or communications.
3) There is a large benefit to ‘stick-on’ sensors rather than having to wire to each
single sensor (or having to install very long fiber-optic type sensor lines to
cover the appropriate areas of interest).
4) There is benefit to being able to add sensors ‘on-the-fly’ to emerging hot spots
on the structure.
5) Multiple standard sensing types need to be integrated through one system.
6) Sensor maintenance issues, such as battery change-outs, can be problematic.
REFERENCES
1. R.D. Kane, D.C. Eden, S. Amidi, and D. Delve, “Implementation of Real-Time Corrosion
Monitoring With Industrial Process Control & Automation,” Corrosion 2007, NACE International,
Houston, TX, March 2007
2. http://www.seattle.intel-research.net/wisp/
3. http://wisp.wikispaces.com/
This work was made possible through a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR)
grant through the United States Navy.
393
Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing for Wind
Blade Strain Monitoring and Defect Detection
A. M. KAPLAN, S. M. KLUTE, D. K. GIFFORD and A. D. HEANEY
ABSTRACT
We present results from using optical frequency domain reflectometry for

high-density distributed fiber optic measurement of strain in a composite wind
blade during dynamic fatigue testing. Three optical fibers were bonded to the
surface of a 9-m wind blade in a grid pattern at the root, and along both the spar
caps of the high- and low- pressure sides. The fiber contained distributed fiber
Bragg gratings each 50-mm long spaced 50-mm apart and strain measurements
were taken with 82-um spatial resolution across each grating. Within the first 10k
cycles at 100% load a region of concentrated strain less than 40 mm wide was
identified. This work illustrates the evolution of this region as the blade fatigued,
demonstrating the potential of distributed fiber optic strain measurement for early
defect detection in large-scale composite structural health monitoring.
INTRODUCTION
Advanced composite wind turbine blades are complex structures that are likely
to exhibit non-uniform, anisotropic strain fields when loaded. Analysis and health
monitoring of these structures, therefore, requires a high-density strain
measurement system in order to assess blade design, record structural health over
time and assess localized defects that might be initiation sites of future catastrophic
failures. The most commonly accepted method for measuring material strain today
are electronic foil gages bonded to a structure’s surface. Conventional foil gages,
however, are not well-suited for distributed sensing because extensive wiring is
required for high-density measurements, potentially increasing the mass of the
structure by a significant fraction and perturbing the system.
Advancements in optical fiber sensors over recent decades have resulted in a
variety of methods for sensing strain and temperature. In general, optical fiber
sensors are small, lightweight and immune to a variety of environmental factors
such as electro-magnetic interference. Distributed sensing by optical fibers has
been demonstrated using multiplexed fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), Brillouin
scattering, and Raman scattering [1,2]. Recent advancements in Optical Frequency
Domain Reflectometry (OFDR) have shown high-accuracy strain measurements
with spatial resolutions as fine as a few millimeters [3]. We report here on
Aaron Kaplan et. al., Luna Innovations, 3157 State Street, Blacksburg, VA 24060, U.S.A.
394
Figure 1. Diagram of optical network for OFDR with FBGs.
distributed strain measurements made by OFDR interrogation of an optical fiber

with semi-continuous FBGs. Using this method strain is recorded across thousands
of gratings simultaneously in a single fiber. Moreover, OFDR allows us to measure
strain changes that occur within a single grating enabling data acquisition with sub-
mm spatial resolution.
An experimental carbon fiber composite blade, the CX-100, was designed and
fabricated by Sandia National Laboratories. Luna Innovations, in collaboration
with Sandia, instrumented the blade with approximately 30 m of optical fiber. The
blade was subsequently cycled to failure at the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory National Wind Technology Center (NREL/NWTC). On the first day of
dynamic testing at 100% load, a small area of concentrated strain was identified.
By examining in how the localized strain response of this region evolved over time
we show the potential for high-density distributed strain measurements to identify
failure locations prior to large-scale damage.
METHODOLOGY
The three optical fibers were interrogated using Luna Technologies’ OFDR
system designed for use with fibers of semi-continuous FBGs at acquisition rates up
to 500 Hz. A FBG is a periodic change in the refractive index of the core of an
optical fiber created by exposing a photosensitive fiber optic to a designed pattern
of ultraviolet light. By Fresnel reflection and interference the changes in refractive
index create a wavelength-dependent filter, the spectral response of which depends
on the spacing of the FBG pattern and variations of refractive index. As the fiber is
subjected to thermal or mechanical strain, the grating expands or compresses,
resulting in a measureable change in the spectral response.
OFDR can interrogate thousands of identical weakly reflecting FBGs along a
single fiber simultaneously. Light from a swept wavelength laser is launched into
the measurement fiber and the amplitude and phase of the reflected light is analyzed
as a function of distance through interferometry. Figure 1 shows a diagram of the
OFDR measurement system. Light from the source is split between the reference
and measurement arm of an interferometer using a fiber optic coupler. The light in
the measurement path is sent to the fiber under test through an optical circulator and
reflected back through the same circulator to combine with light from the reference
path at the second coupler. Both S and P polarization states are measured
independently by two detectors, and a polarization controller in the reference arm
ensures an even distribution at the beam splitter. The interference pattern between
395
the measurement and reference signals is recorded as the laser sweeps; a Fourier
transform of the signal yields the amplitude and phase of the reflected light as a
function of distance along the fiber [3,4].
To find the strain at a given location in the fiber, the complex data resulting
from this first Fourier transform is windowed around the desired location. The
width of this window becomes the gage length of the strain measurement. This
width can be as small as tens of microns and allows us to quantify strain gradients
within a single grating. An inverse Fourier transform of the bandpass-filtered data
yields the reflected spectrum from that small section of fiber. This spectrum is
cross-correlated with a spectrum from the same location measured with the fiber in
a nominal, baseline state. The spectral shift between these two data sets is converted
to strain using a known, linear calibration coefficient. This process is repeated along
the fiber to create a measurement of the distributed strain [5,6].
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
An experimental wind blade designated CX-100 (Carbon Experimental) was

designed and manufactured through a collaborative effort between Sandia National
Laboratory, Northern Power Systems, Global Energy Systems Consulting, Dynamic
Design Engineering, MDZ Consulting and TPI composites. The CX-100 is a 9-m
fiberglass wind blade with a carbon fiber spar cap that runs the entire length of the
blade [8]. The rotor blade was first installed on a 100-kW generator at the USDA-
ARS turbine field test facility in Bushland, TX for operational testing. Afterwards
it was delivered to the NREL facility near Boulder, CO for instrumentation and
fatigue testing.
The blade surface was prepared by light sanding and cleaning, typical of
installation procedures of metal-foil strain gages. Three 10-meter fibers were
bonded to the blade using Vishay M-Bond GA-2 while the blade was supported on
saw horses. Each fiber was single mode, polyimide-coated optical fiber with 0.5-
cm long gratings spaced 0.5 cm apart. As shown in Figure 2a, one fiber was
Figure 2. Instrumentation of the CX-100 wind blade by bonding optical fibers in a grid at the root,
(a), and along the HP side, (b). The white arrow denotes grid Segment 1.
396
Figure 3. Approximate 2D projection of the fiber grid bonded to the root of the blade. Dimensions
are in fiber length, the dashed line shows the HP spar-cap fiber complimenting the grid. Segment 1
is in bold and arrowed.
Figure 4. Experimental setup of the beam for dynamic testing.
bonded in a coarse grid across the root of the high-pressure side. Figure 3 shows an
approximate representation of the grid fiber unwrapped onto a 2D plane above the
blade surface. Two more fibers were bonded along the length of the spar cap on
each the high- (Figure 2b) and low- pressure (HP and LP) sides of the wind blade.
Along the spar-cap fibers four small loops, approximately 8-10 cm in
circumference, were left unbonded at equally spaced intervals to calibrate strain
measurements with thermal expansion. The gratings were interrogated with a
spatial resolution of 82 microns providing approximately 60 discrete strain
measurements per grating. The 60 strain measurements can be averaged for
improved signal to noise ratio or examined individually in areas of high strain
gradient.
After fiber installation the blade was suspended horizontally from the root with
the HP side up as shown in Figure 4. In this position all three fibers were scanned
to acquire a baseline measurement throughout. Strain measurements during static
and dynamic loading of the blade are calculated as strain relative to this baseline.
During dynamic testing a fixed weight was placed on the load saddle and a
hydraulic actuator tipped the blade mount about a pivot point at a rate near the
blade’s fundamental oscillation frequency.
RESULTS
During the collaborative effort with Sandia National Laboratories, data was
acquired during static and dynamic load testing of the CX-100. This paper focuses
on the dynamic test results from the grid fiber and LP-side spar cap fiber. After
397
Figure 5. Strain profile of the LP-side spar cap fiber after 26,500 cycles for one half-period of the
blade cycle. Traces are 54.7-ms apart as the blade travels from compression to tension.
Figure 6. Strain profiles of grid fiber Segment 1, emphasized in Figures 2a and 3, after 26,500
cycles at the same times as Figure 5. Arrowed is Grating 40.
completing 26,521 cycles under light load the amplitude of oscillation was
increased to 100% the designed load at a fundamental frequency of 1.84 Hz. Data
was acquired at a rate of 256 Hz for six seconds, capturing approximately 10.8
blade cycles in each acquisition. Temperature changes in all data presented has
been accounted for. Figure 5 show the first acquisition, taken at 100% load after
26,521 cycles. Plotted are six strain profiles, taken 54.7 ms apart, of the LP-side
spar-cap fiber for one half-cycle of the blade’s movement from compression
(earlier, blade down) to tension (later, blade up). Data has been down-sampled and
averaged to one measurement per grating, equivalent to one strain gage every
centimeter with a gage length of 0.5 mm. Figure 6 shows the same acquisitions for
Segment 1 of the grid fiber on the blade root. Of interest is the large, isolated
region of compression located at 40 cm of the fiber length, arrowed, and at the
approximate 0.8-m blade position as labeled in Figure 3. Segment 1, bonded to the
HP side of the blade, experiences compression when the blade is up, and elongation
when down.
In Figures 7-10 the region about Grating 40 is examined in detail; the x-axes
are local to the 38-44 cm region of Figure 6. The data has been ensemble-averaged
over five periods of the blade cycle, but not down sampled, and visible is the
nominal grating width of 0.5 cm and 1-cm center-to-center spacing. Figure 7a
shows the strain profile when the blade has reached its maximum upward
deflection, when the grid segment is in compression. Figures 7b, 7c and 7d were
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Figure 7. Strain profiles about Gratings 40-41 of grid Segment 1 after 26,500 cycles for one half-
cycle of the blade progressing from compression (a) to tension (d). From (a), (b), (c) and (d) are
taken 117, 195 and 273 ms later.
cycle of the blade. From (a), (b), (c) and (d) are taken 117, 195 and 273 ms later.
acquired 117.2, 195.4 and 273.6 ms later, 7d being the blade deflected furthest
downward. Gratings 39, 40 and 41 experienced large gradients of strain, the
difference between maximum and minimum strain recorded across each grating was
405 µε, 1020 µε and 710 µε, respectively. These transitions occur over the length
of a 5-mm long grating, clearly demonstrating the efficacy of high resolution strain
measurements to investigate variations of strain across a grating length.
In Figures 8 the blade has completed 49,000 cycles at 100% load. In Figure
8a, observed again is the same localized event in compression centered between
Gratings 40 and 41, but its shape and magnitude has changed; the minimum strain
recorded is -1800 µε in Grating 40, previously the minimum recorded strain was
less than -2600 µε. In tension, 8c-d, there is a significant increase in the magnitude
of the strain response centered between these two gratings.
399
cycle of the blade. From (a), (b), (c) and (d) are taken 117, 195 and 273 ms later.
Figure 10. Strain profiles after 1.3M cycles while running at 133% designed load. From the max
compression state, (a), (b), (c) and (d) are taken 117, 178, 203 and 273 ms later.
At cycle count 70,940 a hairline fracture was identified on the trailing edge of
the blade at approximate blade position 0.9 m, and was observed to be heading in
the direction of Segment 1 of the fiber grid. In Figure 9, the blade having
completed 196,000 and still at 100% load, there is a distinct change in the strain
profile about the gratings of interest. In 9a Gratings 40 and 41 record little
compression, and arrowed in 9b is an apparent inflection point. In 9c, as tension
across grid Segment 1 increases, a uniform strain is recorded. At maximum tension
in 9d, these same points are absent as the strain has increased beyond the
measurement range of ~3200 µε. All of these observations are indicative of the
fiber having locally unbonded from the surface of the wind blade, believed to be
due to the hairline fracture propagating beneath the optical fiber at Gratings 40 and
41. As the surrounding regions compress, the unbonded fiber buckles, recording
little change in strain. In tension, however, the hairline fracture expands, pulling
uniformly upon the unbounded fiber. In Figure 10 further evidence of the fiber
having unbonded as a result of the blade fracture is acquired. Here the blade has
completed 1.3 million cycles and is running at 133% load after having completed
400
one million cycles at 100% load, and 100k cycles at each 110%, 121% and 133%.
The observed reduction in compressive strain in 10a is coupled with a significant
increase in measured tensile strain in 10b-d as the blade progresses downward. The
region of flat, tensile strain has broadened significantly in addition to having
increased in magnitude.
CONCLUSIONS
We demonstrated here the novelty of using OFDR for distributed strain sensing
of a complex composite structure. During early dynamic fatigue testing of the wind
blade a localized event where the strain varied by 1000 µε over just 40 mm was
identified. As the blade cycled, and fractured, this same region’s strain profile
changed while surrounding regions remained constant. Based on these observations
we have shown OFDR and distributed fiber optic sensors can record anomalies in
wind turbine blades and have the potential to predict future failure points. OFDR
made practical the collection of data from a dense array of spatially distributed
sensors that is unrealistic with other existing technologies. This ability was crucial
for our investigation of the fatigue failure of a composite wind blade and may
provide future capabilities for in-situ monitoring and failure prediction in large-
scale composite structures.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We gratefully recognize the Department of Energy, Sandia National

Laboratories Wind Energy Department for providing access to the SNL Sensored
Rotor Blade 1 and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Wind Turbine
Technology Center for providing the opportunity and support for this investigation.
REFERENCES
1. Rogers, A. J. 1999 “Distributed optical-fibre sensing,” Meas. Sci. Technol. 10(8): 75-99.
2. Davis, M. A. and A. D. Kersey. 1996. “Simultaneous measurement of temperature and
strain sensing using fiber Bragg gratings and Brillouin scattering,” in Distributed and
Multiplexed Fiber Optic Sensors VI, A. D. Kersey and J. P. Dakin, eds. 2838: 114-123.
3. D. K. Gifford, M. E. Froggatt, S. T. Kreger. 2011. “High precision, high sensitivity
distributed placement and temperature measurements using OFDR-based phase tracking,”
in Optical Fibre Sensors, W. Bock, J. Albert, X. Bao, eds. 7753: 243.
4. Soller, B. J. and D. K. Gifford, M. S. Wolfe, M. E. Froggatt. 2005. “High resolution optical
frequency domain reflectometry for characterization of components and assemblies,”
Optics Express, 13(2): 674.
5. Soller, B. J. and M. Wolfe, M. E. Froggatt. 2005. “Polarization resolved measurement of
Rayleigh backscatter in fiber-optic components,” in National Fiber Optic Engineers
Conference, NWD3.
6. Kreger, S. and D. K. Gifford, M. E. Froggatt, B. J. Soller, M. S. Wolfe. 2006. "High
resolution distributed strain or temperature measurements in single- and multi-mode fiber
using swept-wavelength interferometry," in Optical Fiber Sensors,ThE42.
7. Paquette, J. and J. van Dam, and S. Hughes. 2007. “Structural Testing of 9 m Carbon Fiber
Wind Turbine Research Blades” in AIAA Wind Energy Symposium.
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AEROSPACE STRUCTURES: FIELD
EVALUATION AND VALIDATION
403
Real-Time Micro-Explosive Damage Detection
in an Unmanned Rotorcraft Vehicle Using
Embedded Sensing
H. EDGE, H. CHUNG, M. COATNEY, B. MARY, P. TIBBITS,
M. MURUGAN, A. GHOSHAL, D. LE and M. PAPPAKOSTAS
ABSTRACT
Demonstration of damage detection and related Health and Usage Monitoring

System (HUMS) technologies for condition-based maintenance (CBM) is most
convincingly done through flight testing. Demonstration of damage detection using
manned aircraft may not be feasible due to airworthiness requirements which must
ensure safety of the flight crew. However, demonstrations using an Unmanned Air
Vehicle (UAV) provide unique opportunities to test the in-flight detection and
monitoring of damage to critical aircraft components without risking a flight crew.
UAV demonstrations can therefore initiate faults into primary aircraft structure while
in flight to study real-time fault-sensing capability of advanced sensors. The U.S.
Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is collaborating with Acellent Technologies to
demonstrate the diagnostics capability of advanced sensor systems to detect embedded
flaws/damage on structural components using an unmanned rotorcraft vehicle (URV).
ARL developed innovative techniques to initiate controlled flaw/damage using micro-
explosives on a principal structural element (PSE) on the URV. The selected PSE on
the URV is a side plate, shielding the engine compartment of RAPTOR 90. Two
Acellent SMART Layer sensor patches were surface bonded to the damaged panel.
The installed sensor systems can actuate and receive guided Lamb waves at multiple
frequencies simultaneously. Data collected from the damaged PSE, compared with the
baseline signals collected prior to the damage, showed change in amplitude and phase
of the signals, indicating the presence of damage. Analysis of the signals by the
Acellent Smart Patch software indicated a structural change within the PSE from the
damage initiated by the micro-explosive. A ground-based flight test stand was
developed and built to inexpensively address concerns about the safety of personnel in
the area of operation of the selected URV. Preliminary tethered flight tests were then
conducted as a risk reduction to planned free flight tests within the Army airspace. An
autopilot was developed and control parameters were determined. The tethered flight
tests showed that stable, autonomous flight could be achieved.
Patrick Tibb its, Muthuvel Murugan, Michael Coatney, Bria n Mary, H arris Edge, Aninidya
Ghoshal, D y Le: Army Res earch L aboratory, Ab erdeen Pr oving Ground, MD 2 1005 Mark
Pappakostas, Howard Chung: Acellent Technologies, Inc., 835 Stewart Drive, Sunnyvale, CA
94085
405
INTRODUCTION
Development of structural health monitoring (SHM) is complex and involved

numerous technologies, but it shows tremendous potential for safety and economic
benefits. Demonstration of structural damage detection capability and other related
technologies potentially used for CBM via flight testing using manned aircraft may
not be feasible due to airworthiness requirements and safety of the flight crew[1]. This
paper details the collaborative research among the Mechanics and Autonomous
Systems Divisions of the ARL Vehicle Technology Directorate (VTD) and Acellent
Technologies to advance crack and damage detection capability and other related
technologies to be incorporated into HUMS. The research demonstrated crack and
damage detection capability on a selected URV. The research main steps are:
 Select a URV with a typical PSE.

 Select suitable metallic and composite materials to be used in the duplication of
the selected PSE. Fabricated two PSEs in accordance with the manufacturer’s
design.
 Obtain selected materials properties and fatigue crack growth (FCG)
characteristics to fully understand the materials behavior under loading.
 Design and fabricate a small electro-explosive device (EED) to rapidly introduce a
predictable structural flaw in the fabricated PSEs.
 Select a crack/damage detection system to be installed on the selected URV to
monitor the fabricated PSEs.
 Develop a strategy for safely and inexpensively accumulate flight time, in lieu of
conducting flight tests at an Army airfield, using the selected URV equipped with
crack/damage initiation system and a low-cost HUMS to collect data. Develop risk
mitigation and demonstrate full understanding of progressive failure of fabricated
PSEs and controlled risks to secure the Army safety office approval for actual
flight testing.
 Conduct flight tests of the selected URV with fabricated PSEs and installed
damage detection sensors.
 Analyze the data to establish flaw detection and qualitative flaw location.
Establish the probability of detection of the selected monitoring system.
EXPERIMENTAL TEST SET-UP & PROCEDURE
In collaboration with the ARL-VTD Mobility and Manipulation Team at the

Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG), four URVs have been made available. The
available URVs include the Yamaha RMAX, Vario XLV, Raptor 90, and T-Rex 450.
The URVs are shown in Figure 1 and their development is described in [2]. One of the
smaller URVs, the Raptor 90, is currently used to gain full confidence prior to
incorporating flaws into selected PSEs using a larger URV. The Raptor 90 URV side
plate structure was selected as the PSE to assess and demonstrate advanced sensor
system capabilities for damage detection and damage growth monitoring. The
406
exploded view of the Raptor 90 airframe is illustrated in Figure 2 a), in which the side
plate is indicated.
A controlled crack/flaw initiation technique, which could potentially be remotely
activated in-flight, was developed with support from the ARL Sensors and Electron
Devices Directorate (SEDD) Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR)
Technology Integration Branch. This technique uses micro-explosives to create flaws
at a desired location on a selected component. An M100 electric detonator was chosen
for the initial flaw initiation experiments. The M100 occurs in many Army munitions
and contains approximately 32 mg of explosive [3]. It is small (0.100 inches (2.54
mm) in diameter and 0.25 inches (6.35 mm) long), which makes it easy to fit the
detonator at almost any point on the airframe. Though small, the M100 is a sensitive
explosive detonator requiring care in handling and protection from static discharge.
Other methods were considered, including percussion primers and piston actuators. A
percussion primer is typically found in the base of a cartridge, e.g., in small arms
ammunition.
Figure 1: ARL Available URVs
Side Plate
a) b)
Figure 2: a) The Raptor 90 Airframe and Selected PSE b) The Side Plate with Sensors Installed
407
The primer functions a pyrotechnic mixture when impacted by a weapon’s firing
pin. While safer to handle, its output would be too weak to cause damage. In addition,
for in-flight operation, a large, heavy solenoid and firing pin would be required which
would severely restrict placement of the device on the airframe.
Piston actuators resemble detonators but instead of explosive they contain a
pyrotechnic mixture and a metal piston. When functioned electrically, the mixture
rapidly generates gas which moves the piston forcefully from the end of the device.
The piston is retained at the end of its stroke. The actuator offers ease of initiation and
containment; no fragments are generated. The disadvantage is the amount of force
produced, typically a few tens of pounds at most. This can still equate to a fair amount
of pressure as it is applied over an area of 0.125 inches (3.175 mm) in diameter.
Unfortunately, no piston actuators were readily available at the time of the test.
The M100 was chosen as it was virtually certain to cause some degree of damage.
If the damage were too great it could be reduced by introducing an attenuating
material. Its small size, low energy requirements, and ready availability made it the
choice of the firing material for the first round of testing. To decrease the level of
damage imparted by the M100, an attenuating material was placed between the M100
and the plate to be damaged. The attenuating material, commonly known as
butterboard, is a packaging material for explosives. Initial flaw initiation tests were
performed on square plates made of aluminum 5056. These tests were followed by
controlled flaw initiations on two versions of the Raptor 90 side plate, one made of
carbon fiber composite and one made of aluminum alloy 5056. All flaws were created
in the laboratory on isolated side plates.
Acellent SMART Layer sensors [4-7] were selected and installed on a composite
Raptor 90 side plate, after flaw creation, as shown in Figure 2 b). Each of the Kapton-
based sensor strips contained three piezoelectric transducers capable of generating
Lamb waves. Each transducer can detect the Lamb waves produced by the other
transducers. The flawed, instrumented side plates were then connected to Acellent
ground-based instrumentation, which interrogated the sensors and collected the
resulting data. The data was examined with the Acellent SmartPatch software using
time-history analysis to generate the damage image, Figure 5 b). To increase
flexibility in sensor installation, which in turn facilitates optimization of sensor
location, a version of the side plate was fabricated without lightening holes. The
lightening holes are the seven largest holes which appear in Figure 2 b). Later
iterations of this experimental effort will focus on this design.
An initial flight test with the sensor installed on the PSE was completed. Sensor
integrity was confirmed via comparison of post-flight data to baseline data collected
pre-flight.
Current operational procedures for UAVs prohibit flying an unsafe aircraft. Using
a ground test stand allows operation of URVs having airframes with structural flaws
and enables testing of real-time structural health monitoring sensors and flaw detection
systems. The stand was enclosed in a safety cage to minimize potential risk. A portion
of the cage is visible as shown behind the RMAX in Figure 1. The stand and cage aim
to allow the selected URV to achieve autonomous captive flight to accumulate flight
hours without the need to conduct free flight testing, reducing risk and cost for
experiments with HUMS on defect-embedded rotorcraft components.
The ground test stand resembled a design of the University of Texas at Austin [5]
but incorporated increased overall strength and substituted a spring for the gas-filled
408
T-Rex 450
Arm
Harness
Figure 3: Ground-based Flight Test Stand with T-Rex 450
Table I. Degrees of Freedom for Ground Test Stand

Pitch Roll Yaw Translation & Elevation
±30º ± 10º * 0 to 360º Limited by 1 m Arm (4-bar Linkage)
*
Roll artificially limited to increase margin of safety
strut, which compensated for arm weight. The stand’s harness can accommodate
URVs having rotor diameters of 0.6 to 1.5 m. The URV movements allowed by the
test stand appear in Table I. Initial flights to assess the test stand were carried out with
a small URV, the T-Rex 450, which was mounted on the test stand as shown in Figure
3. Manual flights were performed first. Then system identification experiments were
performed to develop controls for stabilizing the URV autonomously on the ground
test stand [6]. Also, a previously developed microcontroller-based autopilot [7,8]
(ARL Open Autopilot) was modified for experiments on the stand with the T-Rex 450
URV. This autopilot allows custom control software to be written and developed
quickly. It is also small enough and light enough to be flown on the T-Rex 450.
Table II summarizes the test parameters and damage achieved in each flaw
initiator test. A typical hole and typical dimples appear in Figure 4a) and b). The flaw
created on the carbon fiber composite side plate using the micro-explosive device
appears in Figure 4 c), in which a crack along with possible underlying delamination,
not readily visible, connects the two holes. Results were most sensitive to the
presence/absence of the butterboard attenuator. In aluminum, the butterboard
moderated damage from a through-hole to a dimple while, in composite, the crack
width was decreased from 7/16 inches to 1/8 inches wide (11 to 3 mm). Because the
detection of a crack in metallic components is an important SHM problem, neither the
through-holes nor the dimples induced on the aluminum are entirely satisfactory.
409
Table II: Flaw Initiation Tests
Test Test M100 Butterboard Mount Distance from Damage & Size,
No. Plate Orientation Thickness, Location Reference, Inches (mm)
to Plate inches (mm) Reference inches (mm)
1 Solid Normal None Edge 0.25 Jagged Hole, 1/16 (1.6) dia.
5056 Al (6.35) Edge bend
Dimple, 1 (25.4) dia.
2 Solid Normal None Edge 1 Jagged Hole, 1/16 (1.6) dia.
5056 Al (25.4) Dimple, 5/8 (16) dia.
3 Solid Parallel None Edge 1 Rough Pitting, Scratches
5056 Al (25.4) Dimple, 5/8 (16) dia.
4 Solid Normal 0.037 Edge 2 Dimple, 5/8 (16) dia.
5056 Al (1) (50.8)
5 Solid Normal 0.100 Center 1 Dimple, 5/8 (16) dia.
5056 Al (2.54) (25.4)
6 Raptor 90 Side Normal 0.037 Between Midway Dimple, 5/8 (16) dia.
plate (1) Lightening
5056 Al Holes
7 Raptor 90 Side Normal 0.037 Between Midway Slight crack, mountside
plate (1) Lightening Large crack, underside,
Composite Holes 7/8 (22) long, 1/8 (3) wide
Delamination
8 Raptor 90 Side Normal None Between Midway Slight crack, mountside
plate Mounting Large crack, underside,
Composite Holes 7/8 (22) long, 7/16 (11) wide
Small through hole
Delamination
a) b) c)
Figure 4: a) & b) Underneath M100 Test on Flat Al 5056 Plates c) on Composite Raptor 90 Side Plate
The Lamb waves generated by transducer 3 and the sensor signal received by
transducer 4 is shown in Figure 5 a). The sensor locations and numbers are illustrated
in Figure 5 b). Transducers 1, 2 and 3 were used as actuators and transducers 4, 5, and
6 were used as sensors, resulting in a total of 9 actuator-sensor paths that formed a grid
encompassing the target damage detection monitoring area. The baseline data,
collected before initiation of damage, appear in blue while the post-damage data
appear in red. Acellent ACESS software post-processed data from the 9 actuator-
sensor paths, which have been used to generate the diagnostic image, appears in
Figure 5 b). Contour colors graduate from blue to red to indicate the probable damage
location. The Acellent’s data collection hardware uses discrete actuator and sensor
connectors, facilitating low noise/low crosstalk signal generation and capture. Close
sensor spacing can be utilized without signal degradation, allowing for high-resolution
damage detection.
410
Damage
Baseline 1 3
2
5
6
a.
4 b.
Figure 5: a.) Baseline and Post-Damage Data b.) Post-processed Image
As a testament to the benefit of ground test stands and flight safety, during an
experiment with a T-Rex 450 URV, the tail rotor belt broke. In free flight, the URV
and autopilot may have been irreparably damaged. On the test stand, the URV spun
briefly and harmlessly in the harness. Only the belt needed to be replaced in order to
continue the experiments.
The harness allows the URV to pitch, yaw, and, roll, but its attachment points
define axes of rotation, which do not pass through the center of gravity of the URV.
Hence, the harness does not permit the same rotation of the URV, which would occur
in free flight. To allow natural rotation, a custom harness needs to be fabricated for
each URV, and the URV airframe will possibly need to be modified to accommodate
the proper attachment points to mitigate the effect of the constraints. Issues will still
remain with different vibration frequencies being generated in captive flight versus
free flight. Additionally, it requires precise navigation to follow the constrained path
of the test stand to minimize forces generated by the test stand and acting on the URV.
Early results from the ground test stand indicated that aircraft stability in
autonomous flight was achieved. Control system identification of an operating
rotorcraft on the ground test stand was successfully performed using the ARL Open
Autopilot. As currently configured, the gains for control of pitch and roll of the
helicopter computed for captive flight cannot be directly applied to free flight.
CONCLUSIONS
The RAPTOR 90 URV and its side plate structure were selected to assess and
demonstrate Acellent system capabilities for damage detection and damage growth
monitoring. Controlled flaw initiations were accomplished with an electro micro-
explosive technique. The flaw initiator has the potential to be remotely triggered to
create cracks/flaws on structural components during flight. Its output can be attenuated
to deliver varying degrees of damage to the component. Its small size and light weight
allow it to be easily mounted on a surface. The URV structural element fabricated
from ductile 5056 aluminum alloy did not lend itself to cracking by micro-explosive.
The carbon fiber component developed macroscopic cracks and delamination even
though the surface, where the M100 was mounted, displayed little visual indication of
extensive damage. The selected sensors survived initial flight tests, and the damage
detection system demonstrated flaw detection and qualitative flaw location on a
411
quiescent structural component in a laboratory setting. If some disparities between the
ground test stand flights and free flight are acceptable, then the relatively inexpensive
prototype ground test stand and autopilot developed for this program can safely
accumulate flight hours, at low cost, for validating HUMS detection of damage in
rotorcraft PSEs.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
 A crack is the desired flaw for the aluminum component. More research will be
conducted on initiation of flaws in a structural element fabricated from the less
ductile 7075-T6 aluminum alloy.
 Improvements to the ground-based flight test stand will be made to reduce the
effects of the harness constraints and to allow better determination of free flight
control gains.
 A larger URV will be instrumented with a selected mini-HUMS and sensors.
 Acquire full understanding of the FCG of fabricated PSEs, potential risk, and
safety issues during flight
 Flaw initiation will occur during tethered flight of an instrumented URV and,
potentially, during free flights after safety concerns have been successfully
addressed.
 Further evaluation of the system will include evaluation of receiver operating
characteristic (ROC) curves [9,10] to characterize damage detection probability
versus false alarm rate.
REFERENCES
1
Farrar, C.R., Lieven, N.A.J., 2007, Damage Prognosis: The Future of Structural Health Monitoring,
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 2007 365, 623-632
2
Cai, G., Chen, B.M., Lee, T.H., 2009, An Overview on Development of Miniature Unmanned
Rotorcraft Systems, Frontiers in Electrical and Electronic Engineering China 2010, 5(1): 1-14
3
Millar, R.W., Lead-Free Initiator Materials for Small Electro-Explosive Devices for Medium Caliber
Munitions: Final Report 04 June 2003, QinetiQ/FST/CR032702/1.1
4
Lin M, Chang F-K. The manufacture of composite structures with a built-in network of piezoceramics.
Composite Science and Technology 2002 62:919–939.
5
Training Apparatus for Remote Control Model Helicopters, patent number 4,917,610, April 17, 1990
6
Moses, A., Collins, J., Edge, H., Garcia, R., “Method for Miniature Rotorcraft System Identification
and Controller Evaluation”, ARL internal communication, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, APG
7
Slegers, N., 2010, Modeling and Control of a Tethered Rotorcraft, US Army Research Office Final
Report Number 56044-NS.1, Contract Number W911NF-09-1-0567
8
Slegers, N., 2008, Miniature Rotorcraft Flight Control Stabilization System, US Army Research
Office Final Report Number 53331-MA-II.1, Contract Number W911NF-07-1-0508
9
Egan, J. P. 1975 Signal detection theory and ROC analysis. New York, NY: Academic Press.
10
Duda, Hart, Stork, 2001, Pattern Classification, 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY.
412
Comparisons of SHM Sensor Models
with Empirical Test Data for Sandwich
Composite Structures
V. HAFIYCHUK, D. G. LUCHINSKY, V. N. SMELYANSKIY,

R. TYSON, J. MILLER and C. BANKS
ABSTRACT
This paper reports on analytical work, as well as experimental testing, that

were accomplished at the Ames Research Center and at the Marshall Space Flight
Center to examine acoustic wave propagating and the ability to detect intrinsic faults
in sandwich type composite structures. Sandwich type composites are being studied
for use in NASAs new heavy lift launch vehicle and flaw detection is crucial for
safety and for failure prognostics. The work reported on in this paper involved both
the theoretical modeling as well as comparison with empirical testing needed to
answer the question of feasibility for reliable, and accurate, structural health
monitoring (SHM) in the composite structure of interest. The analytical model of the
transient wave propagation and scattering based on the Mindlin plate theory was
developed. A scattered transient field properties are calculated theoretically using
this model and numerically using the finite element model for acoustic waves
generated by an acoustic-patch actuator. It is shown that theoretical results are in
agreement with the results of numerical simulations and with experimental results.
Introduction
Composite sandwich panels (CSP) are replacing metals in engineering

applications due to their high strength and low weight properties, as well as their
flexible production capabilities [1]. Their stiffness-to-weight ratios and the lack of
corrosion lead to the wide usage of them in the naval ships, airplanes, bodies for
vehicles and trains, etc. They are very prospective for space applications where
light flight structures immediately lead to higher payloads. CSP, to which we
restrict our consideration here, are complex structural materials made from stiff
facesheets and soft cores and are usually referred to as sandwiches with soft cores.
Sandwich panels have one basic drawback in common: they all share failure mecha-
nisms and structural failures occur internally, out of the view of normal visual
means of inspection. Internal de-bonds, de-laminations, cracks, and/or buckles are
_____________
V. Hafiychuk, D. G. Luchinsky and V. N. Smelyanskiy, NASA Ames Research
Center, Mail Stop 269-3, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA
R. Tyson, University of Alabama, 1804 Sparkman Dr. Huntsville, AL 35816, USA
J. Miller and C. Banks, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL 35812
413
typical local failure modes, decrease the strength of composite material sandwich
structures, and may lead to serious damages and even to structure disintegration.
Many methods are used for investigating acoustic wave propagation and
scattering in the framework of structural health monitoring (SHM). We consider
that the waves are excited by piezoelectric transducers (PZT), which act both as
actuators and sensors. In this paper we use plate theory for analytical investigation
of wave propagation in sandwich panels, discuss parameters, governing equations,
and the properties of the basic sandwich panel. High-fidelity simulations are
employed to compare the results of the simulation with analytical results. Some
comparison with experimental study is made.
Plate theory for sandwich structures.
In a Mindlin plate theory the displacements of the plate in the transverse, radial, and
tangential direction components are expressed as follows [2-5]
w = w(r , θ , t ), u = zψ r (r , θ , t ), v = zψ θ (r , θ , t ),
where z is the coordinate defining points across the thickness of the plate ( z = 0 is
the neutral plane) and w is the out-of-plane displacement, ψr and ψθ are the
rotations of vertical lines perpendicular to the mid-plane. The governing equations
for the symmetric honeycomb panels in terms of moments M and shear forces Q
can be presented as
1 ∂Qθ ∂ 1 ∂2
+ Qr + Qr − Qθ = ρ 2 w , (1)
r ∂θ ∂r r ∂t
∂M rr 1 1 1 ∂ ∂2
+ M rr − M θθ + M rθ − Qr = I 2 ψ r , (2)
∂r r r r ∂θ ∂t
1 ∂M rθ 2 1 ∂ ∂2
+ M rθ + M θθ − Qθ = I 2 ψ θ , (3)
r ∂r r r ∂θ ∂t
where ρ = ∑ 3k =1 ∫ ρ k dz , is the mass density per unit area of the plate, index k
bk
ak
corresponds to the material layer, ρk is the density, I = ∑ k =1∫ ρ k z 2 dz is the

3 bk
ak
mass moment of inertia. Each layer in the sandwich panel is bounded by the coor-
dinates ak and bk in the thickness direction as shown in the Fig. 1. The stress
resultants in terms of moments M rr , M θθ , and M rθ , along with shear forces Qr
and Qθ can be related to the transverse displacements and rotations as follows:
D  ∂ψ r ∂ψ  D(1 −ν )  ∂ψ r ∂ψ 
M rr =  r +ν (ψ r + θ ) , M rθ =  −ψ θ + r θ  , (4)
r  ∂r ∂θ  2r  ∂θ ∂r 
D  ∂ψ r ∂ψ   ∂   1 ∂ 
M θθ = ν r + ψ r + θ  , Qr = 2G ψ r + w  , Qθ = 2G ψ θ + w,
r  ∂r ∂θ   ∂r   r ∂θ 
where D = E f t 3f 6 + Ectc3 12 + E f t f (t f + tc ) 2 4 - is the flexural stiffness, ν is the

Poisson ratio, which for the sake of simplicity is taken as equal for each layer, Ef, Ec
414
- Young's modulus of the facesheet and the core, correspondingly, tf, tc - thicknesses
of the facesheet and the core layers, G is the shear stiffness of the plate.
Wave propagation. The general solution of the acoustic waves propagation
with cycling frequency ω is ( w,ψ ) = Re [ (W , Ψ ) exp(−iωt ) ] [2-7], where and
throughout this paper, Re(.) denotes the real part of the quantity in parentheses,
ψ=(ψr,ψθ). For isotropic sandwhich layers wavenumbers have three brunches:
2
k1,2 = ( k p2 + k s2 ) / 2 ± k 4f + ( k p2 − k s2 ) 2 / 4 , k 32 = k12 k 22 k p2 , (5)
where
ks = ω / cs , k p = ω / cp , k f = (ρω2 / D)1/4 , cs = (G ρ )1/2 , cp = ( D I )1/2 .
The flexural wave corresponds to the real ω,k in whole ω domain. The second (and
third) dilatation branch of (k,ω) dependence become real starting from the cutoff
frequency.
Model of the scatterer. The scattering problem for Mindlin plate theory was
considered in several articles. Pao and Chao [6] considered scattering of a flexural
wave at a circular hole. The circular inhomogeneity was considered in [4] and the
graduate damaged model - in [7].
Let us consider the following scattering problem (see Fig. 1b). The circular
delamination (debond) is located at the center of the sandwich composite panel
(x=y=0). The source of the cylindrical wave generated by PZT sensor is located at a
distance b from the center of the circular delamination (x=− b, y=0). In this paper
we extend the damage model of the defect in the CSPs in such a way that it allows
us to differentiate between the delamination and debonding faults. The sketch of the
damage model is shown in Fig. 1a. It consists of two vertically stack circular
cylinders with integral properties depending on the location of the fault. If the fault
is located in the facesheet the model represents a delamination. If the fault is
located at the interface between the facesheet and the soft core the model represents
a debond. To find the parameters of the fault we will use formulas for a non--
symmetrical sandwich panel [1], which for brevity are not presented here. In this
case, the symmetrical sandwich part of the panel is denoted by index 1. The
delaminated region consists of two subregions (see Fig. 1b): (i) a subregion with the
sandwich core denoted by index 2 and (ii) the delaminated facesheet subregion
denoted by index 3 with plate parameters D2, I2, G2, ρ2 and D3, I3, G3, ρ3,
correspondingly. If we introduce wavenumbers kij for the delaminated regions we
can use the dispersion relation for the roots (5) with parameters corresponding to
indices 2 and 3 (index 1 belongs to the symmetric sandwich panel without any
damage). As a result, we get a square matrix of kij where the first index is a
number of a root (5) and the second one is a number of a media (j= 1,2,3 ). For the
self-consistent behavior of the delaminated region we impose boundary conditions
between the delaminated region and the healthy annular sandwich beam. These
conditions include the continuity of the plate displacements, the equality of the
slopes, moments and shear forces at r=a:
w1 = w2 = w3 , ψ r1 = ψ r2 = ψ r3 , ψ θ1 = ψ θ2 = ψ θ3 ,
(6)
M rr1 = M rr2 + M rr3 , M r1θ = M r2θ + M r3θ , Qr1 = Qr2 + Qr3 ,
415
a b
Figure 1. Sketch of the sandwich structure with delamination fault. Domain 1 (healthy panel) is
connected with two domains 2 and 3 through the boundary of the fault – a, Geometry of the
scattering of the incident wave - b .
where moments and shear forces are described by expressions (4), with
corresponding indices.
Incident wave. We will consider a circular-patch actuator on the Mindlin
plate generated by a surface traction plate waves in the form derived in [2,5]. For
the sake of brevity let us consider only win component which for the actuation
circular force leads to the incident wave for r<b
∞ ,2
win ( r , ω) = ∑ si ε n ( −1) n H n ( ki1b ) J n ( ki1r ) cos ( nθ),
n = 0 , i =1
(7)
where si are a certain constants depending on wavenumbers ki and Hankel functions

H 0 ( k r + b ) are expanded into a Fourier series and εn is the Neumann factor, ε0=1,
εn=2 (n=1,2,3,…) [8].
The solution of scattering waves from the fault. If we consider that
equations (1)-(4) are true for each domain: outside the damage and inside of it
(j=1,2,3), the solution is separated into three domains, where the delaminated
region, in turn, consists of two domains. As a result, the general solution can be
represented for r > a by incident and scattered waves. We seek the solution in the
form of a linear combination of the scattered and incident waves. The functions we
have used for the solution should be finite at r = 0 and vanish at r → ∞. As a
result, the general solution for the domains i = 1,2,3 is
 w1 ≡ wnin + a1n H n ( k11r ) + a2 n H n ( k21r ) |r > a

∞ 
w( r , t , θ ) = Re ∑e − iωt cos( nθ )  w2 ≡ a4 n J n ( k12 r ) + a5 n J n ( k22 r ) |r ≤ a (8)
n =0  3
 w ≡ a '4 n J n ( k13 r ) + a '5 n J n ( k23 r ) |r ≤ a
Here wavenumbers kij are calculated for three media and the first index i
corresponds to a root, and the second index j - to a medium (expressions for ψr,ψθ
are not presentet here for making writing concise). The boundary conditions (6),
lead to a system of linear algebraic equations for each value of n
Anun = bn (9)
The matrix An and vector bn and complete list of the matrix elements can be
calculated by symbolic calculus and is not presented here.
As a result we obtain a system of linear algebraic equations relative to
416
' ' ' T
constants un = (a1n , a2n , a3n , a4n , a4n , a5n , a5n , a6n , a6n ) , which can be solved nume-
rically. We find that the first several main modes determine the spectrum of the
scattered wave, and truncation of n at n=30-50 in eqautions (9) gives practically the
same result at any desired wave frequencies. According to the expression of a1n,
a2n:
det A1n (k ij (ω)a) det A2 n (k ij (ω)a)
a1n (ω) = , a 2 n (ω) = , (10)
det An (k ij (ω)a) det An (k ij (ω)a)
the elastic field around the circular debond is computed and the coefficients
a1n , a2n determine displacements outside the debond region. In expressions (10)
matrix A1n ( k ij a ) is obtained by substituting the first column in matrix An (kij a)
by the left hand side column, and matrix A2n (k ij a) - by substituting the second
column by the right hand side column. As a result, for out of plane solution for
r > a , the formula can be presented as
∞
w( r , θ , ω ) = Re ∑ cos(nθ )[ wnin (r ) + a1n (ω ) H n (k11 (ω )r ) + a 2 n (ω ) H n (k 21 (ω ) r )]e −iωt (11)
n=0
The first term in (11) corresponds to the incidend wave, second - to the flexural
mode with a wavenumber k11 and the thrid one describes the flexural wave with a
wavenumber k21 propagating above the cutoff frequency. Below the cutoff
frequency (ω < ωc) the third term corresponds to the evenecent wave. The solution
for rotations of vertical lines perpendicular to the mid-plane ψr and ψθ can be
determined in a similar way.
Transient Solution. To study the transient wave propagation we consider
that the plate is excited by a pulse of the load stimulated by a PZT sensor. The
expression for the wave pulses in the plane (x,y) may be derived from the
steady-state solution in the frequency domain by applying the Fourier transform
technique. For the Fourier spectrum G(ω) of the signal g(t) the final solution for out
of plane field outside the debond in the time domain will be
∞
1
w(r, θ, t ) = Re ∫
2π −∞
G(ω)w(ω, r , θ)e −iωt dω (12)
We consider the Hanning type actuation signals which are usually used for
fault detection in SHM. Out of plane displacemnet (8) is an analytical solution of
0.3 0.3 0.1
a
x=-0.13,y=0 x=-0.05,y=0
b c
0.2 0.2 x=0.13,y=0
0.05
0.1 0.1
Amplitude
Amplitue
Amplitude
0 0 0
-0.1 -0.1
-0.05
-0.2
-0.2
0 1 2 -0.1
Time, sec -4 0 1 2 0 1 2
x 10 -4 Time, sec -4
Time, sec x 10 x 10
Figure 2. Wave propagation and scattering by the debond region located at the center of the
plate (dashed line – pristine plate, solid black line – plate with delamination: x=−13.5cm –a),
x=−5cm – b), x=13cm – d).
417
a b
Figure 3. Wave propagation without a debond presented in coordinates (x,t) along the line y=0. No
scatteing domain – a); Scattering from the debond region located at the center. Path is taken along
the line passing through the centers of the source and the scatterer – b).
the scattering problem and makes it possible to investigate the transient pulse
propagation, and to compare the obtained results with the finite element simulation.
In Fig. 2 the transient pulse propagation determined by formulas (8),(12) is
presented for different points of the line passing through the actuator and the fault.
The dynamics of the propagating signal for pristine plate for these points of the
structure is plotted by the blue dashed line and the w displacement of the debond
plate is depicted by the black line. We can see that for the pristine plate without a
fault, the wave propagates without any reflection and due to the dispersion we have
an increasing number of oscillations (Fig. 3 a). In the plate with a fault we see that
after scattering the propagating signal partially propagates back and continues to
propagate forward in the initial direction (Fig. 3 b). The transient solution of the
propagating wave as a result of calculation of the expression (7) shows that the
form of the signal is different for each specific point of the plate. While analyzing
the structure of the transient signal we can see two main features. The signal for the
points located sufficiently far from the fault consists of the direct signal and the
reflected one of the similar form propagating back. Signals passing along the
straight line connecting the actuator with the fault have counter motion as it is seen
from Figures 2 and 3. The measurement of the back-propagating signal, which can
be detected by the pulsed echo technique, and the forward-propagating one detected
by the pitch-catch method, can retrieve information about the fault since they carry
this information while propagating through the plate.
When transient waves are used to detect delamination in the sandwich
plate, the total solution can be written as a superposition of the incident and
scattering waves in the time domain containing n + 1 different modes (7).
a b c
Figure 4. FE modeling of wave propagation from the center and scattering from the debond region
(view in x,y plane, damage is located at x=14cm fro the center (0,0)) at t=0.45×10-4s – a),
t=0.9×10-4s – b, t=1.35×10-4s – c)).
418
We compare the analytical results with the corresponding results obtained
by the Finite Element simulation. The FE modeling for 2D Mindlin plate is
presented in Fig. 4. and it fits well with the theoretical approach. The main
difference between these signals is that the theoretical results are valid for the
infinite plate, and the FE 2D Mindlin plate model gives the result which takes into
account reflections from the boundaries. The comparison of the 3D modeling of
sandwich composite panels with the theoretical result is considered in the last
section. The propagation of the wave originated at the center of the plate (0,0) and
scattered from the debond region located at the distance b=0.14m apart is presented
in Figure 4. You can see that the cylindrical out-of- plane wave propagates without
any reflections (Figure 4 a), and the scattered from the debond region wave excites
the vibration of the debond generating a pulsed echo signal and a changing pitch
catch signal.
Experimental, Analytical and FE comparisons. An experiment in Lamb
wave propagation in a honeycomb sandwich panel was done by Metis Design Inc.
in collaboration with ARC NASA. The sandwich panel fabricated for this test
consisted of two 84-mil thick cross-ply carbon fiber composite laminates (bonded
to a 1”- thick aluminum honeycomb core). The size of the panel was 1ft×1ft. In the
experiment, PZT sensors located on the facesheet of the honeycomb panel were
used to determine the deformation at a different location (See disks located on the
panel which correspond to real PZT sensors in the experiment). The results of the
comparison voltage on these PZT sensors are presented in Figure 5 b, c.
The obtained experimental time domain results are compared with the
corresponding results of the FE simulations in Abaqus. The FE analysis makes it
possible to find the amplitude of all displacements (u,v,w) in 3D simulations as well
as the stresses and strains under an external excitation depending on the frequency
of the excitation. The FE model was built as an exact copy of the experimental
panel. It was meshed to define the solution's resolution and satisfy the tolerance
conditions, which make it possible to investigate the acoustic wave propagation
through a layered sandwich plate. The discretization was chosen to determine the
wavelength with a high resolution at several elements per wavelength limits. Finite
element 3D modeling of real honeycomb structure with laminate facesheets is
performed in order to validate the approximating Mindlin plate theory analytical
approaches and to get more realistic results in application of the homogenized
structure model for SHM. The finite element simulation
simulation of Abaqus Explicit has
Sensor 1 Sensor 8
Actuator Fault
Sensor 8
Sesnor 1 Sensors
Figur 5. View of the panel FE model used for experimental investigation of wave
propagation and scattering – a); Sensor signal in mV on the sensors located at a distance of 25cm
apart from each other for a sandwich composite panel: x=−12.5 cm –b and x=12.5cm − c. The red
line − experimental data, black line − FE simulations and the green line − fitted Mindlin plate theory
results.
419
been used to determine the PZT actuation of the sandwich plate. The small debond
fault was introduced at the center of the plate (Fig. 5 a). For the sandwich structure
we performed the simulation of the several possible layups we come across in
developing SHM methods. The actuator and the sensor were simulated as PZT discs
(14mm and 7mm in diameter and 2mm in thickness). The excitation source was
positioned at a distance b from the damaged area and the receiving sensors are
located in (x, y) plane as it is seen from the plots.
In the Mindlin plate theory we do not consider coupling with piezo sensors
and that is why we cannot plot a real electric signal on this plot. We used
comparing relative amplitude and phase velocity to show how the Mindlin plate
theory results relate to a real structure. The comparison of out of plane displacement
dynamics shows that the obtained results are a sufficiently good fit to analytical
results. The simulations are done for modeled structures with 1in core and 84mil
face sheets in thickness.
It should be mentioned that the results of modeling wave propagation and
scattering in sandwich composite plates fit well to the theoretical ones only for
small time intervals. For a longer time interval, the experimental result differs
significantly from the theoretical approach. However, if in the case of FE modeling
we can fit experimental and numerical signals for a longer time, here the theoretical
approach is proposed for the infinite plate only.
Conclusion
This paper addresses the simulation of the guided wave propagation and scattering
in sandwich structures with the emphasis given to the properties which can be used
for SHM. The analytical investigation of the plate wave using the Mindlin plate
theory and the numerical simulations shows the main features we come across when
developing real SHM methods. An analytical study is carried out to find the
solution for transient wave propagation and scattering from the delaminated and the
debond area. The obtained analytical solutions are compared to the FE analysis as
well as the experimental data.
REFERENCES
1. D. Zenkert, Ed. The Handbook of Sandwich Construction, EMAS Ltd, Warley, UK (1997).
2. R. F. Rose and C. H. Wang. “Mindlin plate theory for damage detection: Source solutions”.
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116 (1), 154-171 (2004).
3. S.D. Yu, W.L. Cleghorn. “Free flexural vibration analysis of symmetric honeycomb
panels” Journal of Sound and Vibration 284, 189—204 (2005).
4. C. Vemula and A. N. Norris. “Flexural wave propagation and scattering on thin plates using
Mindlin theory”, Wave Motion 26, 1-12 (1997).
5. C. H Wang, J. T Rose and F.K. Chang. “A synthetic time-reversal imaging method for
structural health monitoring”. Smart Mater. Struct. 13, 415-423 (2004).
6. Y-H Pao, CC Chao, “Diffractions of flexural waves by a cavity in an elastic plate”, AIAA J
2(11), 2004-2010 (1964).
7. C. H. Wang, Fu-Kuo Chang. “Scattering of plate waves by a cylindrical inhomogeneity”.
Journal of Sound and Vibration 282, 429-451 (2005).
8. P.M. Morse, H. Feshbach. Methods of Theoretical Physics, McGraw-Hill, New York
(1953).
420
Large Sensor Network Architectures for
Monitoring Large-Scale Structures
D. C. ZHANG, V. NARAYANAN, X. B. ZHENG, H. CHUNG,
S. BANERJEE, S. BEARD and I. LI
ABSTRACT
In order to monitor large-scale structures, such as the heavy-lift launch vehicle

payload shroud, propellant tanks, and aircraft fuselage, practical methods to install and
connect large sensor networks are being developed. Traditional means to build such
sensor networks require careful sensor placement, sensor attachment, and network
wiring. Since these tasks are inherently serial and cannot easily be automated, the
integration of dense sensor networks into structures is often an expensive proposition.
Furthermore, large-scale structures can have numerous egress ports for umbilical
attachments, power connections, fuel tank ports, and structurally complex features
such as stiffeners, flanges, gaps, etc. Conventional approaches for individual sensor
installation are impractical given the structure’s size and geometric complexities.
This paper discusses large sensor network architecture concepts and associated
trade studies on the various options. All the architecture options are modular in
design, i.e. they are applicable to localized areas requiring large number of sensors and
scalable to large areas. Also, the architecture options consist of different components
that can be considered to be on-board (permanently integrated with the vehicle
structure) or off-board (detachable from the vehicle structure). Example applications
and test results for composite tanks and aircraft fuselage will be presented.
INTRODUCTION
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is becoming more popular for its

advantage of extending structure’s life cycle and reducing maintenance cost [1-5].
In order to monitor large-scale structures, such as an aircraft fuselage, payload
shroud for a heavy-lift launch vehicle, or a windmill blade, it is essential to develop
practical methods to install and connect large sensor networks. To build such sensor
networks, careful sensor placement, sensor attachment, and network wiring are
David C. Zhang, Vindhya Narayanan, Xiaobin B. Zheng, Howard Chung, Sourav Banerjee,
Shawn Beard, Irene Li, Acellent Technologies Inc, 835 Stewart Dr, Sunnyvale, CA, 94085,
USA
421
required. Since these tasks are inherently serial and cannot easily be automated, the
integration of dense sensor networks into structures is often an expensive
proposition. Furthermore, large-scale structures can have numerous egress ports for
umbilical attachments, power connections, fuel tank ports, and structurally complex
features such as stiffeners, flanges, gaps, etc. Conventional approaches for
individual sensor installation are impractical given the structure’s size and
geometric complexities.
To address the practical engineering issue of monitoring large structures, this

paper presented several architecture concepts and conducted a trade study on the
various options. All the architecture options are modular in design, i.e. they are
applicable to localized areas requiring large number of sensors and scalable to large
areas. Also, the architecture options consist of different components that can be placed
either on-board (permanently integrated with the vehicle structure), or off-board
(detachable from the vehicle structure) flexibly. System design including sensor layer,
hardware and data management are introduced. Example applications for large
structures are presented in this paper.
LARGE SENSOR NETWORK ARCHITECTURES
The overall architecture for the large sensor network is shown in Figure 1. It
consists of the sensor network and diagnostic hardware, which includes excitation
generation (EG), data acquisition (DA), and the microprocessor (MP) where the
diagnostic software sits.
Display
Diagnostic
Hardware
Microprocessor (MP)
Excitation Generation (EG) Data Acquisition (DA)
Sensor Network 1 Sensor Network 2 Sensor Network N-1 Sensor Network N
Figure 1: SHM system components.
422
The options for on-board and off-board architectures have been narrowed down
to the following:
Option 1 (Figure 2)
On-board: Sensor network + Connection block
Off-board: Excitation generation + Data acquisition + Microprocessor
In this option, the cables are routed together to the connection block and the
main cable connects to the diagnostic hardware. Because the number of cables is
equal to the number of sensors plus the number of ground wires and additional
wires, the cables are cumbersome and heavy at the connection block. The sensor
excitation generation and data acquisition are in series from one path to the next
path.
Option 2 (Figure 3)
On-board: Sensor network + Excitation generation + Data acquisition
Off-board: Microprocessor
In this option, diagnosis algorithm is off-board and the data is acquired on
board. Data can be downloaded to the off-board instrument via Ethernet interface or
through a portable data storage device. Switching devices can be installed for each
local network so that the number of cables from the local network to the diagnosis
hardware can be reduced significantly. Excitation generation and data acquisition
are also in series in this option.
Display
Electronics including excitation
generation, data acquisition, and
microprocessor Diagnostic Hardware
On structure
(EG + DA + MP)
Connection Block
Connector
Figure 2: Option 1 - only sensor network on-board.
423
Option 3 (Figure 4)
On-board: Sensor network + Excitation generation + Data acquisition +
Microprocessor
Off-board: None
Option 3 is a completely on-board architecture that has several sub-options with
varying degrees of complexity. The data processing is implemented at each
distributed local electronic node. Excitation generation and data acquisition are
carried out in parallel. This can improve the SHM speed dramatically. The size and
weight of the node should be minimized without intrusion to the structure. To
achieve this goal, Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design is
necessary to minimize the weight, size and power consumption of such a system.
This option could be the ultimate solution for large structure application.
Display
MP On structure
EG + DA
Figure 3: Option 2 - sensor network, excitation generation, and data acquisition on-
board.
424
Display can be either
on-board or off-board Display On structure
SHM results and control

Distributed
local electronics:
EG, DA, MP
Figure 4: Option 3 - fully on-board architecture (display/control can be on-board or

off-board).
SMART LAYER MANUFACTURING AND INTEGRATION
An important part of the large-scale structural health monitoring system is the proper
integration of the sensors with the structure. Sensors permanently mounted onto the
structures provide the capability to monitor their condition through their lifetime.
SMART (Stanford Multi-Actuator-Receiver Transduction) Layer is a novel and cost-
effective method for integrating a network of piezoelectric elements with the structure
to monitor the structure condition and detect damage while the structure is in service.
The layer is a thin dielectric film with an embedded network of distributed
piezoelectric elements that can be used as either actuators or sensors. The major
features of the layer include:
 Actuating and sensing capabilities
 Built-in sensor network for large-area sensing
 Signal consistency and sensor reliability
 Flexibility, lightweight
 Shielded layer to reduce EM noise Simple installation
 Durable and reliable under variable environments
As shown in Figure 5, the sensor network diagnostic layer can be generally integrated
into composite structures during fabrication (e.g. Resin Transfer Molding, and
Filament Winding) or surface mounted on existing structures thereby providing a
built-in nondestructive assessment of the internal and external states of the structure.
The sensor network approach has the advantage of providing wide area coverage for
gathering data with its network of miniature piezoelectric actuators/sensors so they can
425
detect impact and damage in all regions, thereby providing ease of usage and
consistency of information.
Figure 5: Piezoelectric sensor network integrated with structure.
DATA ACQUISITION HARDWARE
Acellent’s original data acquisition hardware was developed specifically for the
SHM purpose [6-8]. The hardware consists of arbitrary waveform generator, power
amplifier, transmission MUX, receive MUX, conditioning circuit, A/D conversion,
USB interface and power supply. The original ScanGenie system can connect up to 64
sensors [6]. The system consists of two pieces of hardware: the main box and the
Switching Amplifier (SA) box. The SA box can be put close to the sensor network to
pre-amplify the sensor response signal and improve the signal/noise ratio. The signal
conditioning circuit can remove the high-frequency noise. The distance between the
main box and the SA box can go up to 12 feet. The original ScanGenie system can be
configured as option 1 (Figure 2). However, the maximum number of sensors is
limited to 64 only.
Acellent’s latest ScanGenie II hardware was developed for large sensor network
application. A Switch Hub (SH) was designed to connect to 10 SA II boxes. Each SA
II box can connect to 32 sensors. Therefore, the ScanGenie II system can connect up
to 320 sensors in a standard configuration. This system can be configured as option 2
(Figure 3).
Each ScanGenie II system can have its own controller board. The controller board
has Ethernet interface that allows multiple ScanGenie II systems to connect to each
other via Ethernet. Therefore, a real large-scale SHM network can be achieved with
the ScanGenie II system. In this case, option 3 (Figure 4) configuration can be
achieved with the ScanGenie II system.
DATA MANAGEMENT
Figure 6 shows the data management and utility model in a large sensor network
system. The collected data is always archived with the system integrity check and the
complementary notes from the field inspections, online or in real-time. The data will
426
be forwarded to the central data warehouse and processed by the centralized computer
engine. The processed data information is then utilized by the diagnostics and
prognostics processes in a full cycle of structural health monitoring operations.
Sensor System
Integrity Check Centralized Data
Warehouse
Take Data Diagnostics Prognostics

Process
Centralized Data
Processor Engine
Complementary
Note
Figure 6: Data Management and Usage Model in Large Sensor Network
Data management is an important portion in a large sensor network structural

health monitoring system. The data of a large sensor network includes: (1) the
structure and the structural configuration, (2) sensor layout locations, channel settings,
(3) hardware operation parameter settings, (4) actuator-and-sensor network path
configuration, (5) sensor data, and (6) data analysis configuration files. Acellent’s
advanced SmartComposite software specializing in large sensor network diagnostics
can provide seamless data management software solution.
In SmartComposite, the data is managed in workspaces. A workspace manages all
the prescribed data configurations. In each workspace, a structural system can be
scanned by a number of distributed areas which are connected with a central data
acquisition system. In order to ensure the reliability of connections between the
scanning hardware and sensors, the software is capable of doing self-diagnostics
during the performance of system integrity checking. Once the sensors are confirmed
to be healthy, the system will scan the structure to acquire the sensor signals for the
entire structure.
Centralized Data Subset 1 Area

Warehouse Analysis
Subset 2 Area
Analysis Local Analysis
Integration
Subset …
Distributed Data
Processing
Subset N Area
Analysis
Figure 7: Scalable Subset Processing in a Large Sensor Network System
In the data analysis portion, a scalable data analysis algorithm is introduced now
using subsets (Figure 7). The usage of subsets makes the software more flexible and
efficient in handling large amounts of data and enhances the local damage
detectability in a large sensor network system. While the data in a complex network
is analyzed in a centralized station, the data mining technique has to be used.
427
Currently, studies are underway to identify and implement data mining techniques
that can achieve more efficient data storage and communication in large sensor
networks.
ONBOARD VS OFFBOARD IMPLEMENTATIONS
Structural health monitoring can be implemented in two ways, a) on-board

application and b) off-board application. A hybrid approach also exists which Acellent
has adopted. This approach is called the semi on-board system. In an on-board
application of SHM, it is desired to collect the data on-board and analyze it in real
time. The data acquisition can be performed on demand. The centralized system of the
aircraft such as HUMS or IVHM can trigger the SHM system when ever necessary.
Also the central system could schedule the data scan at regular intervals during the
specific times such as boarding, taxi-in, taxi-out, take off, flight, landing etc. These
data can be easily archived and analyzed. In this on-board application, collection of
abundant baseline data is quite easy and eventually it helps to perform the
environmental and operational compensation of the real time data to interpret the
damage state in the structure. However, in an off-board system, plentiful baseline data
that can represent the different environmental conditions cannot be generated so
easily. Data needs to be collected with precise measurement of temperature near each
sensor. This task is more complicated than it appears. Acellent has successfully solved
this issue by implementing temperature sensors for each switch amplifier dedicated for
32 sensors, which can give representative temperature measurement locally. In the on-
board applications a thorough process of getting the data, checking the validity of the
data and updating the data set to the baseline storage in case no damage is detected, is
absolute necessity. Whereas in off-board applications, data can be collected for later
analysis and no real time indication can be given. In Acellent’s semi off-board
application the data is collected and through preliminary analysis is performed on-
board to give an indication of damage. The data can then be downloaded to the ground
station for further advanced analysis for validation and quantification of the damage.
EXAMPLE APPLICATIONS
Initial development of the large sensor

network architectures was conducted with
NASA for applications on composite
propellant tanks and the heavy-lift launch
vehicle payload shroud. Several monitoring
scenarios were studied, including (a) after
manufacturing, during transportation, (b) on
the pad prior to launch, and (c) during launch
and subsequent mission flight.
Feasibility testing for damage detection

and sensor survivability was conducted on
large composite panels, rocket motor cases,
and the Composite Crew Module (CCM) as
shown in Figure 8. Figure 8: Sensors on CCM
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Figure 9: Airbus large-sensor network conceptual diagram
In addition, Acellent is developing a custom structural health monitoring system

with Airbus for application to door surround areas. The system includes the SMART
Layer sensor network, data acquisition hardware and data analysis software. This
system is undergoing evaluation in a realistic aircraft environment on an A340 flight
test aircraft. A conceptual diagram of the system is shown in figure 9.
This system provides –
 Optional real-time Damage Detection

 Autonomous Operation (battery powered)
 On-demand Inspection - Anytime, Anywhere
 Damage Location and Size Quantification
 Up to 320 sensors in standard configuration (Expansion capability to
thousands of sensors)
 Easy and reliable installation of sensors via SMART Layer™ Sensor
Network
Sensors and associated interconnects and wiring have been installed on a

composite fuselage panel which is inserted as a replacement for a section of the
metallic fuselage barrel on an A340 aircraft used for flight trials. The panel is
approximately 3m X 4m and includes complex structural features (frames, stringers,
clips) and geometry (shell shape). The area of application covers approximately 6
frame pitches and 8 stringer pitches. A total of 235 PZT sensors in eight SMART
Layer strips are installed on the fuselage. Currently, the configuration of the system is
a semi-onboard application, which means that the excitation signal generation and data
acquisition are off-board, and the SA boxes and SH are onboard.
429
Fig. 10: Embraer panel tests Fig. 11: Lockheed Martin study on C-5 aft crown
Other examples of large sensor network applications include collaboration with

Embraer on large composite panels to optimise sensor placement and investigate
environmental effects (Figure 10), and a study with Lockheed Martin regarding
implementation architectures for the aft crown of the C-5 (Figure 11).
SUMMARY
This paper presented several system architectures for large-sensor networks. The
presented architecture is flexible and can be configured for both on-board and off-
board applications. The large-sensor network system setup including sensor, hardware
and software (data management) is also introduced. Application examples with NASA
and Airbus are presented.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from NASA under SBIR contracts
NNX08CB19P and NNX09CA20C. The authors thank Benjamin Eckstein, Martin
Bach and the team at Airbus and EADS Innovation Works for their continued
collaboration. The authors also thank Fernando Dotta of Embraer and Joe Lougheed
of Lockheed Martin for their technical discussions.
REFERENCES
1. Beard, S. and Chang, F.-K. 1997. Active damage detection in filament wound composite tubes
using built-in sensors and actuators. J. of Intelligent Material, Systems and Structures, 8: 891-897.
2. Banks, C. Conn, C. and Miller, J. 2010. Benchmarking of Structural Health Monitoring Sensors for
Composite Structures. JANNAF 40th Structures and Mechanical Behavior.
3. Beard, S., Liu, C.-C. and Chang, F.-K. 2007. Design of a Robust SHM System for Composite
Structures. Proceedings of SPIE -- Volume 6527 Industrial and Commercial Applications of Smart
Structures Technologies.
430
4. Beard, S., Kumar, A., Qing, X., Chan, H.L., Zhang, C., Ooi, T. 2005. Practical Issues in Real-World
Implementation of Structural Health Monitoring Systems. Proceedings of SPIE on Smart Structures
and Material Systems.
5. Dugnani, R. and Malkin, M. 2003. Damage Detection of Large Composite Structure. Proceedings
of the 4th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring.
6. Zhang, C, Paul Liu, Shawn Beard, Qing, X., Amrita Kumar and Lien Ouyang, “SMART
Solutions for Composite Structures”, Proc. SPIE 6934-48, (March, 2008)
7. Zhang, C, S.J. Beard, B. Liu, Qing, X., O. Yang, A. Kumar, “A multifeatured hardware
platform for SHM,” SPIE Nondestructive Characterization for Composite Materials, Aerospace
Engineering, Civil Infrastructure, and Homeland Security II, 6934 1C, March, 2008
8. Zhang, C, Lien Ouyang, Qing, X., and Li, I., “A novel real-time health monitoring system for
unmanned vehicles”, Proc. SPIE Vol. 6962, 696217 (Apr. 16, 2008)
431
Overview of CVM Technology Tests
Performed by Embraer
R. P. RULLI and P. A. da SILVA
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an overview of the Comparative Vacuum Monitoring (CVM)

technology tests performed by Embraer in the scope of the company’s effort on
Structural Health Monitoring. Less time-consuming and less complex maintenance
procedures, facilitated damage detection in areas with restricted access, early detection
of structural damages and reduction of maintenance costs are potential benefits that
can be achieved by using SHM. In order to reach and make good use of those benefits,
SHM technologies are being investigated at Embraer. Among them, CVM is
considered one of the promising technologies for monitoring metallic material parts.
Some tests with CVM technology were performed, such as having sensors installed in
a Full-Scale Fatigue Test monitoring the structure periodically or installing sensors in
a flight tests aircraft for on-ground periodic inspections. Those tests are focused on the
investigation of the many aspects of CVM technology. Results obtained have
demonstrated the viability of CVM to be applied for monitoring aircraft parts;
however, aspects regarding sensors and cables durability and system qualification and
readiness level still have to be addressed, depending on the application scenario.
INTRODUCTION
In the Embraer’s perspective, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) means a

monitoring and management technique that utilizes calculation methods and on-board
sensors to assure the aircraft continued airworthiness from the structural viewpoint,
focusing on the improvement of design, operation and maintenance.
Believing that benefits such as less time-consuming and less complex maintenance
procedures, facilitated damage detection in areas with restricted access, early detection
of structural damages and reduction of maintenance costs can be achieved considering
current and future aircrafts, the company has selected SHM to be one of the main
technologies to be developed within the company’s R&D Portfolio [1].
_____________
Ricardo Pinheiro Rulli and Paulo Anchieta da Silva, Embraer S.A., Av. Brigadeiro Faria Lima
2170, Sao Jose dos Campos/SP, Brazil.
432
Founded in 1969, Embraer designs, develops, manufactures and sells aircraft for
the commercial aviation, executive aviation, and defense segments. Embraer also
provides after sales support and services to customers worldwide. Embraer’s
headquarters are located in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, and it has offices,
industrial operations and customer service facilities in Brazil, China, France, Portugal,
Singapore, and the United States.
Among a variety of SHM damage monitoring technologies (such as Electro-
Mechanical Impedance, Acoustic Emission, Lamb Waves, Fiber Bragg Gratings, etc.)
Comparative Vacuum Monitoring (CVM) is considered one of the promising
technologies for monitoring metallic material parts.
Comparative Vacuum Monitoring is a measure of the differential pressure
between fine galleries containing a low vacuum alternating with galleries at
atmosphere in a simple manifold [2]. Cracks developed in the surface of the material
underneath a CVM sensor create paths for the air to flow from the galleries at
atmosphere to the galleries containing low vacuum [2]. Measuring the fluid flow can
indicate the presence of flaws in the monitored structure.
Due to the technology characteristics and its relatively simple concept, Embraer
has performed laboratory tests with CVM applying the technology in a metallic barrel
test and in the E-Jets Full-Scale Fatigue Test. In addition, Embraer has started the
installation of CVM sensors in a flight tests aircraft.
This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the Embraer investigations on
Comparative Vacuum Monitoring technology during the last years. Subjects such as
brief description of the CVM technology and general overview of SHM potential
benefits will be presented. Overview of the main tests carried out in order to evaluate
the CVM technology will also be shown.
Such discussion aims to show that Comparative Vacuum Monitoring technology
has been demonstrating its viability as promising one to improve aircraft structural
maintenance.
COMPARATIVE VACUUM MONITORING (CVM) TECHNOLOGY
The Comparative Vacuum Monitoring (CVM) technology is based on the

principle that a vacuum maintained within a small constant volume is extremely
sensitive to any leakage [3]. The system designed for metallic structures uses
elastomeric polymer sensors that are self-adhesive, passive, inert and lightweight, and
can conform to the material surface contours [3]. When those sensors are adhered to
the monitored structure, fine channels on the adhesive face of the sensor form a
manifold of galleries with the structure itself. The galleries alternate, one containing
the steady state vacuum, and the other having air at atmospheric pressure [3,4].
The CVM equipment consists of a stable source of vacuum, a fluid flow meter and
the sensor. The vacuum source provides the vacuum (20 kPa below ambient
atmospheric pressure) to the sensor and also acts as the reference for the flow meter
[3]. If no crack is present in the structure the vacuum level will be the same in both the
sensor and the vacuum source. If a surface crack develops, it will form a leakage path,
air will flow through the passage created from the atmospheric to the vacuum
galleries, the vacuum level in the sensors will decrease and the vacuum change will be
measured [3,4]. CVM offers an easy way to monitor “hot spot” areas.
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Figure 1. Schematic of an installed CVM sensor
The CVM equipment consists of a stable source of vacuum, a fluid flow meter and
the sensor. The vacuum source provides the vacuum (20 kPa below ambient
atmospheric pressure) to the sensor and also acts as the reference for the flow meter
[3]. If no crack is present in the structure the vacuum level will be the same in both the
sensor and the vacuum source. If a surface crack develops, it will form a leakage path,
air will flow through the passage created from the atmospheric to the vacuum
galleries, the vacuum level in the sensors will decrease and the vacuum change will be
measured [3,4]. CVM offers an easy way to monitor “hot spot” areas.
SHM POTENTIAL BENEFITS
Regarding airplane operation and maintenance, some of the potential benefits that
can be achieved by using SHM are: reduction of operating and maintenance costs,
reduction of inspection time, minimized “human-factor” effects (that may also lead to
safety enhancements), elimination of disassembly processes, and less costly repairs.
SHM may allow damage detection in areas with restricted access, where current
visual and non-destructive testing (NDT) technique inspections are difficult or can not
be performed, avoiding disassembly processes (which may undesirably lead to
damages in the structure). Less time-consuming and less complex procedures allowed
by SHM (compared to current NDT techniques) will lead to the reduction of
inspection time and burden, and as a consequence SHM can minimize “human-factor”
effects (for instance, automated data analysis has the potential to reduce human errors
induced by fatigue and repetitive tasks). Early detection of structural damages may
lead to the implementation of less costly repairs.
Avoiding disassembly processes and promoting less-time consuming inspections,
allied to the reduction of labor costs (due to the less complex procedures) indicate that
SHM has strong potential to reduce aircrafts operating and maintenance costs [1].
In terms of airplane design, SHM offers potential benefits such as structural
efficiency improvements and weight savings.
With the application of SHM at early development phase, the design philosophy
can be changed enabling to improve structural efficiency, decreasing the weight and
the level of complexity of the structure. In metallic structures the SHM system can be
applied to reduce high redundancy and to monitor locations where damage tolerance
scenarios are severe, eliminating the necessity to consider the primary element failed
with propagation on the secondary element [1,5].
434
Figure 2. Metallic barrel test monitored by CVM technology
In the future, SHM will be capable to provide means for the replacement of the
current time-based maintenance practices by Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM)
[6].
TESTS PERFORMED WITH CVM TECHNOLOGY
In this section, an outline of the main tests carried out by Embraer in order to
evaluate the CVM technology will be presented.
Embraer has developed a project regarding study and evaluation of Comparative
Vacuum Monitoring systems.
CVM sensors were applied to the continuous monitoring of a Metallic Barrel test
(ERJ-145 fuselage section). The aim was to monitor the presence of cracks in the
windows frames of the pressurized fuselage along the testing period. Cracks were
detected starting with 1 and 2mm in length.
(a) (b)
Figure 3. Example of a crack detected in the metallic barrel test by a CVM sensor. (a) CVM
sensors installed around rivets; (b) one of the sensors was removed and dye penetrant testing
confirmed the presence of a 2mm crack.
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Figure 4. E-Jets FSFT monitored with CVM sensors
Besides the barrel test, around 260 CVM sensors were installed in the Full-Scale
Fatigue Test (FSFT) of the company’s E-Jets aircrafts (Figure 4).
Various regions and components have been periodically monitored (such as shear
clips, splice joints, windows frames and joint holes) using this technology. These tests
aim to provide enough information about CVM sensors and systems, regarding their
capabilities, installation, operation and maintenance.
Figure 5. CVM sensors installed in various regions of the E-Jets Full-Scale Fatigue Tests
436
Figure 6. On-board sensors installed in a flight test aircraft
CVM sensors were also installed in a flight test aircraft in order to verify if the
technology is capable of withstanding the real aircraft in-flight conditions (Figure 6).
Periodic monitoring of these on-board sensors has been performed using a CVM
ground equipment.
A further phase of this project is currently under development. The target of this
phase is to develop and demonstrate an on-board in-flight version of the CVM
instrumentation system for continuous monitoring of aircraft structures during flight.
On-board tests will complement the tests with the CVM ground equipment
performed previously, aiming to demonstrate the ability of the CVM on-board
equipment to withstand the real aircraft in-flight environment and real operational
conditions.
In order to address questions related to sensors and cables durability, Embraer
plans to perform environmental qualification tests according to the RTCA/DO-160E
(“Environmental Conditions and Test Procedures for Airborne Equipment”) standard.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
This work presented an overview of Embraer advances in the SHM field focusing
the application of Comparative Vacuum Monitoring (CVM) technology on ground
and in-flight trials.
The tests performed with CVM indicate that it is a promising technology for
monitoring metallic material parts. Nevertheless, since only “hot-spot” areas can be
monitored by this technology, it becomes extremely important to correctly identify the
regions of interest and crack growth path.
Tests demonstrate that CVM technology offers inert and lightweight sensors that
can be customized and fit to various surface contours.
During the tests, less than 3% of the CVM sensors presented some kind of
malfunction (including disbonding).
All cracks detected by CVM on ground tests were confirmed (i.e. no false
positives).
Preliminary results from in-flight tests indicate that CVM sensors seem to be
capable of withstanding the real aircraft in-flight conditions. Further tests shall be
performed to confirm it.
437
Sensors and cables durability are a concern at Embraer regarding all SHM
technologies under study. For CVM technology, environmental qualification tests
were planned to be performed in the future.
Aspects of system qualification and readiness level, depending on the application
scenario, still have to be addressed in order to fully apply the CVM technology to
current and future Embraer aircrafts.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge FINEP for the financial support.
REFERENCES
1. Rulli, R. P., and Silva, P. A., 2010. Embraer Perspective for Maintenance Plan Improvements by
Using SHM. 3rd Asia-Pacific Workshop on SHM.
2. SMS – Structural Monitoring Systems Ltd, Australia, 2011. CVM Technology Overview.
www.smsystems.com.au.
3. Doherty, C. M., Lindroos, M. and Barton, D. P., 2003. Structural Health Monitoring of Aircraft
Using CVM. 4th Australian Pacific Vertiflite Conference on Helicopter Technology.
4. Walker, L., 2004. Real Time Structural Health Monitoring - Is It Really This Simple? SAMPE 2004
Conference, Long Beach, USA.
5. Schmidt, H.-J., et al., 2004. Application of Structural Health Monitoring to Improve Efficiency of
Aircraft Structure. 2nd European Workshop on SHM.
6. Roach, D., 2007. Smart Aircraft Structures: A Future Necessity. High Performance Composites.
438
Advanced System-Level Reliability
Analysis and Prediction with
Field Data Integration
T. MEYER, J. BERG, A. PALLADINO, A. SARLASHKAR,
S. HUSSAIN and D. LAMB
ABSTRACT
As the acquisition, operating and support costs rise for mission-critical ground and
air vehicles, the need for new and innovative life prediction methodologies that
incorporate emerging probabilistic lifing techniques as well as advanced physics-of-
failure durability modeling techniques is becoming more imperative. This is because
of interest in not only extending the life of current structures, but also in optimizing
the design for new components and subsystems for next generation vehicles that are
smaller, lighter, and more reliable with increased agility, lethality, and survivability.
The component level physics-based durability models, although widely adopted
and used in various applications, are often based on simplifying assumptions and their
predictions may suffer from different sources of uncertainty. For instance, one source
of uncertainty is the fact that the model itself is often a simplified mathematical
representation of complex physical phenomena. Another source of uncertainty is that
the parameters of such models should be estimated from material-level test data which
itself could be unavailable, noisy or uncertain. At the system level, most modeling
approaches focus on life prediction for single components and fail to account for the
interdependencies that may result from interactive loading or common-cause failures
among components in the system.
In this paper, a hybrid approach for structural health prediction and model
updating for a multi-component system is presented. This approach uses physics-of-
failure and reliability modeling techniques to predict the underlying degradation
process and utilizes field data coming from findings of scheduled maintenance
inspections (or potentially, a real-time onboard health monitoring data) as feedback to
update the model and improve the predictions. The integration of field data and model
updating is realized via the Bayesian updating technique. The approach is being
evaluated by an OEM to a ground vehicle suspension design enhancement.
Two different failure mechanisms, corrosion and thermal mechanical fatigue, are
taken into consideration for physics-of-failure modeling. Finite element analysis
(FEA) is performed on the components to calculate the stress values needed as inputs
to the life prediction models. Once the expected life of individual components is
calculated (considering multiple failure modes and composite of usage profiles), a
_____________
Theodore Me yer, Joel Ber g, An drew Palla dino, Avinash Sarlashk ar , Impact T echnologies,
LLC, 200 Canal View Blvd., Rochester, NY 14623
Shabbir Hussain and David Lamb, US Army RDECOM-TARDEC, Warren, MI 48397-5000
UNCLASSIFIED: Dist A. Approved for public release.
439
reliability model is used to calculate the system-level reliability from the reliability of
individual components. To perform the Bayesian updating, the Markov Chain Monte
Carlo (MCMC) technique is employed to 'tune' the model parameters based on
available field data and update the reliability estimates. This process results in an
enhanced life prediction model that compensates for the aforementioned modeling
uncertainties by utilizing feedback from the field behavior of an actual structure to
tune the life-prediction model parameters.
INTRODUCTION
A software framework for performing component and system durability

calculations at the design stage has been developed. The initial target for this software
is ground vehicles. This framework incorporates the following aspects:
• System Durability Explorer – Combines reliability predictions across multiple
components and failure modes in an assembly to estimate the system
reliability. The system level assessment is based on a system relational model,
component level reliabilities, and a user defined usage or mission profile.
• Durability Analysis Enhancement Modules – Compute component life and
reliability under corrosion and thermo-mechanical fatigue for specific
combinations of finite element results (composite usage profiles). Parameters
for life-prediction models are considered probabilistically via the use of Monte
Carlo simulations.
• Parameter Updating – Incorporates feedback from field observations to
enhance the prediction accuracy using Bayesian theory.
Figure 1: Architecture of the Advanced System Durability Analysis Software.
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440
SYSTEM DURABILTY EXPLORER
The System Durability Explorer is a software tool that conducts system level
reliability computations given the reliability of individual components or subsystems,
considering various failure modes. The component or subsystem reliability is “rolled
up” to a higher system level by combining reliability of each individual component
that comprises the system. In order to accomplish this task, information about the
internal system connectivity and the expected usage or mission profiles is required, in
addition to component and failure mode specific reliability curves with uncertainty
bounds. The specific reliability curves can be determined from a lifing calculation,
experience, or vendor supplied information. A graphical modeling environment has
been developed to establish a system-level inter-relational model. A full lifetime
operational profile for the system can be specified as a combination of results from
individual lifing analyses.
System reliabilities are calculated by modeling the system as an interconnection of
components and failure modes in series or in parallel. If the failure of one component
in the assembly would result in the system becoming inoperable, this component is
modeled in series. If one component can fail, but the system continues to function
since another component assumes the role of the failed component through
redundancy, the two components are considered to be operating in parallel [1].
Assuming the failures in the components are independent, the system reliability
distribution of M serial components can be calculated based on the probability of
failure at time t as shown:
M
FS (t) = 1 − ∏ (1 − Fi (t)) (1)
i =1
Where Fs(t) is the cumulative distribution function (CDF) for system reliability
prediction, and Fi(t) is the CDF of reliability prediction for component i.
Similarly, the system reliability CDF of M parallel components can be calculated
from:
M
FS (t) = ∏ Fi (t) (2)
i =1
DURABILITY ANALYSIS ENHANCEMENT MODULES
A software framework for computing component life and reliability with uncertainty
bounds has been implemented. Two specific failure modes are considered: corrosion
and thermo-mechanical fatigue. These durability analysis enhancement modules are
made independent of the FE package employed by utilizing a neutral file format for
the computed nodal stress / strain and temperature inputs. Results sets are combined
according to a loading spectrum definition. The output from each of these modules is a
component-specific reliability curve as a function of time, with uncertainty bounds
that are derived from the input parameter uncertainties through a Monte Carlo
simulation.
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441
Corrosion Modeling
For structural and drivetrain applications, two possible corrosion forms are
corrosion fatigue and stress corrosion cracking. Corrosion fatigue describes the
mechanism where localized corrosion pits form and become local stress risers, leading
to crack formation under cyclic loading. The second failure mode is stress corrosion
cracking under high mean stresses in the presence of a corrosive environment [2].
The model proposed by Harlow and Wei [3, 4] for corrosion fatigue incorporates
localized pit growth by electrochemical means. In this model, the pit is assumed to
grow at constant volumetric rate according to the Faraday and Arrhenius laws. The
pitting model parameters are generally physics-based rather than empirical, and most
can be found in the literature or derived. Once a critical pit size has been reached, the
flaw behaves more like a crack and mechanically driven crack propagation dominates.
To account for stress corrosion cracking (SCC), two methods for crack rate
calculation have been investigated and are incorporated into the module. The first
method, as discussed by Jones and Ricker [5], is based on anodic dissolution of a
metal utilizing the Faradaic relation. Some of the parameters in this equation are
identical to those in the Harlow-Wei model. This SCC model is very aggressive and
can be viewed as an upper limit since it neglects any passivation at the crack/pit
surface. For SCC, once the stress corrosion cracking stress intensity threshold is
reached (KISCC), crack growth progresses at a constant rate based on this relationship
independent of stress until the stress intensity approaches the fracture toughness.
Below the KISCC threshold, no crack growth due to SCC is assumed to occur. A
second SCC calculation method has been developed in the power generation industry
to predict SCC in power turbine blades. This approach, as explained by Rosario et al.
[6], has been in use for the past few decades and is based on empirically derived
material constants. This method also assumes that the crack growth rate due to SCC is
constant above the KISCC threshold. Published data for this approach is based on
materials commonly used for power turbines. However, the material constants can be
also derived from test data.
Figure 2: Example Probabilistic Corrosion Damage Progression Curves
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442
Thermo-Mechanical Fatigue Modeling
Thermo-Mechanical Fatigue, or TMF, is caused by cyclic thermal gradients in

components. Constrained thermal growth that results from these thermal gradients
leads to material strains. Further, the effects of mechanical property changes as a
function of temperature and compounding high temperature effects such as creep and
oxidation makes TMF different from traditional low cycle fatigue (LCF) analyses
where component temperatures can be assumed to be reasonably uniform and
constant. In general, TMF can be broken into two categories, based on the
temperatures experienced by the component: 1) moderately high temperatures, where
the predominant failure driver is fatigue, and 2) very high temperatures (above roughly
30% of the melting temperature for example) where creep and oxidation are
significant.
A review of thermo-mechanical fatigue literature (for example, see [8]) reveals
that there are a number of approaches available for analyzing these types of problems.
For the software development effort described here, fatigue due to a combination of
applied loads and thermal expansion/gradients is considered to be the primary life
driver, and very high temperature effects are neglected. The strain life approach [9, 10]
has been selected for implementation, with a Finite Element model providing the
nodal stress and temperature inputs. Damage from an applied cyclic loading history is
then accumulated linearly according to Miner’s Rule.
Two key effects in TMF that are handled in this software implementation include
the temperature dependence of material properties, and the phase between mechanical
loads and component temperatures. When isothermal test data is used, there are
several choices of temperatures to choose for material properties over the course of a
thermal stress cycle. One approach is to simply use material properties at either the
maximum or mean cycle temperature. A method for determining whether the mean or
maximum is more appropriate is described by Kang et al. [11], and Nagode and Hack
[12]. An alternative method to handle this problem of temperature choice is through
the computation of a Spanning Factor that allows the life to be estimated by
combining Nf at the temperature extremes of the cycle [13]. The loading phase refers
to the relationship between mechanical loading and thermal loading. For in-phase
loading, the maximum temperature occurs at the same time as the maximum stress or
strain. In the software implementation, fatigue properties obtained from fully in-phase
and fully out-of-phase tests are accepted as inputs, and estimated properties are
obtained by interpolating to the phase relation that is present in the loading data.
Probabilistic Analysis using Inner-Outer Loop Approach
The probabilistic nature of component dimensions, assembly conditions, material

properties and loading conditions involved in lifing analysis is an important fact of life
that influences structural safety. Durability and reliability analyses lead to safety
measures that a design engineer has to take into account due to the uncertainties in
model parameters, data variation, environmental factors, etc. Each of the model input
parameters are allowed to vary within this software framework. The material
properties as well as the load profile inputs for corrosion and TMF modules can be
selectively considered probabilistic.
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443
Figure 3: Overview of Inner-Outer Loop Procedure to Estimate Prediction Uncertainty
The uncertainty on the life prediction is determined through an inner-outer loop

Monte Carlo approach (see additional discussion in [14]). To illustrate, a specific
material property variation could be described with a Weibull distribution, with shape
parameter α, scale parameter β, and offset γ. This inherent variability represents the
inner loop. The Monte Carlo simulation in the inner loop will determine the
probability of failure or reliability as a function of time for a specific set of model
inputs, but it does not provide a confidence interval on that risk assessment. If
variables α, β, and γ that describe a given input parameter are allowed to vary (for
example, due to manufacturing or assembly variability across different batches of
components), the uncertainty in the predicted probability of failure or reliability curve
can be characterized. The variables that describe an input parameter may take on
random values each with individual probability distributions. For example, parameter
α may be described by a normal distribution with mean μ1 and standard deviation σ1.
Likewise, β and γ may be represented by μ2 and σ2, and μ3 and σ3 respectively. These
“hyper-parameters” (μ1, σ1), (μ2, σ2), and (μ3, σ3) that express the “hyper-
distributions” are varied in an outer loop Monte Carlo simulation to establish the
confidence bounds. The simulation approach consisting of two Monte Carlo
Simulation loops is shown in Figure 3.
MODEL PARAMETER UPDATING
The model input parameters and their hyper-distributions that are initially based on
a-priori experience or expert knowledge can be updated by applying Bayesian analysis
to obtain a posterior distribution when evidence (inspection data, observations, or real
time sensor data) becomes available. This evidence might be in the form of statistical
samples of field failure incidence rates, or damage level inspection reports. The
Bayesian updating addresses model parameter uncertainty when the model physics are
assumed to be known and fixed. This type of Bayesian approach combines
information contained in the observed data in the form of a likelihood function with
the prior prediction from a model.
UNCLASSIFIED
444
Figure 4: Bayesian Updating Interface
Based on Bayes’ theorem, the data D influences the posterior probability

distribution through the likelihood function p(D | θ), where θ represents the set of
model input parameters. The updated probability distribution pD(θ) = p(θ | D,M) is
obtained according to:
pD(θ) = C * p(D | θ,M) * p0(θ | M) (3)
Where, p0(θ | M) is the a-priori probability distribution, and C = 1 / p(D | M) is a

normalizing constant. M signifies that the probability distribution was derived from a
model prediction. The input parameters are treated as random variables, providing a
feedback mechanism to update the original assumed values of the parameters. A
Markov Chain Monte Carlo Simulation (MCMCS) is used for systematically
extracting samples from a probability distribution during the updating process [15].
The benefit of performing this parameter updating step for a fielded component is
realized when a new untested design requires similar input parameters to determine its
life expectancy. Uncertainty can be reduced for parameters that are difficult to
ascertain, leading to more accurate and realistic life predictions.
CONCLUSIONS
A set of software tools for estimating system durability at the design stage has
been developed, along with an approach for incorporating field observations to
improve the prediction. Software modules have been created to perform life
predictions based on corrosion and thermo-mechanical fatigue induced failures. The
corrosion module considers corrosion pitting/fatigue and stress corrosion cracking.
The thermo-mechanical fatigue module includes the strain life approach with
temperature compensated material properties, and is applicable for temperatures where
creep and oxidation are minimal. The flexible architecture allows other failure mode-
specific lifing modules to be integrated if needed. Component and failure mode
specific reliability data is aggregated at the system level to provide an overall
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445
reliability estimate and identify the life-limiting components using reliability concepts.
A model builder application has been designed to provide a means for creating system
relational models. Interfaces are provided for updating model input parameters based
on field observations or test data using Bayesian updating techniques. The initial target
application for this software package is in the design of Army ground vehicle
subsystems.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A significant portion of this work was funded by Army contract W56JZV-09-C-

0036. Program monitors were Shabbir Hussain and David Lamb of Army TARDEC.
Contributions by Corey Andalora, Liang Tang, Jinhua Ge and Masoud Rabiei of
Impact Technologies, LLC are gratefully acknowledged.
REFERENCES
1. Lewis, E. 1995. Introduction to Reliability Engineering. John Wiley & Son, New York.
2. Hoeppner, D., Chandrasekaran, V., and A. Taylor. 1999. “Review of Pitting Corrosion Fatigue
Models,” Proc. of the 20th Symposium of the International Committee on Aeronautical Fatigue
(ICAF), 1. http://www.faside.com/publications.htm.
3. Harlow, D., and R. Wei. 1994. “Probability approach for prediction of corrosion and corrosion
fatigue life.” AIAA Journal. Vol. 32, 10, pp. 2073-2079.
4. Shi, P., and S. Mahadevan. 2001. “Damage tolerance approach for probabilistic pitting corrosion
fatigue life prediction.” Engineering Fracture mechanics, Vol 68, pp.1493-1507.
5. Jones, R., and R. Ricker. 1992. Stress Corrosion Cracking: Materials Performance and Evaluation,
ASM International, Chapter 1.
6. Rosario, D., Riccardella, P., Tang, S., Gandy, D. and R. Viswanathan. 2000. “Development of an
LP Rotor Rim-Attachment Cracking Life Assessment Code”, Forth International EPRI Conference
on Welding Repair Technology for Power Plants.
7. Clark, W., Seth, B., and D. Shaffer. 1981. “Procedures for Estimating the Probability of Steam
Turbine Disc Rupture from Stress Corrosion Cracking”, presented at Joint ASME/IEEE Power
Generation Conference.
8. Zhuang, W., and N. Swansson. 1998. “Thermo-Mechanical Fatigue Life Prediction: A Critical
Review”, DSTO-TR-0609.
9. Dowling, N. 1999. Mechanical Behavior of Materials. Prentice Hall.
10. Bannantine, J., Comer, J., and J. Handrock. 1990. Fundamentals of Metal Fatigue Analysis.
Prentice Hall.
11. Kang, H., Lee, Y., Chen, J., and D. Fan. 2007. “A Thermo-Mechanical Fatigue Damage Model for
Variable Temperature and Loading Amplitude Conditions”. International Journal of Fatigue 29, pp
1797-1802.
12. Nagode, M., and M. Hack. 2004. “An Online Algorithm for Temperature Influenced Fatigue Life
Estimation: Stress-Life Approach”, International Journal of Fatigue 26, pg 163-171.
13. Bill, R., Verrilli, M., McGaw, M., and G. Halford. 1984. “Preliminary Study of Thermomechanical
Fatigue of Polycrystalline MAR-M 200”, NASA Technical Paper 2280.
14. Tang, L., Kacprzynski, G., Roemer, M., Koelemay, M. and B. Walsh. 2007. “A Bayesian-Based
Graphical Modeling Tool for Probabilistic Structural Reliability Analysis”, Proceedings of the 61st
Meeting of the Society for Machinery Failure Prevention Technology (MFPT).
15. Tang, L., Kacprzynski, G., Goebel, K., G. Vachtsevanos. 2009. “Methodologies for Uncertainty
Management in Prognostics” Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT.
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Development and Testing of an Ultrasonic
Phased Array System Based on Piezo
Actuators and Fiber Optic Sensors
M. SCHEERER, C. BOCKENHEIMER, A. DANTELE, Z. DJINOVIC,
F. GRAF, T. NATSCHLÄGER, A. PELDSZUS, M. REITERER,
T. SAUTER and R. STÖSSEL
ABSTRACT
In order to be able to monitor large areas of composite structures online, an active

ultrasonic Phased Array SHM System based on Piezo-Actuators and Fiber Optic and /
or Piezo Sensors was developed where approximately 8 piezo actuators and 4 fiber
optic sensors are required to monitor 1 m² of a composite structure. In this concept an
array of piezo actuators is actuated by a series of burst signals confined in time and
frequency with a defined time delay producing an ultrasonic (US) beam in a
predefined direction. The beam can be swept over the area to be inspected. The beam
interferes with a potential defect in the structure producing a backscattering of the US
beam which will be measured by the fiber optic sensors. The captured signals will be
fed in a post processing routine to visualize and quantify the damaged region. A lab
based SHM system based on the mentioned technology consisting of the piezo
actuators with its actuation hardware, the fiber optic sensor with its opto-electronic
hardware and the control and data acquisition unit was set-up. The system was tested
on several panels made of Aluminium and CFRP with different types of damages –
holes and impact damages - between 300 and 800 mm² of overall size. All data
collected were fed in a data evaluation algorithm and post processed. After first
verification of the ability to detect, locate and quantify the introduced damages the
system was tested on an A340 spoiler from FACC damaged by typical impact
damages producing an overall delamination area of 300 to 1000 mm².
INTRODUCTION
Due to their contributions for weight reduction, the percentage of composite

structural parts in commercial aircraft is continuously increasing. Still the full potential
of the composite materials has not been reached, mainly due to uncertainties in the
manufacturing process, the presence of barely visible impact damages (BVID´s) and
the prediction of the long term behaviour in use, leading to much higher safety factors
compared to metals to date. The effect of impact damages on the strengths of
composite materials has been studied intensively in the literature [1]. It was shown that
impact damages of a size of 200 to 300 mm² in 3 mm CFRP panels (BVID´s) lead to a
reduction of approximately 30% of the compression strength.
_____________
Michael Scheerer, AAC, A-2444 Seibersdorf c/o Forschungszentrum, Austria
447
If a non-destructive inspection system could be permanently applied to the
structure of interest and operated online (Structural Health Monitoring), especially in
distributed and difficult to access areas of composite structures, a strong reduction in
the down time and subsequent costs of maintenance and also a reduction in weight
with a further reduction of fuel consumption could be expected.
Worldwide activities in the field of „Structural Health Monitoring” are
continuously growing since more than two decades. An intensive overview of the
various activities in the field of structural health monitoring can be found in “Health
Monitoring of Aerospace Structures – Smart Sensor Technologies and Signal
Processing” [2] and in the recently released “Encyclopedia of Structural Health
Monitoring” [3]. It is possible to classify the different technologies by the used sensor
principles or by the used SHM methodologies. The most promising sensor principles
are based on piezoelectric materials, eddy current foils and fiber optic sensors like
fiber Bragg grating sensors, extrinsic fabry perot interferometers or brillouin optical
time domain reflectometry sensors. Analyses show that only the acoustic methods
either passive as acoustic emission [4, 5] or active as lamb waves [6, 7] are able to
cover larger areas with a sufficient size of detectable damage.
Within this paper the authors present the latest developments of an active
ultrasonic Phased Array SHM System based on Piezo-Actuators (PA) and Fiber Optic
(FOS) and / or Piezo Sensors (PS). After the application of the PA and FOS to
different flat plates made of Al and CFRP, the behaviour of the system and its ability
for the detection of damages such as holes and delaminations caused by impacts was
verified. Finally the PA and FOS (PS) were applied to an A-340 Spoiler and a system
tests have been performed.
DESCRIPTION OF THE SYSTEM COMPONENTS
In the above mentioned SHM concept a line array of 8 PA is actuated by a series

of burst signals confined in time and frequency with a defined time delay producing an
ultrasonic (US) beam in a predefined direction (active beam forming in actuation).
The backscattered signal from potential defects in the structure will be measured by a
line array of 4 FOS. The captured signals will be fed in a post processing routine that
reconstructs the beam from the 4 FOS (virtual beam forming in sensing) to visualize
and quantify the damaged region.
A lab based SHM system based on the mentioned technology consisting of the PA
with its actuation hardware, the FOS with its opto-electronic hardware and the control
and data acquisition unit was set-up.
Piezo Actuator Array & Control Unit
For the design of the hardware electronics for the actuation of ultrasonic beams by
means of PA´s a system with eight actuation channels has been developed. The eight
PA´s form a line array with the ability to send a beam of the emitted lamb wave in a
certain direction [6, 7]. The individual PA´s are circular discs with a diameter of 10
mm and a thickness of 0.2 mm out of PIC 255 material separated by 11 mm. The
direction of choice depends on the phase delay between the actuators [6, 7] and has to
be controlled via a PC-interface.
448
Fig. 1: Scheme of electronic for phased array actuation
The chosen system comprises a master controller (provides trigger and clock for
all channels), one synthesizer per channel (generates excitation signal) and one power
amplifier per channel. The power amplifier is needed to produce an appropriate output
signal for PA. The power amplifier provides an output voltage of up to 200 Vpp and
has a frequency range of up to 1.5 MHz when driving capacitive loads of 5 nF.
However, due to thermal restrictions only burst operation is recommended. More
details can be found in [8, 9]
Fiber Optic Sensor Array & Interrogation Unit
The sensor itself consist of two coils (25 mm diameter with 5 windings) made of
single mode fibres of 9μm core and 125μm cladding diameter where one coil is used
as sensing coil and the other coil is the reference coil arranged in a 3x3 FO - coupler.
The sensing coil is in direct contact with the structure while the reference coil is
isolated (see left side of figure 1). In front of the reference coil stays Al mirror on an
appropriate distance to provide the maximum signal. The third output arm was
immersed in index matching gel to suppress back reflection from the fiber tip. Input
arm of the OS is connected with the pigtailed superluminescent laser diode (SLD)
Supelum, Moscow that lunches a low-coherence radiation of 1310nm with coherence
length of about 30μm. The above schematic is one interferometer based on low-
coherence interferometry. The main phenomena that is used is a phase change of
optical beam that travels throughout the sensing coil that leads to change of optical
path difference between the sensing and reference arm. This causes formation of
interferometric pattern at the PD1 and PD2. Using two photodiodes (PD) a stabilized
interferometric signal (quadrature signal) can be achieved. The quadrature signal has a
specific elliptic shape when presented as a Lissajous figure, where the information
about the phase, extracted by a special post processing algorithm, is used to represent
the vibration signal. The useful part of the signal that corresponds with vibrations of
sensing coil is presented as black line, a fraction of the full ellipse trajectory.
Multiplexing of four FOM has been performed by a 1x4 splitter. In the middle of
Figure 1 we present schematic view of multiplexing of four sensors composed of 3x3
coupler mentioned above. More details about the FO sensor can be found in [10].
Fig. 2: Left side: FO sensing configuration, Middle: FO multiplexing scheme, Right: Lissajou
Representation of the signals from the 2 Photodiodes
449
Reference Piezo Actuator and Piezo Sensor Array for Virtual Beam Forming
For reference measurements a system based on PA´s and PS´s was set-up. The
system uses an arbitrary signal generator card ARB-1410-150 from MISTRAS
(sampling rate: 125 MSamples/s, output voltage: 300 Vpp, frequencies of 700 kHz)
that can actuate one single PA. For data acquisition the oscilloscope card described
below is used. For both actuation and sensing arrays of smart layerTM actuators/sensors
from Acellent have been used. In this operation virtual beam beam forming in
actuation and sensing is used in a post processing step [6, 7].
Control and data acquisition unit
For data acquisition, an oscilloscope card type OctopusTM OCT-848-002 from

Gage Sensing mounted in an external PCI box was used. The card can catch up to 8
signals with 16 bit resolution, sampling rates up to 25 MS/s and can be triggered
externally.
For the control of the actuation electronic and for automated data acquisition a
LabView program was implemented. The program has the following features: full
control of the active phased array via a RS232 interface, full control of the GaGe
OctopusTM, setup of different actuator (single PA/phased array) and sensor
configurations (PS array, FOS settings), save data in ASCII and/or TDMS format
(supplying correct meta-data), Fully automated data acquisition for various beam
angles (angular scan).
Post Processing of raw data
In a first step the raw data either from the PS´s of the reference system or the data
from FOS were filtered using an FIR (or respectively FFT) band pass filter to remove
noise and direct current content.
Control and data acquisition hardware Actuation hardware
Fiber optic detection hardware

Software architecture
Fig. 3: Different parts of the complete system including the components of the reference system
450
Far visualisation of the damages a phased array near-field beam forming algorithm
was used. The algorithm is based on the time-of-flight principle. First step is to define
a mesh of planar coordinates (x, y) over the plate. For each position the distance to the
corresponding actuator Iaj(x, y) and sensor Isj(x, y) is calculated. Assuming a fixed
propagation speed c the distances are transformed into time delays (tsj(x, y)c / taj(x,
y)c). With the known central time of actuation the corresponding time of observation
tobs, where a reflection would be observed for the coordinates x and y, is calculated by
tobs = toffset + tsj(x, y)c + taj(x, y)c. For each combination of sensors and actuators and
each position the time of observation is calculated. A time window with time dilation
of the corresponding wavelet is centred around tobs. This signal window is windowed
by a hamming window to smooth the signal. These windows, which inherently contain
the near-field steering delays for both actuation and sensing arrays, are simply added.
In this step the delay-and-sum beam forming applies. Hence for each position a beam
formed signal window is obtained, which is used to calculate the squared power sum,
breaking down the signal vector into a scalar, which gives information about the
reflectivity at this position. For processing of the active phased array data only beam
forming in sensing was used.
RESULTS OF VALIDATION TESTS
In order to validate the developed system, tests on an Al-plate (800 x 400 x 5 mm³)
and a quasi-isotropic CFRP plate [0/90/-45/45]2s (1585 x 790 x 2.8 mm³) have been
performed. The used material for the CFRP plate is a Cytec 977-2A-42%-6KHTA-
2x2TW-285. The actuation array was placed on the long side of the test article at a
distance of approximately λ/2 from the boundary in order to allow constructive
interference of the reflected beam. The FO sensor array was placed direct in front of
the actuator array followed by the reference PS array. In the Al plate 2 damages have
been introduced: a 20 mm hole and later a 20 x 40 mm long hole. In the CFRP plate
two impacts one with 17 J (overall damage area: 300 mm²) and a second impact with
21 J (overall damage area: 670 mm²) have been introduced. For actuation of the single
PA´s in the reference system and for the active PA array a Morlet type Wavelet with
two different center frequencies was used. All measurements have been repeated 10
times at three different days for each state of the structure (undamaged and damaged)
in order to evaluate the reproducibility of the results. The following table shows the
used pseudo-frequencies, the wave velocities of the present lamb wave modes and the
present wavelength for both materials. The required group velocities have been
derived from the program “DISPERSE” and verified by wave propagation
measurements at selected frequencies. In Table I the bold marked fields indicate the
preferred operating regimes for the used array configuration: distance of the PA´s is
close to λ/2.
TABLE I: PSEUDO-FREQUENCIES, GROUP VELOCITIES AND WAVELENGTH FOR BOTH MATERIALS

Al plate (5mm) CFRP Plate (2.8 mm)
f [kHz] A0 S0 A0 S0
vg [m/s] λ [mm] vg [m/s] λ [mm] vg [m/s] λ [mm] vg [m/s] λ [mm]
60 1550 25.8 5430 90.5 1308 21.8 5480 91.3
250 2465 9.86 5280 21.12 1325 5.3 5396 21.58
451
1 2 3 4 5
Fig. 4: 2D images of the undamaged (1) plate, damaged plate with hole (2), damaged plate with long
hole (3) difference between 2 and 1 (4), difference between 3 and 1 (5), the circle marks the position of
the defect
TEST OF THE REFERENCE SYSTEM ON AL PLATE
In a first step the reference system with PA´s and PS´s together with the data
acquisition unit and the virtual phased array near-field beam forming algorithm was
tested on the Al plate. The following figure show the 2D images of the undamaged
and the damaged plate (20 mm hole / 20 x 40 mm² long hole) and the difference signal
between the undamaged plate derived from the 250 kHz measurement campaign.
Figure 3 clearly illustrated the ability to detect, locate and also quantify such a type of
damage in Al plates using the reference system with the data acquisition unit and the
virtual phased array near-field beam forming algorithm.
TEST OF THE SYSTEM ON CFRP PLATE
For the validation tests on CFRP panels an active PA array, for actuation and 4
FOS and 8 PS´s (reference sensors) type smart layerTM have been used to acquire the
data. The filtered signals from the FOS and the PS´s have been compared and were
finally post processed. The following figure shows the results for an actuation
frequency of 60 kHz and an actuation angle of 30°: filtered signals of FOS No. 2 and
PS No. 4 after damage 1, the difference between the damaged and undamaged CFRP
plate as 2D colour plot. When comparing the shape of the raw data between the PS
and the FOS both show similar frequency spectra and comparable arrival times of the t
travelling waves when the different distances between the PA array and the FOS on
one side and the PS on the other side is taken into account (shift between the signals).
Residual
20
-0.8
-0.6
10
-0.4
0
-0.2
y[m]
0 -10
0.2
-20
0.4
0.6 -30
0.8
-40
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
x[m]
Fig. 5: Results for an actuation frequency of 60 kHz and an actuation angle of 30°: filtered signals of
FOS No. 2 and PS No. 4 after damage 1, difference between the damaged and undamaged CFRP plate
for the same sensor combination and as 2D colour plot.
452
The signal from the PS is more damped compared to the FOS but the difference
between undamaged and damaged CFRP panel appears more pronounced using the
PS. Out of the right side of figure 3 there is an indication of the damage close to the
exact position (red circle), but a lot of high signals all over the plate interferes with a
clear damage localization. The major reason for that can be found in the fact that the
S0 mode (approximately 3 times faster than the A0 mode) also interacts with the
defect leading ghost reflections in various position of the plate as for beam forming the
slower wave velocity of the A0 mode is used. On the other hand the calculation of the
average value of the absolute differences between all signals show that these values
are very small between repeated measurements of the same regime and scale with size
of the defect.
TEST OF THE SYSTEM ON A-340 SPOILER
The used demonstrator structure for verification tests is a spoiler used in

commercial Airbus A-340 aircrafts. The inspected region (front side) of the spoiler
consists of a Nomex honeycomb core (48 g/m², thickness between 30 mm and 140
mm) and a thin CFRP face sheet (6 layers of 977-2 / HTS, layup [45/-45/0/90/-45/45],
total thickness of 0.8 mm). The following figure show a picture of the spoiler with
attached PA array and FOS / PS arrays, a detail of the actuators and sensor and the two
impacts (300 mm² - left impact and 800 mm² - right impact), a visualization of the
actuated wave by a scanning laser vibrometer and the 2D image of the post processed
data using the FO sensors looking in the direction of the larger impact.
After a first analysis of the data with the presented algorithm the localization of
both impacts was very difficult due to the complex acoustic response of the structure
caused by several reflections from the various boundaries. But after a simple
calculation of the absolute distance between all signals both impacts can be detected.
CONCLUSION
An active ultrasonic Phased Array SHM System based on Piezo-Actuators and

Fiber Optic and / or Piezo Sensors together with the required piezo actuation
electronic, FO interrogation unit and data acquisition unit has been successfully set-up
in a laboratory environment.
Impact Residual
-0.3 50 -0.3 50
40 40
-0.2 -0.2
30 30
-0.1 -0.1
20 20
y [m]
y [m]
0 0
10 10
0.1 0.1
0 0
0.2 0.2
-10 -10
0.3 -20 0.3 -20

-0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4
x [m] x [m]
Fig. 6: Picture of the spoiler with attached PA array and FOS / PS arrays, a detail of the actuators and
sensor and the two impacts , a visualization of the actuated wave by a scanning laser vibrometer and the
2D image of the post processed data using the FO sensors looking in the direction of the larger impact.
453
The data acquisition unit and developed near field post processing algorithm was
successfully tested on an Al plate, showing that the introduced defects can be detected,
located and quantified. System Tests on the CFRP panels show that the introduced
impacts can be detected and located, although the interference with ghost echo´s lead
to less clear results in the localization compared to the Al plate. The evaluation tests
on the A-340 spoiler show a clear detect ability of the damage but localization of the
damages was very difficult.
AKNOWLEDGEMENT
The presented work has been funded by the Austrian Promotion Agency within
the Take Off project “Austrian Structural Health Monitoring Demonstrator - I”
(ASHMOSD-I).
REFERENCES
1. Herzsberg, 1999. An engineering approach for predicting residual strength of carbon/epoxy
laminates after impact and hygrothermal cycling. Composite Structures 47 (1999) 483-490
2. W.J. Staszekski, C. Boller, G.R. Tomlinson, 2004. Health Monitoring of Aerospace Structures –
Smart Sensor Technologies and Signal Processing. John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-470-84340-3
3. Christian Boller, Fu-Kou Chang, Yozo Fujino, 2009. Encyclopedia of Structural Health
Monitoring. John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ISBN 978-0-470-05822-0
4. Christophe A. Paget, Kathryn Atherton and Eddie O’Brien, 2004. Damage Assessment in a Full-
Scale Aircraft Wing by Modified Acoustic Emission. Proc. of 2nd EWSHM
5. M. Scheerer, T. Goss, M. Henzel, M. Marischler, R. Wagner, 2010. Impact Damage Quantification

by Analyses of Acoustic Emission Data. Proc. 14th ECCM, June 7-10 2010, Budapest, Hungary
6. V. Giurgiutiu, 2008. Structural Health Monitoring with Piezoelectric waver active sensors.
Academic Press, ISBN 978-0-12-088760-6, 2008
7. Improvement of Damage Detection with the Embedded Ultrasonics Structural Radar for Structural
Health Monitoring; Lingyu Yu, Giurgiutiu Victor, University of South Carolina; Proc. of 5th Int.
Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (2005)
8. H. Wernick, A. Dantele, J. Korak, T. Rittenschober, 2010. Detection of delamination defects in

carbon fiber reinforced polymer components: miniaturized hardware design for the smart material
actuation of ultrasound guided waves. SPIE Smart Structures/NDE, San Diego, CA, USA, March
2010.
9. A. Dantele, J. Korak, T. Rittenschober, 2009. Continuous health monitoring of CFRP plates by

smart material actuation and sensing. SPIE Smart Structures and Materials & Nondestructive
Evaluation, San Diego, USA, 8.-12. March 2009
10. Z. Djinovic, M. Tomic, M. Stojkovic, G. Schmid, 2010. Failure Detection by a Fibre Optic Low
Coherence Interferometric Sensor. 5th European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring,
Sorrento, Naples-Italy, 29 June -Friday 02 July 2010
454
Damage Detection Method for CFRP Bolted
Joints Using Embedded BOCDA Optical
Fiber Sensor
N. SAITO, T. YARI, K. NAGAI and K. ENOMOTO
ABSTRACT
Mechanically fastened joints are common method of connecting structural

components in aerospace structures. Bearing failure is the main failure mode at these
portions of quasi-isotropic composite structures. Therefore, it is required for
improving the reliability of structural health monitoring technique from the present
techniques [1] to detect bearing failures including micro-damages. In this paper,
micro-damages are defined as the fiber micro-buckling, matrix cracking, interlaminar
delamination and out-of-plane shear cracking. The bearing damage tests were
conducted to develop the damage detection method using the BOCDA optical fiber
sensors. In these tests, optical fiber sensors were the hole-assisted-fiber and its
diameter is 125 μm. In order to understand the relationship between the BOCDA
measurement results and damages, several specimens were observed by means of
optical microscopy. The BOCDA can detect micro-damages by comparing the
measuring results after damaged with that before damaged.
INTRODUCTION
To reduce the maintenance costs of aircrafts, structural health monitoring (SHM)

is a key technology. The SHM technology can monitor the aircraft structure conditions
any time during operation, and evaluate damages on the aircraft structures and assess
its operation condition such as excessive flight load or hard landing. Therefore this
technology has the potential of a structural maintenance scheme change from the
current schedule-based maintenance to the condition-based maintenance. If the
condition-based maintenance was adopted, the maintenance was carried out only when
the structures were damaged. This change is effective for reducing maintenance costs.
In aircraft structure, the optical fiber sensing technologies have been developing by
many researchers because optical fiber sensors have the characteristics as light weight,
long durability and capability to be embedded into composites.
_____________
Nozomi Saito1*, Takashi Yari1, Kanehiro Nagai1, Kiyoshi Enomoto2
1
Research Department, Aerospace Systems, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, LTD.
Phone number: +81-52-611-8170
*Corresponding Author: nozomi_saito@mhi.co.jp
2
RIMCOF Research C enter of A dvanced Me tals a nd Composites, T he Materia l P rocess
Technology Center
455
Meanwhile, carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) are widely used in aircraft
structures because of their light weight and high strength. Most of CFRP parts are
attached another parts using bolts. At the bolted joints portion, the stress concentration
is large. Furthermore, CFRP are brittle materials and have the low degree of yielding.
These mean that stress concentrations that occurred near these portions are not
relieved by plastic deformation. The main failure mode at these portions is bearing
failure.
Bearing failure occurs from the micro-damages such as the fiber micro-buckling,
matrix cracking, interlaminar delamination and out-of-plane shear cracking [2].
Because bolted joints are used at high-load path portions such as around wing-body
joints and landing gears attached portion, micro-damages at high-load path portions
would cause a catastrophic failure of aircraft structures. Therefore it is important to
inspect these portions for such damages as soon as they occurred. Recently, ultrasonic
inspection is widely used to inspect these portions. However, this inspection method
needs detaching fittings and plates because micro-damages are behind some fitting or
plates. Therefore, the SHM system using optical fiber sensors is desired to inspect
these portions and detect micro-damages without detaching fittings and plates. This
means that maintenance costs can be reduced by adopting the SHM system using
optical fiber sensors to aircraft structures
Many optical fiber sensing systems are studied to monitor structural state during
operation. The distributed sensors using optical fiber are so convenient because these
sensors can detect damages which occur near these sensors on structures using only
one sensing system. Brillouin optical correlation domain analysis (BOCDA) system
we are developing is one of the distributed sensing systems using optical fiber sensor.
The BOCDA principle was developed by Hotate et al. [3]. The BOCDA can measure
the distributed strain along the optical fibers, and the dynamic strain at arbitrary points
along the optical fiber sensor with high special resolution compared with other
distributed sensing systems. Yari et al. [4] developed the detection method of fastener
missing from BOCDA distributed strain changes. Yari et al. [5] also conducted a flight
demonstration test using a business jet. Hasegawa et al. [1] investigated the
detectability of the delamination in composites with BOCDA measurement.
Although this system is an attractive system, it has a difficulty in detecting micro-
damages which occurs near bolted joint portions of CFRP structures because the
micro-damages were smaller than 30 mm, that is the specifications of the measuring
device of this system included a spatial resolution. The purpose of this study is to
overcome this difficulty, namely we propose the damage detection method for these
small damages around CFRP bolted joint portions.
MEASURING PRINCIPLE
Stimulated Brillouin scattering is the phenomenon of interaction between the

pump light wave and the probe light wave in optical fiber sensors, and its spectrum
are called Brillouin gain spectrum (BGS). The pump light wave, when the optical
power exceeding the Brillouin threshold, generates acoustic wave in the optical
fiber. The probe light wave obtains Brillouin gain with the Doppler shifts by the
acoustic waves. When an axial strain is loaded in the optical fiber sensors, the
fluctuation of density changes the acoustic wavelength. The changing acoustic
wavelength makes Brillouin frequency change. Consequently, the strain states of
456
Stimulated Brillouin scattering
Strain
Probe light
Pump light
Optical fiber
Position of
Brillouin Scattering Sensing Fiber
Light Intensity
BFS
Strain
BGS
Probe Light Frequency
Fig.1 BOCDA measurement principle
the optical fiber sensor are obtained from Brillouin frequency shift (BFS). The
Brillouin frequency shift by strain and temperature are known as 495 MHz/% and 1
MHz/ºC in silica based optical fiber sensor. The BFS νB is given by this equation
(1).
2nV
νB = (1)
λ
where n is the refractive index of an optical fiber core, V is acoustic wave speed in
an optical fiber and λ is pump light wavelength. Furthermore, the stimulated
position is limited by optical correlation domain analysis [3]. Fig.1 shows the
BOCDA measurement principle.
BEARING DAMAGE TEST
Test specimen
We conducted the bearing damage tests in order to detect the micro-damages
which occurred around bolt holes in multi-fastener single-lap joints. The specimen
used in the bearing damage test is shown in Fig.2. Specimens were CFRP quasi-
isotropic laminates ([45/0/-45/90]2S) with embedded optical fiber sensor. The
specimen width, length and thickness were 150 mm, 350 mm and 16 ply (about 3
mm), respectively. The optical fiber sensor was embedded in 2 interlaminar
interfaces, paralleled to the fastener line, A and B. Position A was between the 90º
layer and the 90º layer, and position B was between -45º layer and 90º layer. The
embedded positions of the optical fiber sensors were 2 mm and 5 mm away from
the bolt hole edge, shown in Fig. 3. The optical fiber sensor used in the tests was the
125 μm diameter hole-assist-fiber. Hole-assist-fiber is suitable for embedding into
the composite structures [1]. These specimens were bolted with steel plate and the
optical fiber sensors were spliced with connectors.
457
Load Embedded
optical fiber
sensor
Steel plate
5 5mm
a b c
2 mm
2
Bolted Joint
Bolt
0º
45º
90º Unit：mm
Quasi-isotropic
CFRP laminates
Load
Fig.2 Test specimen
5 mm
5 5 mm
5
2
2 mm 2 mm
2
45° 45°
……………….
……………….
0° 0°
-45° -45°
90° 90°
90° 90°
-45° -45°
0° 0°
45° 45°
45° 45°
0° 0°
-45° -45°
90° 90°
90° 90°
-45° -45°
0° Bolt hole 0° Bolt hole
45° 45°
(Steel plate side) (Steel plate side)
Optical fiber
Optical fiber sensor Optical fiber
Optical fiber sensor
sensor sensor Unit：mm
Cross sectionS-S
Cross section S-S(Embedment
(Embeddedposition
positionA)A) Cross section
Cross S-S
section S-S(Embedded
(Embedmentposition
positionB)
B)
Fig.3 Embedment positions of the optical fiber sensors
Test procedure
The test specimen was attached to the test machine and was loaded tensile load
increased 5 kN steps until micro-damages were occurred. After each loading step,
the test specimen was unloaded. The overview of the test setup is shown in Fig.4.
458
Load
Optical fiber sensor
Test machine
BOCDA measuring
device
CFRP specimen
Load
Fig. 4 Overview of the test setup
The BOCDA measured at each step during loading and after unloading in order to
confirm the relations among damage status, BFS distribution status and BGS shape
status. The spatial resolution of the BOCDA measurement is up to 30 mm. If the
micro-damages were occurred, BFS distributions and BGS shapes will be changed.
Then, it is proposed that BGS shapes will be changed more clearly than BFS
distributions change. The reason is that the BFS indicates only the peak-power
frequency of the BGS. The BGS contains detailed strain states of optical fiber
sensors. Furthermore, microscopic observations were conducted to identify the
micro-damage type around the optical fiber sensors.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
All test specimens were damaged around 30 kN loading. In these tests, there
were no significant differences between the bearing strength of the specimens
embedded optical fiber sensors at different positions. Fig.5 shows the BFS
distributions along the optical fiber sensors measured in 30 mm and 50 mm spatial
resolution.
459
11 unloading (Intact) 11 unloading (Intact)
unloading before damaged unloading before damaged
unloading after damaged unloading after damaged
10.96 10.96 unloading after damage expanded
unloading after damage expanded
BFS (GHz)
BFS (GHz)
10.92 5 mm 2 mm 10.92 5 mm
2 mm
10.88 10.88
10.84 10.84
Fiber embedded position Fiber embedded position
10.8 10.8
88.9 89 89.1 89.2 89.3 89.4 88.9 89 89.1 89.2 89.3 89.4
Position (m) Position (m)
(a) Spatial resolution: 30 mm (b) Spatial resolution: 50 mm
Fig.5 BFS distributions after unloading at each damage status
1.2 1.2 unloading (Intact)

unloading (Intact)
unloading before damaged
unloading before damaged unloading after damaged
1.1
unloading after damaged 1.1 unloading after damage expanded
BGS intensity (a.u.)_
unloading after damage expanded

BGS intensity (a.u.)
1 1
0.9 0.9
0.8
0.8
0.7
0.7
10.7 10.8 10.9 11
10.7 10.8 10.9 11
Frequency (GHz) Frequency (GHz)
(a) Spatial resolution: 30 mm (b) Spatial resolution: 50 mm
Fig.6 BGS shapes at 2 mm away from the “b” bolt hole edge at each damage status
In Fig.5, the BFS changed after damaged and after damage expanded. In this
study, the BFS distributions changed when some acoustic breaking sounds occurred.
The BFS changes measured in 30 mm spatial resolution were larger than that
measured in 50 mm spatial resolution. Fig. 6 shows the BGS shapes measured in
30 mm and 50 mm spatial resolution at 2 mm away from the “b” bolt hole edge
shown in Fig.2.
In Fig. 6, the BGS shapes after damaged and after damage expanded changed
more clearly. Furthermore, the BGS, measured on the condition of unloading before
and after damaged, shifted lower frequency compared with the intact conditions.
BGS shifting to low frequency means that optical fiber sensors were compressed.
Therefore, it would appear that optical fiber sensors were compressed before micro-
460
55
mm
2
2 mm
45°
0°
-45° O
90° Optical
s fiber
90° sensor
-45°
0°
45°
45°
0°
-45°
90°
90°
-45°
0° Bolt hole
45°
(Steel plate side)
Fiber-micro-buckling
0º
0º
-45º
-45º
90º 90º
90º 90º
-45º
-45º
0º
0º
Out-of-plane shear cracking Interlaminar delamination
Fig.7 Photographs of the cross-section near the optical fiber sensor
damages occurred.
These mean that damages can be detected earlier by monitoring the BGS change,
compared with monitoring the BFS changes. Fig. 7 shows the cross-section near the
optical fiber sensor embedded in the tested specimens. In this figure, the fiber-
micro-buckling in the 0º layers, out-of-plane shear cracking in the ±45º layers, and
interlaminar delamination occurred at 2 mm away form the hole edge. The fiber-
micro-buckling causes the out-of-plane shear cracking, and the out-of-plane shear
cracking causes the interlaminar delamination that causes the bearing failure [2].
According to the BOCDA measurement result and microscopic observations, it
would be said that the out-of-plane shear cracking and interlaminar delamination
caused the BFS changes shown in Fig.5, and the fiber-micro-buckling in the 0º
layers caused the BGS changes shown in Fig.6, respectively.
461
CONCLUSIONS
In this study, the bearing damage tests were conducted to develop the damage
detection method using the BOCDA optical fiber sensors. The BOCDA measurement
results “BFS” and “BGS” measured after damaged were compared with these
measured before damaged. Furthermore the cross-sections of the specimens were
observed by the optical microscopy in order to understand the relationships between
the BOCDA measurement results and micro-damages near the optical fiber sensors.
The conclusions of this study are summarized as followings.
¾ Micro-damages such as the out-of-plane shear cracking in the ±45º layers and
interlaminar delamination can be detected by the BFS distribution changes.
¾ Fiber-micro-buckling in the 0º layers can be detected by the BGS distribution
changes, and this means that the bearing failure can be predicted by monitoring
the BGS distributions.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was conducted as a part of the project “Aerospace Industry Innovation
Program – Advanced Materials & Process Development for Next-Generation Aircraft
Structures” under the contract with The Material Process Technology Center
(SOKEIZAI Center), founded by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) of
Japan.
REFERENCES
1. Hasegawa, S. Yari, T. Toyama, M. Nagai, K. and Koshioka, Y. 2010. Delamination detection using
embedded BOCDA optical fiber sensor. proceedings of SPIE, 7647
2. Xiao, Y. and Ishikawa, T. 2005. Bearing strength and failure behavior of bolted composite joints
(part I: Experimental investigation). Composites science and technology, 65: 1022-1031.
3. Hotate, K. and Ong, S. S. 2002. Distributed fiber brillouin strain sensing by correlation-based
continuous-wave technique: cm-order spatial resolution and dynamic strain measurement.
proceedings of SPIE, 4920: 299-310.
4. Yari, T. Nagai, K. Song, K.-Y. and Sakurai, T. 2007. Enhancement of BOCDA system for airplane
structural health monitoring. proceedings of 16th ICCM, paper number TuBM1-06.
5. Yari, T. 2008. Aircraft structural health monitoring using on-board BOCDA system. proceedings of
SPIE, 6933: 69330S-69330S-7.
462
Development of Simultaneous Measurement
System for Strain and Acoustic Emission
Using a Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor and
a Fiber Ring Laser
T. NAKAJIMA, E. SATO, H. TSUDA, A. SATO, N. KAWAI
and H. KAWASAKI
ABSTRACT
A simultaneous measurement system for strain and acoustic emission signals (AE
signals) was developed for one fiber Bragg grating sensor (FBG sensor) using a fiber
ring laser. The system consists of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), an optical
circulator, optical couplers, photo detectors and an FBG sensor. A CFRP beam
bending test was carried out to confirm the possibility of simultaneous measurement
of both strain and AE signals from a single FBG sensor. In the test, signals from a
conventional electric resistive strain gage and piezo-electric AE sensors were
compared to those from the FBG sensor. Those were equivalent each other, and the
simultaneous measurement of strain and AE signals using the newly developed system
was verified.
INTRODUCTION
We have been developing structural health monitoring systems for space rockets
using fiber Bragg grating sensors (FBG sensors) from 2010. We built a high speed
strain measurement system using FBG sensors including a broadband light source and
WDM filters as demodulators. We have also developed acoustic emission (AE)
measurement system using a broadband light source and fiber Fabry-Perot filters [1].
However, there were two drawbacks in our broadband light system to measure AE
signals. One is low signal-noise ratio compared to a conventional piezo-electric sensor,
and the other is the wavelength dependency of AE-signal sensitivity under strain-
changing environment. From these backgrounds, we decided to develop a new system
using a fiber ring laser, which was expected to overcome the drawbacks of the system
using a broadband light source.
Furthermore, the new system was expected to measure simultaneously both strain
and AE from a single FBG sensor.
Tomio NAKAJIMA and Hiraku KAWASAKI, IHI Inspection & Instrumentation Co.,Ltd , 2-6-17
Fukuura, Yokohama, Kanakagawa, Japan
Eiichi SATO and No buaki KAWAI, Institute of Space and Astronautical Sci ence, Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Chuo, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan
Hiroshi TSUDA, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology, Tsukuba
Central 2, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
Akiyoshi SATO, IHI Aerospace Co.,Ltd , 900 Fujiki, Tomioka, Gunma, Japan
463
The new system consists of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), an optical
circulator, optical couplers, photo detectors and an FBG sensor. In the system, an FBG
works not only as a sensor but also as a ring cavity mirror. This system ensures lasing
at the Bragg wavelength of the FBG sensor. A preliminary test demonstrated that the
change in the wavelength of laser generated from the system corresponded to the
strain applied to the FBG sensor. The system is capable of measuring strain
continuously through optical demodulation technique with an optical filter. Meanwhile,
the system also enables to measure AE signals in higher signal-noise ratio than that of
the broadband light source system. The principle of the measuring of AE signals is the
wavelength dependency of the amplification rate of the EDFA, which was proposed
by Tsuda, one of the authors [2]. Furthermore, the configuration of the new system is
simplified form that using a broadband light source by eliminating the fiber Fabry-
Perot filters.
Several preliminary tests were carried out to employ a fiber ring laser which is a
new light source. One is the evaluation of relation between the lasing wavelength and
the strain which was applied to the FBG sensor. In another test, the background noise
level of AE signal was confirmed to keep almost constant regardless of the lasing
wavelength shifts
Finally, a CFRP beam bending test was carried out to confirm the possibility of
simultaneous measurement of both strain and AE signals from a single FBG sensor. In
the test, signals from a conventional electric resistive strain gage and piezo-electric AE
sensors were compared to those from the FBG sensor. Those were equivalent each
other, and the simultaneous measurement of strain and AE signals using the newly
developed system was verified.
.
FIBER RING LASER
A fiber ring laser consists of an EDFA, an optical circulator, an FBG sensor and an
optical coupler. The FBG sensor works as a cavity mirror of the laser system. The
configuration of the fiber ring laser system is shown in Fig. 1. A weak broadband light
emitted from an EDFA travels to an FBG sensor. The FBG sensor reflects a narrow
band light at the Bragg wavelength and the reflected light splits at the optical coupler.
Part of the reflected light is transmitted to a photo detector where the intensity of the
light is converted into a voltage signal. Remaining reflected light travels to the EDFA
where the light at the Bragg wavelength is amplified, and then the boosted light is
transmitted to the FBG sensor. These processes are repeated at light speed. As a result,
this system ensures the lasing at the Bragg wavelength of the FBG sensor.
Optical Circulator
FBG sensor
Output
EDFA
Input
Optical Photo Detector or
Coupler Optical Spectrum
Analyzer
Figure 1 FBG sensing system based on a fiber ring laser
464
PRELIMINARY TESTS
Several preliminary tests were carried out to employ a fiber ring laser which is a
new light source. One was the evaluation of relation between the lasing wavelength
and the strain applied to the FBG sensor. Figure 2 shows the block diagram of the test
configuration. The laser light spectrums are shown in Fig. 3. Figure 4 shows the
obtained relation between the lasing wavelength and the strain. Here, the lasing
wavelength was confirmed to shift linearly with the strain. In this experiment, the
strain was measured using a conventional electric resistive strain gage.
Figure 2 Block diagram of a preliminary test configuration
0.020
Tensional Strain
Compressional Strain
Strain Free
0.015
Optical Power(mW)
0.010
0.005
0.000
1546 1548 1550 1552 1554
Wavelength(nm)
Figure 3 Fiber ring laser light spectrums
465
1555
1554
Lasing Wavelegth(nm)
1553
1552
1551
1550
1549
1548
1547
-3000 -2000 -1000 0 1000 2000 3000 4000
Strain(micro-strain)
Figure 4 Relation between lasing wavelength and strain
50 5
40 4
Noise RMS(mV)
Noise RMS(mV)
60k-120kHz
20k-1MHz
30 3
20 2
Noise AC 20k-1M
10 1
Noise AC 60k-120k
0 0
1546 1548 1550 1552 1554 1556
Lasing Wavelength(nm)
Figure 5 Fluctuation of a photo detector out put voltage
The fluctuation in noise level of the system was also investigated. Figure 5 shows
the fluctuation in noise level of output of the photo detector shown in Fig. 2. Figure 5
indicates that noise level is almost constant regardless of the lasing wavelength shifts.
CFRP BEAM BENDING TEST
The measurement system was applied to a CFRP beam bending test to confirm
whether strain and AE signals were able to measure simultaneously. Figure 6 is the
block diagram of the measurement system. Strain was measured with both an FBG
sensor and a conventional electric resistive strain gage. AE signals were also measured
with both an FBG sensor and two piezo-electric sensors. The three AE signals from
the FBG sensor and piezo-electric sensors were recorded with a commercially-
available AE measurement equipment (Vallen AMSY-5) for piezo-electric sensors.
466
Figure 6 Measurement system block diagram of a CFRP bending test
30%
Transmittance
Overall Transmittance
and Reflectance
20%
10%
Reflectance
0%
1547 1549 1551 1553 1555
Wavelength
Figure 7 Overall transmittance and reflectance of the optical filter
to measure strain for an FBG sensor
467
Figure 8 Measurement system setup Figure 9 CFRP beam specimen setup
In Fig. 6, the strain measurement

system for the FBG sensor consists of the
strain measurement optical filter, the
photo detector 1 and the photo detector 2.
The strain measurement optical filter
divides the inserted light into the Figure 10 CFRP beam specimen
transmitted light and the reflected light.
Figure 7 shows the transmittance and reflectance of the optical filter. The lasing
wavelength is able to be estimated from the voltage outputs of the photo detector 1 and
2 [3, 4 and 5].
Figure 8 shows the measurement system setup. Figure 9 shows the specimen setup.
The CFRP specimen size was 20mm wide x 200mm long x 5mm thick. The FBG
sensor and the conventional electric resistive strain gage were attached at the center of
the CFRP beam as shown Fig. 10.
Figure 11 shows the obtained load strain relation. Strain values of the FBG sensor
and the strain gage were corresponding well through the test.
4000
FBG sensor
Strai Gage
3000
Micro Strain
2000
1000
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3
Load(kN)
Figure 11 Strain measurement result in CFRP bending test
468
Figure 12 AE measurement result
AE signal example of the FBG sensor
AE signal example of the piezo-electric sensor

Figure 13 AE signal example
Figure 12 shows a typical AE measurement result. The vertical and horizontal

axes are the amplitude of AE signals and the test time respectively. The conventional
electric resistive stain gage amplifier output voltage history is plotted in Fig. 12.
Figure 13 shows an example of AE signal. In Fig. 13, the left side graphs show the
469
waveforms and the right side graphs show the spectrums of the left side’s waveform.
In the spectrums graphs, horizontal axes units are kilo-Hertz.
There is some difference of amplitude level between the FBG sensor and the
piezo-electric sensor. However, the FBG sensor detected the damage event of the
CFRP specimen.
CONCLUSIONS
The measurement system using a fiber ring laser was developed to measure strain
and AE simultaneously using an FBG sensor. The system was applied to several tests.
It was confirmed that the wavelength of the laser generated from the system shifted
linearly with strain applied to the FBG sensor. Furthermore, the system was able to
measure strain and AE simultaneously in a CFRP beam bending test.
The system will be easily extended to a multiple FBG sensors measurement
system. Then, the system is expected to be adopted in the development of new space
rockets and other composite structures.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by Japan Aerospace Exploring Agency (JAXA) space
open lab program.
REFERENCES
1. Nakajima, T., Sato, E., Tsuda, H., Sato A., Kawai, N., Tanaka, N., Tsurui, Y. and Sakyo, N., 2010.
Development of a fiber Bragg grating acoustic emission measurement system for space rockets.
Proceeding of ASIA-PACIFIC WORKSHOP ON STRUCURAL HEALTH MONITRING 2010,
(1A11)-1-9.
2. Tsuda, H., 2010. Fiber Bragg grating vibration-sensing system, insensitive to Bragg wavelength
and employing fiber ring laser, Optics Letters, 35, 2349-2351.
3. Davis, M.A. and Kersey, A.D., 1994, All-fibre Bragg grating strain-sensor demodulation technique
using a wavelength division coupler, Electronics Letters, 30, 75-77.
4. Tsuda, H. and Lee, J. R., 2007, Strain and damage monitoring of CFRP in impact loading using a
fiber Bragg grating sensor system 、Composite Science Technology., 67, 1353-1361.
5. Nakajima, T., 2010. Frequency characteristic evaluation of FBG sensor using a Hopkinson’s bar,
Proceeding of EUROPEAN WORKSHOP ON STRUCURAL HEALTH MONITRING 2010, 1313-
1318
470
Wireless and Batteryless Accelerometry for
Aircraft Structural Health Monitoring
R. MONTHÉARD, C. ESCRIBA, J.-Y. FOURNIOLS, M. LASTAPIS,
J.-M. PRUNET, M. BAFLEUR and J.-M. DILHAC
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the design of a self-powered impact sensor dedicated to

Structural Health Monitoring for aeronautic applications. The purpose of this work is
to identify and implement technological solutions that meet specific requirements for
on-ground operation. A prototype featuring thermal energy harvesting, super-
capacitor-based energy storage and 3D-accelerometry is demonstrated.
INTRODUCTION
Aircraft Structural Health Monitoring (ASHM) is one of the major challenges

faced by aircraft manufacturers. To ease the implementation of the devices likely to
perform ASHM, wireless systems are highly desirable. The wireless nature of a sensor
relates to both data transmission and power supply, and as a direct consequence, such
a system is meant to be energy autonomous.
However, whatever the performance and size of batteries, they only store a limited
amount of energy and exhibit a limited lifetime, while their replacement may be
difficult given the fact that the devices may be placed in remote areas with very
limited access. More important, at temperature levels encountered at high altitude in
unpressurized areas far from engines (down to –60°C), their yield is drastically
reduced [1] whereas unacceptable safety issues (thermal runaway and fire) are raised.
This is why energy capture from the environment is required. In this context, the
functions of the sensor node – sensing, signal processing, and data transmission – must
deal with a restricted energy budget. Therefore, to increase autonomy and reliability,
energy efficiency of every stage becomes a priority.
The purpose of this paper is to describe the design of a wireless and batteryless
sensor specifically dedicated to ASHM. Cross-dependence between topics such as
R. Monthéard1,2, C. Escriba1,2, J.-Y. Fourniols1,2, M. Lastapis1,2, J.-M. Prunet3,

M. Bafleur1,2, J.-M. Dilhac1,2
1
CNRS ; LAAS ; 7 avenue du Colonel Roche, F-31077 Toulouse, France
2
Université de Toulouse ; UPS, INSA, INP, ISAE ; LAAS ; F-31077 Toulouse, France
3
Tag Technologies, Regent Park II – Bâtiment 1, rue du Lac, 31670 Labège, France
471
implementation technologies, environmental energy capture and storage, sensing and
communication protocol design are described in details.
OBJECTIVES AND REQUIREMENTS
The work reported in this paper focuses on the design of a SHM system for
aeronautic applications. It aims first at identifying technological solutions that suit this
particular context and then at implementing such a system according to aircraft-
specific environment.
Aircraft-specific Requirements
For an easy installation of the SHM system at any location on an aircraft, it is

highly desirable that it be wireless. This property makes it physically independent
from the main aircraft network, in terms of power supply as well as data transmission.
On the other hand, however, the system has to run on its own energy resource, which
becomes the crucial matter in that kind of application.
In this study, the target application is the detection of impacts while the aircraft is
on ground and engines are stopped. This phase is called ground handling: it includes
services such as aircraft towing, luggage and air cargo handling, catering, refueling,
etc, all activities implying various trucks and specialized equipment, likely to
inadvertently damage the aircraft structure (body, wings, doors, hatches, …). As
energy can hardly be harvested from the environment while the aircraft is on ground, it
must be captured beforehand, i.e. during flights. It is easily understood that, energy
capture and energy consumption occurring at different times, energy storage is
required.
The presented design has been realized within the frame of a few predetermined
mission profiles, in order to comply with the aircraft operator’s needs. These profiles
(see Table I) correspond to 24-hour cycles that comprise three main phases: flight,
active phase (aircraft on ground, sensing on) and inactive phase (aircraft on ground,
sensing off).
TABLE I. AIRCRAFT MISSION PROFILES

Profile Flight time Active time Inactive time
Long-haul 15h (2 x 7h30) 5h 4h
Short-haul 6h (5 x 1h20) 10h 8h
Low-activity 2h 20h 2h
It can be noted that energy must consequently be stored for several hours, so there
is a high requirement regarding the energy storage solution; particular attention must
be paid to the self-discharge figure.
Global System Architecture
The target system has been functionally described according to Fig.1. The
following main functions have been identified:
- Energy harvesting
- Energy storage
472
- Sensing and signal processing
- Wireless transmission
Each of the above functions has been implemented in our design, with a concern
about using efficiently the limited energy budget.
sensing
energy energy Wireless
+ signal
harvesting storage transmission
processing
Figure 1. General functional architecture of a sensor node
ENERGY CAPTURE AND STORAGE
The choice of energy harvesting to autonomously supply power to the sensor node
is dictated by the strict requirements stated above. It is however necessary to benefit
from an adequate resource of energy provided by the environment.
Thermal Energy Harvesting
In normal operation, an aircraft is submitted to temperature changes taking place

between ground and cruise altitude. These important temperature fluctuations,
inducing transient thermal gradients, may represent an interesting opportunity to
capture energy in the form of heat and to transform it into electrical energy.
In our experimental setup, considering its

relatively small size and the included basic
power management electronics, an evaluation
kit from Micropelt GmbH (see Fig. 2) has been
used. This device consists in a Thermo Electric
Generator (TEG) mechanically inserted between
an aluminum heat sink and a thermal exchanger.
Its output is connected to a DC booster that
steps up the voltage and charges a storage
capacitor, followed by a low drop-out (LDO)
regulator providing a constant output voltage.
Figure 2. Micropelt TE-POWER PLUS [2]
In order to assess the potential thermal gradients that could be exploited to power a
node, in-flight measurements on board a long-range aircraft have been carried out at
several spots, where SHM could be used to detect shocks. More precisely, for each
spot one sensor monitored the temperature on the inner side of the aircraft skin, while
a second sensor measured the air temperature at a few centimeters distance. These data
have been used as an input for the modeling of thermal energy conversion. A typical
result of this data processing is shown in Fig. 3 where it appears that temperature
gradient can exceed 25°C. Using typical thermal and electrical properties of
thermoelectric generators, open-circuit voltage at TEG output that could be harvested
473
has been assessed (Fig. 3). For this computation, the effect of varying air density with
altitude has been taken into account to adjust exchange coefficient between TEG and
inner air. It can be seen that the output voltage is about a few hundreds of millivolts
only, hence the usefulness of the above-mentioned DC booster.
Figure 3. Recorded temperature gradient (top) together with aircraft flight phase (middle) ; modeling of
open-circuit voltage and output power at matched load of a thermoelectric device (bottom).
Storage on Super-capacitor
In our application context, the use of a primary or secondary battery being

prohibited for energy storage, electrical double-layer capacitors, also named super-
capacitors or ultra-capacitors, have been chosen for this purpose. These devices
exhibit many advantages: long lifetime, high specific energy and power, low-
temperature operation, no safety issue, low cost. On the other hand, their main
drawback is the strong dependence of the output voltage with the state of charge,
which raises the need for a voltage regulator (such as the LDO aforementioned) and
unfortunately leads to extra energy consumption.
The super-capacitor sizing is an important step of the design, as it determines both
the amount of energy that can be stored within a given time interval as well as the
autonomy it provides to the system when no energy is harvested. The super-capacitor
value must be high enough to store all the energy likely to be harvested during the
flight(s), while not being too high, not to prohibitively increase the rise time of the
474
super-capacitor voltage, with the risk of a partial energy capture and reduced storage.
Moreover, one must ensure that the voltage across the super-capacitor never exceeds
its voltage rating.
Therefore, the power source (TEG + DC booster) has been characterized when
submitted to temperature gradients identical to those recorded during flight, and
measurements with different storage capacitor values demonstrated that the
association of the TEG and DC/DC converter can be considered as a Thévenin source,
with a 16V electromotive force and an internal resistance of about 100kΩ (see Fig.4,
left). For storage, it allowed identifying a trade-off value of 2 farads, which is not
optimal from a power transfer point of view, but is a minimum to prevent overvoltage
regarding the mission profiles presented above. Simulation results (see Fig.4, right)
show that using smaller capacitors (in the order of 0.5F) would have led to greater
harvested energy, but the capacitor voltage would have raised well above 5.5V (within
15 hours), which is the common voltage rating for the chosen super-capacitors.
Harvested energy vs. C
35
T = 2 hours
30 T = 6 hours
18 T = 15 hours
Energy (Joules)
25
16 20
15
14
Supercapacitor voltage (V)
10
12 5
10 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Storage capacitor value (Farads)
8
State of charge vs. C
6 16
T = 2 hours
14 T = 6 hours
4 C = 100µF T = 15 hours
Voltage (Volts)
12
2 C = 200µF 10
C = 320µF
8
0
6
ï2 4
0 2 4 6 8 10
Time (s) 2
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Storage capacitor value (Farads)
Figure 4. Capacitor charging profile for constant source output power (left); simulations for super-
capacitor sizing (right)
The storage unit has been consequently implemented using two 1F super-
capacitors connected in parallel, giving an equivalent value of 2F. The Cooper
Bussmann PB-5R0V105-R model [3] has been chosen for its relatively low series
resistance (rated 1Ω).
SENSING AND WIRELESS TRANSMISSION
The sensing, signal processing and wireless transmission circuits are seen as the
energy-consuming blocks of the entire system. Thus, their design follows an energy-
oriented scheme with the aim of increasing the duration of autonomous operation.
Accelerometer-based Monitoring
Vibrations and shocks are common matters of interest and fit well within the scope
of SHM. Whereas the monitoring of vibrations often requires complex signal
processing such as Fast Fourier Transforms, which are relatively power hungry,
impact detection is easier to implement.
475
A three-axis accelerometer has been chosen to perform sensing as it may monitor
positions, vibrations as well as impacts. This type of device has many advantageous
features including small size, low cost, easy integration. Moreover, its power
consumption can be drastically reduced thanks to a method that consists in powering it
periodically. The pulse width can be as short as the turn-on time of the device, which
is typically in the order of 1 millisecond [4]. The duty cycle, on the other hand, must
be compatible with both the energy constraints and the SHM requirements (i.e. the
highest frequency of interest to be monitored).
Sensing is achieved by event-triggered embedded signal processing. Therefore, the
sensor node itself determines whether an “event” has been detected and is worth
transmitting. This technique not only reduces the average consumption due to signal
processing, it also decreases the number of irrelevant wireless transmissions and the
associated power usage.
Wireless Data Transmission
Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) has been selected as the modulation scheme for
data transmission, as it provides good immunity to noise. The carrier frequency is
433MHz, which is an available band commonly used for systems such as remote
controls and alarms. At the sensor level, once an acceleration signal has been
categorized by filtering as an “event”, five redundant frames are emitted for more
reliability.
A test bench has been built around the aforementioned technological solutions in
order to verify and demonstrate the performance of the whole system. For the sake of
simplicity compared to an implementation with highly negative temperatures, we
generated the same thermal gradient as the one during a typical flight with positive
temperatures. This has a low impact on the TEG yield and should allow easily
validating the proposed concept. Thus, the Micropelt TEG assembly has been placed
on a copper plate heated at a regulated temperature of 50°C, so that the gradient with
ambient air is approximately 25°C. It has been used to charge two super-capacitors of
1F placed in parallel. The powered sensor was a TAG sensor from TAG Technologies
[5] (see Fig.5), from which the alkaline batteries have been removed. It includes a
Freescale MMA7331 3D accelerometer [6] set with a full scale of +/-4 g and a
sensitivity of 300 mV/g, a microcontroller and a radio frequency front-end. This
sensor is able to wirelessly transmit data to a remote central station.
Figure 5. Printed circuit board with the accelerometer, signal processing and RF front end
(antenna is on the back of the PCB) [5].
476
The different mission profiles presented in Table I were assessed, with a rate of
around one transmission every hour (Fig.6). Experiments showed that the system was
first capable of harvesting and storing energy, and then in a second phase could
effectively detect impacts (Fig.7) and possibly wirelessly report to the central station if
the event is categorized as significant, while being only powered in this phase by the
energy initially stored in super-capacitors.
Longïhaul
6
5
Voltage (Volts)
0
0 5 10 15 20
Time (hrs)
Shortïhaul
6
5
Voltage (Volts)
0
0 5 10 15 20
Time (hrs)
Figure 6. Super-capacitor output voltage (red/upper curves) and LDO output (blue/middle curves) for
long-haul (upper set) and short-haul (lower set) flights. The lines at the bottom of both figures are used
to visualize the transient 20 mA current surges associated to RF transmission.
However, it must be highlighted that the sensor operation duration strongly

depends on the ratio between flight time and active time.
Figure 7. Example of impact signature on the 3D accelerometer three outputs (X,Y,Z)
In both cases, it appears that the LDO output voltage is not regulated as long as the
super-capacitor voltage does not exceed the target-regulated voltage, i.e. 3.3 V. Once
this target is reached, the LDO output remains constant while the super-capacitor
keeps on charging during the rest of the flight. Then, during the inactive phase, there is
477
a slow discharge due to both the LDO consumption (between 3 and 6µA according to
datasheet) and the super-capacitor self-discharge (about 20µA). Finally, during the
active phase, an idle current of 80µA is delivered by the LDO to the load. The
discharge rate of the super-capacitor consequently increases.
From Fig.5 it appears that for long haul flights, after 24 hours, enough energy is
still stored to allow the LDO regulating the voltage for the load. For short haul flights,
this is not the case anymore after 19 hours, but the energy balance is nevertheless
neutral after 24 hours: as much energy was harvested than consumed.
It is worth to mention that 20mA current surges of 1s duration have been triggered
(see Fig.6) to emulate the effects of RF transmission: they do not affect the overall
energy balance, and the LDO was then able to deliver the required current as long as
the super-capacitor voltage was higher than 3.3V.
The “low activity” use case of Table I has not been tested, as it is obvious from the
above that, keeping identical test setup and conditions, the energy balance would be
negative in that case.
CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVES
In this paper, the design of a self-powered accelerometer-based vibration/impact

sensor has been presented. It has been demonstrated that such a system can be an
enabler for aeronautic Structural Health Monitoring. Nevertheless, the dependence on
the aircraft’s mission profile and short-term history has been emphasized. Future work
will focus on the development of new electronic architectures aiming at improving the
energy storage efficiency.
REFERENCES
1. D. Meekhun, V. Boitier, J-M. Dilhac, Charge and Discharge Performance of Secondary Batteries
According to Extreme Environment Temperatures, 35th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial
Electronics Society (IECON 2009), Porto (Portugal), November 2009.
2. http://www.micropelt.com/
3. http://www.cooperindustries.com/content/public/en/bussmann.html
4. M. Lastapis, C. Escriba, G. Auriol, R. Albu, P. Berthou, J-L. Boizard, J-M. Dilhac, J-Y. Fourniols,
Embedded blade microsystem and events recorder for drone structural health monitoring, Asia-
Pacific Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, (APWSHM), November 2010, Tokyo, Japan.
5. J. Prunet, J-Y. Fourniols, Method for processing acceleration measurements, acceleration sensor
and alarm system equipped with such sensors, European Patent EP1941475.
6. http://www.freescale.com/files/sensors/doc/fact_sheet/MMASENSORFS.pdf?tid=TSPGAD200406
LP
478
Flight Data from an Airworthy Structural
Health Monitoring System for an Unmanned
Air Vehicle Using Integrally Embedded
Fiber Optic Sensors
N. GUPTA, M. J. AUGUSTIN, S. SATHYA, R. SUNDARAM,
M. H. PRASAD, A. PILLAI, S. GALI, J. BALTER, P. GUEDJ,
I. KRESSEL, A. H E NDLEMAN, Y. BOTSEV, N. GORBATOV
and M. TUR
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an airworthy, Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG) based, Structural
Health monitoring System (SHM) system for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV).
Various design issues pertaining to sensors location, embedment, integration of
interrogation system instrumentation and online data recording are addressed. FBG
data were processed to identify both loads and vibration modes using low pass
filtering and artificial neural network algorithms. Results of an actual flight test
conducted indicate that this sensor network can track the vibration and loads signature
during all flight conditions, making this system a candidate for real time UAVs
structural airworthy assessment.
INTRODUCTION
SHM systems [1] should prove extremely important in composite-made UAVs,

where conventional inspection methods of critical structural components are hindered
by limited accessibility. Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBGs) are especially suitable for SHM
due to their reliability, small size, low weight, high sensitivity, immunity to
electromagnetic interference (EMI). For example, a surface bonding FBG sensor net
was successfully used for shape predictions of the doubly-tapered Ikhana wings during
flight [2,3], taking advantage of the multiplexing capability of fiber optic sensors.
Successful embedding technologies were also considered [4].
This work presents an advanced smart load monitoring, airworthy system, for a
UAV composite tail booms, based on an array of FBG sensors, embedded in the tail
boom during manufacturing. The system was tested on ground in order to verify its
ability to track both static and dynamic boom loading. Structural characteristics like
_____________
1 1 1 1 2
Nitesh Gupta , Augustin MJ , Sakthi Sathya , Ramesh Sundaram , M Hari Prasad , ACR
2 3 4 4 4 5 5 5 5
Pillai ,S Gali , J Balter , P Guedj , I Kressel ,A. Hendleman , Y Botsev , N Gorbatov , M Tur
1
Advanced Composites Division, National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), Bangalore, India
2
Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), Bangalore, India
3
Consultant, Tel-Aviv, Israel
4
Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), Engineering Division, Israel
5
School of Electrical Engineering, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
479
strain distribution under static loading, impact response, and normal modes were
successfully traced by the system. As a final proof of concept the system was
integrated in the UAV and was successfully flown. The application of this technology
will help in the reduction of Direct Operating and Maintenance cost of the aircraft.
FIBER BRAGG GRATING (FBG) SENSOR
The shift in the reflected wavelength from the central wavelength of a free (not
embedded) grating, ΔλB/λB, due to an applied strain along the fiber (ε) & change in
temperature (ΔT) is approximately given by [5]:
 B
 1  p e        n  T (1)
B
where  is the mechanical strain along the local vicinity of the FBG sensor, T is the
temperature change, pe is an effective strain-optic constant,  & n are, respectively,
the thermal expansion coefficient and thermo-optic coefficient of the fiber. On the
other hand, an embedded fiber, firmly attached to its surrounding matrix, is also
affected by the thermally induced mechanical strains in that composite substrate.
Therefore, for an embedded fiber, where the transverse mechanical coupling between
the fiber & the composite substrate is small, Eq. (1) should be rewritten as:
B
 1  pe        n  T  1  pe  substrate     T (2)
B
where substrate is the thermal expansion coefficient of the composite substrate. As the
UAV experiences temperature changes during flight, it is necessary to compensate for
the temperature induced ΔλB/λB in order to get the true mechanical strains. Boom
heating test was conducted in order to evaluate the total thermal effect on the
embedded Bragg grating sensor wavelength shift. The procedure of removing the
thermal effect will be discussed further. True structural strain values were used for the
development of Artificial Neural Network based boom load estimation.
SENSOR LOCATION IDENTIFICATION & EMBEDMENT
Nishant UAV, designed & developed by ADE in India, was chosen as the flying
test platform for the evaluation of the SHM system (Fig. 1). The two tail booms
holding the horizontal tail (with elevator) and the vertical tails (with rudder) [6] were
selected as the structure to be monitored. Each of the two tail booms is a composite
structure made of two thin wall “C” section channels, riveted together to form a close
rectangular beam. The FBG sensor net, comprising four polyimide coated fibers, each
with four sensors per boom, was tailored to monitor critical locations in the booms,
based on a detailed finite element analysis. All operating conditions of the UAV,
including normal cruise case, launch, parachute opening and final UAV air-bag
assisted recovery were considered. The main boom loading conditions are vertical and
horizontal bending. In order to track such loadings two fibers were embedded at the
center of the boom and another two fibers were embedded near the corners. Fig. 2
shows a typical layout of the FBG sensors in a C-section along with boom cross
section. For such a sensing net arrangement, the two centre fibers are only sensitive to
480
the vertical bending. The side fibers are sensitive to the vertical bending in a similar
manner as the central ones, but will also react to horizontal bending. Since no tension
loading is applied to the boom, the vertical bending introduces similar but opposite
strains in the top and bottom fibers. The two side fibers are on the same side with
respect to the center line. Hence, the horizontal bending induces similar strains on both
side fibers, in addition to the vertical bending contribution. Once FBG readings are
acquired, this sensors arrangement enables direct identification of the two bending
loads on each boom. The center boom sensors, embedded in pairs into the top and
bottom skins, at the same distance from the boom end, react very similarly to
temperature changes, but oppositely to vertical bending. By adding these two readings
the mechanical loading effect is canceled and the temperature contribution on the FBG
readings can be evaluated.
Top and
Bottom
C-
sections
for FBG
sensor
Fig.1. Nishant UAV Fig. 2. Typical C section with embedded FBGs
Essential to reliable embedment is the proper handling of the egress points, where
the fibers tend to break at the exit point from the composite structure due to the
accumulation of small quantities of resin, which is very brittle & sharp. Various
embedment studies conducted earlier showed that use of Neoprene rubber or Teflon
sleeve at the exit point eases the long-term handling of these delicate points [4].
However, this scheme is suitable only when the fibre is exiting at the end of the
structure. As the boom has to go through other assembly related operations such as
trimming, butting with fairing section etc. another scheme of patch embedment was
devised & implemented as shown in Fig. 3.
Fig.3. Sensor patch embedment
A patch embedment concept was developed in this project in order to protect the
fibers during all production and assembly process. A small pre-cured patch made with
the same boom material was prepared and attached to the reinforced fibres at the
egress point. The patch size cut out was made in the host structure during the
manufacturing. The sensor patch was then placed at the cut out location & the fiber
was routed so as to place the FBG sensors at the predetermined locations. Additional
481
composite layers were added on top of the patch and fibres, yielding a protected
embedded sensor net ensuring the booms structural integrity and efficiency of the
embedment process in terms of boom manufacturing time.
SHM INSTRUMENTATION & VALIDATION FOR FLIGHT
The airworthy SHM instrumentation consists of an FBG interrogator, on-board

computer, battery, electrical & fiber optic interconnects & mounting fixtures. A solid
state, high sampling rate (>2KHz) FBG interrogator capable of reading multiple FBGs
simultaneously, distributed across four fibers (4-channles), was used. The sensor data
were transferred over an Ethernet cable to an on-board computer, having the
capabilities of both controlling the interrogator and also storing the data on a solid
state drive. The complete assembly of these units was placed in the payload bay of the
UAV on a specially designed mounting fixture. These instruments was tested &
verified for their functionality, as per the Environmental Screening Specification
(ESS) requirements of the UAV, comprising vibrations, shock & temperature tests.
The on-board SHM instrumentation was designed such that, while on ground, it
can be controlled and monitored using a quick-disconnect cable, connecting the
onboard computer to ground-based keyboard and VGA screen. This arrangement also
ensured that after the recovery of the UAV the FBG data can be downloaded and the
on-board system can be stopped as per its operating procedures.
GROUND LEVEL TESTS
Ground tests, comprising (i) static & dynamic testing of boom & (ii) ground
engine run tests with boom assembled onto UAV with above SHM instrumentation,
ensuring that the SHM instrumentation does not interfere with the operation of
existing avionics inside UAV and vice versa. The sensor data obtained from static
testing were also used to compare with the FEA data, enabling the learning cycle of an
Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based Load Estimator.
Static testing of the booms was carried out to correlate embedded FBG readings
with collocated surface bonded strain gauges for different load cases. The boom was
fixed in a cantilever configuration at the same attachment points, used to fix it to the
wing in UAV. Tail loading in both vertical & horizontal direction was applied in steps
at the boom end as per the design limit load. Fig. 4 shows the typical static test setup.
Fixed End Loading End
Embedded FBGs with

surface bonded RSG
Fig.4. Experimental setup for boom static testing
482
Fig. 5(a) shows the response of the FBG & strain gauges at various load values for
a typical sensor location on boom. From the plots it can be observed that the strain
gauge & FBG data are in good agreement with FEA values.
In order to evaluate the ability of the embedded sensor to track the dynamic
behaviour of the boom, an impact test was performed [7]. A weight of 60Kg was
attached to the boom at the end & released by cutting its attachment to the boom. The
FBG readings during the dynamic test are shown in Fig. 5(b). The first bending mode
frequency of the cantilever boom, as obtained by the Fourier analysis of the dynamic
test data, was identified as 27.6Hz.
Top Corner 3
250 400
Top FBG
300 Bottom FBG
Strain (microstrains)
200
Strain (microstrain)
200
150 100
0
100
FE -100
50 RSG -200
FBG
0 -300
0 5 10 15 20 -400
3.9 4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5
Load(Kg) Time (sec)
Fig.5(a) Static test results Fig. 5(b) Dynamic test data
Ground engine run tests with booms assembled onto the UAV were also carried
out [7]. In this test, the FBG data collection started a while before the start of the
engine. Engine was run for various RPM values of 4000, 5000, 6000 & 7000. Fig. 6(a)
shows a typical time record of FBG sensor wherein the regions of “system at rest”
(engine off), “start up” (engine on) & engine operation at 4000 RPM are clearly
observed. Frequency analysis of the time series data was carried out for different RPM
values. Fig. 6(b) shows typical PSD plots.
40 -50
30 Start -60
20
Strain (microstrains)
-70
Idle
Amplitude(dB)
10 -80
0 -90
-10 -100
Rest
-20 -110
-30 -120
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 50 100 150 200
Time (sec) Freq (Hz)
Fig.6(a) Ground engine run data Fig. 6(b) PSD of ground engine run data
From the PSD of the sensor data for different engine RPM values it was observed
that the peaks with values of 83.48 Hz, 103.8 Hz & 120.2 Hz match the engine RPM.
However, the group of low frequencies, especially ~10 Hz, do not change with the
engine RPM. Thus, they can be attributed to the natural vibration modes of the
483
structure. The ability to distinguish between the sources of the various groups of
frequencies proves the feasibility of the SHM system in detecting small strain values.
Based on the validation & ground test results, SHM instrumentation was cleared
for the flight test.
FLIGHT TEST & FLIGHT DATA ANALYSIS
The Nishant UAV equipped with above airworthy SHM system was flown at
Kolar Airfield near Bangalore, India. It was demonstrated that the system captured the
data successfully from all 16 FBG sensors of the 4 centre fibers of both booms,
starting from launch, flight manoeuvres & parachute recovery.
A LabVIEW based QuickVIEW software was developed to visualise the sensor
data immediately after flight recovery. The software provided a flight playback of the
sensor data coupled with other flight parameters such as altitude, engine RPM, yaw,
roll & pitch angle etc. recorded separately by UAV avionics.
The first step in the evaluation of the mechanical behaviour of the booms is to
isolate the temperature induced strains. As discussed previously, adding the top and
bottom results of each centre fiber FBG sensors pairs isolate the temperature effect,
[Fig 7(a)]. Additional low pass filter of 0-35Hz was also applied to remove
frequencies associated with noise and local higher skin bending local modes. The
temperature effect, as obtained from the sensors was compared to the flight elevation
data, translated to FBG readings using the standard temperature-altitude profile
combined with the embedded FBG CTE obtained during ground heating test.
(a) (b)
Fig.7: (a) Raw FBG readings during flight, showing the combined effect of strain and temperature
(thicker-blue curve). Superimposed is a curve of the effect of temperature alone based on the UAV
height, as obtained from telemetry; (b) Boom loads and vibration signature after removal of
temperature effect
The Boom vibration signature, excluding launch and landing, can be seen in Fig
7(b). Fig. 8 shows the temperature compensated strain values for top & bottom sensors
for complete flight profile [Fig. 8(a)], launch [Fig. 8(b)] & recovery [Fig. 8(c)]. It is
observed from the plot that the readings of the sensors are out of phase as they are
located on top & bottom centre fibers of the composite boom structure.
484
ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK (ANN) BASED LOAD ESTIMATOR
In order to convert the sensor data in terms of strains into meaningful information
(e.g. load or damage, frequency response), ANN based techniques were employed
[1,8,9]. ANNs are usually required when a specific equation or algorithm is not
applicable, but when adequate knowledge or data base exist (either from experiments
or analysis or both) to derive knowledge based solutions [10].
For the current case, a feed-forward back propagation ANN based load estimator
was developed. The strain patterns across individual booms from centre fiber FBGs
were used as inputs & corresponding bending load values were used as the outputs to
the load estimator. The training of the load estimator for this defined set of strain
pattern/load combination was developed for both booms.
In order to estimate the flight loads, the temperature compensated strain values as
determined in the previous section, were used. These strain patterns were given as
inputs to the trained load estimator. The output of the estimator was the predicted
flight loads. Fig. 8 shows the estimated load values for complete flight profile [Fig.
8(a)], launch [Fig. 8(b)] & recovery phase [Fig. 8(c)] of UAV.
1.00
2000 1.00 1.00
125
0.80
0.75 0.85
100
1500
Launch Recovery
0.60
75
0.50
Normalized Altitude
1000
0.71 0.40
50
0.25 Load Bottom FBG 0.20

Normalized Strain
500
Normalized Load
25
0.57
0.00
0 0.00
0
0.42
-0.25
-500
Altitude -0.20
-25
Top FBG 0.28 -0.40

-50
-0.50
-1000
-0.60
-75
-0.75 0.14
-1500
-0.80
-100
:00
:00
:00
:00
:00
:00
:00
:00
:00
-1.00
-2000 -1.00
-125
:15
:30
:45
:00
:15
:30
:45
:00
:15
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
14
14
Time
(a). Complete flight profile
1 1 1
Bottom FBG 0.5

0.5 Load Bottom FBG
0.5 0.5
Normalized Strain
Normalized Strain
Normalized Load
Normalized Load
0
0 0 0
Top FBG Top FBG

-0.5 -0.5
-0.5 -0.5
Load
-1
50
54
42
58
46
-1
39
35
37
41
-1
7:
7:
7:
7:
7:
7:
7:
7:
7:
:1
:1
:1
:1
:1
Time Time
:2
:2
:2
:2
14
14
14
14
14
12
12
12
12
(b). Launch (c). Recovery

Fig. 8. Temperature compensated strain & ANN estimated load
CONCLUDING REMARKS
A Successful flight trial of an airworthy, FBG based, SHM system was conducted
on an UAV. The FBG sensor data tracked the entire flight events. The instrumentation
has survived the harsh operating conditions of UAV flight course. Rugged embedment
485
schemes have been developed together with software to handle the large size flight
data. Artificial neural network based load estimation methodology has been developed
to estimate the flight loads at different flight regimes. However, there are several
issues which need to be addressed in order to realize a cost effective on-line SHM
system as an integral part of avionics. The next phase of work should include damage
identification, “sensor net” optimization for reliable damage detection, enhancement
of sensor embedment concepts & SHM instrumentation for large sensor count.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This technological achievement, perhaps first of its kind in terms of flying a UAV
with a fiber sensor net fully embedded during the very manufacturing of the monitored
parts, was the culmination of rigorous joint efforts between National Aerospace
Laboratories (NAL), Constituent of Council of Scientific & Industrial Research
(CSIR), Bangalore, Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), Bangalore,
Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) & Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv. Authors are thankful
to Mr HN Sudheendra, Dr Byji Varghese, Mr Kotresh, Mr Kundan Verma, Mr
Ramchandra, Mr Ramanaiah, Mr Gururaj & Mr Amith of NAL for their help during
the course of work. Authors express their sincere thanks to Mr A Nathan, Mr S Ronen,
from IAI and Mr G Natarajan, Mr G Siva Sankaran, Mr G Sreenivasa Murthy from
ADE for their thoughtful suggestions. Authors are grateful to Dr. AR Upadhya,
Director NAL & Mr PS Krishnan, Director ADE for their encouragement & support.
REFERENCES
1. WJ Staszewski, C. Boller and G.R Tomlinson, 2004, "Health Monitoring of Aerospace Structures",
John Wiley & Sons.
2. William L. Ko, W. L. Richards, and Van T. Tran, 2007, “Displacement Theories for In-Flight
Deformed Shape Predictions of Aerospace Structures” NASA report TP-2007-214612.
3. William L. Ko, W Lance Richards, and Van Tran Fleischer, 2009, “Applications of Ko
Displacement Theory to the Deformed Shape Predictions of the Doubly-Tapered Ikhana Wing”,
NASA report TP-2009-214652.
4. Sundaram, R., et.al. 2005, “Structural health monitoring of co-cured composite structures using
FBG sensors”, Proc. SPIE International Conf. on Smart Structures & Systems, Newport, USA.
5. Andreas, O., and Kyriacos, K., “Fiber Bragg Grating. Fundamentals & Applications in
Telecommunications & Sensing”, Artech House, 1999.
6. M. Tur, et.al., 2009, “The use of optical fiber sensors for load tracking & structural health
monitoring of UAV composite structures”, ICAUV, Bangalore, India.
7. A Handelman, et.al. 2010, “Load tracking & structural health monitoring of Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles using optical fiber sensors”, 10th International Conference on Fiber Optics and Photonics,
IIT Guwahati, India
8. Chang, F.-K. and Beard, S. 1997. “Active damage detection in filament wound composite tubes
using built-in sensors and actuators”. J. of Intelligent Material, Systems and Structures, 8: 891-897.
9. Staszewski, W.J., Read, I. and Foote, P. 2000. “Damage detection in composite materials using
optical fibres – recent advances in signal processing”, Proc. of the SPIE’s 7th International
Symposium on Smart Structures and Materials, Conference on Smart Structures and Integrated
Systems, Newport Beach, California.
10. Kamath, G.M. et.al. 2006, “A neural network based health monitoring methodology for co-cured/
co-bonded composite aircraft structures”. Proc. of the 3rd European Workshop on Structural Health
Monitoring, Granada, Spain.
486
Algorithms to Monitor Damaging Events on a
Plane Blade with an Autonomous Embedded
Microsystem
M. LASTAPIS, C. ESCRIBA and J.-Y. FOURNIOLS
ABSTRACT
Monitoring of aircrafts composites structures is part of today challenge named

SHM, for Structural Health Monitoring. Turboprop blade surveillance is part of it.
In this context we devised a microsystem embedded on these structures in order to
monitor various blade parameters such as speed, vibrations or impacts. This paper
intends to show results obtained in blade monitoring data processing. These works
lead to a dedicated algorithm of surveillance based on a single accelerometer.
INTRODUCTION
In several fields, manufacturers aim to monitor their structure, especially when

they are in composites. A domain pools these wishes and is named SHM. These
researches are dedicated to better plan maintenance calendars. Also manufacturers
will be able to improve their products by adapting them to what they are subjected
to during their life. The plane propeller blade is one of these aircrafts composites
structures. Previously, we devised a microsystem able to monitor a propeller blade
in real time. This monitoring improves blade safety and maintenance. Its design is
based on accelerometers in order to detect various damaging events:
• impacts from birds happening at taking off or when landing, stones
when plane uses unprepared runways, or bullets when plane is intended
for military purposes,
• overspeeds, which can induce damaging aerodynamic loads,
• overvibrations, which can lead to cracks into the composite structure.
In order to diagnose blade structural health, our microsystem processes in real
time signals from the sensor. Then detected event is recorded into memory. Data
extraction is made through USB interface to be post-analysed. These devices are
detailed in previous papers: one is devised for Transall blade [1] (Fig. 1) while
another one targets drone blade [2]. This paper is dedicated to results based on
aircraft blades.
Mathieu Lastapis, Christophe Escriba, Jean-Yves Fourniols.

CNRS; LAAS; 7 avenue du colonel Roche, F-31077 Toulouse Cedex 4, France.
Université de Toulouse; UPS, IN SA, INP, ISA E ; UT1, UT M, LA AS ; F-31077
Toulouse Cedex 4, France.
487
Fig. 1: Transall blade embedded board
Monitoring turboprop blades is a new challenge in research. Equivalent works

can be found on helicopter [3] or more commonly on wind turbine blades [4-6]. A
company has even emerged from this research field: Insensys [7]. Also,
SmartFibres sell systems based on optical fibres to monitor such structures [8].
Unfortunately plane blades do not offer the same constraints. Volume is much
lower and each blade must be equipped individually. That's why we have chosen a
system based on a single accelerometer. This one is fitted on blade at a sensitive
place whereas main system (signal conditioning, power, data processing...) is at
blade bottom [2].
Blade monitoring process is based on a dedicated algorithm. First part concerns
impact detection and localization. Then techniques to detect overvibrations and
overspeeds are shown. Finally, a global algorithm is processed with previous
analysis. This one is ready to be embedded for flight tests.
IMPACTS DETECTION AND LOCALIZATION
Impacts on a blade are the only events which stimulate eigenfrequencies of the
structure. So impacts detection is based on eigenfrequencies surveillance. After
processing the signal to obtain a spectrum (Fig. 2), embedded algorithm looks for
various proper modes of the blade. If they appear, the conclusion that an impact
has happened can be done.
Fig. 2: Blade eigenfrequencies stimulated by an impact
A second important aim for the impact monitoring is localization. Indeed,

blade is mechanically more or less sensitive among shock localization. An impact
488
at blade bottom is less critical than higher. So to achieve such a work, localization
of these impacts is done by measuring differences between eigenfrequencies
amplitudes (Fig. 3). This property comes from the half-constrained blade structure.
Excited eigenfrequencies are different among impact position. A bottom impact
engenders high frequencies while a top impact creates more low frequencies.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 3: Relative amplitude shift depending on impact localization ((a) top impact and (b) bottom
impact)
A lab demonstrator has been developed to show this behaviour (Fig. 4). On the
blade of an ATR airplane, an accelerometer is mounted. Its signal is converted in
digital through a National Instruments acquisition card. Then LabView processes
signals among previously shown techniques. Finally it displays results by
discriminating three zones on the blade (green spots on Fig. 3). Localization is
reliable at 75 % (15 impacts well placed for 20 tries).
489
Fig. 4: screen capture of lab demonstrator of impact detection and localization
VIBRATIONS AND SPEED MONITORING
Last points to monitor on a blade are vibrations and rotating speeds. These
events can be damaging for the structure if they are above a certain level. Here,
data in this paragraph comes from strain gauges because flight tests with the
designed embedded system have not been run yet.
While flying, blade vibrates almost like a pure sinusoidal signal. Depending on
flight phases (take off, fast climbing ...), signal maxima vary. Knowing various
constraints and normal vibrations, overvibrations are detected by watching if signal
is over predefined thresholds (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5: Vibrations during a flight and illustrations of the technique to detect overvibrations
About overspeeds, monitoring technique is based on spectral analysis. During a

flight, blade vibrates at its rotating speed. So measurement of this speed is
achieved by processing a frequency analysis on the sensor signal (Fig. 5). Result is
shown Fig. 6. It gives a main frequency at 14.04 Hz, which matches standard
rotating speed of A400M propellers: 842 RPM.
490
Fig. 6: spectral analysis of a vibrating signal during a flight
120 samples
acquisition
(fs = 600Hz;
Tacq = 200ms)
Frequency Min and max

analysis measurement
Speed Above or under

Eigenfrequencies? measurement threshold?
Y Y
Localization by
eigenfrequencies Overspeed?
amplitude analysis
Y
Y
Impact detection Overspeed Overvibrations

and localization detected detected
Event memory
storage with
timestamping and
stored by level
Fig. 7: Algorithm to monitor propeller blades
491
GLOBAL ALGORITHM PROCESSING
By compiling all previous monitoring techniques, an algorithm can be

processed. Its aim is to be embedded on the microsystem. So it has to be energy
and time saving. Fig. 7 shows this algorithm. It starts by acquiring samples from
accelerometer signal. Then the spectral analysis and the research of
maxima/minima are processed. The second one gives result if overvibrations
happen. Spectral analysis leads to speed measurement and thus overspeed
detection. But it allows checking if eigenfrequencies appear in signal spectrum. If
so, another algorithm localizes the impact on the blade. In any cases when a
damaging event is detected, a record with time stamping is written in flash
memory. To minimise data recording, event are classified among their damaging
capabilities: for example overspeeds are marked "level 1" as light and possibly
without consequences. "Level 5" represents an important overspeed and damages
are very probable.
CONCLUSION
This paper intends to show how to monitor a turboprop blade with a single
accelerometer. Such a solution allows a maximal integration for a minimum
power. It gives good results even if a long flight test campaign will check them
soon.
REFERENCES
[1] Lastapis, M., C. Escriba, Y. Grondin, G. Auriol, P. Amat, S. Andrieu, J. Strak, J.-L.
Boizard, and J.-Y. Fourniols. 2010."Blade recorder microsystem design and validation for
aeronautical structural health monitoring". in European Workshop on Structural Health
Monitoring. Sorrento, Italy: DEStech publications.
[2] Lastapis, M., C. Escriba, G. Auriol, E. Albu, P. Berthou, J.-L. Boizard, J.-M. Dilhac, and
J.-Y. Fourniols. 2010."Embedded blade microsystem and events recorder for drone
structural health monitoring". in Asian-Pacific Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring.
Tokyo, Japan.
[3] Roy, N. and R. Ganguli. 2005. "Helicopter rotor blade frequency evolution with damage
growth and signal processing," Journal of Sound and Vibration, 283(3-5):821-851.
[4] Rumsey, M.A. and J.A. Paquette. 2008. "Structural health monitoring of wind turbine
blades," Smart Sensor Phenomena, Technology, Networks, and Systems 2008, 6933:450.
[5] Ciang, C.C., J.R. Lee, and H.J. Bang. 2008. "Structural health monitoring for a wind
turbine system: a review of damage detection methods," Measurement Science &
Technology, 19(12):-.
[6] Ghoshal, A., M.J. Sundaresan, M.J. Schulz, and P.F. Pai. 2000. "Structural health
monitoring techniques for wind turbine blades," Journal of Wind Engineering and
Industrial Aerodynamics, 85(3):309-324.
[7] Insensys. 2010; Available from: http://www.insensys.com.
[8] Smart Fibres. 2010; Available from: http://www.smartfibres.com.
492
Numerical Predictions of Elastic Wave
Scattering from a Sub-surface Defect
in an F-111 Wing Skin
W. H. ONG, W. K. CHIU, S. C. ROSALIE and N. RAJIC
ABSTRACT
An effective application of stress wave based in-situ structural health monitoring

methodologies requires a fundamental understanding of the interaction between a
wave field and a structural defect. In the case of plate-like structural components such
interactions are complicated by the dispersive nature of the stress waves and the
presence of at least two wave modes at any frequency. In addition, changes in the
structural geometry in the vicinity of the defect can affect the propagation of these
wave modes. An ability to accurately predict the interaction of a stress wave with a
structural defect therefore has significant potential benefit for the design of optimal
SHM systems. The finite element method provides arguably the most versatile basis
for predictive modelling of problems that involve arbitrary complexity; however
simulations that cater for full piezoelectric coupling tend to be impractical for large
problems. This underscores the importance of developing simplified input or forcing
conditions that adequately approximate the mechanics of piezoelectric transduction.
This paper examines the fidelity of two numerical approximations to piezoelectric
coupling, in the context of a complex structural application involving the lower wing
skin of the F-111 aircraft. Numerical predictions furnished by finite element
modelling are compared to experimental observations of scattering from defects
machined into a representative F-111 coupon specimen. The results show that the
scheme used to approximate piezoelectric transduction has a significant influence on
the predictive accuracy of the model.
INTRODUCTION
Structural plate waves are often preferred for structural health monitoring applications
(i.e. [1] [2]) because of their ability to travel efficiently over relatively long distances.
This allows in principle for the development of SHM systems with a relatively sparse
array of transducer elements, one of the key potential advantages of acousto-
_____________
1
W.H. Ong, 1W.K. Chiu, 2 S.C. Rosalie, 2 N. Rajic
1
Monash University, Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering,
Wellington Road, Clayton, Australia
2
Defence Science & Technology Organisation, Air Vehicles Division, Platforms
Science Laboratory, Fishermens Bend, Victoria, Australia
493
ultrasonics over other forms of structural health monitoring. The detection of a defect
using plate waves invariably depends on that defect scattering the incident wave.
However scattering is influenced by a variety of factors including the structural
geometry, the characteristics of the defect or scatterer, the wave mode or modes, the
wavelength, and others. Predictive modelling of the scattering process is consequently
a challenging problem, and in most cases intractable for analytical methods. Although
numerical approaches like the finite element method are far more capable in this
respect, they too have limitations. One such limitation is the heavy computational
burden involved in solving a fully coupled elasto-electromagnetic problem, as is
required to describe precisely the piezoelectric transduction of elastic stress waves.
Consequently, it is common for modellers to approximate the action of a piezoelectric
source with a set of forces, often a single point force or a distribution of normal forces
acting across the footprint of the source (i.e. the piston mode approximation).
Previous work [3] has shown that such approximations do not always adequately
describe the action of a piezoelectric source, leading to inaccuracy in the simulation.
Many of the studies of elastic wave scattering reported in the literature address
relatively simple structural geometries that can be reduced to a 2D problem, i.e. [4-9].
Although such cases do occur in practice, most real problems cannot be simplified this
way and instead require a full 3D analysis. The problem considered in this paper falls
into that latter category. It relates to a serious structural integrity issue that affected
the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) F-111 fleet in the 1990’s. A detailed
description of the problem has been given elsewhere [10]. In summary, it involved the
growth of a fatigue crack in a fuel transfer groove (FTG) on the inside of the lower
skin of the wing. The initial discovery of the problem led to an immediate grounding
of the fleet since the crack length was beyond critical at the design limit load, and the
wing skin is obviously flight critical structure. The problem was eventually resolved
by developing a boron composite patch that was adhered to the skin as a
reinforcement.
Although the approach proved successful, substantiation of the repair was difficult,
primarily because of deficiencies in nondestructive inspection technology, which to
this day cannot furnish an assurance of bondline strength for an adhesive repair
system. The integration of an acousto-ultrasonic SHM capability within the repair
system was seen as a cost-efficient way of providing additional structural integrity
assurance [10] for the repaired structure. However, the design of such a system is
predicated on a good understanding of the relevant elastic wave dynamics. Predictive
modelling is a vital tool in achieving that understanding, however the development of
a useful predictive capability is difficult, largely for the reasons outlined earlier, and
made more so in the present context because of the geometric complexity of the wing
skin at the critical location (see Figure 1) as well as the need to describe the
transduction of elastic waves by an integrated piezoceramic element.
This paper outlines the development of a predictive finite element modelling

capability for the acousto ultrasonic interrogation of the fuel transfer region of the F-
111 lower wing skin. It accommodates the full 3D geometry of the wing skin. One of
the key issues addressed by the paper is whether the action of a piezoceramic source
can be adequately approximated by an appropriate set of forces, such that piezoelectric
494
coupling can be omitted from the simulation. Two approximation schemes are
considered and the predictive accuracy of the simulation compared against
experimental observations of scattering obtained from laser vibrometry (LV) of a
structurally representative test coupon.
Spanwise
direction
FTG
Integral
main
stiffener
Side
stiffener
Figure 1 Photograph of the fuel transfer groove (FTG) on the inside of the F-111 lower
wing skin. Fatigue cracks initiate centrally in the FTG and grow in the chordwise
direction.
2. Experimental and computational methods
2.1 Experiment
A test specimen representative of the F-111 lower wing skin was machined from a
billet of aluminium. Some key specimen dimensions are shown in Figure 2, along with
the location of a groove machined into the FTG to simulate the presence of a crack.
The schematic also shows a piezoceramic source element adjacent to the groove.
The groove in the FTG was machined in the form of an elliptical notch 20 mm long
and 1.8 mm deep. The piezoceramic element was 6.35 mm in diameter and 0.5 mm
thick and was bonded to the test specimen using silver-loaded epoxy, at the location
shown in Figure 2, which is midway between the main and secondary stiffeners in the
thinnest part of the specimen. A 5 cycle Hanning modulated tone-burst with a centre
frequency of 300 kHz, and an amplitude of 80 V was applied to the piezoceramic
source. Out of plane displacements in the specimen were measured using a Polytec
OFV 505 laser vibrometer and data was acquired using a National Instruments PCI-
6115 data acquisition card. An x-y traversing rig was used to scan the laser over the
area corresponding to the dotted box in Figure 2.
In the analysis, results from the LV scans along Line 2 (see Figure 2) were used to
identify the stress wave modes generated in the plate by the piezoceramic source. The
effects of the geometry and the defect on the propagating stress wave were studied
using the results of LV scans taken along Line 1. Those results were used to
corroborate corresponding results obtained from the numerical simulations.
495
Figure 3 Laser vibrometry rig used to
generate Lamb wave imagery
Figure 2 Schematic of F-111 model
2.2 Computational modelling

The specimen was modelled in 3D using the Femap pre/post-processor and solved in
NEiNastran. Table I shows the properties of the materials used. Further post
processing was carried out in MATLAB to analyse the displacement fields from the
model. Two excitation regimes were investigated in this paper, involving piston and
the radial force distributions, as shown in Figures 4(a) & (b). In each case, the size of
the actuation region in the model corresponded to the circular footprint of the
piezoceramic element used in experimental study. For the purpose of this study a 5
cycle 320 kHz Hanning modulated tone-burst was used to modulate the forces. This
frequency is marginally higher than the value applied in the experimental study, and
corresponds to the centre frequency of the response spectrum measured in the
experiments. For each of the applied excitation regimes, the propagation of stress-
waves in the structure was computed with and without a notch in the FTG. The
geometry of the notch was consistent between the model and the actual specimen.
A mesh spacing of 0.9 mm was used in all of the simulations, which is equivalent to a
sampling resolution of 8.5 nodes per wavelength for the fundamental antisymmetric
(A0) mode, and 17.5 nodes per wavelength for the fundamental symmetric mode (S0)
mode, at 320 kHz. The total run time for the simulation was 45 microseconds.
496
Table I Mechanical properties of adhesive layer and aluminium
Adhesive Aluminium
Young’s Modulus 1.9GPa 71GPa
Density 1150 kg/m3 2700 kg/m3
Poisson’s ratio 0.33 0.33
a) b)
Figure 4 PZT models: a) Piston excitation c) Radial excitation
3. Presentation of results
As remarked earlier the detection of a defect using acousto-ultrasonics relies on

scattering of stress waves. The scattered field is defined by equation (1) and the energy
in the scattered field by equation (2). A time–gate is used to exclude reflections from
the edges of the test specimen.
ScatterFi eld ( x, y, t ) = WaveField ( x, y, t )unnotched − WaveField ( x, y, t ) notched Eq. (1)
[ ]
t2
IntensityLevel = ∑ ScatterField ( x, y, t ) 2 Eq. (2)
t1
4. Results
The modal characteristics of the wave-field propagating along Line 2 (see Figure 2)
for the undamaged specimen are shown in Figure 5. Both the measured and simulation
data sets reveal a strong preference for the A0 mode, which is not unusual given the
surface mounted attachment of the piezoelectric element.
497
Figure 5 Modal composition of the Lamb wave along Line 2
Figure 6 shows a snap-shot of the propagating displacement field in the pristine

specimen at a given time instant. An outline of the key geometric features of the test
plate is superimposed on these results to show their effect on the propagating Lamb
wave. The group velocity of the A0 mode is expected to increase as it propagates from
the thinner to the thicker sections of the specimen. This acceleration is evident along
the transition regions of the plate as shown in Figure 6 and explains the apparent
distortion of the wave front as it propagates through those regions.
The effect of a notch in the FTG was considered next. Figure 7 shows a snap-shot of
the scattered field at a given time instant. The scattering is highly localised and clearly
strongest in the thinner sections of the structure between the stiffeners. The results for
the two excitation regimes are broadly consistent with the observed result, however
the radially distributed set of forces qualitatively gives a better agreement .The energy
distribution in the scattered field (as given by equation (2)) is shown in Figure 8.
Again, there is good qualitative agreement between both the numerical and
experimental results.
Figure 6 Comparison of displacement snapshot. Scales on FE are normalized to 1 while experimental

scale shows nano-meters(nm)
498
Figure 7 Comparison of scatter snapshot. Scales on FE are normalized to 1 while experimental scale
shows nano-meters(nm)
Figure 8 Comparison of scattered field.
A more quantitative comparison of the results is given in Figure 9, which plots the
distribution of energy in the scattered field along a segment of Line 1. Both forcing
regimes produce reasonably accurate predictions for the location of peak scattering.
However, the radial force approximation is seen to provide a better prediction of the
distribution of scatter energy. Results for a point force approximation are also shown
in Figure 9, and are seen to match reasonably well those produced by the piston mode
approximation.
Figure 9 Comparison of normalized scatter along line 1.
499
5. Summary and Conclusions
The results have shown that finite element modelling is capable of providing a
reasonably accurate description of the elastic wave dynamics in a structurally detailed
component, even when the effects of piezoelectric transduction are drastically
simplified. Given the limited scope of the numerical study reported here it is difficult
to draw generalizations about the efficacy of different forcing function
approximations, however for the specific case addressed here a radial distribution of
forces produced the best overall agreement with the experimental results. The
agreement was considered to be of a sufficient quality to enable the location of
piezoelectric sensing elements to be determined on the basis of numerical simulations
alone, eliminating the need for time consuming and expensive experimental analysis.
However, before this would be considered, further work would be required to
demonstrate a robust predictive capability across a range of excitation frequencies and
defect geometries. A more expansive study of these issues will be reported elsewhere.
References
[1]. W.J. Staszewski, B. C. Lee, L. Mallet and F. Scarpa, Structural health
monitoring using scanning laser vibrometry: I. Lamb wave sensing, Smart.
Mater. Struct. 13 (2004) 251-260
[2]. D.E. Chimenti, and R. W. Martin, Nondestructive evaluation of composites
laminates by leaky Lamb waves, Ultrasonics 29 (1991) 13-21
[3]. Rajic, N., A Numerical Model for the Piezoelectric Transduction of Stress
Waves, Smart Materials and Structures, 15 (2006)
[4]. R. Benz, M. Niethammer, S. Hurlebaus and L.J. Jacobs, Localization of
notches with Lamb waves, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 114 (2003) 677-685.
[5]. D. Leduc, B. Morvan, A. Hladky and J. Izbicki, Interaction of Lamb waves
with a grating composed of two spatial periodicities: Study in dual space,
NDT&E Int. 42 (2009) 513-517.
[6]. Y. Cho, Estimation of Ultrasonic Guided Wave Mode Conversion in a Plate
with Thickness Variation, IEEE T. Ultrason. Ferr. 47 (2000) 591-603.
[7]. F. Benmeddour, S. Grondel, J. Assaad and E. Moulin, Study of the
fundamental Lamb modes interaction with asymmetrical discontinuities,
NDT&E Int. 41 (2008) 330-340.
[8]. J. Han, C.Kim and J.Kim, The propagation of Lamb waves in a laminated
composite plate with a variable stepped thickness, Compos. Struct. 76 (2006)
388-396.
[9]. N. Terrien, D. Royer, F. Lepoutre and A. Déom, Numerical predictions and
experiments for optimizing hidden corrosion detection in aircraft structures
using Lamb modes, Ultrasonics 46 (2007) 251-265.
[10]. N. Rajic, Development of an Active Smart Patch for Aircraft Repair,
Encyclopedia of Structural Health Monitoring, Wiley, 2009
500
Real-Time Condition Assessment of RAPTOR
Telescope Systems
C. J. STULL, S. G. TAYLOR, J. WREN, D. L. MASCAREÑUS
and C. R. FARRAR
ABSTRACT
The RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) observatory network

consists of several astronomical telescopes designed to search for astrophysical
transients called gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Although intrinsically bright, GRBs are
difficult to detect due to their short durations, and as such, the RAPTOR telescopes
must operate autonomously, at high duty-cycles and in peak operating condition. To
facilitate more efficient planning of maintenance schedules, a recent research effort
at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has focused on developing a structural
health monitoring (SHM) system for these telescopes. This paper summarizes the
results from this effort. The damage scenario of concern, namely damage to the
telescope drive mechanism, is first presented. Next, a damage detection algorithm is
developed with LANL’s new publically available software package, SHMTools and
the results of this process are discussed in detail. The paper then concludes with a
summary of future planned refinements of the RAPTOR SHM system.
INTRODUCTION
Comprising the primary hardware component of the Los Alamos Thinking

Telescope Project [1], the RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR)
observatory network is made up of several autonomous, robotic, astronomical
observatories designed to search for astrophysical transients, namely, gamma-ray
bursts (GRBs) [2] [3] [4]. GRBs are among the most powerful explosions observed
by astronomers and can easily be detected at the very limits of the observable
universe. On average, GRBs occur once per day and can last anywhere from a
fraction of a second to several minutes. The first detection of a GRB was performed
by scientists at LANL in 1967 using the Vela satellite network. Since that time,
GRBs have remained a focus of astronomical research, as the extreme nature of the
explosions makes them an excellent probe for many unusual physical processes.
Although intrinsically bright, GRBs are difficult to detect due to their short
duration. Typically, they are first observed by gamma-ray sensing satellites, and in
Christopher J. Stull, Stuart G. Taylor, James Wren, David L. Mascareñus, Charles R.

Farrar, Los Alamos National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, New Mexico, 87545,
USA.
501
Figure 1: Telescope system with mount, drive mechanisms (left); drive motor unit, capstans (right).
conjunction with these data, the RAPTOR telescopes are able to identify and record
these events using a two-step process. First, a large field-of-view telescope provides
information on potential events of interest. Once such an event is identified, narrow
field-of-view telescopes are moved at a high slew-rate to perform more detailed
spectroscopy and light-curve measurements. Due to the potentially large number of
events of interest, this process is executed many times throughout the night,
necessitating that the RAPTOR telescopes operate in peak operating condition.
An individual RAPTOR “observatory” consists of two main components: (1) an
automated enclosure and (2) a telescope system. The focus of this paper is on the
telescope system, and within this context, damage is defined as being any changes
in the mechanical characteristics of the telescope mount that reduce, limit, or
prevent its capacity for capturing GRB events. Experience indicates that damage to
the telescope mount manifests primarily in the drive mechanism: a servo-system
that employs an encoder on each rotational axis in a feedback loop to control
velocity, acceleration, and position of the telescope optics. At the heart of this drive
mechanism, for both the right ascension (RA) and declination (DEC) axes (see
Figure 1 (left)), are components referred to as “capstans,” which provide the friction
interfaces between the motors that drive the mounts and drive wheels. The capstan
itself is an 8.58cm long stainless steel rod, 6.35mm in diameter, with a urethane
coating, which wears with use, resulting in irregular travel of the drive wheel and
the eventual inability to actuate the wheel. Figure 1 (right) illustrates a drive motor
with a capstan in place, accompanied by three capstans at various levels of wear.
The RAPTOR telescope systems employing this capstan drive mechanism are
currently operated in a run-to-failure mode; the capstans, which are almost
invariably the first component to fail, are often replaced only after an inability to
control the telescope optics is observed. Left unchecked, the inevitable wearing
away of the urethane coating can cause damage to other, considerably more
expensive components (e.g. the telescope optics). Given the variability in both the
geospatial locations and the duty-cycles associated with these telescope systems,
the rates at which the capstans will experience wear is extremely difficult to predict,
precluding the a priori development of cost-effective maintenance schedules for
individual telescope systems, or for the network as a whole. Conversely, replacing
the capstans at a conservatively chosen interval without regard to their condition is
hampered by the man-hours involved in accessing the oftentimes remotely-located
systems. A structural health monitoring (SHM) system deployed across the entire
502
Figure 2: Telescope mount (right ascension axis assembly) with accelerometers.
RAPTOR observatory network would offer a means of monitoring the condition of

each observatory, enabling managers to better plan maintenance schedules, adapt to
the real-time needs of each installation, and make more cost-effective use of the
limited maintenance resources.
While the application of SHM to ground-based telescope systems is novel in
and of itself, such an application has many advantages that are not typical to
traditional SHM problems. First, there are no life-safety concerns associated with a
failure of a RAPTOR telescope system. Additionally, common concerns relating to
power, computing, and network connectivity are non-issues given the operational
requirements of these systems. Also, resulting from the fact that astronomical
observations are carried out at night, controlled diagnostic tests may be performed
at regularly-scheduled intervals during the day without interfering with normal
operations. Lastly, the availability of previously damaged capstans permits a
supervised learning approach to the problem, which is the approach adopted herein.
The following sections outline the experimental setup and data assessment
methodologies employed in this study. Subsequently, results of this study are
presented, followed by a brief outline of directions for future research.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The primary mechanism by which RAPTOR telescope systems experience

damage relates to wearing of the urethane coating on the capstans. While past
performance indicates that this presents an issue for both the RA and DEC axes, the
higher inertial loads imparted to the RA axis typically result in higher incidences of
damage. The present study thus focuses on results related to the RA axis only, but it
is noted that the experimental setup and data analysis procedures discussed herein
could readily be applied to the DEC axis assembly as well.
An illustration of the experimental setup for this study is given in Figure 2.
Three accelerometers (PCB Piezotronics model 352A24) are attached to the RA
axis assembly using a wax adhesive. It is noted that although the use of wax
introduces a low-pass structural filter, preliminary results indicated that frequencies
of interest were in the sub-kHz range. The first accelerometer is attached to the
tensioning bar, a mechanism that allows for adjustments to be made in the contact
force between the RA drive wheel and the capstan. The second two accelerometers
503
TABLE I: VISUALLY ASSESSED CONDITIONS OF CAPSTANS FOR EXPERIMENTAL
TESTING.
are attached to the RA motor mounting bracket, enabling measurement of the

bracket’s response both parallel and perpendicular to the plane-of-rotation of the
RA drive wheel. A preliminary analysis uncovered the most informative signal to
be that from the accelerometer attached to the mounting bracket, measuring
response perpendicular to the plane-of-rotation; the present study focuses on the
data from this accelerometer.
Experimental tests are conducted by recording accelerations during clockwise
and counterclockwise rotations of the telescope mount. This rotation occurs about
the RA axis, as indicated by the double yellow arrow near the top of Figure 2. This
motion is similar to the “homing sequences” used to calibrate the telescope optics
with the drive systems. This procedure is executed a total of ten times, for each of
twelve capstans. The first six capstans, for which the condition is known, are
employed in the construction of the damage classifier (denoted “construction
capstans”), and the latter six capstans, in which the condition is unknown, are used
to validate the classifier (denoted “validation capstans”). An expert’s visual
assessment of each capstan lead to the classifications given in TABLE I, with an
illustration of the construction capstans given in Figure 3. The results generated by
the classification methods will be compared against these assessments. A
disadvantage to testing in this manner is that the telescope is driven at velocities far
lower than those it may experience when a GRB is detected. It is thus likely that
future testing of these systems will incorporate a wider range of motions, informed
by SHM-specific concerns and conclusions from the present study.
DATA ANALYSIS METHODOLOGY
This section focuses on the final two parts in the four-part statistical pattern
recognition paradigm discussed in [5]: feature extraction and statistical modeling
Figure 3: Capstans employed in construction of damage classifier.
504
for feature classification. To this end, SHMTools, a MATLABTM software package
developed at the LANL/UCSD Engineering Institute, is employed. SHMTools
facilitates the construction of SHM processes, by providing a set of functions
organized into modules according to the three primary stages of SHM: data
acquisition, feature extraction, and feature classification. SHMTools, in addition to
a companion graphical user interface mFUSE, are freely available to the SHM
research community at http://institute.lanl.gov/ei/software-and-data/SHMTools/.
Feature Extraction
Feature extraction is the process by which important distinguishing
characteristics of a system’s response are identified, with an additional focus on
reducing the dimensionality of the response data. In this study, we chose the
coefficients from auto-regressive (AR) models as features (see e.g. [6] [7] [8]).
These coefficients represent the poles of the structural response, making them
sensitive to changes in the dynamic characteristics of the structure due to damage.
Additionally, adopting such a reduced-order representation of the time-history data
results in a significant compression of these data into a manageable form, for use in
the selected classification methodology. For a time-history having discretely
sampled components, 𝑥1 , 𝑥2 , … , 𝑥𝑛 , the corresponding AR model is given as:
𝑝
𝑥𝑖 = � 𝜑𝑗 𝑥𝑖−𝑗 + 𝑒𝑖 , (1)
𝑗=1
where 𝑝 is the order of the AR model, 𝜑𝑗 are the AR model coefficients, and 𝑒𝑖 is a
random error at time i. The coefficients 𝜑𝑗 may be solved for using a least-squares
technique or the Yule-Walker equations [9], with the number of coefficients being
equal to the order of the AR model: a number that is typically several orders of
magnitude smaller than the number of samples within the time-history.
For SHM applications, the choice of an appropriate AR model order usually
involves a balancing act between fidelity-to-data and ability of the resulting AR
models to generalize to multiple data sets. While well-behaved signals exhibiting a
fixed number of easily-defined poles in the frequency domain offer an AR model
order choice defensible by direct inspection of the data (as in [10]), the time-
histories obtained for the present study provide no such convenience. Previous
approaches to this problem are reviewed in [11]. In the present study, a strategy that
incorporates information-gap decision theory [12] is employed to determine a so-
called “robust” solution to the problem of choosing the AR model order. Info-gap
decision theory offers a means of facilitating decision-making in the face of severe
uncertainty, which prompts the following two questions: (1) What is the decision
that needs to be made? and (2) Where is the uncertainty that affects the quality of
this decision? The answer to the first question obviously relates to choosing an
appropriate AR model order; this decision has implications in both the
representation of the data and the subsequent construction of the damage classifier.
For the second question, while there are many uncertainties related to this study, the
focus here is on the uncertainty emanating from ignorance about the form, content,
etc. of future data sets. Guarding against such ignorance is especially important
when adopting a supervised learning approach to SHM, as it is often the case that
data collected in the future is only known to a certain degree. Further discussion of
505
this approach is omitted herein for brevity, but the readers are informed that at the
time of this writing, the authors had submitted a manuscript that contains a more
detailed outline of this approach [13].
Classifier Development
This study employs a damage classifier that adopts the Mahalanobis squared
distance (MSD) metric for comparing feature vectors. The MSD is a common
metric employed in pattern classification problems to quantify the similarity (or
difference) between a training data set and a data set of features obtained from an
unknown system state. The formula for computing this metric is given as
𝐷𝑀 = �(𝐱 − 𝛍)𝑇 𝚺 −1 (𝐱 − 𝛍), (2)
where 𝐱 is the feature vector that is being classified, and 𝛍 and 𝚺 denote the mean
value of the feature vector and the covariance matrix of the training data set,
respectively. In this way, the classification problem reduces to one of “scoring”
individual feature vectors, where the scores represent the deviation of each feature
vector from the mean behavior of the training data set. For the supervised learning
approach adopted herein, 𝛍 and 𝚺 are constructed from data associated with the
capstans known to be undamaged. Thus, higher MSDs are assumed to be associated
with damaged capstans and vice-versa. Compared to a Euclidean distance metric,
the MSD offers the advantage of accounting for correlation between the individual
elements of a multivariate feature vector, in addition to being insensitive to scaling.
This property is especially attractive in cases where the feature vector is composed
of disparate response types (e.g. a combination of modal frequencies and peak
acceleration amplitudes.)
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Results from the classification problem are now presented, whereby the
methodology outlined in the previous section is examined for its ability to
accurately predict the presence (or absence) of wear in the urethane coating on a
capstan. In constructing and evaluating this classification methodology, the
acceleration time-histories are first divided into equal-size records, each having a
length of 256 time points. Subsequently, AR models are computed for each of these
smaller records. In this way, variability exhibited between individual tests of a
capstan, and from one capstan to the next, is effectively marginalized out over a
larger number of samples having a reduced size. For this reason, the classification
of an individual capstan actually relates to the classification of 160 instances in
Figure 4 (left). As briefly discussed above, an info-gap analysis is conducted which
uncovers an AR model order of ‘18’ as being the most robust AR model order to
uncertainty in the data. Note that the AR coefficients associated with the
undamaged construction capstans are employed as training data.
Examination of Figure 4 (left) illustrates that in general, damaged versus
undamaged conditions are detectable using the MSD metric, where it is noted that
the fifth construction capstan exhibits some distinction from the undamaged case.
However, it does appear that this capstan falls into more of a borderline condition.
This claim is further justified by its appearance in Figure 3. A questionable result is
that related to the fifth validation capstan. In addition to being assessed as
506
Figure 4: Classification of undamaged, damaged, and borderline capstans (left) with associated
histograms of scores (right).
undamaged in TABLE I, this particular capstan was brand new when installed into
the drive mechanism; yet its scores indicate a more borderline condition in both
plots of Figure 4 (left). It is hypothesized that general classifier definitions, while
able to detect whether capstans are damaged or undamaged, may be less able to
discern incremental changes in the capstan condition. Thus, it may be that instead
of adopting a general classifier definition for the system-wide implementation,
individual classifiers that are trained as new capstans are installed, will form the
primary mechanism by which condition assessments are made.
Figure 4 (right) illustrates the distributions of the scores associated with each
capstan condition, undamaged, damaged, and borderline, where the vertical dashed
lines correspond to the mean of the distributions. There is a clear separation
between the mean scores for the undamaged and damaged conditions, but there is
also considerable overlap between the distributions, which will invariably lead to
higher false-positive and false-negative rates. Additionally, the separation between
the undamaged and borderline conditions is considerably smaller than that between
the undamaged and damaged conditions. While it is true that there will almost
always be overlap between the various distributions, it is possible that this issue
could be mitigated by conducting full life-cycle tests of capstans, in order to define
more clear separations between undamaged and damaged states.
Concerns regarding component wear in the drive mechanisms of RAPTOR

telescope systems have given rise to an effort at LANL to develop a means by
which the condition of these systems may be autonomously monitored in real-time.
A research effort aimed at studying the feasibility of such a system has herein been
conducted and reported upon. The results of the study are promising in that the
damaged versus undamaged conditions are discernable with commercially-available
hardware and freely-available software tools. Further refinement of the SHM
system is needed, however, such that the condition of the capstans can be assessed
507
on a continual basis, enabling the development of regression models that can be
used to estimate the remaining useful life of each capstan.
The results of this study will lead to the development of a SHM system that will
allow remote monitoring of each RAPTOR telescope system vis-à-vis a remote-
desktop-like user environment. While still early in development, the plans for this
system involve relatively inexpensive sensor nodes attached to the right ascension
and declination axis assemblies. Data retrieved at regularly scheduled intervals will
be transmitted to a dedicated server. Incorporating knowledge gained from the
present study, the data will then be passed through a damage classifier, which will
be used to update a central database containing the condition of each telescope in
the RAPTOR observatory network. While this study offers a significant step toward
that eventual goal, the damage detection process will be further enhanced by
monitoring the full life-cycles of multiple capstans. Such monitoring will provide
the data necessary to develop damage prognosis capabilities for the RAPTOR
telescope observatories.
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508
Autonomous Battery-less Wireless Strain
Gage for Structural Health Monitoring
V. OLARIU, A. GNADINGER, J. BAO and V. GIURGIUTIU
ABSTRACT:
Strain and temperature are important measurements for structural health and
integrity. High magnitude and repetitive variations of these two parameters may
lead to fatigue or yielding in the material or even failure of the structure. Strains can
be used to estimate the loads, moments, and stresses on structures, or to measure
torque, pressure, and acceleration.
Since the surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices are sensitive to various physical
parameters, including strain and temperature, they can be used as sensors of these
parameters. They are passive (no power supplies (e.g. batteries) are required), they
are very small (1 to 3 mm2), they can embed an identification code so that multiple
sensors can be used simultaneously within the reading range of the interrogator and
they can be used in extreme environments (e.g. temperatures fiom cryogenic values
up to more than 1,OOO"C).
SAW devices are also well suited for wireless communication. A wireless sensor
system consists of SAW sensors/transponders and a radar like interrogator reader.
In order for SAW sensors to become ubiquitous, several problems have to be
solved. The major challenge is to separate the influence of different physical
parameters on the sensor response. The second challenge is to make the sensors
operate over a wide temperature range. Both problems have been solved by Albido.
DESCRIPTION OF THE TECHNOLOGY
SAW sensors are monolithic structures fabricated with current IC

photolithography techniques, which makes them small and rugged. Compared to
current IC technology, SAW sensors are simple to fabricate. They only use one or
two photolithography steps as compared to more than 20 for a standard IC.
Dr. Viorel Olariu, Albido Corporation, 19 Learning Rd. Colorado Springs, CO 80906
Dr. Alfred P. Gnadinger, Albido Corporation,l9 Learning Rd. Colorado Springs, CO 80906
Dr. Jingjing Bao, University of South Carolina, 300 S. Main St., Columbia, SC, 29208
Dr. Victor Giurgiutiu, University of South Carolina, 300 S. Main St., Columbia, SC, 29208
509
Figure 1. SAW sensor with 2 ports
The following gives an overview of our SAW sensors, the principle of operation
and some recent results. There are essentially two types of SAW sensors (1) a
structure with 2 separate interdigitated structures (IDT) for input and output as
shown in Figure 1 and (2) a device with only one set of interdigitated structures that
serves both as input and output and a set of reflectors. This device, as shown in
Figure 2, operates essentially in a resonant mode.
As shown schematically in Figure 3, an RF pulse is transmitted by the
interrogator and is received and reflected back by the SAW sensor/transponder. The
frequency, the phase, and the amplitude of the reflected RF signal are a function of
the piezoelectric parameters of the substrate, the geometrical characteristics of the
interdigitated electrodes and the associated reflectors (as shown in Figures 1 and 2),
but also a function of the environmental parameters, such as temperature, strain,
humidity, etc. The SAW sensors can operate in a wide frequency range, from below
100 MHz to above 3 GHz. One of the challenges of the proposed technology is
how to perform anti-collision schemes in order to operate multiple SAW sensors
(up to several hundred) in the same area. One way to implement anti-collision is
with different multiplexing methods. Depending on the application, one or a
combination of the following methods: TDMA (Time Division Multiplexing
Access), FDMA (Frequency DMA), CDMA (Code DMA), OFC (Orthogonal
Frequency Coding), or SDMA (Spatial DMA) can be used.
A reading range of up to 20 meters or even more can be achieved. This depends
on the operating frequency, the sensor geometry and the nature and shape of the
objects in close proximity, and how many sensors are within the reading range of
the reader system.
The distance between two fingers of the same polarity is termed the electrical
period q of the IDT. The maximum electroacoustic interaction is obtained at the
frequencyfo, the mid-frequency of the transducer. At this frequency the wavelength
ho of the surface acoustic wave precisely corresponds with the electrical period q of
510
Figure 2. SAW sensor with one port and reflectors
the IDT, so that all wave trains are superimposed in-phase and transmission is
maximized
q = A(7 = v@o
The relationship between the electrical and mechanical power density of a

surface wave is described by the material-dependent piezoelectric coupling
coefficient A?. Around k-2overlaps of the transducer are required to convert the
entire electrical power applied to the IDT into the acoustic power of a surface wave.
The velocity v of a surface wave on the substrate, and thus the propagation time T
and the mid-frequency& of a surface wave component, can be influenced by a
various physical andor chemical variables. In addition to temperature (1)
mechanical forces such as static elongation, compression, shear, bending and
acceleration have a particular influence on the surface wave velocity (2). This
facilitates the remote interrogation of mechanical forces by surface wave sensors.
To first order, the influence of the quantity y (which can be temperature, strain et
al.) on the mid-frequency& and propagation time T can be calculated as follows:
511
If only the differential propagation times or the differential phase between the
individual reflected pulses are evaluated, the sensor signal is independent of the
distance between the reader and the transponder. The differential propagation time
72-1, and the differential phase 92-1 between the two received pulses is obtained from
the distance L2-1 between the two reflectors, the velocity v of the surface wave, and
the frequencyf of the interrogation pulse.
The measurable change AQ-1 or A(p2-1when a physical quantity y is changed by

the amount Ay is thus:
The influence of the physical quantity y on the surface wave transponder can
thus be determined just by the evaluation of the phase difference between the
different pulses of the response signal.
Similar to RFIDs, SAW sensors are powered by the electromagnetic field
emanating from the readerhnterrogator system. The optimal frequency is in the
MHz to GHz range. There is a difference of about 5 orders of magnitude in the
communication frequency and the surface acoustic wave frequency. This means,
that we don’t have to worry about signal reflections that plague many of the
competing systems. A system based on SAW sensors should be immune to signal
reflections which makes it ideal for application in a metallic environment (e.g.
inside a jet engine).
Tag Antenna Surface

\
IDT
\ Acoustic
Electromagnetic t /
/ /
Waves
Piezoelectric / Reflectors I
Substrate
Figure 3 Schematic of a SA W-based radio-link measurement system
512
As mentioned before, Albido has solved the problem that SAW sensors cannot
easily distinguish between various physical parameters. For example, SAW sensors
are sensitive to temperature and strain. If the temperature is not constant it is not
clear whether the sensor response is due to a temperature change or strain. Albido
has developed a methodology to distinguish between the effects of various physical
parameters and has applied for a patent on its solution.
1 MHz
432.3
Frequency vs. Strain
432.28
432.26
432.24
432.22
432.2
432.18 -
432.16
y = -0.OOOlx +4 3 2 . 2 7 1
432.08
0 500 1000 1500
microstrain
Figure 4 Frequency vs. strain response of a representative sensor
I Frequencyvs. load and Temperature
418.10
418.08 -20 c
418.06 -4OC
418.04 -5OC
418.02 -6OC
418.00 -7OC
417.98 -90 c
I I I I
i
417.96 0 ' 100 200
microstrain
300 400
Figure 5 Frequency vs. strain response of a representative sensor with

temperature as a parameter
513
Figure 4 shows the frequency versus strain variation for quartz based SAW
sensor with resonant frequency equal to 432.27 MHz. The reading range was about
3 m with 10 mW RF power from the reader and an unoptimized antenna. Figure 5
shows the frequency versus strain response with temperature as a parameter. It is
clear from Figure 5 that it is critical that a methodology is found to separate the
effects of strain and temperature from the sensor response.
CONCLUSIONS
Recently, surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices have been used as sensors.
Depending on the substrate material chosen, they can cover a wide temperature
range. They are simple to fabricate: they require only 1 or 2 photolithography steps
(as compared to more than 20 for standard IC processing), they are small (- 1 x 3
mm) and, therefore, inexpensive. They are quite sensitive to many physical
parameters such as temperature, straidstress, humidity, pressure, etc. but also to
chemical contaminants. They are ideally suited for wireless communication since
they require an electromagnetic field for power that can also be used for
communication. We believe that these sensors are ideally suited for structural health
monitoring (SHM), especially in applications where small, localized defects have to
be detected. It is important that the sensors can distinguish between different
physical parameters (e.g. temperature and strain). Albido has solved this problem
and has applied for a patent on the solution. Also, Albido's sensors cover a wide
temperature range, from cryogenic temperatures (e.g. -60 "C) to temperatures in
excess of 1,000 OC.
514
REFERENCES
1. Wireless Measurement of temperature using SAW sensors. M., Reid1 L. 11,

Nov. 2004, IEEE Trans. Ultrason., Ferroelect., and Freq. Contr., Vol. 51.
2. Surface acoustic wave stress sensors - Designing analysis. Filipak J., Solarz
L., Steczko G. 2007, Molecular and Q u t u m Acoustics, Vol. 28.
3. C.K., Campbell. Surface Acoustic Wave Devices for Mobile and Wireless
Communications. s.1. : Academic Press, 1998. ISBN 0-12-157340-0.
4. Brocato, R.W. Passive Wireless Sensor Tags. Albuquerque, NM : Sandia
National Laboratories, 2006. SAND2006-1288.
5. “Embedded-Ultrasonics Structural Radar for In-Situ Structural Health
Monitoring of Thin-Wall Structures. Giurgiutiu, V. and Bao, J. 2, June 2004,
Structural Health Monitoring - an International Journal, Vol. 3, pp. 121-140.
515
Mission and Scale Analysis on SHM of UAV’s
M. ÇELEBÍ
516
ABSTRACT:
Within last a few years tactical, operational and strategic UAV usages have become
very common. Some UAV’s mission duration may last more than 24 hours with a range of
more than 1500 km. That long duration and range makes structural health monitoring (SHM)
of UAV’s very crucial. However, is it really necessary to monitor the structural health of
every UAV? Is there any limit when considering the mission and the scale? Is damage
tolerance methodology applicable to large scale UAV’s? Such issues will be investigated
during the study.
INTRODUCTION:
Structural health monitoring (SHM) systems have been developed over many years for
manned air vehicles, considering a variety of missions, service requirements and
environmental conditions. These SHM methodologies used have been developed both for
tracking manned vehicles using the experience from ground and flight tests and accumulated
mission flight hours for different usage scenarios.
Loads
act on Aircraft
aircraft responds
1 . landing
2. lift,‘drag
3.turbulence Damage
4 thrust changes
5 impact Damage response
grows in to loads
stabilizer
Response ca~1ses
damage to grow
Figure 1.Aspects of health monitoring in a UAV [ 11
The UAV systems also may use variation of the design criteria for manned air vehicles
to fulfill similar mission requirements. Like most of the designed platforms an important
element in UAV’s platform design are the cost aspects both in terms of acquisition and in-
service usage [I]. During service usage maintenance cost, duration and mission readiness
become important. Therefore, considering structural integrity which affects overall system
reliability, SHM becomes an important element as shown in Fig. 1.
The intent of this paper is to decide SHM necessity of UAVs considering their scale and
mission requirements. In case of SHM, damage tolerance methodology will be evaluated for
the structural integrity of UAV systems.
SHM EVALUATION REQUIREMENTS:

While comparing UAVs to manned air vehicles it can be seen that SHM becomes necessary
from many aspects:
Mansur CELEBI, Turkish Air Force Academy , Istanbul/TURKEY
517
[(+): SHM is necessary, (-): SHM is not necessary]
Low factor of safety may be applied to UAVs. (+)

Pilot or crew depended restrictions removed, high g maneuvering with more severe
flight conditions is applicable. (+)
UAV’s are started to become autonomous, like fire & forget. (+)
0 Since there is no pilot intelligence an artificial intelligence may be required for failure
situation (damage by specific threats, fatigue crack, bird strike, icing, lightning etc.)
evaluation especially in autonomous missions. (+)
The Flight Control System has to control unmanned air systems for flight safety as
flying over populated areas. In this case to know damage level becomes important in
order to decide whether to continue the mission or quit. (+)
GENERAL ATOMICS MQ-9 REAPER *

Figure 2. Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle [2]
Increasing the complexity, modularity of structural components and a1so morphing
structures are started to use in manufacturing of UAVs. (+)
On the other hand, in most of the area composite structures are used against fatigue
and corrosion. Therefore, crack probability is lessened. (-)
Since pilot diagnostic is not in the air vehicle any more a new sensing system sense; diagnose,
respond as an artificial intelligence instead of pilot called SHM is inevitable. Table.l gives
basic evaluation of the SHM requirements from design and operational point of view.
Figure 3. Bayraktar Mini UAV
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MALE- Medium Altitude Long Endurance Air Vehicle
HALE- High Altitude Long Endurance Air Vehicle
URAV - Unmanned Reconnaissance Air Vehicle
UCAV - Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle
Table 1. The evaluation of the SHM necessity
According to Table.l for MALEBALE, URAV and UCAV SHM is necessary since they
have high mission altitude, long endurance, harmful operating environment, long service life
in addition to critical missions. On the other hand, for Micro and Mini UAVs since they have
low g loading, low endurance, long fatigue life and light weight SHM is not necessary as long
as they don’t have special missions.
Figure 4. Bayraktar Tactical UAV System (MALE)
By monitoring of general characteristics of a UAV, the SHM system must decide; to continue
the mission, return to base or for the worst case go to a non-public area for crash under
conditions; that may damage integrity of structure, impair functionality of the equipment or
may lead to loss of UAV. If a UAV is flying at supersonic speed sonic fatigue cracking also
becomes important. For a tactical military UAV, due to thermal transients, overpressure, and
gust associated with weapon detonation the UAV structure must withstand the loads. In
addition, after being damaged by specific threats it should be verified that the UAV structure
can withstand the operational loads in order to continue the mission. Therefore, SHM should
decide the level of the damage.
Figure 5 . Boeing Phantom Ray first flight, Stephen Trimble
519
For long endurance missions, real-time monitoring of structural systems will be required
for the diagnosis and prognosis of structural integrity. These capabilities are designed to
acquire accurate structural response information and to infer the state of structural
deformation and potential damage and defects [3].
In near future it can be seen that some UAVs will operate from special purpose UAV
carriers. In the UAV carriers there will be limited number of UAVs and all the missions must
be accomplished. The carriers will have limited time and the commander must know all the
system failures immediately. Therefore in order to continue the missions the UAVs structural
integrity has to be sustained and known.
UAV DAMAGE PROGNOSIS AND RELIABILITY:

The vehicles are typically made of lightweight advanced composite materials to reduce their
weight and improve their flight performance. The SHM system will mainly monitor the
airframe, assess its structural integrity and predict the remaining life of critical components
(prognosis). An in-flight real-time system may monitor stiffness changes or structural
damage. The system sensors could either be attached (strain gauges, accelerometers, piezo-
patches,) or embedded (fiber optics) into the structure, and it could be passive (sensors only)
or active (embedded sensors and actuators). This sensor data along with reduced-order
analytical models will be used to identify regions in the structure that need further inspection.
[4] Severity and location of the damage can be predicted by using the global (natural
frequencies) and the local (strain or curvature mode shapes) dynamic behavior of the
structures. [ 5 ]
I
Figure 6. Mosquito armed UAV, Tolga Ozbek
DAMAGE TOLERANCE ASSESSMENT IN CONSIDERATION WITH MIL-STD-1530C:

Damage tolerance criteria shall be established to ensure all safety-of-flight structure and
other mission critical structure of the UAV can safely withstand undetected flaws, corrosion,
impact damage, and other types of damages throughout its design service life.
To be able to sustain structural integrity damage tolerance is required as well as
durability. All the structural parts must be divided as maintenance-critical parts, mission
critical parts and safety-of-flight structures. The loss could occur either immediately upon
failure of safety-of-flight structures or subsequently if the failure remained undetected. Those
parts should be decided before SHM decision evaluation. According to evaluation results of
mission critical and safety-of-flight structures parts SHM system may be established.
When applied loads are distributed to other load carrying members in the event of failure
of individual elements, the mission that has already started may be continued. If the applied
loads are through a single member the failure of the member would result in the loss of the
structural capability to carry the applied loads. [6] Before SHM applications members must be
evaluated accordingly.
520
When there are cracks at sufficient size, such that the structure will no longer meet its
damage tolerance requirement, the situation has to be decided whether the mission can be
continued under this condition or UAV should return to the base.
DAMAGE DETECTION AND RISK ANALYSIS:

During damage tolerance assessment it may not be possible to detect the crack in the first
inspection and this may increase the failure risk under severe maneuver loading. If damage
tolerance methodology is decided to apply in order to avoid severe damage or cancellation of
mission, slow damage growth structure may be used.
Structural risk analysis is an evaluation of a potential structural failure severity and
probability of occurrence. For UAV structural applications, the potential crack risks include
structural failures that can cause severe damage to or loss of the UAV or cancellation of
mission. For SHM; probability of crack occurrence and detection, risk analysis,
categorizations of structural members, mission analysis, stress loading and UAV scale
become important in order to decide whether or not the SHM is necessary or what kind of
SHM technique should be applied.
SHM DECISION ALGORITHM:

All air vehicles are desired to be operationally ready. For a UAV system; one major item
that affects its operational readiness is the condition of the structure. The target of the
structural health monitoring is to ensure the desired level of structural safety, performance and
durability throughout the UAV’s design service life. The main objective of real time SHM is
to acquire, evaluate and substantiate the structural integrity during the mission.
To decide UAV SHM system; critical parts load condition and the condition after critical
crack size must be known. The impact on safety-of-flight and mission completion shall be
considered. Figure.1 shows SHM evaluation process.
Are the members in NO

Is Damage
SHM Evaluation critical areas single NO
Tolerance Structure
load carrier.
YES
YES
SHM not required
yes safety-of-flight no
structure
Fructure Critical, SHM YES NO

required Is It Mission
Critical
Mission Critical SHM not required

SHM required
Figure 1. SHM evaluation process
Mansur ÇELEBİ, Turkish Air Force Academy , Istanbul/TURKEY
521
Depending on the classification of the structural component SHM application may be
decided. If the risk analysis is evaluated sufficiently SHM may not be necessary.
CONCLUSION:
The evaluations of structural problem shall define corrective actions required to sustain
the strength, rigidity, damage tolerance, and durability design requirements and the associated
risk reduction is achieved.
The structural maintenance database shall be developed to capture adequate, detailed
information on the structural problems which occur in the UAV and thus support the ongoing
evaluation of structural integrity during sustainment.
Damage tolerance criteria shall be established to ensure that the damage on all safety-of-
flight structures and other mission critical structures never reaches the sizes that can cause
catastrophic failures.
A system shall be developed to obtain actual usage data that can be used to update or
confirm the original design spectrum. This data can be obtained using an appropriate SHM
system. It may have the ability to predict damage growth and when the structural component
life limits will be reached in all critical locations as a function of the total usage, and to
recognize changes in operational mission usage.
In contrast to manned air vehicles for UAVs, real time SHM is required; the monitoring
will be for safety of flight parts and mission critical parts. The areas that are difficult to
inspect will be damage tolerant parts.
Reliability of a UAV system may be increased using a SHM system since reliability
depends on the mission readiness and success rate.
A new sensing system that will sense, diagnose and respond as an artificial intelligence
instead of pilot called SHM system must decide to continue its mission, return to base or go to
a non-public area for crash under conditions that may damage integrity of structure, impair
functionality of the equipment or may lead to loss of UAV.
REFERENCES:
1. Health Monitoring of Structural Materials and Components: Methods with Applications D. Adams 2007
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
2. http://www.vectorsite.net/twuav.html
3. Structural Analysis Methods for Structural Health Management of Future Aerospace Vehicles, Alexander
Tessler, Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia
4. Los Alamos National Laboratory
5. Damage Identification in Beam-like Structures by Vibration-based Analysis and Artificial Neural
Networks, Melin Sahin
6. MIL-STD-1530C
Mansur ÇELEBİ, Turkish Air Force Academy , Istanbul/TURKEY
522
AEROSPACE STRUCTURES: LABORATORY
DEMONSTRATION
523
Monitoring the Degradation by Fire of
Composite Laminates by Embedded
FBG Sensors
A. GÜEMES, C. E. GARCIA-GONZALEZ,
I. GONZALEZ-REQUENA and C. DE MIGUEL-GIRALDO
ABSTRACT
Fire resistance is a critical requirement for some components of the aircraft

structure, such as engine cowlings, meaning that the structural material must be able to
contain an internal fire for at least 15 minutes, to allow the extinction system to
extinguish the fire before it propagates to the structure. Composite materials degrade
under fire, but the char layer is an effective low thermal conductivity protecting layer,
insulating the material and delaying the degradation. Detailed mathematical models
for the composite behavior are available, but to obtain accurate predictions,
temperature dependent experimental parameters are requested. Only with knowledge
of the internal temperature distribution a quantitative prediction can be done. Fiber
optic sensors have a thickness similar to the lamina, and consequently can be
embedded without disturbing the laminate. FBG sensors can withstand temperatures
up to 900 Celsius for several minutes, so a detailed mapping of internal temperatures
may be obtained. The paper describes the experimental setup and the obtained results
on real aeronautic parts submitted to fire.
INTRODUCTION
The vulnerability of composite structures to heat and fire is a major problem.

Unlike aluminum airframes, exposure of polymer matrix composite laminates to heat
results in degradation of mechanical properties, thermo mechanical fatigue,
delaminations and matrix cracking. In flight fire is the fourth most common cause of
aircraft fatalities. Exposure to fire results also in buckling and loss of matrix material.
Even local and limited in size heat or fire exposure may introduce various new and
physically different types of damage in a composite aerostructure, which will remain
hidden and may interact with other mechanical loads, affecting the structural integrity
of the airframe structure.
Alfredo Güemes. Dpt Aeronautics, UPM. Plaza Cardenal Cisneros, 3 MADRID 28040 SPAIN
Alfredo.guemes@upm.es, Carlos.DeMiguel@airbus.com, carlos.enol.garcia@upm.es,
ignaciof.gonzalez@upm.es
525
Aircraft Regulations FAR AC 20-135 specifies the methods for testing the
materials and components used in the propulsion engines and APU installations. The
primary objectives for fireproof and fire resistant materials and components are to
contain and isolate a fire, and to ensure that components of the engine control system
will function effectively to permit a safe shutdown of the engine or APU.
Performances of composites under fire conditions are poor: degradation of
mechanical properties, smoke, toxicity, heat release. Polymer composites are
flammable materials; additives can improve their resistance to pyrolysis.
Nevertheless, composite materials show some good features: Heat insulation and
burn-through resistance. The rate of heat conduction through composites is much
slower than metals, and this is a significant benefit in slowing the spread of fire from
room-to-room. Composites can provide and effective protective barrier against flame,
heat, smoke and toxic fumes.
COMPOSITE BEHAVIOUR UNDER FIRE CONDITIONS
The types of thermomechanical and heat damage and their evolution are well
understood and characterized. Composite materials can be seriously damaged under
thermo-mechanical loading. The first type of heat damage is wrinkling of the
composite laminate surface and bending or buckling due to applied thermal moments
[1]. The type of deformation, bending or buckling relates to thermal distribution and
laminate configuration in the composite structure [2]. Another obvious heat effect is
degradation and glass transition of the polymer matrix [3]. Resin matrix is finally
decomposed to a carbonaceous char, forming a “char zone” as a well defined layer of
uniform thickness but with no resin to support the remaining undamaged fibers. Below
the “char layer” delamination and matrix cracks appear in the remaining laminate.
The effect of heat and fire on mechanical performance of composite laminates is
an area of research over the last 10 years. The mechanical properties of composites
during combined heating and compressive loading are reduced [4], [5]. Compression
creep failure occurs when the composite is heated about the glass transition
temperature of the polymer matrix. Compressive failure is also affected by
decomposition and delamination cracking of the polymer matrix.
PREPARATION OF LAMINATES WITH EMBEDDED SENSORS
FBG sensors provide the most developed sensor suitable for embedding into a
composite laminate. However, its application to detect thermal strains and temperature
poses difficulties. The peak drifting of the FBG is related to strain and temperature
changes and both parameters need to be determined. This is a complex issue when
FBG sensors need to be embedded into a thermally loaded composite structure. A
technique proven by UPM at room temperature and cryogenic conditions [6], [7]
(under a project for the European Space Agency), engraves multiple gratings at the
same optical fibre, and encapsulates some of them inside a micro-tube for isolation
from laminate strain (Figure 1). The encapsulated gratings provide local temperature
measurements and the remaining gratings measure strain after proper compensation.
526
Figure 1. FBG temperature and strain sensor concept.
The work done in this project, and the innovation, is to keep it in a minimal outer
diameter, and to demonstrate that it works over 900 ºC
To demonstrate the fire resistance properties of an structure (figure 2), a
CFRP flat panel done with 26 prepreg fabric plies with quasi isotropic layup,
approximate dimensions 600 X 700 mm, was manufactured by hand layup and
cured in autoclave.
Strain and temperature sensors were located inside the laminate, one layer
below both external surfaces, and at the middle of the laminate. A total of 30
sensors where embedded.
To minimize the intrusivity in the panel, the sensors were of the kind of
FBG (optical fibre Bragg grating), coated with polyimide, with a total external
diameter of 150 microns. Each optical fibre has two sensors engraved, the first one
working as strain sensor, but of course also sensitive to temperature, the second one
was encapsulated inside a brass tube, 0,5 mm diameter and 10 mm long, sealed at
both ends, and consequent free from local strains, which was verified before fire
test. Only one sensor happened resin ingress in the tube during the curing.
The panel was installed at the fire test facility available at EADS Spain, at
the back side of the panel a flow of cool air is forced, to reproduce flying
conditions, as requested by the Standards. A load was applied at the door latch, and
the panel must withstand the flame for 15 minutes, at least.
527
Fig.2. Composite panel with embedded FBG sensors ready for fire test.
FIRE TEST FACILITY
The fire test facility available at EADS Spain is built to satisfy FAR AC 20-
135 Regulations, and it has a burner Flaxmer LE-15, a wind tunnel up to 100 knots, a
load system up to 20 kN, an vibration excitation to 50 Hz, data acquisition room an
visible and IR cameras . Flame calibration is done according ISO 2685 Standards.
Photographs from the test room and control room are included at figure 3
Figure 3. Fire test facility. Test room (left) and control room (right)
528
Figure 4. Fire test. Evolution of temperatures
Figure 5. Fire test. Evolution of strains
FIRE TEST RESULTS
A continuous flame was applied on one side of the specimen, and at the same
time cool air was flowing by the other side. After 9 minutes the airflow was stopped,
and 3 minutes later the flame was shut down.
As shown at figure 4, the near surface sensors (T3, T4, T5, T6) were quickly
heated up, and then they reached a stationary value around 800 ºC ( the flame
temperature was 1100 ºC). The differences among them were related to their XY
position in the laminate. The internal sensors al the middle of the laminate (T15, T16
529
and T17) got a stationary value around 400 ºC, and the outer sensors were only 100ºC
over the temperature of the cold airflow. A near constant heat flux was established in
the laminate, with temperature gradients of 100- 200 ºC/ mm across the thickness. It is
known that the conversion from composite to char is produced around 400 ºC, so after
3 minutes 50% of the thickness was burned, then it progresses very slowly, until the
airflow, and consequently the heat removal, was stopped, allowing a sudden
temperature increase. The temperature signals were lost at 1000ºC, which is the
melting point of the metallic tube surrounding the sensor (brass).
From the strain sensors (fig 5) the signal was very distorted or even lost in
most of them, and it was recovered after cooling the specimen. The distortion is
associated to strong strain gradients, caused by the fabric around the sensors.
CONCLUSIONS
Currently the analysis is not accepted as Means of Compliance for fire

behavior; only a similarity of the materials and design is accepted based on
previous tests experience. To a larger extent, this is due to the unavailability of
experimental procedures to verify the accuracy of the models, only surface
temperatures are obtained with infrared cameras.
We have demonstrated that it is possible to measure the temperature
distribution inside a composite laminate during the fire test. As the degradation of the
material can be correlated to its maximum temperature, the residual strength of a
partially burned laminate can be calculated.
REFERENCES
1. Mouritz A.P. (2003). Fire Resistance of Aircraft Composite Laminates, Journal of Material Science
Letters, 22:1507-1509
2. Dao, M. and Asaro, R. (1999). A Study on Failure Prediction and Design Criteria for Fiber
Composites under Fire Degradation, Composites: Part A, 30:123-131
3. Gibson, A.G., Wright,P.N.H., Wu, Y.S., Mouritz, A.P., Mathys, Z. and Gardiner, C.P.(2004). The
Integrity of Polymer Composites During and after Fire, Journal of Composite Materials, 38
4. Feih, S., Mathys, Z., Gibson, A.G. and Mouritz, A.P. (2007). Modelling the Compression Strength
of Polymer Laminates in Fire, Composites Part A, 38(11): 2345–2365.
5. Mouritz, A.P. and Gibson, A.G. (2006). Fire Properties of Polymer Composite Materials, Springer,
Dordrecht.
6. Güemes, J.A. and Menéndez, J.M. (2002). Response of Bragg grating fiber-optic sensors when
embedded in composite laminates, Composites Science and Technology, 62: 959 -966
7. Fernández – López, A., Menendez, J.M. and Güemes, A. (2007). Damage detection in a stiffened
curved plate by measuring differential strains, Proc. of ICCM16, Edimburg, UK
530
Nonlinear Ultrasonic Techniques for
Nondestructive Damage Assessment in
Metallic Materials
J.-Y. KIM, L. J. JACOBS and J. QU
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an overview of the application of nonlinear ultrasonic (NLU)

techniques to characterize materials; it has been demonstrated that NLU can provide
quantitative inputs to determine the material state and measure damage in
engineering components. It has recently been shown that NLU can be used to
develop the framework for accurate life prediction of fatigue damaged components.
These NLU measurements are done at the material level, before the formation of
micro- and macro-cracks. The traditional NDE of damage of a material subject to
fatigue starts from the time when a small crack initiates because there is no
measurable macroscopic change in the material prior to the crack initiation. In most
metallic materials, however, cracks in a measurable size appear quite late (after 80%)
in the total life, while the material’s integrity in terms of toughness and strength
gradually decreases due to the microplasticity (dislocations) and associated change in
the material’ microstructure. Starting from mechanics fundamentals, we first develop
the theoretical equations of wave motion in an elastic solid with quadratic
nonlinearity. The next section considers measurement techniques for NLU, which is
followed by examples of the assessment of fatigue damage in metals with NLU.
TIME HARMONIC WAVE MOTION IN ELASTIC SOLIDS WITH

QUADRATIC NONLINEARITY
The three-dimensional equations of motion for waves propagating in an elastic

medium with quadratic nonlinearity will be derived in this section. The derivation
follows closely the approach used in [1].
First, to describe the wave motion, we affix a Cartesian coordinate xi (i = 1, 2, 3)
to the continuum elastic body of interest, where the coordinate xi is also used to label
the material particle that was located at xi in the initial (undeformed) configuration.
This way of describing the wave motion is called the Lagrangian description and xi
is called the Lagrangian coordinate.
____________
Jin-Yeon Kim and Laurence J. Jacobs, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Jianmin Qu, Northwestern University, USA
531
At any given time t, the displacement of the particle xi from its initial location is
denoted by ui = ui ( x, t ) . The deformation of the continuum can then be described by
the Lagrangian strain
ε ij = (u i , j + u j ,i + u k ,i u k , j ) ,
1
(1)
2
where, and in the rest of this paper, the summation convention has been adopted.
Next, let the continuum medium be a hyperelastic body [2] with quadratic
nonlinearity, i.e.,
1
σ ij = Cijklε kl + Cijklmnε klε mn , (2)
2
where σ ij is the first Piola-Kirchhoff stress, and Cijkl and Cijklmn are the second and
third order elastic constants of the hyperelastic body. Substituting (1) into (2) yields
1 1
σ ij = Cijkl uk ,l + Dijklmnuk ,l um.n + Cijklmnuk ,l um.n , (3)
2 2
where
Dijklmn = Cijlnδ km + C jlmnδ ik + C jnklδ im , (4)
and δ ij is the Kronecker delta.
Finally, consider the equations of motion
∂σ ji ∂ 2u
= ρ 2i , (5)
∂x j ∂t
where ρ is the mass density of the undeformed body. Substituting (3) into (5) leads
to the displacement of equation of motion
∂ 2ui ∂ 2 uk ∂um ∂ 2uk 1 ∂Cijklmn ∂uk ∂um
ρ 2 − Cijkl = ( Dijklmn + Cijklmn ) + . (6)
∂t ∂x j ∂xl ∂xn ∂x j ∂xl 2 ∂x j ∂xl ∂xn
Furthermore, we will limit ourselves to isotropic materials only. Under these
assumptions, the elastic constants can be simplified to [1],
Cijkl = λδ ijδ kl + 2μ I ijkl , (7)
Cijklmn = (2l − 2m + n ) I ijklmn + (2m − n )( J ijklmn + J klmnij + J mnijkl )
n , (8)
+ ( J ikjlmn + J iljkmn + J jkilmn + J jlikmn )
2
Dijklmn = λ ( I ijlnkm + I jlmnik + I jnklim ) + 2 μ ( J kmijln + J ikjlmn + J imjnkl ) , (9)
where λ and μ are the Lamé constants, and l, m and n are the Murnaghan third
order elastic constants [1], and
1 1
I ijklmn = δ ijδ klδ mn , J ijklmn = ( I ijkmln + I ijknlm ) = (δ ijδ kmδ ln + δ ijδ knδ lm ) . (10)
2 2
Making use of (7) - (8) in (6) yields
1 ∂ uj
2
1 ∂ 2ui 1 ∂ 2ui
− (1 − 2 ) − = fi + gi , (11)
cL2 ∂t 2 κ ∂x j ∂xi κ 2 ∂x j ∂x j
where κ = cL cT , and cL = (λ + 2 μ ) ρ and cT = μ ρ are the longitudinal and
transverse phase velocities, respectively. The right hand side of (11) is given by
532
Cijklmn ∂um ∂ 2uk 1 ∂Cijklmn ∂uk ∂um Dijklmn ∂um ∂ 2uk
fi = + , gi = . (12)
λ + 2 μ ∂xn ∂x j ∂xl 2 ∂x j ∂xl ∂xn λ + 2 μ ∂xn ∂x j ∂xl
Clearly, f i arises from the material nonlinearity and gi comes from the geometrical
nonlinearity. It can be easily shown that gi vanishes if small strain assumption,
1
ε ij = (ui , j + u j ,i ) (13)
2
is made.
In the foregoing derivations, we had implicitly assumed that Cijklmn is spatially
dependent so that ∂Cijklmn ∂x j ≠ 0 . In the rest of this paper, we will assume that
Cijklmn is uniform throughout the body so that ∂Cijklmn ∂x j = 0 .
We now define boundary value problems for the wave propagation in a weakly
nonlinear elastic medium. In such a medium, the displacement field can be written as
the sum of the primary linear field, ui(1) and the secondary nonlinear field, ui( 2) as the
first correction term to the primary field:
ui = ui(1) + ui( 2) . (14)
with
ui( 2) << ui(1) . (15)
Experimental results on numerous engineering materials including pure metals and
metallic alloys show that the amplitude of the secondary wave displacement (the
second harmonic) is typically 10-3-10-2 times smaller than the amplitude of the
primary wave displacement (the first harmonic). Therefore, the perturbation
condition, Eq. (15) is well supported by experimental results. By this condition, it
follows
ui( 2)u (j2 ) << ui(1)u (j2 ) << ui(1)u (j1) . (16)
Substituting Eq. (14) into Eq. (6) and then applying Eq. (16), one obtains the
equations of motion for the primary and secondary fields as follows,
∂ 2ui(1) ∂ 2u k(1)
ρ − C ijkl = 0, (17)
∂t 2 ∂x j ∂xl
∂ 2ui( 2) ∂ 2u k( 2)
ρ − C ijkl = f i (1) . (18)
∂t 2
∂x j ∂xl
where
∂u m(1) ∂ 2u k(1)
f i (1) = ( Dijklmn + Cijklmn ) . (19)
∂xn ∂x j ∂xl
It is seen in Eq. (18) that the secondary field is excited by the interaction of the
primary field and this excitation appears as the body force term ( f i (1) ) in Eq. (18).
For one-dimensional waves,
u1 = u1 ( x1 , t ) , u2 = u2 ( x1 , t ) , u3 = 0 . (14)
In this case, only two of the equations of motion (11) are non-trivial. They are
∂ 2u ∂ 2u ∂u ∂ 2u ∂u ∂ 2u2
L[u1; cL ] ≡ 21 − cL2 21 = β L cL2 1 21 + β T cT2 2 , (15)
∂t ∂x1 ∂x1 ∂x1 ∂x1 ∂x12
533
∂ 2 u2 2 ∂ u2
2
2 ⎛ ∂ u1 ∂u2
2
∂u1 ∂ 2u2 ⎞
L[u2 ; cT ] ≡ − cT = β c
T T ⎜ + 2 ⎟
, (16)
∂t 2 ∂x12 ⎝ ∂x1 ∂x1 ∂x1 ∂x1 ⎠
2
where
β L = 3 + η L , β T = κ 2 + ηT , (17)
are called, respectively, the longitudinal and transverse acoustic nonlinearity
parameters. In the above,
2(l + 2m) m
ηL = , ηT = (18)
λ + 2μ μ
represent the material nonlinearity. Clearly, the acoustic nonlinearity parameters
account for both geometrical and material nonlinearities.
The corresponding stresses follow from (3)
⎡ β L ⎛ ∂u1 ⎞
2
β T ⎛ ∂u2 ⎞ ⎤
2
2 ∂u1
σ 11 = ρ cL ⎢ + ⎜ ⎟ + 2⎜ ⎟ ⎥ , (19)
⎢⎣ ∂x1 2 ⎝ ∂x1 ⎠ 2κ ⎝ ∂x1 ⎠ ⎥⎦
⎡ ∂u1 βL ⎛ ∂u1 ⎞ β T ⎛ ∂u2 ⎞ ⎤
2 2
σ 22 = ρ cT ⎢(κ − 2)
2 2
+ [κ (1 + ) − 2 β T − 1] ⎜
2
⎟ + ⎜ ⎟ ⎥ , (20)
⎢⎣ ∂x1 2 ⎝ ∂x1 ⎠ 2 ⎝ ∂x1 ⎠ ⎥
⎦
⎡ ∂u ∂u ∂u ⎤
σ 12 = ρ cT2 ⎢ 2 + (1 − κ 2 + β T ) 1 2 ⎥ , (21)
⎣ ∂x1 ∂x1 ∂x1 ⎦
where κ = cL cT .
Next, we consider a half-space defined by x1 ≥ 0 . Let the boundary of the
half-space be subjected to prescribed displacement condition
u1 (0, t ) = U sin(ω t ) , u2 (0, t ) = 0 , (22)
where ω = k L cL is the circular frequency and k L is the wavenumber for the
longitudinal propagating wave. It can be easily shown that, for β LUk L2 x1 1 , the
solution to the boundary value problem given by (15) and (22) can be written as [3],
u1 x β Uk L2 x1 ⎛ x1 ⎞
= sin[ω (t − 1 )] − ⎜ A + cos[2ω (t − )] ⎟ , (23)
U cL 8 ⎝ cL ⎠
σ 11 x
= −Uk L cos[ω (t − 1 )]
ρ cL2
cL
, (24)
β U 2 k L2 ⎡ x1 x1 ⎤
+ A + cos[2ω (t − )] − 2kx1 sin[2ω (t − )]⎥
8 ⎢⎣ cL cL ⎦
where A is an arbitrary constant. Note that, unlike the corresponding linear problem
where A must be zero because the solution must be bounded as x → ∞ , the constant
A in (23) does not have to be zero because (23) is valid only for finite x. To uniquely
determine this constant, we use the consistency condition [4],
∂u1 2c ∂u
= − L [(1 + β L 1 )3 2 − 1] . (25)
∂t 3β L ∂x1
This is valid for any β and is independent of the boundary conditions. It can be
shown that in the limit of β L → 0 , the above reduces to the well-known equation [5],
534
∂u1 ∂u
= − cL 1 . (26)
∂t ∂x1
The consistency condition (25) provides an additional equation to uniquely
determine the constant A. By substituting (23) into (25), we arrive at A = 1 . Thus,
the solution becomes
u1 x β Uk 2 x ⎛ x ⎞
= sin[ω (t − 1 )] − L L 1 ⎜1 + cos[2ω (t − 1 )] ⎟ , (27)
U cL 8 ⎝ cL ⎠
σ 11 x1 ⎡
β LU 2 k L2 x1 x1 ⎤
= −Uk cos[ω (t − )] + ⎢1 + cos[2ω (t − )] − 2kx1 sin[2ω (t − )]⎥
ρ cL2 L
cL 8⎣ cL cL ⎦
(28)
The above solutions satisfy (15) and (22) up to the order of β LU k L .
2 2
MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES FOR NONLINEAR ULTRASOUND
A number of investigators have applied nonlinear ultrasonic techniques to assess

fatigue damage in different materials under a variety of laboratory conditions. Yost
and Cantrell [6-10] experimentally observed changes of the acoustic nonlinearity
parameter, and attributed the changes to the effects of fatigue-induced dislocations.
Frouin et al. [11,12] performed in situ nonlinear ultrasonic measurements during
fatigue testing, and related the measured increase in the acoustic nonlinearity
parameter—in the vicinity of the fracture surface—to an increase in the dislocation
density. Among these studies, only Frouin et al. [11,12] reported using nonlinear
ultrasonic results to track fatigue damage throughout the entire fatigue life of a
specimen. Hurley et al. [13] used a laser interferometer to measure the second order
harmonic in through-transmission, longitudinal waves. Recently Kim et al [14]
developed a robust experimental procedure to track the evolution of fatigue damage
in a nickel-base superalloy with the acoustic nonlinearity parameter, β, and
demonstrates its effectiveness by making repeatable measurements of β in multiple
specimens, subjected to both high- and low-cycle fatigue. The measurement
procedure developed in this research is robust in that it is based on conventional
piezoelectric contact transducers, which are readily available off the shelf, and it
offers the potential for field applications. In addition, the measurement procedure
enables the user to isolate sample nonlinearity from measurement system
nonlinearity. The experimental results show that there is a significant increase in β
linked to the high plasticity of low-cycle fatigue, and illustrate how these nonlinear
ultrasonic measurements quantitatively characterize the damage state of a specimen
in the early stages of fatigue. One application of these results is to serve as a master
curve for life prediction based on nonlinear ultrasonic measurements.
The measurement of nonlinear longitudinal waves with contact piezoelectric
transducers is fairly straight forward, and a typical schematic is shown in Figure 1. A
tone burst signal determined by the specimen thickness is generated by a function
generator and is fed into a high-power gated amplifier. In order to ensure
one-dimensional wave propagation in a single direction, the exact number of cycles
535
of the tone burst is selected as the maximum number of cycles that can fit within the
thickness of the specimen. Commercial narrow-band PZT (Lead Zirconate Titanate)
are used as a transmitter and a receiver, respectively. The transducers are coupled to
the specimen with light lubrication oil. A special fixture is designed to keep both the
transmitting and receiving transducers aligned on the same centerline axis, and to
also allow for the removal of either transducer (transmitter or receiver) without
disturbing the coupling (and position) of the other; this capacity is critical for the
calibration procedure described next. The receiver is terminated with a 50 Ω passive
load to have the same terminal load in the calibration. Both voltage and current
signals of the transmitted ultrasonic waves are recorded and time averaged with an
oscilloscope, and then transferred to a computer for further signal processing. Then,
diffraction corrections are made to the measured fundamental and the
second-harmonic signal amplitudes. The calibration procedure for the piezoelectric
receiving transducer is based on the principle of self-reciprocity [15], and is
employed in order to obtain a conversion transfer function from the measured
electrical signal to the absolute amplitude of the particle displacement, and to
compensate for any small variations in the coupling of the receiving transducer. Note
that this calibration is performed prior to every nonlinear measurement, with the
transmitter transducer removed. The current and voltage signals of the incident and
the reflected pulse from the bottom surface of the specimen that is kept stress-free
(when the transmitter is removed), are measured and used to calculate a transfer
function that converts the measured current signal to the particle displacement of the
incident wave at the receiver.
One clever way to improve SNR is through the pulse-inversion technique to
accentuate the contribution of the even, second harmonic signal, while reducing the
dominance of the fundamental contribution. The pulse-inversion technique is very
efficient in extracting this second-harmonic amplitude by canceling out the odd
harmonics, which are mainly due to the instrumentation; the even harmonic signal is
extracted by adding two 180° out-of-phase input signals.
Figure 1. Schematic of Experimental Setup for Through Transmission
536
As an example, consider a set of nonlinear longitudinal wave measurements in
low cycle fatigue damaged IN100 specimens. Figure 2 shows a rapid increase in the
measured material nonlinearity (up to 30%) during the first 40% of fatigue life. This
behavior demonstrates that NLU can be used to quantitatively characterize the
damage state in this material in the early stages of fatigue life. There is also excellent
agreement in the material nonlinearity measured with either Rayleigh or longitudinal
waves.
Longitudinal wave measurement (Specimen #1)

Normalized acoustic nonlinearity, β/βunfat
1.6 Longitudinal wave measurement (Specimen #2)

Rayleigh wave measurement (Specimen #1)
Rayleigh wave measurement (Specimen #2)
1.5
Best fit of longitudinal wave measurement results
1.4
1.3
1.2
1.1
1.0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Fatigue life (%)
Figure 2. Normalized acoustic nonlinearity as a function of fatigue life.
REFERENCES
1. Norris, A. 1998. "Finite Amplitude Waves in Solids," in Nonlinear Acoustics, M. F. Hamilton and
D. T. Blackstock, eds. San Diego: Academic Press.
2. Malvern, L. 1969. Introduction to the Mechanics of a Continuous Medium. New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall.
3. Thompson, D.O. and Breazeale, M.A. 1963. "Ultrasonic Waves of Finite Amplitude in Solids." J.
Acoust. Soc. Am., 35(11): 1884-1884.
4. Cantrell, J.H. 1985. "Acoustic Radiation Stress in Solids." IEEE Transactions on Sonics and
Ultrasonics, 32(1): 100-100.
5. Achenbach, J.D. 1973. Wave Propagation in Elastic Solids. 1973, Amsterdam: North-Holland.
6. Yost, W.T. and Cantrell, J.H. 1990. "Material Characterization Using Acoustic Nonlinearity
Parameters and Harmonic Generation: Engineering Materials." Review of Progress in QNDE,
13B: 1669-1676.
7. Yost, W.T. and Cantrell, J.H., 1992."Absolute Ultrasonic Displacement Amplitude Measurements
with a Submersible Electrostatic Acoustic Transducer." Review of Scientific Instruments, 63(9):
4182-4188.
8. Yost, W.T. and Cantrell, J.H. 1992. "The Effects of Fatigue on Acoustic Nonlinearity in Aluminum
Alloys", Proceedings of IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium, Vol 1. 947-955.
9. Yost, W.T. and Cantrell, J.H. 2000. "Fatigue Cycle Induced Variation of the Acoustic Nonlinearity
Parameter in Aluminum Alloy 2024", Review of Progress in QNDE, 19B: 1381-1386.
10. Yost, W.T., Cantrell, J.H., and Na, J.K. 2001. "Nonlinear Ultrasonic Pulsed Measurements and
537
Applications to Metal Processing and Fatigue", Review of Progress in QNDE, 20B: 1268-1275.
11. Frouin, J., Matikas, T.E., Na, J.K., and Sathish, S., 1999."In-Situ Monitoring of Acoustic Linear
and Nonlinear Behavior of Titanium Alloys During Cycling Loading." Proceedings of SPIE - The
International Society for Optical Engineering, 3585: p. 107-116.
12. Frouin, J., Maurer, J., Sathish, S., Eylon, D., Na, J.K., and Matikas, T.E. 2000. "Real-Time
Monitoring of Acoustic Linear and Nonlinear Behavior of Titanium Alloys During Cyclic
Loading", Proceedings of Materials Research Society Symposium, Vol. 591, 79-84.
13. Hurley, D.C., Yost, W.T., Boltz, E.S., and Fortunko, C.M. 1997. "A Comparison of Three
Techniques to Determine the Nonlinear Ultrasonic Parameter Beta", Review of Progress in
QNDE, 16: 1383-1390.
14. Kim, J.Y., Jacobs, L.J., Qu, J.M., and Littles, J.W., 2006."Experimental Characterization of
Fatigue Damage in a Nickel-Base Superalloy Using Nonlinear Ultrasonic Waves." Journal of the
Acoustical Society of America, 120(3): 1266-1273.
15. Dace, G.E., Thompson, R.B., and Buck, O., 1992."Measurement of the Acoustic Harmonic
Generation for Materials Characterization Using Contact Transducers." Review of Progress in
Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation, 11: 2069-2076.
538
Hierarchical Sensing System Combining a
Fiber-Optic Network and Distributed
Built-in Capillary Sensors for Impact
Damage Monitoring of CFRP Structures
H. BANSHOYA, S. MINAKUCHI and N. TAKEDA
ABSTRACT
In this study, the authors propose a novel hierarchical sensing concept for
detecting damage in composite structures. In order to overcome the weak points of
conventional fiber-optic-based monitoring, such as reparability and robustness, the
proposed system stratifies the roles of “damage detection” and “damage signal
transmission” with distributed damage sensing mechanisms and a fiber optic backbone.
In order to validate the proposed concept, an impact damage detection system for large
scale composite panel structures was established, utilizing comparative vacuum
monitoring (CVM). It was indicated that the hierarchical system has better reparability,
higher robustness, and wider monitorable area compared to existing systems. Since
this system was only able to detect damage that penetrates the back surface, the
authors have begun investigating a distributed device with the capability of detecting
internal damage. Glass capillaries (or "hollow glass fibers”) embedded in the structure
are considered here as a damage detection device. A concept utilizing glass capillaries
is proposed, and preliminary tests were undertaken to verify the feasibility of this
concept.
1. INTRODUCTION
In order to improve the reliability of the composite materials and save

maintenance cost, many health-monitoring technologies which enable the detection of
internal damage in composite structures have been developed [1]. Among the
developed techniques, optical fiber sensors have attracted a considerable amount of
attention since they are lightweight, small in size and relatively easy to incorporate
into CFRP structures, immune to electromagnetic interference, environmentally stable,
and have little signal loss over extremely long distances. Recently, many innovative
techniques have enhanced distributed strain/temperature sensing in terms of spatial
resolution [2-6].
Hidehiko Banshoya, Shu Minakuchi, Nobuo Takeda

Dept.of Advanced Energy, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo
5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa-shi, Chiba, 277-8561, Japan
539
Easy replacement / repair of
damaged region
Figure 1. Nerve systems of lifeforms Figure 2. Hierarchical sensing system
However, when the optical fiber sensor network is applied to large scale structures
for monitoring randomly induced damage, the existing systems are unsatisfactory in
the following three properties: reparability, robustness, and its monitorable area. Once
optical fibers are damaged and disconnected, the fibers are difficult to re-connect
especially when they are embedded in the structure. This also leads to low robustness,
since a single disconnection will cause dysfunction of the whole sensing network. Last
but not least, optical fibers can only detect axial strain near or directly over the fiber
itself, and thus it is difficult to detect damage occurring in the area between two or
more fibers. This means that the conventional system cannot reliably detect randomly
induced impact damage, which can severely degrade structural integrity of CFRP
structures [7].These drawbacks are caused for the sole reason that the optical fibers in
this system bear both damage detection and information transmission.
To overcome these drawbacks, the authors have proposed a hierarchical impact
damage detection system [8]. This system draws an analogy with nerve systems in life
forms (Figure 1). The hydra, one of the first life forms to have a nerve system, has
nerve cells which do not have specific roles but basically bear all nervous functions,
forming a diffuse “nerve net” [9]. Life forms acquired more complex nerve systems,
with brains, spinal cords, and peripheral sensory nerves through evolution [9]. This
suggests a new method for improving fiber-optic-based monitoring systems.
In the hierarchical system, numerous three-dimensionally structured sensor
devices are distributed throughout the whole structural area and connected with the
optical fiber network (which is not embedded into the structure) through transducing
mechanisms (Figure 2). The distributed “sensory nerve cell” devices detect the
damage, and the fiber-optic “spinal cord” network gathers the damage signals and
transmits the information to a measuring instrument. By stratifying “damage
detection” and “information transmission”, as life forms have done so with their nerve
systems in the process of evolution, this system can have “better reparability,” “higher
robustness,” and “wider monitorable area” compared to existing systems utilizing
optical fiber sensors. Broken devices can be easily replaced during the material
repairing process, and if by any chance the optical fiber is broken, the broken parts can
be readily reconnected by using a fusion splicer since the optical fiber is accessible.
In order to demonstrate this concept, an impact damage detection system was
assembled, and used for verification.
540
2. CONSTRUCTION OF AN IMPACT DAMAGE DETECTION SYSTEM
2.1 Comparative Vacuum Monitoring
Here, damage detecting devices are based on “comparative vacuum monitoring”

(CVM). Developed by Structural Monitoring Systems in Australia, CVM uses an
elastomeric surface sensor with fine channels to detect surface cracks by monitoring
internal pressure variation of the sensor. In the system envisioned, a number of tightly-
arranged devices will be bonded on the back surface of the whole composite structure
and will simultaneously monitor damage on-board. A schematic is shown in Figure 3.
The channels, bonded on to the back surface of the structure, will be vacuumed
and internal pressure of the channels will be kept at nearly zero. Upon impact of a
foreign object, a bending crack will be generated on the back surface of the structure.
Atmospheric air will flow through the crack into the individual sensor placed over the
crack (Figure 3 (a)). This pressure change within the sensor device will be converted
Sensor Channel
device
Bending crack
Adhesive face
(a) Crack detection with CVM (b) Transducing mechanism
Figure 3. Schematic of proposed device
Figure 4. Applying system to mock fuselage
541
into axial strain in the optical fiber through the transducing mechanism, which is
connected to the channels (Figure 3 (b)). By monitoring the strain distribution along
the optical fiber, it is possible to identify the transducing mechanism in which pressure
change has occurred, thus making it possible to specify the location of impact damage.
2.2 Application to Large Scale Structure
After a verification test was performed on a prototype device, the system was
applied to a large scale structure, and impact damage was successfully detected. The
test piece, shown in Figure 4, is a CFRP fuselage demonstrator, with a quasi-isotropic
stacking sequence (Toray T300S/3601, [45/0/-45/90]4S). Thickness was approximately
4mm, while length and width were approximately 1m. There are nine integrally
molded T-shaped stringers, and space for one frame (which, in this case, has been
removed). Sixteen sensor units (thirty-two sensor devices) were deployed on the back
surface (internal surface) and connected with optical fibers. In order to vacuum air out
from all devices at once, check valves are attached to all transducing mechanisms, and
they were connected with a single tube, from which the vacuum pump draws air.
2.3 Pros and Cons of this System
By utilizing CVM, the proposed hierarchical system was able to detect impact
damage occurring in a broad area, with high robustness and maintainability. Since
damage detection and structural repair are two sides of one coin, it is also important
that the sensing system enables simple maintenance procedures. In this sense, it can be
said that this system has a decisive advantage in application to actual aircraft. It should
be also noted that even though the damage detection area of one device is a broad, 2-
dimentional area, only 1 or 2 sampling points in the optic fiber correspond to this
device. When damage is detected, the strain distribution will show a strong peak at the
location of the transducing mechanism, which will be fairly easy to recognize.
A downside of this system is that it is unable to detect microscopic internal
damage, such as small delamination. It is desirable that a device with the ability to
detect internal damage is developed. The authors have begun investigation to realize
such a sensing system, and this will be discussed in the next section.
3. A DAMAGE DETECTION SYSTEM USING HOLLOW GLASS FIBERS
3.1 The Use of Hollow Glass Fibers as Sensors in Composites
Another advantage of this proposed hierarchical system is that any kind of sensor
can be used, as long as the output of the sensor can be converted into signals in the
optical fiber at the transducing mechanism. Thus, upon developing a distributed sensor
with the ability to monitor internal damage, many options were considered.
CVM was used in the earlier demonstration because it had a very simple yet
reliable mechanism (in other words, the sensor only needed vaccum and had low
“energy density”), and also because there was no need to alter the structure for sensor
incorporation in the manufacturing process. As long as these conditions could be met,
any kind of sensor would be usable. For instance, piezo-electrics were considered
542
during conception, because it is a powerful method to detect internal damage without
actually penetrating the structure. However, piezo-electric sensors (especially ones
that utilize Lamb waves) need electrical power; hence each distributed sensor device
would need a power source. This suggests a rather high energy density device, which
may be undesirable under the hierarchical concept. The whole system (baseline and
pattern recognition) must be recalibrated after some region is repaired, which would
also go against the design philosophy. In this sense, CVM may still bear some
advantages even when considering internal damage detection. The authors have begun
investigating the application of hollow glass fibers (HGFs), which will become the
channels for CVM damage detection.
HGFs have drawn a considerable amount of attention especially in the field of self
healing materials [10]. A number of researches have been conducted in this area by
embedding HGFs in the in-plane direction in CFRP, and using them as vessels to
contain repairing agents [11-14]. Once damaged, the HGFs will be breached, thus
diffusing the repairing agent to the damage site. This mechanism can also be used for
CVM damage detection. However, since the HGFs are embedded in-plane directions,
they can only be extracted at the edge of the structure; thus it is impossible to use them
as distributed sensors that monitor a designated region. Hence, HGFs must be
embedded in the through –thickness direction to construct a hierarchical system.
Embedding foreign objects in the through-thickness direction in CFRP structures
is not an immediately attractive option, because deterioration in structural integrity
may be inevitable. However, a common structure with objects in the through-thickness
direction would be CFRP made with stitched dry fabrics (especially Non-Crimp
Fabrics, or NCFs) and resin transfusion molding (RTM). If some of the stitching in
dry fabrics could be replaced with HGFs, they could be instantly used as sensor
devices after curing of the structure, not to mention self healing vasculatures. Damage
detection and repair are two sides of one coin; this can prove to be a very attractive
approach. Should extracting them from the surface become possible, the HGFs would
be able to be cut and terminated, or be attached to a transducing mechanism at the
extraction points. This would enable the HGFs to be used as sensors that monitor a
designated region. A schematic of fabrication of this system is shown in Figure 5.
3.2 Embedding and Extracting Hollow Fibers
Before using HGFs, polyimide (PI) tubes were used for preliminary examination.
The tubes used were MicroLumen Polyimide Tubing, Code#068 (inside diameter:
180m, wall thickness 19m). Tubes were stitched to a uni-directional, non-stitched
carbon fiber fabric (SAERTEX V96069). Specimens were cured using vacuum
assisted RTM (VARTM).
In order to extract the tubes from the surface, small inserts made of Teflon (PTFE)
were inserted between the stitching and the fabric surface, as shown in Figure 6
(a).The corners of the inserts were rounded, so the tubes would not collapse or be cut.
These inserts were easily pulled out after cure, and the tubes were extracted from the
surface successfully.
Specimens for demonstrating this technique were fabricated. Tubes were stitched
and embedded in the above manner, and were extracted from the surface (Figure 6 (b)).
These were cut, and connected to a larger piece of vinyl tube, which simulates a
transducing mechanism. The vinyl tube was vacuumed of air (thus, the embedded PI
543
Dry fabric with stitched
HGFs
Resin infusion and curing
Machining
Attachment of transducing
mechanisms and optical
fibers to HGFs
Figure 5. Fabrication of proposed sensing system
tubes were also vacuumed), and connected to a manometer, which would monitor the
internal pressure of the vinyl tubes. The specimens were tested under mode-I loadings,
and the pressure rose significantly after the crack breached the stitch to which the
vinyl tube was attached. However, the PI tubes had a tendency to deform plastically,
thus a large amount of bridging was observed along the crack. This suggests that PI
tubes themselves cannot be used to detect small internal damage.
3.3 Damage Detection
Next, the authors made an attempt to detect damage using HGFs. Since the HGFs
are very brittle, they were expected to be much more sensitive to damage, making an
ideal sensor for damage detection. The HGF used here had an external diameter of
125m, internal diameter of 40m (hollowness fraction: 10%), and was manufactured
at Kohoku Kogyo Co, Ltd (Japan). Unfortunately, the HGF had a thick UV-cure
coating, which would not withstand the cure temperature of CFRP, and it had to be
stripped off before embedding, thus the HGF was susceptible to breakage under
bending. This made it very difficult for them to be stitched and embedded into fabrics.
If PI coating with sufficient thickness (as in optical fiber sensors) becomes possible,
they would be strong enough to withstand stitching.
Although these HGFs could not be stitched, tests were conducted to ensure their
functionality. Since the prominent cause for impact related delamination is mode-II
loading within the plies, an end notched flexure (ENF) specimen was fabricated
544
Extracted
PI tubes
PI tubes
Extracted
PI tubes
PI tubes
PTFE inserts PTFE inserts
(a) Before resin transfer and cure (b) After cure

Figure 6. Extracting PI tubes from laminate
Figure 7. Schematic of ENF test specimen
with HGFs embedded in the through thickness direction (Figure 7). The specimen was
approximately 6mm thick (30 UD fabric plies, cross-ply stacking sequence), with a
PTFE sheet inserted in one end to simulate an initial crack. HGFs with lengths of
approximately 5mm were inserted in the through thickness direction. These HGFs had
one end closed with Araldite epoxy, and the other end was connected to a long PI tube.
This tube, on the other end, was connected to a transducing mechanism and a
manometer, as in the earlier section. This transducing mechanism (thus, also the HGF
and PI tube) was vacuumed. 3-point bending was applied to the specimen, and the
internal pressure of the transducing mechanism was monitored.
When load dropped and the crack penetrated the HGF, air pressure suddenly
began to rise (Figure 8 (a), (b)). Note that Figure 8 (b) plots pressure difference from
atmospheric air. This suggests that the HGFs can indeed be used as a sensor device. A
SEM image of a tube that was breached by a crack is shown in Figure 8 (c).
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this study, the proposed hierarchical monitoring system was verified by

constructing a damage detection system for CFRP panels utilizing the CVM method.
It was possible to detect impact damage occurring in a broad area, with high
robustness and maintainability. HGFs were used to investigate possibilities for a more
advanced damage detection system with the ability to detect internal damage.
Although a full detection system was not able to be constructed at this point, basic
investigation was conducted and it was made clear that the methodology was feasible.
The authors will continue to aim at constructing a system utilizing this method. Focus
will also be put on how the incorporation of HGFs will affect the material properties
of a CFRP specimen. Since the fabric structure itself would not differ largely from
NCFs, it is reasonable to think that material properties of specimens with stitched
HGFs would not stray far from those made of NCFs.
545
Differential Pressure [kPa]
Load [kN]
Load drop
Displacement [mm] Time [sec]

(a) Load-displacement curve (b) Internal pressure of transducing
of ENF test mechanism during ENF test
200m
(c) SEM image of breached HGF
Figure 8. ENF test results
REFERENCES
1. W. J. Staszewski, G. R. Tomlinson and C. Boller, editors. 2004. Health Monitoring of Aerospace

Structures: Smart Sensor Technologies and Signal Processing, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
2. K. S. C. Kuang and W. J. Cantwell. 2003. Applied Mechanics Reviews, 56(5):493-513.
3. N. Takeda, Y. Okabe, T. Mizutani. 2007. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Part G - Journal of Aerospace 221(G4), 497-508.
4. X. Bao, A. Brown, M. DeMerchant and J. Smith. 1999. Optics Letters, 24(8):510-512.
5. K. Kishida, C. H. Li and K. Nishiguchi. 2005. Proceeding of the SPIE 5855, 559-562 .
6. K. Y. Song, Z. Y. He and K. Hotate. 2006. Optics Letters, 31(17): 2526-2528.
7. S. Abrate. 1998. Impact on Composite Structures, Cambridge University Press.
8. S. Minakuchi, H. Tsukamoto, N. Takeda. 2009. Proceedings of the SPIE, Vol. 7293, 72930G.
9. K. Agata, and O. Koizumi, editors. 2007. Neuronal Diversity: its Origin and Evolution (in
Japanese), Baifukan Co., Ltd.
10. S. van der Zwaag (Editor). 2007. Self Healing Materials, Springer, pp.115-138.
11. Hucker M, Bond I, Bleay S, Haq S. 2003. “Experimental evaluation of unidirectional hollow
glass fibre/epoxy composites under compressive loading”, Composites Part A, 34:927–32.
12. Trask RS, Williams GJ, Bond IP. 2007. “Bioinspired self-healing of advanced composite
structures using hollow glass fibres,” J Roy Soc Interface, 4:363–71.
13. Williams G, Trask R, Bond I. 2007. “A self-healing carbon fibre reinforced polymer for
aerospace applications,” Composites Part A, 38:1525–32.
14. C.J. Norris, I.P. Bond, R.S. Trask. 2011. “The role of embedded bioinspired asculature on
damage formation in self-healing carbon fibre reinforced composites,” Composites: Part A, 42:
639–648
546
Waveguided and Noncontacting
Thermoacoustic Sensing of Thermal
Protection Systems
D. HUSTON, D. HURLEY, D. FLETCHER and W. OWENS
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the results of studies aimed at developing methods for
sensing the condition of structures operating in extreme environments, such as the
thermal protection system (TPS) on a space vehicle during atmospheric entry. The
particularly acute challenge to sensing in these extreme conditions is that the sensor
and associated electronics are not sufficiently robust to withstand the structural test
conditions. Instead, it is necessary to place the sensors at a remote and more
hospitable location, and then to use signal transduction methods to carry the signal
from the structure to the remote sensor. An inductively coupled plasma (ICP) torch
creates tests the heat shield materials of hypervelocity vehicles. Acoustic Emissions
(AEs) are generated by stresses within the material, propagate as elastic waves, and
can be detected with sensitive instrumentation. AE testing equipment (Physical
Acoustics Corp PCI-2) and waveguides were used to monitor samples being tested
in the ICP. Data were analyzed and classified using statistical pattern recognition
algorithms. Results show that AE data can be used to discriminate between test
conditions. The testing environment dictates the physics and chemistry of the
thermal breakdown of the sample which indicates that AE testing is sensitive to
those processes. This study shows the potential of AE as a powerful analysis tool
for heat shield thermal degradation with the unique capability of real-time, in-situ
monitoring.

THERMAL PROTECTION SYSTEMS

Demanding entry conditions, such as those of Pioneer Venus, Galileo, Apollo
lunar return, and Stardust require heat shields that burn in a controlled manner to
block the high convective and/or radiative heat flux [1]. Early ablative materials
were developed for ballistic missile nose cone protection and included organic
matter such as cork. This fairly light and porous material will smolder or pyrolize
_____________
Mechanical Engineering, University of Vermont, 33 Colchester Ave, Burlington, Vermont
05405, U.S.A.
547
Figure 1. Physical and chemical processes for an ablating surface, courtesy NASA
slowly when subjected to intense heat. Subsequent material development efforts led
to carbon-phenolic for heat shields; and its use on the Apollo capsule is perhaps the
best-known example of an ablative thermal shield [2].
Current research efforts are focused on materials that develop lower density and
higher porosity char layers. Examples include SIRCA and PICA, which were
developed and matured at NASA Ames Research Center. Both of these materials
have a fibrous matrix that is filled with a resinous material, with the former using a
silica matrix and the latter a carbon matrix [3]. Developing ablative heat shields is
difficult because of the complex physical and chemical processes that occur in
changing aerothermal environmental conditions. Key processes include heat and
mass transfer, phase change, and solid material ejection, see Figure 1. The
mechanisms by which the surface impinging heat flux is blocked are summarized in
the right-hand side of Figure 1. Mass flow leaving the ablating material, either in
the form of vapor or solid particles, provides a strong counter-flow, which limits the
ability of shock-heated gases to reach the surface.
Despite the impressive performance of PICA for a very high-speed entry to
Earth’s atmosphere, there is only a primitive understanding of material response to
a dynamic and harsh aerothermal environment [4]. It is often not known how the
mass is actually lost: whether by phase-change to gas and then escaping or directly
by spallation [5]. One of the contributing factors to the primitive state of ablation
modeling is the lack of detailed measurements at relevant aerothermal test
conditions, even coming from ground test facilities.
UVM Inductively Coupled Plasma Torch Facility
A 30 kW Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) facility has been developed at

UVM, see Figure 2. This facility is capable of producing free stream temperatures
of 6000 – 8000 K for a N2/Ar environment. This creates surface temperatures
upwards of 1800C on the sample to simulate planetary entry conditions. Resins in
carbon composite heat shield materials pyrolyze during aeroconvective heating,
leaving an outer surface of almost pure carbon [6].
548
Figure 2 Photographic detail of N2/Ar plasma ball near coil (left) and corresponding free stream
test plasma inside test chamber with small sample holder installed (right).
This allows Pure graphite (POCO DFP-2) to be used at the plasma facility to study
gas-surface interaction during the degradation of thermal protection materials.
ACOUSTIC EMISSION TESTING
A project parallel to and complementing the fundamental study of ablative

processes is developing a heat shield diagnostic system. Heat shields are
notoriously delicate with damage and faults creating the potential for disaster [7].
AEs are elastic waves generated by stresses within a material and can be used for
nondestructive evaluation (NDE). The transient waves propagate through the
material and produce small displacements at the surface which can be detected with
sensitive instrumentation. Because the signal source originates within the material,
AE testing has unique capabilities and limitations. Relatively few sensors are
required to monitor large areas, especially in materials and geometries where elastic
waves experience minimal attenuation and propagate well. In simple geometries the
signal source can be easily located using triangulation or attenuation. A downside
of AE testing is that AE are only produced under loading and in some cases the load
must exceed all previous loadings, a phenomenon known as the Kaiser effect [8].
Typically, AEs are transient signals at frequencies in the low hundreds of kHz and
require constant monitoring for detection. This limits AE testing to real time
damage detection because damage can only be detected as it occurs. This is in
contrast to other NDE techniques such as ultrasonic testing that can interrogate a
structure for existing defects. Common AE testing applications include proof
testing for pressure vessels and leak detection in pipelines and valves. AE testing is
used for many research applications, a good example is the work by Madaras et. al
using AE to detect and locate impacts on space shuttle structures [9]. AE testing
was found to be well suited for impact detection and localization and offered the
potential for damage characterization.
The goal of this project is to investigate AE testing as diagnostic tool for heat
shields. Because the source of AEs is the material tested, extreme environments can
be monitored remotely through the use of waveguides. To avoid the extreme
environment within the plasma facility vacuum chamber, AE sensors are attached to
the copper probe used to position the graphite sample in the plasma stream. The L-
549
shaped probe contains a sample on the shorter end, then passes though the vacuum
chamber wall and has Swagelok fittings connecting to hoses for the liquid cooling,
see Figure 3. Physical Acoustics AE sensors are placed on the Swagelok Tee to take
advantage of a flush mounting surface. Mechanical coupling is enhanced with high
viscosity silicone grease. AEs generated at the sample propagate along the length of
the probe to the exterior mounted sensors, making it a functional waveguide. Sensor
data is acquired and processed using a Physical Acoustics Corporation (PAC) PCI-2
18 bit A/D conversion, 40 MSample/second system.
The first objective was to investigate the compatibility of AE testing with the
plasma facility environment. The plasma is produced by a RF magnetic field driven
by a 30kW power supply at 3 MHz with large spikes occurring when the power
supply is powered on or off. The plasma facility also relies on liquid cooling, which
produces mechanical noise. Of particular concern is the copper probe, which is
cooled internally. AE testing is often used on fluid systems and the shell and tube
heat exchanger design of the probe was a potential noise source. A pre-test was
conducted with all systems operating as normal except with the probe retracted
several inches so that the graphite sample was out of the plasma stream and not
subjected to high heat fluxes. The results were used to characterize background
noise and determine appropriate thresholds for the sensing equipment so that
system operation produced little AE activity. Subsequent testing under the same
operating conditions but with the graphite sample placed in the plasma produced
drastically different results. The number of registered hits increased by several
orders of magnitude and AE energy, a measure of signal strength and duration,
went from virtually no information to a distinct, high-energy pattern having good
agreement with testing procedure. This indicated that AE testing was capable of
isolating the thermal behavior of the graphite sample from the large amount of
noise in the system and could be a suitable tool to study the breakdown of thermal
protection materials.
Combined test
piece mount
and waveguide
Figure 3 AE Testing at the Plasma Facility
550
ANALYSIS OF AE DATA
AEs are typically discrete, transient events. The Physical Acoustics PCI-2
Acoustic Emission testing system registers an AE, or hit, whenever the signal
crosses a preset threshold. When a hit is detected, it is time stamped and several
statistical features are generated to characterize the waveform associated with the
hit. This is the first testing of this kind conducted on the plasma facility. As such,
thresholds and filters were kept at a minimal level to avoid excluding any relevant
data. Minimal filtering resulted in large datasets.
AEs may be generated by thermal degradation of the sample material or any of
the noise sources detailed above. In addition to multiple AE sources, filtering and
geometrical effects during waveguiding and narrow band sensor characteristics
mean the observed signal is not a faithful reproduction of the original source [8].
The challenge of AE data analysis is to extract useful information on the signal
source of interest from the vast total amount of data collected. As a first step in
assessing AE testing as a diagnostic tool for ablative heat shields, the goal is to
determine whether signals associated with the thermal breakdown of the sample can
be detected. Because the data of interest are mixed in with spurious information and
have been modified and filtered by waveguiding and data acquisition, an
appropriate first step is determining if different test conditions produce different
data. Data were collected under multiple scenarios, including two different
materials: graphite and an ablative material; and three different environments: air,
nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Samples erode significantly faster in air and CO2
environments compared to the nitrogen environment because of the greater
magnitude of surface oxidation compared to surface nitridation [6]. The hope is that
the different samples and environmental dependence of the physics and chemistry
of the thermal breakdown will produce unique data signatures.
The AE dataset, consisting of many events described by numerous features for
relatively few test cases, is ideally suited for statistical pattern classification.
Statistical pattern classification schemes rely on data of a known class to train the
algorithm or develop rules on class membership. Correctly classifying data based
on the test condition shows that a signature unique to that scenario is present within
the data. Further, the performance of a classifier can be thought of as a measure of
how different two datasets may be. A high misclassification rate suggests the
datasets are similar whereas a low misclassification rate shows greater distance
between the datasets.
AE Datasets are comprised of a series of ‘hits’. Each hit is characterized by 15
statistical features. Rise time, which is measured from the first threshold crossing to
the maximum amplitude of the signal; counts, the number of times the signal
threshold is crossed during a hit; energy, a measurement of the total magnitude of
the hit; duration, time between first and last threshold crossings during a hit;
amplitude; average-frequency; RMS; average signal level, a logarithmic equivalent
to RMS; counts-to-peak, the number of counts until maximum amplitude is
reached; reverberation frequency; initiation frequency; signal strength, another
measure of the rectified signal area; absolute energy; center frequency; and peak
frequency [8,11]. A second challenge is determining if certain statistical features
contain more information and are better suited for classification. Certain features
551
have direct physical significance, so knowing the degree of influence in the overall
dataset yields insight into the physical process.
Classification assessment and identification of key features can be
accomplished using sequential feature selection. Subsets of features are selected in
an iterative process to maximize a criteria, in this case classification rate.
Classification was chosen as the criteria so that classification and identification of
key features could be accomplished in the same process. Sequential feature
selection is the process in which the feature that makes the largest improvement in
classifier performance is selected until either the maximum number of features is
reached or the addition of any features decreases classifier performance [12].
Sequential feature selection was performed using four different classifiers. The first
three use different discriminant functions to classify data. Linear classifiers fit a
multivariate normal density to each group using a pooled estimate of covariance.
Quadratic classifiers using multivariate normal densities with covariance estimates
stratified by group were compared next. The third type of discriminant analysis uses
the Mahalanobis distance as a classifier with stratified covariance estimates. The
fourth approach to classifying the data was the nearest neighbor method. This
variation uses the Euclidean distance to classify samples. All four classification
schemes are easily implemented using MATLAB.
Sequential feature selection using the four classification schemes was applied to
the four testing scenarios summarized in Table I. The first two comparisons look at
the same sample material in different testing environments. These comparisons look
at AE sensitivity to differing chemistry of thermal breakdown. The second two
comparisons look at AE sensitivity to different mechanics of thermal breakdown.
The results of the sequential feature selection for each scenario are presented in
Figure 4 and Figure 5. With misclassification rates of less than one percent, nearest
neighbor offers the best classifier performance. The remaining classifiers provide
comparable performance except for determination of environment (N2 or CO2)
with a graphite sample. This analysis gives good evidence that AE testing can not
only detect thermal breakdown of materials but is also sensitive to differences in the
acoustic signatures of the thermal breakdown due to different material or
environment.
TABLE I. SUMMARY OF CLASSIFICATION SCENARIOS

Test number Material(s) Environment(s)
1 ablative N2 vs CO2 vs air
2 graphite N2 vs CO2
3 ablator vs graphite N2
4 ablative vs graphite CO2
552
Figure 4. Misclassification rate for sequential feature selection,
lower value indicates better classifier performance
Figure 5. Features selected by each classifier for each classification scenario.

Y axis format is classifier + test number.
(L: linear, Q: Quadratic, M: Mahalanobis, K: Nearest neighbor)
CONCLUSIONS
The goal of this project was to assess the potential of AE testing for heat shield
monitoring. Data were collected remotely, post processed, and analyzed using
553
statistical pattern recognition algorithms. The results clearly show that different
testing environments have different AE signatures and those differences are
quantifiable. AE testing is sensitive to the physical and chemical processes of
thermal breakdown of the sample, the surface erosion rate, or some combination of
the two. This capability makes the development of an AE based diagnostic system
feasible. The ultimate goal would be a deployable diagnostic system but presently,
AE testing on laboratory experiments can help improve understanding of the
ablative process. With the effectiveness of AE testing established, the next step is to
identify and characterize the various signal sources. This will include a thorough
study of the mechanics of wave propagation along the waveguide and cluster
analysis of individual datasets.
REFERENCES
1. Olynick, D., Y.-K. Chen and M. Tauber, 1999. “Aerothermodynamics of the Stardust Sample
Return Capsule”, J. Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol 36, No. 3, pp. 442-462.
2. Lee, D.B. and W.D. Goodrich, 1972. “The Aerothermodynamic Environment of the Apollo
Command Module During Superorbital Entry,” NASA TN D-6792,.
3. Tran, H.K. and D.J. Rasky, 1993. "Thermal Response and Ablation Characteristics of  Light-
Weight Ceramic Ablators," AIAA Paper 93-2790.
4. Milos, F.S. and D.J. Rasky, 1994. “Review of numerical procedures for computational surface
thermochemistry”, Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer, vol. 8, no. 1 pp. 24-34
January-March.
5. Lachaud, J., N.N. Mansour, 2008. “Ablation of Pica-Like Material: Surface or Volume
Phenomenon?”, Presented at the 6th International Planetary Probe Workshop, Atlanta,.
6. Zhang, L., D. Pejakovic, J. Marschall, and D. Fletcher, 2009 “Laboratory Investigation of
Active Graphite Nitridation by Atomic Nitrogen”. AIAA 2009-4251
7. “Laser Inspection of Space Shuttle Endeavour Shows Gouge Penetrated Heat Shield Tiles”.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293010,00.html August, 2007
8. Pollock, A. 2003. “Acoustic Emission Inspection”. Technical Report TR-103-96-12/89.
MISTRAS Holdings Group.
9. Madaras, E. W. Prosser, and M.. Gorman. 2005. “Detection of Impact Damage on Space Shuttle
Structures Using Acoustic Emission”, CP760 Review of Quantitative Nondestructive
Evaluation, vol 24, American Institute of Physics 0-7354-0245-0/05.
10. The Mathworks Inc, 2010. MATLAB R2010b user’s manual.
11. ASTM Standard E1316-05, 2005, "Standard Terminology for Nondestructive Examinations,"
ASTM International, DOI: 10.1520/E1316-05
12. Webb, A. 2002 . Statistical Pattern Recognition 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons.
554
Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensor Network
for Aircraft Structures Damage Localisation:
Pitch-Catch Method
H. BOUKABACHE, M. MATMAT, S. KSOURI, C. ESCRIBA

and J. Y. FOURNIOLS
ABSTRACT
Mechanical flaws detection and damage severity quantification in aircraft’s

structures are ones among the major research axes that the aeronautic manufactures
takes during theses lasts years. Our work in this field focuses on the development
of a new damage diagnosis methodology based on the exploitation of specific
guided wave propagation and on the capability of piezoelectric network
actuators/sensors to generate/sense them. The proposed method allows a relative
quick diagnosis using a smart comparison between a baseline captured before the
commissioning of the plane and a damaged signal captured after N flight cycles.
The major asset of this method is the capability to probe large structure within a
minimum time and human interaction.
This paper brings examples of feasibility on aircraft structures specimens made of
composite and isotropic alloys. The feasibility of the system is therefore demonstrated
using a basic sensors/actuators network.
INTRODUCTION
Led by the challenge to reduce aircrafts weight, carbon-epoxy composite

materials are more and more used into airplanes structures fabrication process. This
integration has promoted the emergence of new hybrid structures composed of
metal alloys and composite materials. This fact makes damage detection and
imaging techniques based on local embedded ultrasonic radar (EUSR) and Eddy
current quite critical and very complex to setup for large hybrid structures.
To circumvent the problem, we developed a new methodology based on a smart
comparison between a healthy and damaged structure’s acoustic signature. The
algorithm exploits pitch-catch technique and Lamb wave propagation through a
piezoelectric wafer active sensor network to capture the global structure’s response.
_____________
H. Boukabache 1,2, M.Matmat1, 2, S. Ksouri 1,2, C. Escriba 1,2, J-Y. Fourniols 1,2.
1 CNRS ; LAAS ; 7 avenue du colonel Roche, F-31077 Toulouse, France
2 Université de Toulouse ; UPS, INSA, INP, ISAE; LAAS ; F-31077 Toulouse, France
555
Some nodes of the network are dynamically configured to emit specifics Lamb
wave modes when the others are set to capture the structure response. This method
allows unlike conventional NDT techniques a fast diagnostic even for very large
structure whatever the nature of the material.
THE METHODOLOGY
The methodology we propose is based on the capability of a piezo-wafer active

sensor (PWAS) to generates/measures specific Lamb wave’s modes [1, 2]. According
to piezoelectric effect the application of a bipolar sinusoidal voltage on the normal axe
of the transducer develops an alternative material displacement that is directly
responsible of Lamb wave generation [2, 3]. The phenomenon being totally
reversible, the sensor generates an electric field when it is subject to a mechanical
stress.
The generated waves are therefore exploited through a piezoelectric actuator-
sensor network to capture acoustic signatures from structures. By comparing a
healthy signature saved before the commissioning of the plane to the damaged one, we
demonstrate a new non intrusive and non destructive control method dedicated to
metal and composite large scale structures.
REALIZATION OF THE METHOD
Theoretical study
To extract the most relevant signature, analytical and experimental

investigations focused on the generation of specifics modes were performed. The
complexity nature of aircraft structures geometries makes widely used techniques
based on the generation of pure Lamb mode [3-4] using a unique excitation
frequency quite impossible. Based on Rayleigh-Lamb equation (Equ.1) and
dispersion curves for isotropic material, our studies led us to select for a given
structure thickness and material proprieties the correct operating frequency interval
that minimizes the number of Lamb modes generation (see Figure 1.a).
(1)
Where: +1 corresponds to the symmetrical mode of propagation and -1 to the

asymmetric one; d is the half thickness of the host ; is the angular frequency ; is
the wave number and and .
As shown in figure 1.a, the optimal operating point for Al2024 alloys is therefore
situated on the basis of the pyramid where the excitation frequency does not exceed
300 kHz. In this area we minimize the number of generated Lamb modes to less than 5
and thus minimize the interaction between the different modes and echoes.
556
(a) (b)
Figure 1: (a) Numerical simulation showing the influence of the frequency and the
structure thickness on the number of Lamb wave modes. [Simulation performed for
AL2024 cL=5900 cT=3100]. (b) Electro-mechanic E/M impedance measured using
a network analyzer Algilent 4294A.
To keep the application nonintrusive the PZT transducers are directly pasted onto
the structure surface (see Figure2.a) which makes Lamb wave’s generation highly
dependent with the used bonding material. Therefore, a bad pasting creates unwished
acoustic emission due to free oscillation and makes the captured signature unsuitable
for a damage diagnosis. So, the most critical point in our method is the interfacing
between the sensors/actuators and the host structure.
-a +a
ta PWAS
-d
x
Host medium
+d
(a) (b)
Figure 2: (a) Schematics of the sensor/actuator pasted onto the surface structure
trough an interface layer. (b) Photography of the PZT sensor/actuator
The comparison study between different pasting materials shows that the
Cyanoacrylate glue is a good compromise between standard glue and the Epoxy. The
Cyanoacrylate has a high and constant shear modulus (Gb>2GPa) which insures a high
mechanical coupling between the structure and the transducer.
557
Experimental set-up
The nodes of the sensors/actuators network are made of a PZT-5H material (see
Figure 2.b). In this work we used PWAS of American Piezo Ltd, APC850 1mm thick
and 10mm diameter showing a high piezoelectric charge and a good voltage constants,
respectively d31= -175 10-12 C.N-1 and g31= 12.410-3Vm.N-1 to insure a good
electromechanical efficiency. The dimensions of the transducers were calculated to
have a radial resonance frequency of 200 kHz and a vertical resonance of 2 MHz
which allows a good resonance decoupling between the two vibrations modes.
PC
Acquisition BUS
box
DATA Sensors
Composite plate like specimen
BUS USB
Acquisition Wave Form
box Generator
PWAS
Wave form
generator
Multiplexeur Stimuls Actuator
PWAS
PZT 1 PZT 2 … PZT n
…
PWAS
PZT m
Complex aircraft structure geometry 30cm
(a) (b)
Figure 3: Experimental setup on a airplane door. (a) Photography of the test

bench, (b) Schematics of the test bench
PWAS 3 PWAS 2
Normelized amplitude
Flaw
PWAS 1
PWAS 4
Time (µs)
(a) (b)
Figure 4: (a) Experimental setup on a wing panel (b) Stimulus waveform
558
Totally two distinguished experiences were performed. The first one concerns
an airplane door made of a mix of metal alloy and composite carbon fiber (figure
3.a). The second experimental setup (see figure 4.a) used the same test bench (see
figure 3.b) but was performed on a pure composite Carbone fiber wing panel.
Experimental Results
The results (see figure 5) showed that the diagnosis using a simple time domain
comparison between the healthy and damaged signature is possible in some areas
where the ratio between the emitted signal and the reflected echo is high. This is
generally the case for large structures part where the distance between ribs is high
such as on aircraft doors (see Figure 3.a). A triangulation algorithm (see Figure 5.b)
based on 3 sensors/actuators is therefore possible to set. The temporal comparison
of the 3 signals captured by PZT A, B and C with the baseline gives information
about the presence of a flaw (see Figure 5.c). An estimation of the damage distance
is therefore possible by a temporal analysis of Lamb modes distortions [4].
PWAS C PWAS B
Probability factor
15 cm
Y (m)
Crack of 4 mm
PWAS A
x
X (m)
(b) (a)
3
Healthy signature (baseline)
Damaged signature
2
1
Voltage(V)
-1
-2
-3
-4
2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Time(s) -4
x 10
(C)
Figure 5: AL2024 / Composite plate like door structure of 3 mm thick monitored by a
basic PZT network of 3 nodes. (a) Sensors/actuators configuration. (b) Crack
localization using a triangulation algorithm. The localization is given by the
probability factor. (c) Example of time response comparison between the baseline and
the damaged signature. The signal was captured by PZT A when PZT B was
configured as an emitter.
559
Experiment of figure 4 showed that the detection of delaminating zone on pure
composite materials could be performed using a simple spectral response
comparison (see figure 6) between the baseline and the damaged signature. The
delaminating zone acts as an electrical filter that absorbs some frequencies and
transmits others
(V)
Signal emitted by PZT1
Free PZT oscillation due to a bad pasting

with the host structure
Temporal response
Healthy response
Temporal response
Damaged response
Time (µs)
(b)
Spectral response
Healthy response
PZT 3 PZT 2
Receptor
Receptor
PZT 1
emitter
Spectral response
Damaged response
50 cm PZT 4
Modes
absorption Ribs
Receptor
(c) (a)
Figure 6: Composite wing-panel monitored by a basic PZT network. (a)
Sensors/actuators configuration. (b) Time response comparison of the healthy
structure and the same one after introduction of a damage. In this configuration
PZT 1 acts individually as an emitter (actuator) when the others are listening
(sensor). (c) Spectral response comparison of the healthy structure and the same
one after a delaminating chock. Each PZT acts individually as an emitter (actuator)
when the others are listening (sensor).
Figures 3 and 4.a show how the PZT transducers are pasted onto the tested
structure and how they are multiplexed between the waveform generator and the
acquisition box. Among the PZT network, we use only one actuator at a time. The
designed emitter is excited using a specific stimulus (figure 4.b) applied by the
waveform generator. During this time all the other PZT sensors are listening. After
the end of the emission the activated PZT is configured on passive mode and
560
another PZT is configured as an emitter. The PZT network is set to accept only a
single emitter each time. Software was developed on the central computer to
monitor the network and to perform using the acquired data all the stages of signal
processing and damage triangulation.
According to the experimental results, we demonstrated that the diagnosis
principle can be based in some specifics areas on a simple frequency or time
domain comparison (figure 5 and 6) between the healthy structure responses and the
damaged one. For more critical regions, the comparison between the signatures is
done by complexes algorithms. In this case a time-frequency analysis based on
wavelet transform is necessary to localize an eventual flaw and quantify the damage
severity.
CONCLUSION
A first approach of aeronautics structure health monitoring using PZT network

was presented. The study focused on a diagnosis methodology capable to detect
cracks in aluminums alloys and delaminating zones on composite stratified areas
using a smart comparison between a baseline saved before the plane commissioning
and an after flight signature. The first’s results are promising witch motivate us to
extend the investigation on the detection of more complexes flaws such as
corrosion. Hardware integration has to be done to make the sensor system more
flexible and more suitable for very large structures.
REFERENCES
[1] Christophe Escriba, Hamza Boukabache, Salsabil Ksouri, Mathieu Lastapis, Jean-Yves Fourniols
“Sensor Network for non destructive control of aeronautics structures: piezo or accelerometer
diagnosis”; EWSHM 2010, in European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, Sorrento, Italy,
2010, pp. 388-393.
[2] H. Boukabache , S. Ksouri , C. Escriba , J-Y. Fourniols, “Piezoelectric sensor/actuator network
for SHM and damage detection on airplane door” Asia Pacific Workshop on Structural Health
Monitoring (APWSHM 2010), Tokyo (Japon)
[3] Lingyu Yu, Giola Bottai-Santonia and Victor Giurgiutiu, “Shear lag solution for tuning ultrasonic
piezoelectric wafer active sensors with applications to Lamb wave array imaging”. Internationnal journal
of engeneering sience 48 p 848-861 2010
[4] Giurguitiu Victor, “Tuned lamb wave excitation and detection with piezoelectric wafer active
sensors for structural health monitoring” 2005, vol. 16, no4, pp. 291-305
[5] P.-Y. Joubert, E. Vourc’h, A. Tassin, Y. Le Diraison, “Source separation techniques applied to the
detection of subsurface defects in the eddy current NDT of aeronautical lap-joints” NDT & E
International, Volume 43, Issue 7, October 2010, Pages 606-614
[6] Victor Giurguitiu, “Tuned lamb wave excitation and detection with piezoelectric wafer active
sensors for structural health monitoring” ; Journal of intelligent Material systems and Structures, vol16
n°4, pp 291-305.
[7] JM. Dilhac, M. Bafleur, JY. Fourniols et al, “Cross-functional design of wireless sensor networks
applied to Aircraft Health Monitoring”, International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring,
Stanford (USA), 9-11 Septembre 2009.
[8] Victor Giurguitiu and Bao, “Embedded-ultrasonics Structural Radar for In Situ Structural Health
Monitoring of Thin-wall Structures”, Structural Health Monitoring Journal , vol3(2), pp121-140, 2004.
[9] Eric Kosters and Thomas J. van Els, “Structural health monitoring and impact detection for primary
aircraft structures”, Proc SPIE vol7677, pp76770C-76770C-6, 2010.
561
1
Detecting the Point of Impact on an

Anisotropic Cylindrical Surface
Using Only Four Acoustic Sensors
T. HAJZARGARBASHI1, H. NAKATANI2, T. KUNDU1
and N. TAKEDA2
Abstract
An optimization based technique for detecting the point of impact on isotropic and
anisotropic plates was developed by Kundu and his associates. Acoustic sensors
attached to the plate record the arrival times of Lamb waves generated at the impact
point. An objective function is then minimized to obtain the impact location [1-3].
Recently this technique has been extended to the cylindrical geometry. This
optimization based technique has been tested on both flat plates and cylindrical shells
made of aluminum [4]. In this paper the impact point on an anisotropic cylindrical
shell geometry made of carbon fiber reinforced composite is investigated. One
shortcoming of the previous method of requiring a large number of acoustic sensors to
obtain the direction dependent velocity profile is also overcome here. In the new
method the velocity profile in the anisotropic shell is obtained using only four sensors.
Predicted points of impact on the anisotropic cylindrical shell are compared with the
actual impact points. Good agreement between the two sets is observed.
Key Words: Lamb Wave, Impact, Acoustic Emission, Passive Monitoring,

Cylindrical Surface, Optimization.
1. Introduction
Localizing the point of impact on an anisotropic plate is necessary for detecting

and repairing the delamination or any other type of defect arising from an impact. A
popular method for detecting the point of impact is the acoustic emission technique.
This technique has been mostly used on isotropic plates. Using passive sensors
attached to the isotropic plate the point of impact can be localized by the acoustic
1
Department of Civil Engineering & Engineering Mechanics, University of Arizona, Tucson,
2
Department of Frontier Science, University of Tokyo, Kashiwanoha, Chiba, Japan
562
emission method following the triangulation technique [5,6]. For efficiently
monitoring the plate the sensors need to be placed near the critical locations of the
plate [7-10]. In anisotropic plates the wave speed is not the same in all directions and
therefore the triangulation technique does not work [1, 11, 12], Kundu et al. [1]
proposed an alternative method which is based on minimizing a nonlinear error
function to find the point of impact. The original objective function proposed in that
reference was modified by Kundu et al. [13] to overcome the singularity problem
associated with that function. It was then improved further [2, 3] to make the
objective function more efficient and less sensitive to errors in the time of flight
measurement. The number of sensors was increased to get more accurate results [2, 3,
12]. All these investigations were carried out on a flat plate. This investigation is
extended to cylindrical structures in this paper. Cylindrical structures have many
applications in industry. Most fuel cylinders have cylindrical geometry. Main bodies
of space shuttles and air plane fuselages also have cylindrical shapes.
In 1978 Asty [14] used the triangulation technique to detect the point of impact on
a spherical surface, then in 1993 Barat et al. [15] detected the point of impact on a
cylindrical surface using the triangulation technique; none of these techniques have
been experimentally verified. As it has been mentioned before the triangulation
technique does not work for an anisotropic cylinder for which the wave speed is a
function of the wave propagation direction. Kundu et al. detected the point of impact
on an aluminum cylindrical shell by the acoustic emission technique [4]. In this paper
a similar technique is applied to an anisotropic cylindrical geometry made of fiber
reinforced composite. The cylindrical coordinates of the attached sensors and the
times of flight of the arriving waves at the sensor locations are used to detect the point
of impact. The direction dependent velocity profile in the cylinder wall is
experimentally obtained from the sensors attached to the cylinder. In the previous
technique one shortcoming of obtaining the direction dependent velocity profile in an
anisotropic plate was the need to have a large number of sensors attached to the plate.
This shortcoming is avoided here by introducing a new method for obtaining the
velocity profile.
2. Formulation
2.1.Introducing the optimization equation
Let the time of detection of the acoustic signal at the i-th receiving station be . If
the time of impact be then the travel time for the signal from the impact point to the
station location is
(1)
Note that in (1) both and are defined in the same time of reference.
Cylindrical coordinates of the receiving sensors S1, S2, S3 and S4 are (r, θ1, z1), (r, θ2,
z2), (r, θ3, z3) and (r, θ4, z4), respectively and the impact point coordinate is (r, θ0, z0) in
which r is the radius of the cylinder. The sensors can be attached on the outer or inner
surface of the cylinder. The impact point can be also on the outer or inner surface. For
the cylindrical arc θ is the angle measured from a reference axis, and z is the vertical
coordinate of the sensors, as shown in Figure 1(a). In order to be able to find the
distance between the sensor and the point of impact the cylindrical surface is
unwrapped to form a flat surface; it makes the calculation easier. In this manner the
563
cylindrical surface becomes a rectangular plate with two side lengths equal to rxθtotal
and the length of the cylinder. In which θtotal is the angle formed by the cylindrical arc
at its center. As it has been shown in Figure 1(b), when the cylindrical surface is
unwrapped to form a flat surface the coordinates of the sensors and the impact point
are mapped into the transformed coordinate system in which the coordinates of the
attached sensors and the impact point can be expressed as (rxθi, zi). In this manner
after converting cylindrical coordinates to Cartesian coordinates the distance between
the point of impact and the i-th sensor can be found easily,
√( ) ( ) i=1,2,3,4 (2)
The travel time of the wave to the i-th sensor is denoted as and the velocity
[c(θ)] of the wave in the flat plate is a function of the wave propagation direction θ;
therefore, one can write
θ rxθtotal
r
z1
z
S1 r×θ1
z4
Cylinder Height
r×θ4
(a) (b)
Figure 1: (a) Schematic view of the cylinder and the sensors placed on the cylindrical surface;
coordinates r, θ and z are defined here (b) Unwrapped cylindrical surface forming a flat surface.
( ) √( ) ( ) i=1,2,3,4 (3)
From (3) one can obtain
√( ) ( ) √( ) ( )
( ) ( )
( )
The error function or the objective function with four arrival times (at four sensors
S1, S2, S3 and S4) can be written as equation (5)
As it can be seen in Eq. (5) the error function or the objective function value is a
function of ( ) which is the impact location that is unknown, the other points
( ), ( ), ( ) and ( ) are the locations of the four sensors that are
known. The time of arrival can be recorded from the signals received by the receivers.
( ) is the wave speed in the direction of the line joining ( ) and ( ),
the wave speed is different in different directions and is obtained experimentally.
Ideally, for the correct values of ( ) the error function should give a zero
564
value, while for wrong values of ( ) it gives a positive value. Therefore, by
minimizing the error function the point of impact ( ) can be found. Note that
the angle of the wave propagation direction from the source ( ) to the
station ( ), is measured from the horizontal axis and can be obtained from the
following equation
( ) ( ) ( )( ) √( ) ( ) ( )
√( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )( )
√( ) ( ) ( ) √( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( )( ) √( ) ( ) ( )
√( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )( )
√( ) ( ) ( ) √( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( )( ) √( ) ( ) ( )
√( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )( )
√( ) ( ) ( ) √( ) ( ) ( )
(5)
( ) (6)
The above equation is valid for all possible combinations of ( ) and ( )

for which the Computed values should vary between ⁄ and + ⁄ . Since the
wave velocity in and ( ) directions should be the same it is not necessary to
consider any angle beyond the boundaries ⁄ and ⁄ for computing the
wave velocity in all possible directions between ⁄ and ⁄ .
2.2.Measurement of wave speeds in different directions
Figure 2 shows the unwrapped plate with 4 sensors attached to it at the 4 corners
and S4. Let the impact point be A, the wave propagates in all directions. Let
the velocity of the wave in direction from A to be , the wave speed in the
direction from A to should be the same if the impact point happens to be on the
line connecting and . From equations 3 and 1 the velocity in this direction can be
found using the lengths of the lines connecting A to and as follows:
( )
So from equation 7 by measuring the distances of the impact point and the sensors
and the time of detection on those two sensors the velocity in that direction can be
found. Knowing the velocity equation 7 can be solved for , the time of impact
(8)
Substituting the time of impact in the following equation the velocity can be
calculated in the direction that connects the impact point to that specific sensor
( ) (9)
565
3. Experimental Investigation
The following experiment was carried out to simulate the impact on a curved
plate. Four acoustic sensors were attached to four corners of a curvedplate made of
carbon fiber reinforced composite (CFRC). The schematic diagram of the curved plate
unwrapped on a flat surface is shown in Figure 3(a), It is clear in Figure 3(a) that the
plate has different thicknesses and there are some alloy foil embedded in the plate. The
impact on the FRP plate is simulated by dropping a steel ball at a specific point. Figure
3(b) shows the steel ball of 9.52 mm diameter that weighs 4 grams.
The ball was dropped from approximately 800 mm height through a pipe which
guides the ball to a specific impact point in multiple experiments. Figure 4 shows
the arrangement of the guiding pipe and the plate; this arrangement also accurately
controlled the ball drop height and guaranteed that during repeated experiments the
ball was striking approximately the same location of the plate with almost the same
velocity. Four receiving sensors are attached to the curved plate; these four sensors
receive the impact generated wave. In figure 2, S1, S2, S3 and S4 show the
locations of the four sensors attached to the plate.
𝑑 𝑆
𝐴
𝑆
𝑑
𝐵
𝑑 𝑑
𝑆
Figure 2: Schematic view of the plate and the impact point for obtaining the velocity profile
An AE apparatus was used to obtain the signal at the receiving sensors, this
apparatus is called CWM (Continuous Wave Memory), which was developed by Dr.
Ito at The University of Tokyo [16].
566
(a) (b)
Figure 3: (a) Schematic diagram of the unwrapped curved Composite plate showing the thickness
variation and other embedded material, (b) The stainless steel ball which was dropped on the plate
for the impact simulation.
Wave speeds in different directions of the plate were obtained by dropping the ball
at different locations on the two diagonal lines that connect the sensors placed at the
diagonally opposite directions. By dropping the ball on a point the velocity can be
measured in two directions from equations 7 to 9. The received signals were recorded
by PZT sensors mounted on the opposite sides (back) of the plate. After obtaining the
velocity profile, a second set of tests were carried out to predict the impact location. A
point was chosen randomly to be the impact point and the steel ball was dropped on
that point using the guidance pipe as shown in figure 4, the four sensors shown in
figure 2 received the impact generated signal. Five signals were collected by every
sensor and the average of the 5 signals was used to avoid the experimental noise.
There is always some ambiguity about the exact time of arrival since the signals
always contain some noise. However, since the objective function, given in equation
5, uses the difference in the recorded arrival times these small errors in the recorded
times should nullify one another and the final results should not be affected
significantly.
The times of flight obtained from the received signals and the coordinates of the
attached sensors are given as input to the Matlab code and the impact point is obtained
as the output by minimizing the objective function of equation 5. The predicted impact
point and the exact impact point are plotted in the same figure. These results are
discussed in the following section.
567
Figure 4: The experimental set up showing the guide pipe and the CFRP composite cylindrical shell
4. Prediction Results
Figure 5(a) shows the schematic unwrapped plate with the attached sensors
(hollow circles) and the impact points (solid circles). Different points of impact were
chosen at different locations on the plate to investigate if 4 sensors and the selected
objective function are capable of predicting the point of impact at any location on the
plate. Predicted impact points are shown in figures 5(b), (c) and (d) for the impact at
locations A, B and C (shown in figure 5(a)), respectively. The dots in these figures
show the predictions and the stars show the exact impact locations. It can be seen that
the predicted points are very close to the exact impact points in all 3 tests.
.
y
S2(0.16,0.85) S1(1.08,0.85)
B(0.71,0.75)
C(0.52,0.69)
A(0.76,0.35)
S3(0.16,0.15) S4(1.08,0.15)
x (b)
(a)
(c) (d)
Figure 5: (a) Schematic view of the unwrapped Composite plate with the sensors (S1, S2, S3 and S4)
attached to it. Random impact points are marked by A, B and C, Predicted results (dots) and exact
impact points (stars) for tests A, B and C are shown in figures (b), (c) and (d), respectively.
568
5. Conclusions
The optimization based method for detecting the impact point on isotropic and
anisotropic plates developed by Kundu and his associates [1, 2] is extended to the
cylindrical geometry. An objective function is defined that uses the cylindrical
coordinates of the attached sensors and the arrival times at the sensors to locate the
point of impact by minimizing an objective function. A new method that uses only
four sensors for obtaining the wave speeds in different directions is introduced. The
technique is experimentally verified by carrying out impact localization tests on
cylindrical plates. The results show that by minimizing the objective function
introduced in this paper the impact point can be correctly predicted.
Acknowledgments
This research was jointly funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of USA and Japan
Science and Technology (JST) office. NSF Program manager is Dr. S. C. Liu.
REFERENCES
1. T. Kundu, S. Das and K. V. Jata, “Point of Impact Prediction in Isotropic and Anisotropic Plates from
the Acoustic Emission Data”, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 122 (4), pp. 2057-
2066, 2007
2. T. Hajzargarbashi, T. Kundu, and S. Bland, “An improved algorithm for detecting point of impact in
anisotropic inhomogeneous plates” Ultrasonics, Vol 51,pp. 317-324, 2011
3. T. Hajzargarbashi, T. Kundu, and S. Bland, “A New Algorithm for Detecting Impact Point in
Anisotropic Plates by the Acoustic Emission Technique”, Proceeding of SPIE 7650, 7650C (2010)
4. T. Hajzargarbashi, H. Nakatani, T. Kundu and N. Takeda, “Detecting the Point of Impact on a
Cylindrical Plate by the Acoustic Emission Technique”,Proceeding of SPIE 7981, 79810U, (2011).
5. A. K. Mal, F. Shih and S. Banerjee, Acoustic Emission Waveforms in Composite Laminates under
Low Velocity Impact, Proceedings of SPIE 5047 (2003) 1-12.
6. A. K. Mal, F. Ricci, S. Gibson and S. Banerjee, Damage Detection in Structures from Vibration and
Wave Propagation Data, Proceedings of SPIE 5047 (2003) 202-210.
7. J. Park and F. K. Chang, Built-In Detection of Impact Damage in Multi-Layered Thick Composite
Structures, Proceedings of the fourth International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring
(2003) 1391-1398.
8. A. K. Mal, F. Ricci, S. Banerjee and F. Shih, A Conceptual Structural Health Monitoring System
Based on Wave Propagation and Modal Data, Str. Health Monit. : Int. J. 4 (2005) 283-293.
9. S. C. Wang and F. –K Chang, Diagnosis of Impact Damage in Composite Structures with Built-in
Piezoelectrics Network, Proceedings of SPIE 3990 (2000) 13-19.
10. S. S. Kessler, S. M. Spearing, and C. Soutis, Damage Detection in Composite Materials using Lamb
Wave Methods, Smt. Mater. Str. 12 (2002) 795-803.
11. T. Kundu, S. Das and K. V. Jata, An Improved Technique for Locating the Point of Impact from the
Acoustic Emission Data, Proceedings of SPIE 6532 (2007).
12. T. Kundu, S. Das and K. V. Jata, Point of Impact Prediction in Anisotropic Fiber Reinforced
Composite Plates from the Acoustic Emission Data, Review of Progress in Quantitative
Nondestructive Evaluation, Am. Inst. of Physics (2007).
13. T. Kundu, S. Das, S. A. Martin and K. V. Jata, “Locating point of impact in anisotropic fiber
reinforced composite plates”, Ultrasonics, Vol 48, Issue 3, pp 193-201, July 2008
14. M. Asty, “Acoustic emission source location on a spherical or plane surface.” NDT Int. 11, pp 223-
226 (1978)
15. P.Barat, P. Kalyanasundaram and B.Raj, “Acoustic emission source location on a cylindrical
surface,” NDT & E Int. 26 pp 295-297 (1993)
16. K. Ito and M. Enoki: "Acquisition and Analysis of Continuous Acoustic Emission Waveform for
Classification of Damage Sources in Ceramic Fiber Mat, Mater. Trans., 48(2007) 1221-1226.
569
Impact Damage Assessment by Sensor Signal
Analysis
R. JOHN, I. READ and W. MACPHERSON
ABSTRACT
Aircraft that employ composites are prone to impact damage that can
degrade structural performance and yet leave little visible sign. Manual
inspection to detect such damage can be costly and time consuming. In this
paper we investigate the use of damage detection sensors to discriminate
between damaging and non-damaging impacts. In use it is likely that the
impact magnitude and location will be unknown. To simulate this, a range of
impact energies were performed at a varying distances from a piezoelectric
acoustic sensor on composite panels. The sensor output was analysed to find
distance invariant features that could be used to indicate whether an impact
caused damage. In damaging impacts, a secondary signal burst, with amplitude
significant when compared to the initial burst, was observed. An algorithm was
produced to differentiate signals based on this feature which has the potential to
contribute to a structural monitoring system and thus reduce the inspection
burden ultimately leading to lower aircraft maintenance costs.
INTRODUCTION
Laminated composites are widely used on aircraft as fuselage or wing

skins because of their low mass and adaptable properties. Low velocity impacts
can weaken such composite structures, yet leave little visible sign, for example
composite delamination will significantly affect structural integrity but may not
show external signs of damage. Clearly, detection of such Barely Visible
Impact Damage (BVID) is an issue for the maintenance of aircraft employing
composites. Manual inspection techniques to detect such damage can be costly,
time consuming and risk overlooking damaged areas. An alternative approach
is to have an automatic system to detect impacts. Ideally this should be able to
distinguish between damaging impacts and those that can be safely ignored.
Ultimately, such automated systems could remove the need for costly scheduled
inspections altogether and allow for condition based maintenance (CBM).
Several studies have investigated impact interactions with composites
including the contact force and strain experienced during the impact [1-3].
These studies tend to use small test structures and reproducible test conditions to
Ryan John, Ian Read, BAE Systems, Sowerby Building, FPC 267 PO Box 5, Bristol, UK.
William MacPherson, Heriot-Watt University, Department of Physics (SUPA), School of
Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, UK
570
allow accurate comparisons between different materials or different composite
stacking sequences. These studies often rely on instrumented impactors to
determine the dynamics of the interaction, however in a realistic impact scenario
the impactor will be unknown and sensing must be realised by the composite
structure. Sensors capable of passively detecting dynamic strain such as
piezoelectric or fibre-optic sensors can be bonded to the surface or incorporated
into the composite material itself to monitor the strain during an impact [4, 5].
This investigation aims to generate a large dataset of signals captured using a
piezoelectric sensor during low velocity impact. Large composite panels were
used to closely emulate a realistic scenario with impacts carried out at many
locations with varying distance from the sensor. This is important because
laminated composites can be highly attenuating. Attenuation of plate waves is
typically ~ 40 dB over the first few centimetres due to geometric spreading
while in the far field the attenuation of the flexural mode may be as high as 83
dB m-1 [6].
IMPACT TESTS
Impact tests were carried out using a drop-tower allowing a weight to be

dropped from a wide range of fixed heights in order to change the energy of the
impact. Two different weights were used with the same hemispherical impact
point to give a repeatable interaction with the composite panel. A 1.02 kg
weight was used for impact energies up to 10 J while a 5.09 kg weight was used
for higher energy impacts upto 50 J. The impactor is considered as a free falling
rigid body. It is assumed that all of the energy from the change in gravitational
potential goes into the impact energy and that there are no losses due to friction
between the weight and the tower.
A low profile piezoelectric sensor was permanently bonded to the
underside of each of the panels tested using quick setting epoxy adhesive. The
sensor is a broadband, non-resonant sensor created from a packaged PZT disk
with a 10 mm diameter and 0.2 mm thickness. It is designed to detect the
acoustic wave caused by the impact and is sensitive from d.c. to several hundred
kilohertz. The unprocessed sensor output and a 50-350 kHz passband filtered
signal were recorded at 5 Msamples s-1 with an 8 bit resolution A/D. For Panel 2
the sample rate was reduced to 2.5 Msamples s-1 to double the signal length as
preliminary impacts showed that some features appeared later due to the larger
panel size. The passband filter was employed to improve bit resolution on the
high frequency content which is small when compared to the large low
frequency component.
Two composite panels were tested in this study:
Panel 1
Glass fibre and LM100 resin [7] flat panel with a foam insert in the centre
section. The panel is 535 mm square with a 2 mm thickness at the edge section
and 7 mm thick in the centre section. The panel was marked for impact at 31
locations in a grid excluding the corners at which points the panel was
supported.
Panel 2
Monolithic carbon fibre and MTM46 resin panel (
Figure 1), 700 mm square and approximately 4.5 mm thick. In this case the
panel supports were designed to more realistically emulate aircraft substructure
571
with the panel affixed to a frame constructed from aluminium ‘C’-section
supports.
Sensor
Location
Figure 1. Example of composite panel used in this study. Here panel 2 is a carbon fibre panel
bolted to a frame constructed from aluminium C-section (along all sides).
Initially both panels were subjected to non-damaging low energy

impacts. At each grid position one or more impacts of different energies were
performed. Recording these impacts provides data to assess signal variation
due to impact energy or distance to the sensor. The panels were then subjected
to higher energy impacts designed to cause damage. Fewer high energy impacts
were recorded for each panel as an impact site cannot be reused once damage
has occurred.
For the glass fibre panel (panel 1), the emphasis was on building up a
large dataset of non-damaging impacts over a range of energies upto 10J which
could be used to differentiate between effects due to damaging impacts. 217
impacts were carried out of which 13 were damaging. The emphasis for the
carbon fibre panel (panel 2) was to create a more realistic scenario by using a
larger panel bolted to a metal supporting frame and to perform a larger
proportion of damaging impacts. This was intended to corroborate results from
the first panel, investigate the generality of the technique and to put into practice
improvements based upon knowledge gained from the earlier experiments on
Panel l. 88 impacts were carried out of which 24 were damaging over a range of
distances (50-500mm) between sensor and impact site. A number of impacts on
Panel 2 were captured using a hi-speed camera operating at 440 frames per
second. This data was then used to determine the dynamics of the impact in
particular the overall contact time and time to maximum panel deflection.
The undamaged glass fibre composite used in Panel 1 was translucent;
impact damage caused the local region to become opaque. Thus, it was
relatively easy to determine when damage had occurred and to what extent.
However this is not true for the opaque, carbon fibre composite. Here, once all
the impact tests had been completed, an ultrasonic non-destructive testing
technique (‘C’-scan) was used to determine the presence and size of damage.
572
Typical unfiltered signals (

Figure 2) vary considerably due to the dynamics of the impact location
and impact energy and are dominated by low-
Figure 2. Unfiltered signal from a 1J non-damaging impact (left) and a 30J damaging impact
(right). Note the difference in magnitude.
frequency components. They have few obvious definable features that could
provide a ‘fingerprint’ confirming damage and, as such, they are weak
candidates for a reliable damage detection system.
The filtered signals (
Figure 3) appear to be more useful and all have an initial ‘burst’
corresponding to the impact event. The magnitude of this burst initially
increases sharply with increasing energy before levelling off and approaching a
saturation point. It was found that for higher energy impacts, one or more
secondary pulses are present whose magnitude does not appear to level off with
increasing energy.
Figure 3 shows a comparison between the non-damaging and damaging
cases in which the secondary pulses are clearly evident on the 30 J damaging
impact. Figure 4 (left) provides more damaging impacts at a range of locations
for comparison and demonstrates the variation in the time between initial and
secondary pulses.
Figure 4 (right) shows a non-damaging impact followed by two
successive damaging impacts at the same location. The first damaging impact
(23 J) has a single secondary pulse while the second damaging impact (35 J)
produced a similar secondary peak in the same temporal location as well as a
pulse both before and after.
573
Figure 3. Bandpass filtered signals from a 1J non damaging impact (left) and a 30J damaging
impact (right) with initial and secondary pulses labelled. Note the difference in magnitude.
Figure 4. Left: The variation in time between initial and secondary pulses is shown by 3
different damaging impacts at different locations on Panel 2 (offset for clarity). Right: A non-
damaging impact (2 J) followed by two successive damaging impacts at the same location,
showing the appearance of secondary pulses (offset for clarity).
We believe that this secondary pulse occurs due to acoustic emission

during damage creation through one of several failure mechanisms. Damage
will occur when a certain force threshold is exceeded in the material causing
release, via acoustic emission, of a proportion of the stored energy in the panel.
The time difference between the initial and secondary pulses varies significantly
and appears to depend on the material properties, the impact location and the
velocity of the impactor. High-speed video indicates that the maximum panel
deflection for Panel 2 occurred between 5-9 ms after initial contact where the
longest deflection corresponded to impacts near the centre of the panel. This is
largely due to the difference in local stiffness across the panels resulting from
the location and nature of the supports.
IMPACT DAMAGE CLASSIFICATION
It is proposed that the presence of the secondary pulse feature could be

used as a signature of potentially damaging impacts and algorithms to achieve
574
automated classification of these were developed. Interpretation of data in
comparison to visual inspection for damage and post experimental NDT reveals
that the mere presence of a secondary pulse is not sufficient to identify damage.
When the impact is close to the sensor the signal-to-noise ratio is good and
initial and any subsequent pulses can be easily identified, however, when the
separation increases the signal-to-noise ratio drops significantly due to the
highly attenuating composite material. In extreme cases this can cause noise to
be of similar magnitude to the initial impact peak even for lower energy non-
damaging impacts making it appear that there are secondary pulses. Therefore a
measure is required to test the significance of such secondary peaks, the most
robust measure of damage was found to be the ratio between the magnitudes of
the largest secondary peak and the initial peak. This ratio was termed the
‘Damage Rating’.
Largest
Secondary
Peak
Initial Peak
Figure 5. Envelope plot of a 40J damaging impact on Panel 1 with peaks indicated
corresponding to a Damage Rating of 1.76
To achieve automated calculation of this ratio, the envelope of the signal

was first computed using the square and low pass filtering method. This was
then corrected using the pretrigger samples to give a consistent baseline at 0V.
A peak detection function is then used to detect a peak above a certain threshold
and designate it as the initial peak. A 1 ms window is then created following this
peak in which any subsequent peaks are deemed part of the initial peak and are
not falsely classified as secondary and hence indicative of damage. Peak
detection is then carried out for the remainder of the signal and the largest
secondary peak magnitude is then divided by the magnitude of the initial peak to
give the Damage Rating for that signal.
Figure 5 shows an example envelope plot from Panel 1 with the detected
peaks labelled showing a Damage Rating of 1.76.
575
Figure 6. Threshold optimisation graph for Panel 2 showing that for equal probability of correct
classification between the two cases the probability of correct classification is 96%. Green,
Amber and Red classification zones are labelled.
To determine the relevant threshold for the Damage Rating a threshold

optimisation graph was produced for each panel, Figure 6 shows this for Panel
2. The cumulative probability is plotted against ascending damage rating for the
non-damaging impacts and descending damage rating for the damaging impacts
in order to determine a threshold. It shows that if the threshold was set so that
there was an equal probability of correctly identifying damaging and non-
damaging impacts then 96% of impacts would be classified correctly. The
results for Panel 1 are similar with a correct classification probability of 93%.
There is a range of Damage Rating’s which came from both damaging and non-
damaging impacts, therefore a traffic light system is proposed in which this
section is the Amber zone and designated a possibly damaging impact. The Red
zone consists of all Damage Rating’s above this range and indicates damaging
impacts while the Green zone includes all Damage Rating’s below this range
and indicates non-damaging impacts. Figure 6 shows that 70% of damaging
impacts were classified in the Red zone while the remaining 30% were Amber.
85% of non-damaging impacts were classified as Green while the remaining
15% were Amber. These Damage Rating thresholds would have to be
determined for each individual application as they will be different for different
materials, however the rest of the method is general. A system can be imagined
in which an impact is detected by a sensor and the signal is then classified using
this technique into Green, Amber or Red which can then corroborate
information about the energy of the impact inferred from the signal amplitude
leading to improved reliability and actionable information.
CONCLUSIONS
A large amount of impacts were carried out on two large composite

panels and signals captured using a piezoelectric sensor. This data was then
analysed and it was found that significant secondary pulses occur in the filtered
data which may correspond to acoustic emission upon damage creation. An
automatic classification algorithm was produced to differentiate between
576
damaging and non-damaging impacts using the ‘Damage Rating’; the ratio
between the magnitudes of the largest secondary pulse and the initial pulse. This
lead to a correct classification probability of 93-96% and a traffic light system
was proposed to differentiate between non-damaging, potentially damaging and
damaging impacts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
R John wishes to acknowledge the UK Engineering and Physical

Sciences Research Council for support through the Heriot-Watt Industrial
Doctorate Centre in Optics and Photonics Technologies, BAE Systems for
industrial support and GE Aviation for informal discussions and related work.
REFERENCES
[1] Aslan, Z. Karakuzu, R. and Okutan B. 2003. The response of laminated

composite plates under low-velocity impact loading, Composite Structures 59:
119–127.
[2] Belingardi, G. and Vadori, R. 2002. Low velocity impact tests of laminate glass-
fiber-epoxy matrix composite material plates. International Journal of Impact
Engineering 27: 213–229.
[3] Davies, G. A. O. and Zhang, X. 1995. Impact Damage Prediction In Carbon
Composite Structures. Int. J. Impact Engng Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 149-170.
[4] Jang, B. -W. Lee, Y. -G. Kim, Y. -Y. Kim, C. -G. Park, C. -Y. and Lee, B. -W.
2010. A study on low-velocity impact induced damage assessment of
composite laminates using fiber Bragg grating sensors. Asia-Pacific Workshop
on Structural Health Monitoring, November 30, to December 2, 2010, The
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
[5] Park, C. Peters, K. Zikry, M. Haber, T. Schultz, S. and Selfridge, R. 2010. Peak
wavelength interrogation of fiber Bragg grating sensors during impact events.
Smart Mater. Struct. 19 045015.
[6] Prosser, W. H. 1996. Applications of Advanced, Waveform Based AE
Techniques for Testing Composite Materials, Proceedings of the SPIE
Conference on Nondestructive Evaluation Techniques for Aging Infrastructure
and Manufacturing: Materials and Composites, December 2-5, 1996,
Scottsdale, Arizona, pp. 146-153.
[7] Re sin Infusion: www.resininfusion.com/infusiontech.html
577
*
(FIRST PAGE OF ARTICLE)
Beam Shape Sensing Using Inverse Finite

Element Method: Theory and
Experimental Validation
M. GHERLONE, P. CERRACCHIO, M. MATTONE, M. DI SCIUVA
and A. TESSLER
ABSTRACT
An inverse Finite Element Method (iFEM) is presented for beam and frame
structures. The method is aimed at reconstructing the complete displacement field
starting from in situ measurements of surface strains. A laboratory experiment is
conducted on a simple cantilever beam subjected to various static loadings.
Experimentally measured strains are used within a single-element iFEM model to
assess the efficiency and predictive capability of the approach with respect to
uncertainties and measurement errors that unavoidably affect real structures.
INTRODUCTION
Real-time reconstruction of the deformed shape of a structure is a key technology

for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) [1]. The computation of the displacement
field is performed on the basis of in situ strain data computed in real time by a network
of strain sensors. This inverse problem is commonly referred to as shape sensing.
Few approaches in the literature lead to practical algorithms applicable for real-
time shape sensing of aerospace structures (for a more complete review refer to [1,2]).
Ko [3] proposed a one-dimensional scheme based on classical beam theory, in which
the deflection and cross-sectional twist angle of an aircraft wing are determined by
establishing the position of the wing’s neutral axis, using a representative finite
element solution of a wing. The axial surface-strain measurements are specified at the
nodes of a piecewise approximation of the idealized beam; the method is assessed
using the strains from a FEM solution. Mainçon and co-workers, [4,5], developed a
finite element formulation, seeking the solution for displacements and loads
simultaneously. Starting from measured displacements and strains and requiring a
priori knowledge of the material properties and a subset of applied loading, the
formulation results in the number of unknowns that is three times the number of
degrees-of-freedom (dof’s) in the finite element discretization. In [5] the effect of
modeling errors is investigated. The approach was also assessed on a damaged beam
Marco Gherlone, Priscilla Cerracchio, Massimiliano Mattone, Marco Di Sciuva: Politecnico di

Torino, Department of Aeronautics and Space Engineering, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24,
10129 Torino, ITALY.
Alexander Tessler: NASA Langley Research Center, Structural Mechanics and Concepts
Branch, Mail Stop 190, Hampton, VA 23681, U.S.A.
578
using experimentally measured data. Tessler and Spangler [1] developed an inverse
Finite Element Method (iFEM) for shear-deformable plate and shell structures. The
formulation is based on a least-squares variational principle that allows the full-field
reconstruction of the three-dimensional displacement vector from measured surface
strains. An experimental assessment of the method was presented in [6,7], where the
deformed shape of a slender beam is reconstructed by an iFEM shell model using
Fiber-Bragg Grating (FBG) strain measurements. Recently, Gherlone [8,9] presented
an iFEM formulation for shear-deformable beam and frame structures. Beam and
frame shape-sensing analyses were performed for static [10] and dynamic [2] loadings
using strain data from high-fidelity FEM models.
The paper presents a brief review of the iFEM variational formulation that
incorporates experimentally measured strains within a simple inverse beam-frame
element. The element is based on Timoshenko beam theory which includes the axial,
bending, torsional and transverse shear deformations. A laboratory experiment is then
discussed in which a thin-walled cantilevered beam is tested using a set of static
loadings. The experimentally measured strain-rosette data are then used within a
single inverse-beam element to model the entire beam. The modeling accuracy of the
iFEM-reconstructed deformed shape of the beam is assessed by comparing the
predicted displacements with those measured experimentally by the displacement
transducers distributed along the beam’s span.
INVERSE BEAM-FRAME FINITE ELEMENT FORMULATION
Consider an isotropic, straight beam-frame structural member of Young’s modulus

E , shear modulus G , and Poisson ratio ν (Figure 1(a)). The structural member is
referred to a Cartesian coordinate system ( x, y , z ) , where x is positioned along the
centroidal and shear axis, and y and z are the cross-section’s principal inertial axes.
The frame member has length L, cross-sectional area A, area moments of inertia with
respect to the y - and z -axis, I y and I z , and polar moment of inertia I P = I y + I z .
Consistent with the hypotheses of Timoshenko beam theory (each cross-section
remains flat and rigid with respect to thickness-stretch deformations along the y- and
z-axis) [11] and neglecting axial warping due to torsion, the displacement field is
u x ( x, y, z ) = u ( x ) + zθ y ( x ) − yθ z ( x )
(1)
u y ( x, y, z ) = v ( x ) − zθ x ( x ) ; u z ( x, y, z ) = w ( x ) + yθ x ( x )
where u x , u y , and u z are the displacements along the x -, y -, and z -axes

respectively; u , v , and w are the corresponding average displacements; θ x , θ y , and
θ z are the rotations about the three coordinate axes. The kinematic variables,
T
u ≡ u , v, w, θ x , θ y , θ z  and their positive orientations are shown in Figure
1(a). The displacement field (1) gives rise to the linear strains
ε x ( x, y, z ) = e1 ( x) + z e2 ( x) + y e3 ( x)
(2)
γ xz ( x, y ) = e4 ( x) + y e6 ( x); γ xy ( x, z ) = e5 ( x) − z e6 ( x)
579
where the strain measures e(u ) ≡ [ e1 , e2 , e3 , e4 , e5 , e6 ] are given as
T
e1 ≡ u, x ; e2 ≡ θ y , x ; e3 ≡ −θ z , x ; e4 ≡ w, x + θ y ; e5 ≡ v, x − θ z ; e6 ≡ θ x , x (3)
The iFEM formulation reconstructs the deformed structural shape by minimizing a

weighted least-squares functional Φ containing the strain measures obtained by in-
situ strain sensors, eε , and e(u) defined by Eqs. (3), i.e.,
Φ ( u ) = e ( u ) − eε
2
(4)
The Φ(u) functional is then discretized by C0-continuous finite elements with the
displacements uh defined by
u ( x ) ≃ u h ( x ) = N( x)ue (5)
where N( x ) denotes C0-continuous shape functions and u e the nodal dof’s.

Consequently, the total least-squares functional is a sum of the N individual element
contributions, Φ e (u h ) , i.e., Φ = ∑ e=1 Φ e . Accounting for the axial stretching,
N
bending, twisting, and transverse shearing, the element functional is given by [2]
6
Φ e (uh ) ≡ ∑ λk Φ ek (6)
k =1
where λ ≡  λ10 , λ20 Ae , λ30 Ae , λ40 , λ50 , λ60 Ae  , with λk0 ( k = 1,..., 6) denoting
dimensionless weight coefficients, and Ae the element’s cross-sectional area. The six
components of the element functional are given as the Euclidean norms
2
Le n
Φ ek ≡
n
∑  ek ( xi ) − ekε i 
i =1
(k = 1,...,6) (7)
where Le is the element length, n is the number of strain sensors within an element,
and xi ( 0 ≤ xi ≤ Le ) are the positions at which the strain sensors are located, with the
superscript εi denoting the strain measures that are computed from the strain sensor
values (experimental values) at the xi locations. Invoking Eqs. (2) and (5), the analytic
element-level strain measures are expressed in matrix form as
e ( u ) = B ( x ) ue (8)
where the matrix B ( x ) contains the derivatives of the shape functions N( x ) .

Substituting Eq. (8) into Eq. (7) and minimizing the element functional with respect to
u e results in the element matrix equation k eue = k e , where k e depends only on the
580
measurement locations xi , whereas the vector f e depends on the experimentally
measured strains [9]. Assembly of the element contributions for the total problem
discretization, while taking into account transformations from the element (local) to
the global coordinate system, and upon specifying the problem boundary conditions,
results in a non singular system of matrix equations of the form ΚU = F . The solution
of these equations for U is efficient: the K matrix is inverted only once, since it is
independent of the measured strains and remains unchanged for a given distribution of
strain sensors. The F vector, however, is dependent on the measured strain values;
thus, at any strain measurement update during deformation, the matrix-vector
multiplication provides the solution for the unknown nodal displacement dof’s
contained in U.
(a) (b)
Figure 1. (a) Beam geometry and kinematic variables, (b) inverse finite element geometry and dof’s.
For frame structural elements loaded only by forces and moments at the end
points, the strain measures can be shown to exhibit the following span-wise
distributions: e1 , e4 , e5 , and e6 are constant, whereas e2 and e3 are linear [9]. From
Eq. (3), it is deduced that u and θ x are linear, θ y and θ z parabolic, v and w cubic.
Thus, the following interpolations are adopted [2,9,10] (also refer to Figure 1(b)):
u (ξ ) = ∑ L (ξ ) u ;
(1)
i i θ x (ξ ) = ∑ L(1)
i ( ξ ) θ xi
i =1,2 i =1,2
v (ξ ) = ∑ L (ξ ) v − ∑
(1)
i i j ( ξ ) θ zj ;
N (3) θ y (ξ ) = ∑ j ( ξ ) θ yj
L(2) (9)
i =1,2 j =1, r ,2 j =1, r ,2
w (ξ ) = ∑ L (ξ ) w + ∑
(1)
i i j ( ξ ) θ yj ;
N (3) θ z (ξ ) = ∑ j ( ξ ) θ zj
L(2)
i =1,2 j =1, r ,2 j =1, r ,2
where ξ ≡ (2 x / Le − 1) ∈ [ −1,1] is a non-dimensional axial coordinate; the subscripts 1,

r and 2 denote positions along the beam length at ξ = −1 , ξ = 0 , and ξ = +1 ,
i ( ξ ) ( i = 1, 2 ) are linear Lagrange polynomials; L j ( ξ ) ( j = 1, r , 2 )
respectively; L(1) (2)
j ( ξ ) ( j = 1, r , 2 ) polynomials are
are quadratic Lagrange polynomials. The cubic N (3)
obtained from standard cubic Lagrange polynomials by enforcing the transverse shear
strain measures ( e4 and e5 ) to be constant along the element (refer to [2] for the
581
j ( ξ ) .) The element has fourteen dof’s: six at each end node plus
expression of N (3)
the rotations θ ym and θ zm at the mid-span. The two internal rotation dof’s are
condensed out statically to achieve a two-node, twelve dof element.
(a) (b)
Figure 2. (a) Orthogonal and cylindrical coordinate systems, (b) strain gauge location and coordinates.
A key step in the formulation is to compute the strain measures, eε , from the
experimentally measured surface strains. We shall restrict the present analysis to the
beam-frame members with circular cross-sections only, and employ the cylindrical
coordinate system (θ , x, r ) shown in Figure 2(a). A strain gauge is placed on the
external surface ( r = Rext ), at x = xi , and is oriented along the θ and β angles (refer
to Figure 2(b)). The relation between the measured strain ε 2 and the six strain
measures at x = xi is [8,9]
ε 2 ( xi ,θ , β ) = e1 ( xi ) ( cβ2 −ν sβ2 ) + e2 ( xi ) ( cβ2 −ν sβ2 ) sθ Rext + e3 ( xi ) ( cβ2 −ν sβ2 ) cθ Rext

(10)
+e4 ( xi ) cβ sβ cθ − e5 ( xi ) cβ sβ sθ + e6 ( xi ) cβ sβ Rext
where cθ ≡ cos θ , sθ ≡ sin θ , cβ ≡ cos β , and sβ ≡ sin β . For the case of end-node
forces and moments, the constant distributions of e1 , e4 , e5 , and e6 and linear e2 and
e3 can be determined requiring a total of eight strain measurements. This number may
be reduced to six by invoking the equilibrium equations of Timoshenko beam theory
which relate the bending moments ( M y , M z ) to the transverse shear forces ( Q y , Qz )
dM z dx = Q y ⇒ EI z e3, x = k y2GAe5 ; dM y dx = Q z ⇒ EI y e2, x = k z2GAe4 (11)
where k y2 and k z2 denote the shear correction factors [9,11].
The application of iFEM for beam and frame structures has been carried out using
a laboratory experiment conducted at the AERMEC Laboratory of the Aeronautics and
Space Engineering Department of Politecnico di Torino. The test article, shown in
582
Figure 3(a), is a thin-walled circular cross-section beam having thickness s=2 mm,
external radius Rext=40 mm and length L=800 mm. The material is a 6060 aluminum
alloy (E=61,922 MPa, ν=0.33). The beam has been mounted on a test-bed in a
cantilevered configuration with one end clamped between two couples of iron blocks
locked together by twelve bolted connections. Four different load cases have been
considered (Figure 3(b)): (i) tip vertical force, (ii) tip horizontal force, (iii) tip force
inclined at 30° with respect to the horizontal y-axis of the cross-section, and (iv) tip
vertical force applied at a distance b=300 mm from the center of the cross-section. The
loading has been achieved by placing several weights on a cradle (for a total weight of
F=26.83 Kg). For cases (i), (ii), and (iii), the cradle was linked to a screw at the center
of the beam tip cross-section while; for load case (iv), the cradle was suspended to a
proper lever arm provided by a thick plate embedded at the beam tip (Figure 3(a)).
(a) (b)
Figure 3. (a) Experimental set-up (A: clamping system, B: lever arm for load case (iv), C: loading system,
D: LVDT transducers, E: aluminum beam), (b) load cases.
Nine stacked strain rosettes have been placed at three different stations along the beam
(x=L/3, L/2, 2L/3); for each station, the three rosettes are placed at θ=–120°, 0°, +120°,
respectively. Each rosette has three strain gauge measuring at β=0°, 45°, 90° (Figure
2(b)). Table I shows the strain gauge configurations used. In the notation, the first
number indicates the number of strain measurements, and the letter “E” signifies the
use of Eqs. (11). LVDT measurements have also been taken at different locations
along the beam length (Figure 3(a)) and used to assess the iFEM-recovered deflections
and rotations. For all load cases, a single inverse element is used to model the entire
beam, using λk0 = 1 ( k = 1,..., 6) , see Eq. (6).
Table II summarizes the experimental and iFEM results. For each loading, the
measured deflections and rotations are shown, together with the percent difference
with the corresponding iFEM predictions.
583
TABLE I. STRAIN GAUGE DISTRIBUTIONS
(ORIENTATIONS ARE EXPRESSED IN DEGREES).
Notation Orientation ( θ , β ) at x=L/3 Orientation ( θ , β ) at x=L/2 Orientation ( θ , β ) at x=2L/3
(-120,0), (-120,45), (0,0),
6Ea - -
(0,45), (120,0), (120,45)
6Eb (-120,0), (0,0), (120,0) - (-120,0), (0,45), (120,0)
(-120,0), (-120,45), (0,0), (0,0), (0,45), (120,0),
8a -
(120,45) (120,45)
(-120,0), (-120,45), (0,0),
8b (-120,0) (120,0)
(0,45), (120,0), (120,45)
TABLE II. EXPERIMENTAL AND IFEM RESULTS: DEFLECTIONS AND ROTATIONS

MEASURED BY LVDT AND PERCENT DIFFERENCE (IN BOLD) IN IFEM PREDICTIONS
USING A SINGLE INVERSE-ELEMENT MODEL.
Measured displacements w(L/2) w(3L/4) w(7L/8) w(L)
Load (mm) -0.648 -1.300 -1.635 -1.985
case 6Ea -9.48 -7.82 -5.11 -3.09
iFEM 6Eb -2.85 -2.45 -0.36 0.88
(i) % difference 8a -1.07 -0.86 0.01 2.22
8b -1.52 -1.12 0.92 2.12
Measured displacements v(L/2) v(3L/4) v(7L/8) v(L)
Load (mm) 0.636 1.272 1.648 1.994
case 6Ea -4.73 -3.70 -4.34 -2.61
iFEM 6Eb -4.00 -3.59 -4.58 -3.24
(ii) % difference 8a -5.24 -3.98 -4.62 -2.95
8b -2.87 -1.99 -2.87 -1.42
Measured displacements v(3L/4) v(7L/8) v(L) w(3L/4) w(7L/8) w(L)
Load (mm) 1.098 1.414 1.667 0.644 0.802 0.963
case 6Ea -8.81 -8.44 -3.85 1.61 4.66 6.98
iFEM 6Eb -4.83 -5.28 -1.48 -0.70 2.40 4.81
(iii) % difference 8a -5.97 -6.00 -1.79 -1.65 1.68 4.14
8b -4.35 -4.55 -0.46 1.93 4.83 6.75
Measured displacements w(L/2) w(3L/4) w(7L/8) w(L) θx(L)
Load (mm) and rotations (rad) -0.664 -1.319 -1.647 -1.958 3.5x10-3
case 6Ea -11.15 -8.70 -5.39 -1.37 -9.36
iFEM 6Eb -7.15 -5.69 -2.90 0.50 -5.23
(iv) % difference 8a -4.10 -3.12 -0.58 2.51 -7.84
8b -5.37 -3.83 -0.95 2.55 -9.36
In all loading cases and using any of the considered strain-gauge configurations, the
iFEM-predicted tip deflections differ from the measured values by less than 7%. The
deflections computed along the beam span exhibited slightly higher differences,
however, not exceeding 12%. The iFEM model that used eight strain gauges generally
produced more accurate predictions compared to the six-strain gauge configuration,
with the exception of case (iv) corresponding to 6Eb which produced a slightly
superior prediction for the tip twist rotation.
The results of this first experimental assessment of iFEM for beams confirm
the accuracy and efficiency of the present formulation, particularly taking into account
that only a single inverse element was used to model the beam.
584
CONCLUSIONS
An inverse finite element method (iFEM) has been presented for the full-field
reconstruction of the Timoshenko-type beam-frame kinematics, using experimentally
measured strains as input quantities in the formulation. The approach has been
demonstrated on a cantilevered beam tested under several static loading cases in a
mechanics laboratory. Strains measured by different sets of strain gauges, attached to
the beam’s external surface, have been employed in the inverse analyses. Using only a
single-element model, the iFEM-reconstructed displacements and rotations compared
favorably with those measured experimentally. The effectiveness of the iFEM
modeling has been shown to depend on the layout and number of strain gauges. The
results of the present effort also point towards the possibility of determining optimally
distributed locations of the strain gauges in order to achieve further improvements in
the shape-sensing predictions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the fundamental contribution to the

experimental activity by Mr. Giuseppe Ruvinetti of Politecnico di Torino. The first
author acknowledges the support of Politecnico di Torino within the Young
Researchers Program 2010.
REFERENCES
1. Tessler, A., Spangler, J.L. 2005. A least-squares variational method for full-field reconstruction of
elastic deformations in shear-deformable plates and shells, Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg.,
194:327–339.
2. Gherlone, M., Cerracchio, P., Mattone, M., Di Sciuva, M., Tessler, A. Dynamic shape
reconstruction of three-dimensional frame structures using the inverse finite element method, III
ECCOMAS Them. Conf. Comp. Meth. in Struct. Dynam. and Earthquake Engrg., Corfù, Greece.
3. Ko, W. L., Richards, W. L., Fleischer, V. T. 2009. Applications of the Ko displacement theory to
the deformed shape predictions of the doubly-tapered Ikhana wing, NASA/TP-2009-214652:1–30.
4. Mainçon, P. 2004. Inverse FEM I: Load and response estimates from measurements, II
International Conference on Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation, Cape Town,
South Africa.
5. Barnardo, C., Mainçon, P. 2004. Inverse FEM IV: Influence of modelling error, II International
Conference on Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation, Cape Town, South Africa.
6. Vazquez, S.L., Tessler, A. Quach, C.C., Cooper, E.G., Parks, J., Spangler, J.L. 2005. Structural
health monitoring using high-density fiber optic strain sensor an in verse finite element methods,
NASA Report, NASA/TM-2005-213761.
7. Quach C.C., Vazquez, S.L., Tessler, A., Moore, J.P., Cooper, E.G., Spangler, J.L. 2005. Structural
anomaly detection using fiber optic sensors and inverse finite element method. AIAA Guid.,
Navig., and Cont. Conf. and Exhibit, San Francisco, California, AIAA-2005-6357.
8. Gherlone, M. 2008. Beam inverse finite element formulation, LAQ Rep. Politecnico di Torino, 1.
9. Cerracchio, P., Gherlone, M., Mattone, M., Di Sciuva, M., Tessler, A. 2010. Inverse finite element
method for three-dimensional frame structures, DIASP Rep. Politecnico di Torino, 285.
10. Cerracchio, P., Gherlone, M., Mattone, M., Di Sciuva, M., Tessler A. 2010. Shape sensing of
three-dimensional frame structures using the inverse finite element method, Vth European
Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, Sorrento, Italy.
11. Timoshenko, S. P. 1921. On the correction for shear of differential equations for transverse
vibrations of prismatic bars, Philosophical Magazine, 41:744–746.
585
Integrated Optical Fibers into Aluminum
Extrusions Enabling Structural Health
Monitoring of Aerospace Structures
G. POUGET, A. FERNANDEZ-LOPEZ, A. GÜEMES
and J. C. EHRSTRÖM
ABSTRACT
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) enables the detection of damage via sensors
that are placed within or onto the structures. SHM technologies are especially
considered for the next generation aircrafts as it could reduce maintenance costs and
enable significant weight savings by revolutionizing the current aircraft design
approach and guaranteeing that a structure is damage-free. Constellium believes that
SHM enabling aluminum parts would contribute to such improvements for metallic
aerostructures and has thus produced extruded semi-products containing integrated
wire-shaped sensors. Optical fibers which are particularly relevant sensors for SHM
have been integrated within aluminum extrusions and tested to assess the SHM
potential and the feasibility of such a solution. Fatigue crack propagation tests have
then been performed, monitoring the optical signal through the optical fibers in
parallel. It is demonstrated that a crack can be detected using such embedded optical
fibers. Depending on the sensor type it can be used to verify the integrity of the
extrusion or to provide more complex information such as the strain, or the damage
position, along the extrusion's length. This could be of particular interest for aircraft
areas designed in damage tolerance such as the lower wing or the upper fuselage, and
enable to change the damage tolerant scenarios.
INTRODUCTION
SHM enables to monitor a structure by interrogating an array of sensors attached to

or embedded into this structure. It is of particular interest for aerospace structures, and
advanced solutions for future aircrafts will likely contain SHM enabling structures.
Advanced aluminum aircraft structures, combining new alloys (AlCuLi) and
new design concepts, offer large weight and maintenance cost potential bene-
fits. In addition, SHM could impact future aluminum solutions at different levels:
– Ease damage detection and determine its location
– Extend inspection interval
– Reduce primary structure weight
Gaelle Pouget, Jean-Christophe Ehrström, Constellium CRV. BP 27, 38341 Voreppe, France.
Antonio Fernandez-Lopez, Alfredo Güemes, ETSI Aeronáuticos, UPM. Plaza del Cardenal
Cisneros 3, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
586
The first goal could be achieved by sensor interrogation, especially for areas
difficult to inspect, and could be converted into reduced maintenance costs. Then
sensors could guarantee that the structure is crack-free, or that the damage is limited
to a more benign level, which could lead either to extended inspection intervals
based on fatigue crack growth while maintaining the same allowable stress, or to
weight reduction by increasing the overall working stress in the structure.
As sensors embedded within the structure show advantages toward sensors added
onto the structure, for instance for handling, paint removal etc., semi-products
containing integrated wire-shaped sensors were produced at industrial scale. Extruded
aluminum profiles with integrated optical fibers have been manufactured, then
characterized and their SHM potential assessed.
EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
A way of integrating optical fibers into profiles based on the extrusion process was
found and demonstrated. Depending on the type of sensors we want to use, the optical
fiber can be either directly co-extruded with the aluminum profile or integrated
afterwards by alternative methods for the most fragile sensors. Aluminum profiles
approximately 7m long have been manufactured with integrated optical fibers in 6056
alloy and in AIRWARETM 2196. Different types of optical fibers have been used,
either multimode or monomode.
The multimode optical fibers were 200 or 400µm in diameter and were metal
coated with copper or aluminum (only two metal coatings tested in this study). They
were resistant enough to be co-extruded with aluminum. An example showing a
profile in AIRWARETM 2196 with co-extruded fibers is presented on Figure 1. The
monomode fiber tested was 125µm in diameter and polymer coated. It was more
fragile mainly because of the polymer coating not resisting to high temperatures, and
could not be co-extruded. It was thus integrated using an alternative method.
Co-extruded optical fibers
10mm
Figure 1: AIRWARETM 2196 profile with co-extruded optical fibers (Ø400 aluminum coated and
Ø200µm copper coated multimode fibers).
587
Embedded
optical fiber
Figure 2: Sampling of CT specimen in a SHM enabling extrusion.
Compact tension (CT) coupons have been machined in accordance with the
standard ASTM E647 with the crack perpendicular to the integrated optical fiber
(Figure 2). Fatigue crack growth tests were then performed using a constant maximum
load, a load ratio R=0.1 and at a frequency of 15Hz. Crack size has been assessed from
crack opening displacement (COD) and through the compliance method as described
in ASTM E647.
The optical signal through the integrated optical fiber has been monitored in
parallel during fatigue testing. The test set up to monitor optical performance is
shown in broad outline on Figure 3. A laser pointer injects light through one end of
the fiber. On the other end, the fiber is connected to a photodetector, which is
connected to a Data Acquisition Card (DAQ), allowing monitoring the continuity
with a PC. Co-extruded optical fibers being completely embedded within the
aluminum, a connecting procedure was developed to link the embedded optical fiber
to the outside monitoring system.
Monomode
PC DAQ Photodetector Optical Fiber
Connections to the
monitoring system
Integrated
Fiber Checker Optical Fiber
(LASER)
Figure 3: Scheme of the experimental set up used to assess the optical performances.
588
reference material
1.2 with co-extruded optical fiber
1 -6% -5.5%
normalized strength
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
UTS L TYS L
(a)
1E-01 2196 with integrated optical fiber

2196 reference
da/dN (mm/cycle) L-T
1E-02
1E-03
1E-04
1E-05
5 10 15 20 25 30 35
∆K (MPa√m)
(b)
Figure 4 (a): Tensile properties of extrusions with a 400µm integrated optical fiber.
(b) Fatigue crack propagation of AIRWARETM 2196 extrusion with 125µm integrated monomode fiber.
RESULTS
First mechanical properties of these SHM enabling extrusions have been assessed
and the presence of the integrated optical fibers does not significantly affect them.
Tensile strength is slightly decreased, maybe partly through a net section effect. With
a 400µm co-extruded optical fiber, the yield strength is decreased by 5.5% (Figure 4a).
Fatigue propagation has also been characterized and crack growth rate perpendicular
to the optical fiber direction is not significantly affected by the presence of the optical
fiber as shown on Figure 4b.
These "smart" extrusions with integrated optical fibers have also been tested to
assess their SHM potential and the feasibility of such a solution to detect damages.
Results are presented in this section, focusing on AIRWARETM 2196 extrusion with
the two types of integrated optical fibers (multimode and monomode). Fatigue crack
propagation tests have been performed on these extrusions, with the crack propagating
perpendicular to the fiber, monitoring in parallel the optical signal. This aims to check
the optical performances under fatigue loading and to study the relationship between
optical properties and fatigue crack size. Depending on the optical fiber type, it can be
589
used either to verify integrity of the stringer or to monitor strain along the length of the
extrusion. The first sensing level uses embedded multimode optical fibers and the
monitored signal (optical continuity) enables to say if the structure is broken or not
(0/1 signal). When the crack reaches the fiber, fiber is broken and light transmission
is interrupted, allowing crack detection with a simply and robust technique (Figure
5a). This type of monitoring would be possible with any type of technology, even
with non optical sensors such as electrical conductor acting as a fuse. The second
sensing level uses more sophisticated optical sensors that can provide advanced
information such as load or strain monitoring, damage localization etc. The first tests
performed used 125µm monomode optical fiber and not only light transmission was
checked, but distributed sensing technology was also used to measure the strain
distribution along the full fiber length (in static conditions). It is shown that the
damage can be localized (deformation localized near the crack tip) and local strain
measured (Figure 5b). Finite elements simulation was used to try to assess the strain
measured along the optical fiber. A 2D linear elastic model of the loaded CT specimen
was built, results are shown in Figure 6. The calculated strain is more localized at the
crack tip than the strain measured by the optical fiber. This may be due to the polymer
coating of the optical fiber, having a lower elastic modulus and accommodating the
strain on a larger zone. The area below each curve however is of the same order or
magnitude, tending to show that the overall deformation is consistent.
crack length a
2
optical signal
40
Optical continuity (0/1)
1.5 Fatigue Crack

Crack length (mm)
1
1
30
0.5
20
0
0
10 -0.5 Optical Fiber

0 20000 40000 60000
Number of fatigue cycle, N
(a)
no fatigue crack (initial state)
crack tip close to optical fiber
4000
Optical Fiber
microstrain (10-6)
3000
2000
1000
-1000 Position of the crack

-2000 x
0
0 20 40 60 80
Length along the fiber (mm)

(b)
Figure 5 (a): Crack propagation and optical signal monitoring in parallel using a multimode optical fiber.
(b) Strain distribution measured along a monomode fiber in a loaded specimen and at different steps of
the test: initial step (no fatigue crack) and when the crack reaches the optical fiber (before its failure).
590
Stresses oriented in the fiber
8000 experimental data direction
FE calculations
6000
microstrain (10-6)
Elastic limit
4000
2000 Crack tip

(reaches the
0 optical fiber)
-2000
0 20 40 60 80
Length along the fiber (mm)
Figure 6: 2D Finite elements model of the CT specimen loaded with the crack tip reaching the optical
fiber (just before failure) and comparison with experimental data.
DISCUSSION AND PERSPECTIVES
It has been shown that a damage, a crack, can be detected using extrusions with
integrated optical fibers. One can imagine using this type of products to change
maintenance strategies by facilitating structure inspection and enabling early damage
detection through sensors interrogation. Areas difficult to visually inspect for instance
could benefit from such SHM enabling structure parts, and one could plug in the
monitoring system during planed inspection, detect and locate possible cracks more
quickly and more easily. This could lead to reduction in maintenance costs. In a longer
term perspective one can imagine to support inspection interval increase and weight
reduction in damage tolerance dominated structures (lower wing, upper fuselage etc.)
by relaxing the damage tolerance scenario. For example metallic fuselage crack
propagation scenarios currently assume a broken frame (longitudinal crack) or a
broken stringer (circumferential crack, Figure 7) and thus load redistribution from the
frame/stringer to the skin when computing crack growth rate. The same type of
scenario is considered for wing structure (broken stringer). Aluminum profiles with
integrated optical fibers would be of particular interest to demonstrate that a stiffener
is not broken, or at least to allow considering a less extended damage for further
fatigue crack growth and residual strength evaluation. This could either lead to extend
the inspection intervals based on fatigue crack growth while maintaining the allowable
stress level, or to increase the allowable stress in the structure while maintaining the
inspection interval, which means reduce its weight.
Figure 7: An example of scenarios considered in an upper fuselage damage tolerance evaluation [1].
591
Schmidt and Schmidt- Brandecker [2] proposed weight savings superior to 13%
for such scenarios when considering stiffened upper fuselage panels, and Weiland et
al. [3] up to 11% considering only SHM enabled stiffeners and above 20% when
coupling SHM with new advanced aluminum alloys. A first assessment for a short
range aircraft's wing box has also been performed here. We consider a lower wing
cover panel with an intact central stringer which remains unbroken during the crack
growth in the skin up to the critical damage size (2 bays); this implies that the load is
transferred from the skin to the unbroken central stringer, this one becoming strongly
stressed in fatigue. The fatigue crack growth allowable stress of the lower cover in
such a scenario can be raised compared to a similar case with a broken stringer. This
leads to an average weight reduction of 37 % for the lower cover and of 24% for the
overall wing box. This benefit would be cut-off by other design criteria, in particular
by endurance fatigue, that by the way can be improved by using adhesive bonding
rather than riveting. However, the large weight saving potential is a strong incentive
for further development of the SHM technology for metallic structures. SHM helps
improving the weakness of aluminum versus composite structures: fatigue crack
growth.
CONCLUSION
The technical feasibility of extrusions with integrated optical fibers, and more
generally with embedded wire-shaped sensors, is demonstrated. It has also been
experimentally demonstrated that a crack can be detected. A first monitoring level
assesses the optical continuity through the fiber and enables to check the integrity of
the profile, to say if it is broken or not. With advanced sensors more complex
information such as strain monitoring and damage localization along the extrusion's
length can be obtained. Distributed sensing technology was successfully used here to
measure strain along the optical fiber, which also enable to locate the crack tip.
Locating a crack could also be quite simply done by an OTDR, for distances up to
hundred of meters [4].
Such products could be used in damage tolerance designed aerostructure areas
and enable to ease the maintenance, extend inspection interval or save weight.
Preliminary calculations show that up to 20% weight savings could be foreseen for
fuselage and up to 24% for wing structures using such technologies.
REFERENCES
1. Telgkamp, J. and Schmidt, H.-J. 2003. Benefits by the application of structural health monitoring
(SHM) systems on civil transport aircraft. Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on
Structural Health Monitoring, 285-292.
2. Schmidt, H.-J. Schmidt-Brandecker, B. 2007. Design benefits in aeronautics resulting from
Structural Health Monitoring. Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Structural
Health Monitoring, 762-769.
3. Weiland, H. et al. 2009. Aluminum extrusions with microcavities enabling cost-effective
monitoring of aerospace structures. Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on
Structural Health Monitoring, 119-125.
4. Güemes, A. et al. 2010. Optical Fiber Distributed Sensing – Physical Principles and
Applications. Structural Health Monitoring, 9(3): 233-245.
592
Early Results of Lamb Waves Approach to
Assess Corrosion Damage Using Direct Image
Path in an Aeronautical Aluminum Alloy
F. DOTTA, F. S. da SILVA, and A. B. da SILVA
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an early Embraer's study of corrosion damage detection by

thickness reduction effect using Lamb Waves Technology. This study is part of a set study
of several SHM Technologies, like CVM (Comparative Vacuum Monitoring), EMI
(Electro-Mechanical Impedance), AE (Acoustic Emission), LW (Lamb Waves). Those
studies are under Embraer's R&D program. Non-destructive testing methods for rapid and
reliable corrosion detection in complex metallic assemblies are an on-going challenge due
to practicalities of inspection and geometric complexity. This work demonstrates the early
Lamb Waves results for detecting and locating corrosion in aluminum alloys for aircraft
structures. The testing were performed using Direct Image Path using Acellent
Technologies Lamb Waves system. The experiments were performed using a plate with
1.6 mm thick. Artificially induced a series of thinning in the center of the test specimen.
The experimental results indicate the Lamb Waves technique is high accurate and it is
shown a promising application to detect corrosion damage.
INTRODUCTION
Founded in 1969, Embraer designs, develops, manufactures and sells aircraft for the
commercial aviation, executive aviation, and defense segments. Embraer also provides
after sales support and services to customers worldwide. Embraer’s headquarters are
located in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, and it has offices, industrial operations and
customer service facilities in Brazil, China, France, Portugal, Singapore, and the United
States.
On Embraer's judgment Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) means a monitoring and
management technique that utilizes calculation methods and on-board sensors to assure
the aircraft continued airworthiness from the structural viewpoint, focusing on the
improvement of design, operation and maintenance.
___________
Dr. Fernando Dotta; Fabio Santos da Silva, M.Sc; Andres Barroso da Silva, Embraer S.A., Av.
Brigadeiro Faria Lima 2170, Sao Jose dos Campos-SP, 12229-901, Brazil.
593
Believing that benefits such as less time-consuming and less complex maintenance
procedures, facilitated damage detection in areas with restricted access, early detection of
structural damages and reduction of maintenance costs can be achieved considering
current and future aircrafts, nowadays the company has selected SHM to be one of the
main technologies to be developed within the company’s R&D Portfolio. There are a
variety of SHM damage monitoring technologies under evaluation: Electro-Mechanical
Impedance, Acoustic Emission, Lamb Waves, Fiber Bragg Gratings, etc.[1]
Aircraft are likely subject to several damages during the operations, due to cyclic
loads, environmental, etc. Early detection of such cracks or thickness reductions is a key
element for assure continued airworthiness, reduce maintenance costs, life extension on
aging, etc. Current inspection techniques involve complex procedures, and time
consuming, which can be very labor-intensive and expensive. Parts may have to be
disassembled and re-assembled for inspection, which can cause significant downtime for
aircraft and its corresponding significative efforts of the inspection procedures. Therefore,
a fast, low cost built-in structural health monitoring system is needed to overcome the
shortcomings of the current inspection techniques. Recently, studies by the aircraft
industry [2, 3] have demonstrated that Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems could
result in considerable maintenance cost reduction and weight savings. In general the
structural health monitoring system requires two major parts: hardware and software. The
hardware includes the distributed sensor network and the data acquisition/storing system.
And the software or ‘diagnostic’ part includes the intelligent algorithms of signal
processing and interpretation which actually relate the raw sensor measurements to the
physical condition of a given structure. Various dynamic based diagnostic methods have
been proposed or are currently being developed for structural health monitoring, which
can be categorized in general as: vibration based methods and wave propagation methods.
The vibration based method can also be further divided into two subcategories: global
vibration methods and local vibration methods [2].
AIRCRAFT CORROSION OVERVIEW
Corrosion is a natural and costly phenomenon and can not be avoided, but
manufacturers and operators spent time and money to keep it in control. According
National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE), in the year of 1996 the total annual
direct cost of corrosion to the U.S. aircraft industry is estimated at $2.2 billion, which
includes the cost of design and manufacturing ($0.2 billion), corrosion maintenance ($1.7
billion), and downtime ($0.3 billion). [4]
Commonly, wrought aluminum alloys are recognized as corrosion resistant, however
for high strength application, like as necessary in aircraft structures, must be added Copper
and Magnesium in the alloy to acquire the desirable resistance, theses age-hardenable
alloys are extensively applied on aircraft, 2000 (fuselage skins), 6000 (some extrusions
parts) and 7000 (machined parts) series. In order to control the corrosion, manufactures
apply expensive surface treatments such as chemical conversion, anodizing, cladding,
primer, paint, interlay sealant, corrosion inhibiting compounds.
Some of aircraft areas are considered as prone to corrosion and detailed Zonal
Analyses are performed in those areas. The zones susceptible to corrosion require
inspection, according authority's requirements and it contribute to increase significantly
maintenance burden, due to perform the disassembles in the aircraft in order to perform
the inspections.
594
Non-expected occurrence during aircraft operation can start a corrosion process, as
example, mercury accidentally spilled or foreign object damage (FOD) that can scratch the
aluminium surface protections. These types of occurrences are normally detected in the
main checks, when the aircraft interiors are disassembled for inspections. In these cases a
remote sensor monitoring can warning in the early stages of a corrosion process, avoiding
a major problem and increasing the reliability.
Also a not mentioned possibility of improvement that can be provided by SHM is the
use of more friendly coatings, free of hazard materials. The hexavalent chromium
conversion layers used to protect the aluminum alloys are recognized as carcinogenic and
a hazardous material for disposal in environment. One promise process that can be
effective when associated with SHM is the sol-gel.
LAMB-WAVES APPROACH FOR DAMAGE DETECTION
The global vibration based method looks for the changes in the structural dynamic
characteristics due to structural damage. The fundamental of this technique is based on the
assumption that structural damage changes the physical dynamic response of the structure,
such as natural frequencies, mode shapes and damping, frequency response, etc.
Doebling et al [5] had provided a complete literature review on vibration based
damage detection. The paper show a review of the fundamentals and methods of the early
applications of acoustics approach for damage detection in laboratory. All works shown
by Doebling et al [5] are assuming linear damage detection where the initially linear
elastic structure remains linear elastic after damage. The linear vibration approach results
in inherently low sensitivity to defects such as cracks [2].
A structure with a damage like fatigue crack or thickness reduction (corrosion)
exhibits non-linear vibrations due to the stiffness change under load variation [6]. The
accuracy of relating changes in modal parameters to flaws such as cracks becomes quite
poor when the aspect ratio between the size of the structure and the size of the flaw is
larger than 10 [2, 6].
Lamb waves represent two-dimensional wave propagation in plates or shells, which
are described by known mathematical equations originally formulated by Horace Lamb in
1917 [7]. There are two groups of waves, the symmetric waves and the anti-symmetric
waves, that satisfy the wave equation and the boundary conditions. The general solutions
can then be split into two modes: symmetric ( S0 ) and antisymmetric ( A0 ) [8]. For
symmetric wave modes, each plate surface has a peak or trough at the same in-plane
location. For antisymmetric wave modes, a peak at one surface corresponds to a trough at
the other surface [8], as shown in Figure 1.
(a) Symmetric mode
(b) Antiymmetric mode
Figure 1: Waves modes: (a) Symmetric, where the wave peaks occur simultaneously at
each plate surface for symmetric wave modes. (b) Antisymmetric where a peaks at one
surface correspond with troughs.
595
The velocities of these waves depend on the frequency and the thickness of the plate (the
dispersion relation) and there exist a finite number of symmetric and anti-symmetric
modes that travel independently. In the plate with a thickness of the order of the
wavelength, Rayleigh wave degenerate into Lamb waves, considering the two modes
(symmetric and antisymmetric). Lamb waves has advantages for thin structures in
comparison with other kind of waves; However, Lamb waves are complicated to process
and analyze, due to its unique characteristics, and particularly, the high product frequency.
The Rayleigh-Lamb wave can be generally described as [9]:
tan qd  2
 2  = − 4k pq for symmetrical modes (1)
tan pd  ( )
2
q2 − k 2
 2
tan qd  2
 2  =− q −k
2 2
( ) for anti-symmetrical modes (2)
tan pd  4k 2 pq
 2
where,
2 2
ω  ω ω
p =   − k 2 , q 2 =   − k 2 , k =
2
(3)
 Cl   Ct  Cp
and k is the wave number, C p , Ct , Cl , ω and d are the phase velocity of Lamb wave
mode, velocities of transverse and longitudinal waves, angular frequency and plate
thickness, respectively. As the multiple Lamb waveforms travel across a plate, they tend to
coalesce into wave packets. At certain excitation frequencies and plate thicknesses, these
packets are dominated by a given Lamb wave mode ( A0 , S0 , etc.) and travel at a group
velocity derived from the phase velocity C p [9].
The dependence of group velocity on frequency and plate thickness can be shown by
plotting the frequency thickness ( fd ) product against group velocity for a given wave
number. Figure 2 shows Lamb wave group velocities for the S0 and A0 waveforms as a
function of fd for aluminum as calculated by Crider [10].
6.00
S0
A0
5.00
Velocity (mm/µ s)
4.00
3.00
2.00
1.00
0.00
0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00
fd (MHz.mm)
Figure 2: Lamb wave group velocity response in function of frequency product [10].
596
Figure 2 shows steep changes in group velocities for the S0 wave packet between
fd 1.5 to 2.5, and for the A0 wave packet between fd 0 to 0.5. These changes in group
velocity based on frequency (considering no changes in plate thickness) tend to disperse
the wave packets. This effect shall be considering to select a frequency for a SHM
application.
EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION
This section shows an outline of the early evaluations of Lamb Waves technologies
for thickness results detections. The results reveal quite promising to an SHM application
for corrosion detection.
Experiments Setup and Procedures
For this evaluation, one rectangular aluminum plate (AL 2024) with 300mm x 200mm
and 1.6mm of thickness was taken. The specimen had been monitored with eight
Acellent's 1/4" circular PZT (Single SmartLayer) and it had been bonded with Hysol
epoxy adhesive EA9320NA. The sensor/actuator has been placed along of the border, as
show by Figure 3 (a). Figure 3 (b), (c) and (d) shows the sequence of the thickness
reduction made by precision machining. The reductions was made on the center of the
specimen, note that for the 3rd reduction the total defect depth is the same the 2nd, but the
defect configuration was changed.. Figure 4 (a) show the specimen with all connections
ready to DAQ (Data Acquisition) and Figure 4 (b) show the detail of machining thickness
reductions.
In this work has been used the Acellent's Lamb waves system composed by
ScanGenie hardware and the Acess 2.05 software for signal generation, DAQ and data
interpretation. The experimentations had been performed in a temperature controlled
room (23ºC) and follows the steps: (1) DAQ on the test specimen without any damage for
baseline generation; (2) machining 1st thickness reduction and DAQ; (3) machining 2nd
thickness reduction and DAQ; (4) machining 3rd thickness and DAQ.
(b) (c) (d)
(a)
Figure 3: Specimen configuration. (a) specimen dimension and sensor placement; (b) 1st
thickness reduction; (c) 2nd thickness reduction; (d) 3rd thickness reduction.
597
(a) (b)
Figure 4: Monitored specimen. (a) specimen with all connection ready for DAQ; (b)
detail of the thickness reduction on the specimen.
The Lamb waves were stimulated in the specimen applying a BURT5 signal with 60V
peak-to-peak on the PZTs. The DAQ had been taken in two phases, following damage
generation order (discussed previews). The first phase have been used 2 sensors (1 path)
spaced by 277.50mm and the signal response was taken frequencies from 100kHz to
200kHz with steps of 25kHz. The second phase's signal was taken using frequency of
150kHz. The focus of the phase one was the evaluation of the signal response for
thickness reduction identification. In the other hand, phase's two objective was the damage
detection it is self.
Experiments Results
The tests had been performed following the procedures previous discussed. Figure 5
shows the spectrograms of the damage detection using direct image path. These
spectrograms does not predict the damage size or location, it is representing the signal
patter change between the baseline and damaged specimen. However, the more intense
changes, represented by red, are around the damage location.
Figure 6 show the signal taken from two sensor (phase one of the experiments). The
solid line is the baseline signal and the dashed line is the signal after the thickness
reduction. Theses results clearly shows the changes in the frequency response (acoustic
response) of the structures, and consequently, representing changing of structure
configuration. The results present here indicated the Lamb waves approach for corrosion
detection is a viable method. Although, the application Lamb waves for corrosion
detection studies shall continues to assure detection capabilities on more complex
structures.
(a) (b) (c)

Figure 5: Damage identification spectrogram using direct image path. (a) damage
identification of 1st thickness reduction; (b) damage identification of 2nd thickness
reduction and (c) damage identification of 3rd thickness reduction.
598
(a)
(b)
(c)
Figure 6: Signal response of 2 sensors. (a) 1st thickness reduction with 0.035mm; (b)
2nd thickness reduction 0.080mm and (c) 3rd thickness reduction with 0.080mm.
599
The results presented in this paper shows the capabilities of the Lamb waves approach
for thickness reductions detection (corrosion effect or mass lost). The technique showed
that it is accurate and it is capable to identify changes in the order of ~2% of thickness
reduction on the flat aluminum plate. Nevertheless, further studies shall be conduct to
assure a field application for corrosion detection, due the present work focus was the early
evaluation the Lamb waves application to identify machined thickness reductions.
Moreover, a sensor network density study shall be conduct to evaluate the system
probability of detection (POD) in corrosion detection and assure the minimum confidence
level for this kind application. Based on the present results, further works are required for
aircraft application, but the system proved as viable way for corrosion detection for
aluminum structures.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge FINEP (CT-AERO) for the financial support through
Grant 01-090228-00.
REFERENCES
1. Rulli, R. P. and Anchieta, P. 2010, Embraer Perspective for Maintenance Plan Improvements by
Using SHM. 3rd Asia-Pacific Workshop on SHM.
2. Ihn, J-B. and Chang, F-K. 2004. Detection and monitoring of hidden fatigue crack growth using a
built-in piezoelectric sensor/actuator network: I. Diagnostics. Smart Materials and Structures (13),
pp. 609–620.
3. Boller C. 2001. Ways and options for aircraft structural health management. Smart Materials and
Structures (10), pp. 432–40.
4. http://www.corrosioncost.com/transportation/aircraft/index.htm, 2011.
5. Doebling S. W., Farrar C. R., Prime M. B. and Shevitz D. W. 1996. Damage identification and
health monitoring of structural and mechanical systems from changes in their vibration
characteristics: a literature review. Technical Report, No.:LA-13070-MS, Los Alamos National
Laboratory.
6. Matveev V. V and Bovsunovsky A P 2002 Vibration-based diagnostics of fatigue damage of beam-
like structures J. Sound Vib. 249 2340.
7. Viktrov I. A. 1967. Rayleigh and Lamb Waves: Physical Theory and Applications, New York:
Plenum.
8. Giurgiutiu, V. 2005. Tuned lamb wave excitation and detection with piezoelectric wafer active
sensors for structural health monitoring. Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures,
16(2):291-305.
9. Rose, J. L. 1999. Ultrasonic Waves in Solid Media. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
10. Crider, J. S. 2007. Damage Detection Using Lamb Waves for Structural Health Monitoring.
Master’s thesis, School of Engineering and Management, Air Force Institute of Technology (AU),
Wright-Patterson AFB OH, March 2007.
600
Contact Pressure and Ultrasonic Damage
Feature(s) in Health Monitoring of L-Shape
Bolted Joints in Aerospace Structures
M. JALALPOUR, A. EL-OSERY, E. AUSTIN and M. REDA TAHA
ABSTRACT
Though advantageous for allowing easy assembly and disassembly of a variety

of structures, bolted joints often are the cause of structural failure. Checking the
integrity of bolted joints after assembly is a critical but time consuming process.
Recent advances in structural health monitoring (SHM) can provide techniques to
automate this process. However, using SHM for the integrity check process requires
relating damage feature(s) to physical quantities representing the structural integrity of
bolted joints.
In this paper we describe an SHM technique to monitor the integrity of bolted
joints for aerospace structures. The proposed technique is based on correlating the
contact pressure at the joint interface with the magnitude of ultrasonic signals passing
across the bolted joint. We present a case study on L-shape bolted joint. Presented
experimental observations demonstrate the ability of the proposed technique to ensure
bolted joint integrity. The correlation between the contact pressure and ultrasonic
signals transmitted through the bolted joint interface is demonstrated.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Machines and structures can to be monitored for damage identification to ensure

safety and uninterrupted services. The main idea of using structural health monitoring
(SHM) is to identify damage in structures at an early stage. There are four main steps
in any SHM system: data acquisition, damage feature extraction, damage pattern
recognition and damage prognosis. These steps are related to collecting data from
sensors in the structure, identifying a critical measure (feature) that can describe the
departure of the structural system from a baseline healthy performance and using this
feature to quantify damage and estimate the remaining service life of the structure.
_____________
Mohammad Jalalpour, Department of Civil Engineering, Univ. of New Mexi co, Centenni al
Engineering Center, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA.
Aly I El-Osery Department of Electrical Engineering, New Mexico Tech. Socorro, NM, USA
Eric M. Austin, Moog CSA Engineering 1451 Innovation Pkwy SE, Suite 100 Albuquerque, NM
87123, USA.
Mahmoud M. Reda Taha, Department of Civil Engineering, Univ. of New Mexico, Centennial
Engineering Center, Albuquerque, NM, 87106, USA
601
Establishing an SHM system requires overcoming a few challenges including
using a robust technology for sensing the responses of structures, power management
within sensor networks, electing sensitive feature(s) that can help in quantifying
damage and realizing uncertainty in the damage recognition process which might
require using probabilistic or non-probabilistic techniques to quantify uncertainty in
SHM systems [1-3].
While bolted joints are critical part of the structure, as they are a source of critical
collapse mechanisms, using bolted joints has the advantage of enabling structural
disassembly for maintenance. It is important that the thermo-mechanical performance
of bolted joints be repeatable and reliable upon reassembly.
The study of bolted joints is not new and significant analytical efforts were
performed in the 1960s and 1970 s to analytically model bolted joint interfaces [4-5].
Recently, Ito et al. [6] studied the interface pressure in bolted flanges of various
surface topographies using ultrasonic waves. The study showed that the material of the
joint, roughness of the surfaces, and the flange thickness have noticeable influences
not only on the form of the interface pressure distribution curve, but also on the
effective area of the bolted joint where force exists. The measured interface pressure
distribution and contact areas differed significantly from the analytical values.
Krdlikowski and Szczepek [7] tried to apply ultrasonic waves to measure contact
stiffness. This method was based on determining the coefficient of transmission of the
longitudinal ultrasonic waves. Based on the experimental results and the wave model,
the effective contact area and contact stiffness versus contact pressure were
determined. The results showed that bolted joints have relatively higher stiffness and
friction than those typically used in theoretical studies. Aymerich and Pau [8] used
ultrasonic waves to evaluate size and shape of the nominal contact area between two
contacting pieces. The method was based on analysis of the reflected ultrasonic waves
by the joint interface. A procedure was applied to the raw data collected from
ultrasonic testing to remove the blurring effect introduced by the ultrasonic beam size.
To evaluate the capability of the ultrasonic technique, the results were compared with
those obtained from pressure sensitive films. The method was able to capture the main
contact features correctly but it was not sensitive enough to get all details of interfacial
pressure at the joint [8].
Hale and Brown [9] used Fuji pre-scale pressure sensitive films to quantify the
magnitude and spatial distribution of contact pressure, known as pressure maps, in
metal joints. One of the goals of this study was to identify the accuracy of the pressure
film in regions of high gradient contact pressure. Comparison between the
experimental and analytical observations showed the pressure of pre-scale films to
have good accuracy to track the pressure gradient in typical joints [9]. Liggins et al.
[10] also examined Fuji pre-scaled films and discussed the relationship between
sample-area and pressure-interval and introduced a method for examining those
effects on pressure maps. It was shown that using very low grade Fuji films produced
relatively high pressure gradients. This might significantly affect the results and
produce inaccurate pressure maps. Doyle et al. [11] presented a method to reduce the
testing time for aerospace structures before launch. The SHM system was used to
locate the source of damage or verify the structure through self-diagnostic techniques
during the assembly process. Piezoelectric active sensors were used to actuate and
sense. A combination of acousto-elastic and electro-mechanical impedance methods
were used to increase system efficiency [11].
602
Fasel et al. [12] used macro-fiber composite (MFC) sensors and ultrasonic chaotic
waves to monitor bolted joints. Experiments on a single-bolt aluminum lap joint were
performed. A three dimensional finite element model was developed to model the
behavior of guided ultrasonic waves through the joint. In order to evaluate the method
efficiency a multiple bolt joint was examined experimentally. A pattern recognition
method was used to categorize the joint integrity into four different states. The results
showed this technique to have a good ability to monitor lap bolted joints. Jalalpour et
al. [13] described experimental and numerical methods to correlate shear slip
measurements of a bolted joint connection to contact pressure maps. Contact pressure
maps were measured using Fuji pre-scale pressure films. Loading and unloading
experiments on the joint allowed separating elastic and shear slip displacements. Shear
slip was then correlated to contact pressure maps [13].
Finally, Argatov and Sevostianov [14] suggested a method based on measuring
electrical resistance of the contact interface. Two conductive members clamped by a
bolted joint to produce the integrity of the joint were used. A formulation was
developed to relate the changes in electrical conductance to the changes in bolt
tightening torque. This formulation was used for detecting the effect of loosening bolts
in a bolted joint [14].
While research efforts have been directed to examine and quantify pressure field
on lap joints, this effort described here examines the L-shape bolted joint performance
by establishing metrics based on ultrasonic testing of the interface and correlate these
metrics to interface contact pressure. This relationship is directly related to the
integrity of the interface. This is because ultrasonic wave propagation is strongly
related to the contact traction at the interface. Therefore, pressure field measurements
can be correlated to ultrasonic signatures derived from ultrasonic waves passing across
the joint. Since the use of Fuji pre-scale pressure films could affect the transmission of
the ultra sonic wave across the interface, the contact pressure and the ultrasonic wave
transmission tests need to be performed separately. However, both tests need to be
performed with similar time periods to eliminate any time-dependent effects on the
measurements. The test set-up to establish this correlation is described below.
EXPERIMENTAL METHODS
Most of the SHM studies on bolted joints have been performed on lap joints
where one or two bolts are used in single shear configuration. However, the joint of
interest here is a 90-degree butt-type joint. Monitoring this type of joint is not reported
in the literature before in spite of the fact that the 90-degree bolted joint is very
common in aerospace structures. Therefore, an article with a 90-degree bolted joint
connected using a single bolt was designed and fabricated from Aluminum as shown
in Figure 1-a. The experimental work is focused on correlating the physical
characteristics of the bolted joint such as ultrasonic signatures to the mechanical
characteristics of the joint such as interface contact pressure. In order to ensure
accurate repeatability of testing conditions with each disassembly and re-assembly of
the bolted joint, a digital torque wrench with a resolution of 0.01 N.m was used to
fasten the bolt. The digital torque wrench is shown in Figure 1[a]. The experiments
enabled reducing the number of variables in the joint and thus establishing a realistic
correlation between the contact pressure and SHM signatures.
603
In order to correlate the pressure maps with ultrasonic results, two piezoelectric
sensors (MFC 2814P2) were installed on the joint plates as shown in Figure 1-b.
These MFC sensors can work either as actuator or receiver for ultrasonic waves. In
order to reduce noise, coaxial cables with limited length were used. Moreover, the
setup was hanged in the air to eliminate any wave loss due to surface contact and to
reduce the effect of external vibrations due to surrounding environment.
[a] [b]
Figure 1: 90-degree bolted joint designed [a] Bolted joint and digital torque wrench [b] MFC
piezoelectric sensors attached to the two sides of the bolted joint.
The ultrasonic wave was driven at one side of the joint and was measured on the
other side of the joint using function generator and oscilloscope. Figure 2 shows the
function generator and the oscilloscope used in the experiment. The function generator
allows performing frequency sweep on the joint and the oscilloscope identifies the
characteristic of the ultrasonic wave received at the other side of the joint. The
experimental investigation was focused on correlating features extracted from the
ultrasonic testing with the contact pressure recorded at this test article due to varying
torque. Fuji pre-scale pressure films were used to identify the pressure map.
[a] [b]
Figure 2. [a] function generator [b] oscilloscope
In real structures, there always exists damping for wave propagation. In most of
the ultrasonic wave tests, damping significantly reduces the amplitude of the
ultrasonic wave sent from the actuator. To avoid that problem, the ultrasonic wave
shall be magnified prior to being measured by the oscilloscope to get accurate and
repeatable results. Therefore, an amplifier was built and connected to the test set-up as
shown in Figure 3. The amplifier is a 40 dB low noise DC signal amplifier with an
operational bandwidth of 5 MHz. A 5V amplitude frequency sweep with zero DC
offset was performed using the function generator and sent to the actuator. The
604
received signal by sensor at the other side of the joint was amplified and filtered using
40 dB amplifier and a low pass filter to reduce noise, respectively. The output wave
was then measured using the oscilloscope. This process was repeated 10 times for
each applied torque at different frequencies. For each test the joint was completely
disassembled and reassembled then the bolt was tightened up to the desired torque to
check the repeatability of the test. Moreover, the total time of each test from the start
of assembly to finishing the ultrasonic test was limited to 5 minutes to eliminate time-
dependent effects on test results.
To examine the pressure distribution at the joint experimentally, Fuji pre-scale
pressure films were used. Fujifilm “Prescale” is a thin film (100-200 microns) that can
measure the contact pressure between two surfaces. Microcapsules in a “micro-
encapsulated color-forming layer” release a red dye in response to external pressure.
The result is a “map” with varying shades of red proportional of the contact pressure.
There are seven types of the Prescale film; each type is good for a specific range of
pressures ranging from 0.05 to 300 MPa. In these tests, Fujifilm type MW (dual layer
10 to 50 MPa) was used. Exposed films are scanned and compared by software
provided by Fuji Inc. It is important to note that measuring the pressure distribution
was done prior to performing the ultrasonic test. The pressure film was installed and
the joint was assembled and the bolts were tightened to 1.13, 1.69, 2.82 and 3.39 N.m
torque. After all the pressure measurements were finished. The joint was disassembled
and then reassembled without the pressure films and the ultrasonic test was conducted.
Figure 3. Ultrasonic test setup
The spatial distributions of contact pressure (pressure maps) across the bolted
joint for different applied torque are shown in Figure 4. It is interesting to note that
most of the high pressure regions are around the bolt and at the edge contacts with the
horizontal plate. This obvious non-uniform distribution affects the behavior of the 90-
degree bolted joint. It is also apparent that as the applied torque increases, the contact
pressure in the zone between the two edges increases. Furthermore, at relatively low
torque (1.13 N.m), there is almost no pressure in the zone between the two edges. The
absence of pressure can be interpreted as no-contact or possibly a gap. The existence
of a large no-contact zone will definitely affect the propagation of ultrasonic waves
across the joint. Propagation of ultrasonic waves requires the existence of contact
between the two surfaces.
605
[a] [b]
[c] [d]
Figure 4. Numerical values of pressure maps in MPa [a] 1.13 [b] 1.69 [c] 2.82 and [d] 3.39 N.m applied
torque
Figure 5 shows the results of different applied torque but a constant ultrasonic
wave propagating at frequency of 49 kHz. It can be observed from Figure 5 that the
method has a very good sensitivity to the applied torque and contact pressure at the
joint interface. It is noticeable that a significant jump is observed when the applied
torque was reduced from 2.82 N.m to 1.69 N.m. As the torque is reduced, the contact
pressure is decreased and the no contact zone increases. This in turn affects the ability
of the ultrasonic wave to transmit across the joint. It is apparent that there is very weak
transmission at relatively low contact pressure at and below 1.69 N.m.
Figure 5. Experimentally measured amplitude of sinusoidal ultrasonic wave transmitted through the
bolted joint for 49 kHz for different average pressure on contact surfaces.
Given the above observations, a correlation between the mean contact pressure
calculated from the pressure maps and the mean of the maximum amplitudes of the
606
received ultrasonic wave can be established. In doing so, the maximum amplitude of
the received ultrasonic wave was used as a damage feature. The measurement was
repeated at different frequencies to track the sensitivity and stability of the proposed
method. The proposed correlation is shown in Figure 6. It can be observed from
Figure 6 that the test is not only sensitive to the average pressure on the contact
surfaces, but also sensitive to the actuator frequency. Figure 6 shows that by
increasing or decreasing the frequency, the correlation trend will change. Therefore,
based on the geometry and location of the ultrasonic sensors the optimal frequency can
be found and the experimental error can be reduced. Moreover, the correlation meets
the physical interpretation discussed above. As the contact pressure increases, the
ultrasonic transmission is enhanced and the maximum amplitude of the transmitted
wave increases. Further research is underway to correlate contact pressure distribution
and the ultrasonic wave feature(s) with thermal conductance of the joint.
[a]
[b]
[c]
Figure 6. Correlation between average pressure and average amplitude for
different frequencies [a] 49 kHz [b] 54 kHz [c] 77 kHz
607
CONCLUSIONS
Ultrasonic wave propagation across 90-degree bolted joints was tested and
correlated with contact pressure at the joint interface. Ultrasonic measurements were
performed using MFC piezoelectric sensors while spatial contact pressure distribution
was determined using Fuji prescale pressure films. It is demonstrated that maximum
amplitude of the transmitted ultrasonic wave can be used as the monitoring feature for
being sensitive to changes in the bolted joint interface. Increasing the fastening torque
reduces the no-contact zone in the bolted joint and therefore enhances ultrasonic
transmission enabling high wave amplitudes. The correlation trend varies with the
applied ultrasonic frequency. Thereafter, for different geometry and location of the
MFC sensors the suitable frequency should be experimentally determined. It is
concluded that ultrasonic waves transmitting across bolted joints can be used to
quickly and efficiently estimate joint integrity represented by its contact pressure.
REFERENCES
1. Chang, F. K. and Markmiller, J.F.C. 2006. “A new look in design of intelligent structures with
SHM,”. in Proc. 3rd European Workshop: Structural Health Monitoring, pp. 5-20.
2. Farrar ,C., Cornwell, P., Doebling ,S. and Prime, M. 2000, "Monitoring Studies of the Alamosa
Canyon and I-40 Bridges," (Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos National Laboratory).
3. Altunok, E., Reda Taha, M.M. and Ross, T.J. 2007, “A Possibilistic Approach for Damage
Detection in Structural Health Monitoring”, ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, Vol. 133, No.
9, pp. 1247–1256.
4. Fernlund, I., 1961. “A Method to Calculate the Pressure Between Bolted or Riveted Plates,”
Transactions of Chalmers, University of Technoloy. Gothenburg, Sweden, No. 245.
5. Gould, H. H. and Mikic, B. B. Aug., 1972. “Areas of contact and pressure distribution in bolted
joints,” Trans. ASME, pp. 864-870.
6. Ito, Y., Toyoda, J. and Nagata, S. 1979. “Interface pressure distribution in a bolted-flange
assembly” Journal of Mechanical Design. pp. 330-337.
7. Krdlikowski, J. and Szczepek, J. 1991. “Prediction of contact parameters using ultrasonic method,”
Wear, pp. 181-195.
8. Aymerich, F. and Pau, M. 2004 “Assessment of Nominal Contact Area Parameters by Means of
Ultrasonic Waves,” Journal of Tribology, pp. 639-645.
9. Hale, J. E. and Brown, T. D. 1992. “Contact stress gradient detection limits of presenssor film,”
Journal of Bio-mechanical Engineering, pp. 352-357.
10. Dwyer-Joyce, R.S. and Drinkwater, B.W. 2003. “In situ measurement of contact area and pressure
distribution in machine elements,” Tribology Letters, pp. 41-52.
11. Doyle, D. T., Zagrai, A. and Arritt, B. 2009. “Bolted Joint Integrity for Structural Health
Monitoring of Responsive Space Satellites,” in Proceeding of 50th AIAA/ASME/ASCE/AHS/ASC
Structures ,Structural Dynamics, and Materials Conference. Palm Springs, CA.
12. Fasel, T. R., Kennel, M. B. and Todd, M.D. 2009. “Damage state evaluation of experimental and
simulated bolted joints using chaotic ultrasonic waves,” Smart Structures and Systems, pp. 329-344.
13. Jalalpour, M., Austin, E. M. and Reda Taha, M. M. 2010. “Correlating shear slip, contact pressure
and ultrasonic features in health monitoring of bolted joints in aerospace structure,” in Proceedings
of the ASME 2010 Conference on Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems,
Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.
14. Argatov, I. and Sevostianov, I. 2010. “Health monitoring of bolted joints via electrical conductivity
measurements,” International Journal of Engineering Science, pp. 874-887
608
Application of Unscented Kalman Filters,
Wavelet Packet Transforms and Feedback
Control to Monitoring and Compensate
Damaged Aircraft Structures
R. VEPA
ABSTRACT
In this paper a scheme for monitoring and control of an aircraft structure is

proposed based on based on nonlinear state estimation employing parametrically
insensitive or sensitive unscented Kalman filters followed by the deployment of a
structural controller to compensate for the damage. The measurements are obtained
from accelerometers, strain measurements from fiber Bragg sensors and from a
wavelet packet transform (WPT) filter of the acoustic emission. The WPT filter
reveals the structure of the deterministic signal by acting a de-noising filter. By pre-
processing the WPT and reconstituting the acoustic emission, all other contributions to
the emission signal including the emission due to crack initiation is filtered out. The
remaining signal can be considered to be purely a function of the crack propagation
phase. Fiber Bragg grating sensors (FBGS) are used to locate regions of maximum
strain.
On detecting the damage in a region of maximum strain it is shown that it is
possible to deploy a structural controller to compensate for the damage. The structural
controller may be considered to be a compliance controller providing for the
possibility of actively stiffening the damaged structure and also increasing the fracture
toughness. However to be able implement such a controller it is required that a shape
memory alloy (SMA) wires are embedded within the structure. The stiffening of the
structure is facilitated by heating the wire so as to transform the wire from a martensite
phase to an austenite phase.
INTRODUCTION
Ultrasonic guided wave based technologies are commonly used in structural health
monitoring (SHM). With several advantages for monitoring including ease of
accessibility of in service components, and wireless interrogation of sensors, ultrasonic
guided waves have attracted much attention in SHM as evidenced by a number recent
reviews such as Giurgiutiu and Cuc [1], Raghavan and Cesnik [2] and Wilcox [3] as
well as studies such as Gao et. al. [4], Soma Sekhar, Balasubramaniam and
________________
Dr. Ranjan Vepa, School of Engineering and Material Science, Queen Mary, University of
London, Mile End Road, LONDON, U.K., E1 4NS.
609
Krishnamurthy [5], Cawley [6], Raghavan [7] and Soutis and Diamanti [8]. It is
natural to ask the question if the SHM can be extended to control structures in order to
reduce or limit the damage and even compensate for or repair the damage in the
structure.
The concept of using feedback control with SHM is not new. Ray and Wu [9],
Ray, Wu, Carpino and Lorenzo [10], Kallappa, Holmes and Ray [11], Zhang, and Ray
[12], Zhang, Ray and Phoha [13], Li, Marquez, Chen and Gooden [14], Khatkhate,
Gupta, Ray and Keller [15], have investigated the concept of life extending control
and other related concepts such as damage mitigating control which use feedback
control to mitigate the effects causing damage and limit the damage.
In this paper we are proposing a completely new and original concept based on the
use of feedback control and SMA wires where a controller is used to compensate for
the damage by increasing the fracture toughness and to compensate for the loss of
compliance of the structure in the vicinity of the damage for a time frame. The
detection of damage is done by methods which are currently been developed and
established for SHM based on monitoring acoustic emission. The region of maximum
damage is located by the use of Fibre Bragg gratings sensors. On detecting the damage
in a region of maximum strain it is shown that it is possible to deploy a structural
controller to compensate for the damage. The structural controller may be considered
to be a compliance controller providing for the possibility of actively stiffening the
damaged structure and also increasing the fracture toughness. However to be able
implement such a controller it is required that SMA wires are embedded within the
structure. The stiffening of the structure is facilitated by heating the wire so as to
transform the wire from a martensite phase to an austenite phase. Such a phase
transformation is accompanied by a stiffening of the structure due to significant
reduction in the martensite fraction in the SMA.
DYNAMIC MODELING OF FRACTURED AIRCRAFT STRUCTURES
Dimensional analysis can be used to show that the stress intensity factor (SIF)
for Mode I, II or III fracture K , has the following form:
sif
K  K sif  C a (1)
where  is the nominal far field stress, 2a is the crack length and C is a mode
dependent, non-dimensional function depending on the size and geometry of the
crack, size and geometry of the structural component, and the type of loading. The
stress energy release rate G is equal to the J-integral which is related to the SIF by:
2
J  G  K sif E (2)
 
where E   E for plane stress and E   E 1   2 for plane strain. The rate of
increase of the crack length can be expressed as,
da da dN da
  fN (3)
dt dN dt dN
610
The results of the crack growth tests have been expressed in terms of da/dN , the
rate of change of crack length with the number of stress cycles, as a function of ΔK
where K  K  K op , K  K op , K  0 , K  K op , and K op is the SIF estimated at
the crack opening stress  op and crack opening half-length, a op . The quantity da/dN
is then given by a modified form of the Paris-Erdogan law (Paris and Erdogan, [16]),
proposed by Petit, Fouquet and Henaff [17],
da
dN

 A K 4  B K 2  KTH
2
 (4)
The constants A and B are generally functions of the minimum to maximum stress
ratio, R (Beden, Abdullah, Ariffin, [18]). The rate quantity dN dt  f N is the stress
cycle rate or the number of stress cycles per second. Also the crack tip opening half-
length may be expressed in terms of the J integral evaluated at crack tip opening as,
 
aop  E  C 2  J op  op
2
. The crack tip opening half-length is not the same as the
crack tip opening displacement ( vctod  4 J op  y ) although it is related to it.
Moreover the SIF estimated at the crack opening stress  op and crack tip opening
half-length, a op may be expressed as,
K op  C op aop ,  op  sop   y , (5)
where the factor s op is the ratio of the crack opening stress to the yield stress.
Considering a beam of depth d in flexure the maximum strain is obtained from the
maximum stress in terms of the bending displacement w x  is,
 fs C a d  2 w x 
 fs    C a . (6)
E E 2r fs 2r fs x 2
Assuming that the nominal stress is due to flexure the maximum stress at the crack tip
may be expressed as,  fs  E fs . For the mode of flexure considered in the example
here, which is assumed to be parabolic, it can be shown that the SIF may be expressed
as,
K  K sif  2 ECd a  x1 . (7)
For plane stress J integral or energy release rate G, is given by,
2
J  G  K sif E   4E Cd 2 a  x12  AE energy . (8)
611
Thus the dynamics of the crack length (equation 9) and the measurements (equations
10) in the absence of measurement noise, may be expressed as,
da
dt

 f N A K 4  f N B K 2  K TH 2

 q a w1 ,
dr fs
dt
 q r w2 , (9)
z1  x1 , z2  x2  , (10a)
 
z3  AEenergy AE0  4E Cd 2 a  x12  a0  x0 12 4E Cd 2 a0  x0 12 ,
ax12  a0 x0 12 , (10b)
z3  0 , ax12  a0 x0 12 , (10c)
K sif 2Cd a  x1
 2Cd a r fs  x1 . (10d)
K
z4   fs   
E 2r fs E 2r fs 2r fs
The first two measurements are the modal amplitudes of structural dynamics. The
third measurement represents the ratio of the change in the acoustic energy with
reference to an initial state to the acoustic energy at the initial state which is assumed
to be at the first instant when the crack half-length a, is equal to the crack tip opening
half-length a  a0  aop and K  0 . The reason for this choice for the measurement
is due to the fact that measured acoustic emission is at best only proportional to energy
release rate. This is based in part on the concept of optimal baseline subtraction
studied proposed by Konstantinidis, Drinkwater, Wilcox [19] and studied by Clarke
[20]. The fourth measurement is the strain measured by the FBGS. In the above model
wi are assumed to be unit intensity white noise processes, representing the additional
process noise components while q a and q r are corresponding variances.
Measurement noise is assumed to be additive and each of the measurements z i are
assumed to include additive noise, vi .
MONITORING CRACK PROPAGATION: UNSCENTED KALMAN

FILTERING
To monitor the crack propagation a dynamic model based unscented Kalman filter
(UKF) is used. To implement such a filter the flexural modal displacement field given
a linear combination of the displacement state vector x, the component of the acoustic
emission that is dependent on the crack geometry and the maximum strain are
measured. Thus one may assume that the modal amplitude x(1), which is related to
the magnitude of flexure, the change in the acoustic energy emission AEenergy , due to
the single largest crack and the maximum strain at a finite number of locations are
measured. For simplicity we will assume that the maximum strain at a single location
is measured. The maximum strain is obtained by scanning the entire surface of the
wing, with the embedded fibres and fibre gratings. By measuring x(1), the maximum
strain as measured by an array of FBGS and its relative location, and AEenergy one
can estimate the crack half-length, a, rfs ,  fs and K. Other possible measurements are
the loss of compliance as it can be shown that the loss of compliance is directly related
612
to the crack length (Fukuda and Kitigawa, [21]). The change in compliance may be
obtained as in Wang, Inman and Farrar, [22]. In this case the measurements z 3 and
z 4 would be different and the model would be independent of the crack location.
The UKF has been proposed by Julier and Uhlmann [23] and Julier, Uhlmann and
Durrant-Whyte [24] as an effective way of applying the Kalman filter to nonlinear
systems. For our purposes we adopt the UKF approach to estimate the states of the
structural dynamic model which now includes the crack length as one of the states.
ACTIVE DAMAGE COMPENSATION CONTROL
A TiNi SMA can be "trained" to exhibit the shape memory effect. In particular the
SMAs undergo a phase change when heated beyond a critical transition temperature
from a Martensitic state to an Austenitic state. In the Austenitic state the SMA exhibits
a greater yield stress, and greater fracture toughness than in the lower temperature
Maartensitic state. Moreover the change of phase from Austenite to Martensite is
accompanied by an increase in compressive strain which could lead to a further
reduction in the tensile SIF in the vicinity of a crack tip. Thus by a controlled phase
change of the SMA one can increase the fracture toughness and stiffness of such an
alloy. This characteristic may be used for damage compensation by embedding a
number of SMA wires or foil at critical locations of the wing structure which are most
likely to experience fracture. Of course heating a SMA wire or foil embedded within
an aircraft's wing structure would consume energy. So one does not heat the embedded
wires or foil as a matter of course but only when fracture damage in the form of the
initiation of a crack is sensed and when it is almost of critical length.
The control variable can be assumed to be the Martensite fraction, which
represents the fraction of martensite in the SMA. As the dynamics of the Martensite
fraction as a function of temperature is hysteretic in nature which is well known and
can be dealt with by a certain lead compensation techniques (Vepa, [25]), the control
input may considered to be the Martensite fraction rm , which in a low temperature
state is equal to unity. To inhibit the crack from growing, the fracture toughness or
K op is increased by letting the Martensite fraction rm decrease proportionately with
ΔK. The proportionality constant is chosen so as to ensure that when the crack growth
reaches a limiting maximum value, rm is greater than or just equal to zero. Thus,
 
rm k  1  rm k   K mc K sif  K op , rm 0  1 , 0  rm  1 , (11)
where K mc is a feedback gain. The yield stress for the aircraft structure may be
 
expressed as,  y  1  sma  yc  sma rm ym  1  rm  ya , where sma is the
fraction of SMA in the structure,  yc is the yield stress of the structure in the absence
of the SMA,  ym is the yield stress of the SMA in a Martensitic state and  ya is the
yield stress of the SMA in a Austenitic state. It is assumed that fracture toughness and
the yield stress are similarly related to the Martensite fraction, rm . This is not a strict
requirement and can be modified to suit the behavior of the fracture toughness of the
SMA.
613
Prior to implementing the damage compensation algorithm it is expected that a
preliminary damage assessment is made to assess the state of the structure with respect
to presence of cracks so as to establish the correct set of initial parameters and to be
able to correctly detect crack initiation and identify a redefined baseline. It is expected
that the state of the system and certain critical parameters such as the crack tip opening
displacement and the corresponding crack tip opening half-length, the fracture
toughness, the acoustic emission energy components at the instant the SIF is equal to
the fracture toughness for the first time and fN which is the loading stress cycle rate or
the number of stress cycles per second will be either assessed at the initial instant or
made available from, a previous run. The methods outlined by Prosser et. al. [26],
Konstantinidis, Drinkwater, Wilcox [19] and Clarke and Cawley [27] are suitable for
the initial analysis and assessment of damage to facilitate the identification of a
baseline. It was found from the results of the simulations that the proper definition and
identification of the baseline was a key issue for the successful implementation of the
control scheme.
TYPICAL APPLICATION, RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A typical application example of a cyclically loaded rectangular aircraft wing

structure is now presented. The cyclic loading is generated by simulating a vertical
random wind gust and the loads associated with it. The wind itself is simulated from a
standard white noise generator by shaping the white noise spectrum by a appropriate
second order filter to approximately emulate the von Karman spectrum. The bending
torsion oscillatory response of the wing is therefore obtained assuming just one mode
for bending and one for torsion. The assumed modes are only required to satisfy the
geometric boundary conditions and the equations of motion are derived by an energy
method. The two modal amplitudes are the outputs of the complete system model
which are driven by a single white noise generator and a state space representation of
the system is established with thirteen states. When the crack dynamics model is
appended to gust response model, the complete dynamics may be written as a
nonlinear system model with 15 states which includes the two dynamic equations for
the crack growth and the crack location with three independent process noise inputs
and four measurements.
The influence of the crack length on the compliance of the structure in bending
and in torsion is modeled by introducing an equivalent Young’s modulus and an
equivalent shear modulus in the presence of the crack, derived from energy
considerations. This effect is almost negligible when the crack is not growing. By
approximating an integral function defined by Radhakrishnan [28] as a power law, an
equivalent elastic modulus is defined in terms of the crack half-length, wing or main
spar depth and length respectively. A similar but different formula is used to modify
the shear modulus, which is obtained by integrating the square of the SIF associated
with the predominant fracture mode (Mode III) across the length of the crack and the
depth of the beam, similar to the approach of Wang, Inman and Farrar, [22].
614
Martensite fraction Martensite fraction
2 1
1.5 0.8
1 0.6
0.5 0.4
0 0.2
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
5 5
x 10 x 10
6 6 Stress Intensity Factoping
x 10 Stress Intensity Factoping x 10
3 3
Crack Opening SIF Crack Opening SIF
Actual SIF Actual SIF
2 2
1 1
0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Number of Time Steps 5
Number of Time Steps 5
x 10
x 10
Fig. 1 Typical simulated open loop SIF Fig. 2 Typical simulated closed loop SIF
compared with the fracture toughness and compared with the fracture toughness and
the corresponding martensite fraction over the corresponding martensite fraction over
25000 non-dimensional time steps 25000 non-dimensional time steps
A typical response plot of the maximum SIF is shown in Fig. 1 with no control
signal input to the embedded SMA wires and compared with the corresponding crack
opening SIF or fracture toughness. The time frame corresponds to 50 non-dimensional
time units or 250000 time steps which are equivalent to about 4000 seconds in real
time. The closed loop control law is given by equation 11. The corresponding
variations in the Martensite fraction rm , and the SIF and fracture toughness are shown
in Fig. 2. The fact that rm reduces below 1 over periods of time is an indicator that the
damage compensation controller is active over those times. There is no significant
increase in crack length during the entire time frame.
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper a concept based on the use of feedback control and SMA wires where
a controller is used to compensate for the damage by increasing the fracture toughness
which also compensates for the loss of compliance of the structure in the vicinity of
the damage for a time frame, is validated. The methodology is based on the use of
nonlinear filtering techniques coupled with a simple linear feedback control law. The
use of SMA wires currently poses two major disadvantages in that there is possibly a
slight reduction in the fatigue life due the lower fatigue life of popular NiTi based
SMA wires and the added weight penalty due to the embedding of SMA wires and
foils within the structure. However alternate solutions to both these obstacles are
currently being developed in the form of light weight and fatigue resistant SMA
615
structures for aerospace applications. Thus accurate measurement and estimation of
the largest crack length and its location is the key to the successful implementation of
an active control system for inhibiting the growth of the crack.
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Bond Graph Model of a Thin SHM
Piezoelectric Energy Harvester
S. THOMAS, D. CHRISTOPHE, G. SÉBASTIEN
and P. CHRISTOPHE
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a Bond Graph model of a SHM piezoelectric sensor used
as power harvester. A FE model of the sensor bonded onto a structure subjected
to low frequency mechanical vibrations has been developed. The forces applied to
the sensor and measured from the FE model have been implemented in the Bond
Graph model to obtain the sensor voltage response. An analytical model,
providing the voltage response of the sensor subjected to an in-plane
displacement field and a simplified FE model representing the sensor alone have
been used to check the Bond Graph model. This Bond Graph model provides
good correlation with the analytical and simplified FE models. As Bond Graph
models also describe the power distribution inside a system, it has been
possible with this model to estimate the power harvesting capabilities of
different piezoelectric sensors under natural mechanical vibrations.
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has become a part of new

avionic systems which will form future aircrafts. To allow the deployment of
these SHM systems throughout the aircraft, they have to be autonomous.
Vibration Energy Harvesting is a promising solution to provide energy to such
systems. The concept developed herein uses the SHM piezoelectric transducers
to convert the mechanical vibrations of the structure they are bonded on into
electrical power [1]. This SHM system aims to have a double functionality since
it will carry out classical SHM tasks but will also be fully autonomous. An
analysis of the piezoelectric harvester itself is of real importance to estimate both
the amount of power that can be effectively harvested but also to obtain a better
comprehension of the whole process of piezoelectric energy conversion [2, 3, 4].
The Bond Graph approach is well-suited to study interaction between different
physical domains and allows the monitoring of power distribution inside systems
[5]. Consequently, in this paper, an original Bond Graph model of the SHM
piezoelectric energy harvester is proposed.
Thomas Sainthuile, Christophe Delebarre, Sébastien Grondel, IEMN-DOAE UMR CNRS 8520
UVHC, Le Mont-Houy, 59313 Valenciennes, France. thomas.sainthuile@univ-valenciennes.fr
Christophe Paget, Airbus, Bristol BS99 7AR, UK. christophe.paget@airbus.com
618
First, the general configuration is presented. Then the model of the piezoelectric
energy harvester is built. Furthermore, a verification of the Bond Graph model is done
by comparing the results with Finite Element (FE) and analytical models. Finally, a
study of the power transfer using this model is carried out.
GENERAL CONFIGURATION
The aim of this study is to determine the behaviour of piezoelectric SHM sensors
integrated in the aircraft and submitted to low frequency mechanical vibrations. One
has to know both the voltage response of piezoelectric harvesters and their power
harvesting capabilities. To carry out this study, a FE model of an aluminium specimen
instrumented with a piezoelectric SHM sensor has been developed using Comsol
Multiphysics. The plate has one fixed edge while the others remain free, resulting in a
cantilever configuration. The plate is subjected to low frequency mechanical
vibrations, as shown in Figure 1. The sensor is a PZT5A from Morgan
Technical Ceramics. Its length is noted L, its width W and its thickness T. The working
frequency has been chosen as 589Hz to generate a flexion mode. This ensures having
the displacement along the length only x-axis dependant. For the piezoelement
considered herein, electric charges are only present on the electrodes and only the
electric field and electrical displacement components parallel to the polarization
direction are non null i.e. D1=D2=0 and E1=E2=0. The thickness of the piezoelectric
sensor is small compared to its length and width and also small compared to the
structure thickness. As a result, one can assume that the deformation of the sensor will
be mainly radial [6, 7]. The FE model shows that the sensor is subjected to
compression along its length, noted u(x), and, due to Poisson’s effect, there is also an
expansion of its width, noted v(y). Moreover, at 589Hz, the deformation wavelength is
equal to 230mm. Consequently, the displacement applied to the sensor can be
considered as linear along its length and its width in a first approximation. The
displacements obtained from this FE model are:
u 0 (t ) v 0 (t )
u(x, t ) = x v(x, t ) = − y (1)
L W
with u0 and v0 the amplitude of displacement.
Piezoelectric power harvester

Force
Fixed edge
300mm
3,z 500mm
2,y
1,x 3mm
Figure 1: aluminium specimen instrumented with a piezoelectric SHM power harvester sensor
619
MODELLING OF THE PIEZOELECTRIC ENERGY HARVESTER
The piezoelectric harvester will be modelled as a single degree-of-freedom

oscillator in its length direction and another one in its width direction to take into
account both the compression along x-axis and expansion along y-axis. The forces F1
and F2 applied to the sensor will be determined from the displacement u(x) and v(y)
measured with the FE model. The mechanical part of the piezoelectric energy
harvester is modelled as a {Mass + Spring + Damper} system as shown in Figure 2 [2,
4, 8]. The mass M represents the mass of the piezoelectric sensor, the springs (stiffness
k1 and k2) represent the storage of mechanical energy while the dampers (η1 and η2)
relate to the structural damping of the piezoelectric sensor. The electromechanical
conversion is modelled considering an ideal transformer. The electrical behaviour of
the piezoelectric energy harvester is also characterized by the piezoelement static
capacitance. Equivalent circuit modelling has been extensively used to represent the
piezoelectric energy harvester [2, 4]. Based on this technique, a Bond Graph model of
the piezoelectric energy harvester is proposed. The Bond Graph approach is well
suited to this discrete parameters modelling since it will be possible to investigate the
behaviour of each discrete parameter distinctively. This model will be checked with
both a FE model of the plate and piezoelement and an analytical model giving the
voltage response of the thin piezoelectric sensor. As for equivalent circuit, the bond
graph model is based on the constitutive piezoelectric equations that can be written as:
Di = ε ijTE j + diklTkl
(2)
Tij = CEijklSkl − ekijE k
Under plane stress condition and in open circuit condition, (2) provides the analytic
voltage response of the sensor at an instant t [6, 7]:
LW
∫ ∫ e 31 (S11 + S 22 ) dx dy
T
VS = (3)
ε 33
S
LW 0 0
Figure 2: model of a piezoelectric power harvester under mechanical vibration
The equivalent circuit and the Bond Graph of Figure 2 are presented in Figures 3
and 4, respectively. To represent both the compression and expansion phenomenons,
two branches have been modelled. They are connected in parallel since they are
620
equivalent to current sources after electromechanical transformation. The voltage
sources correspond to the force applied to the piezoelement. I-elements represent the
kinetic energy of the structure, modelled by the mass M of the piezoelement. R-
elements represent the mechanical energy dissipation modelled by the mechanical
damping η1 and η2 of the piezoelement. For thin sensors in low frequency vibrations,
one can neglect their contribution. C-elements represent the potential energy,
modelled by the inverse of the mechanical stiffness k1, and k2 of the structure along its
length and width, respectively. The electromechanical energy conversion is modelled
with two TF elements transforming mechanical flow and effort into electrical flow and
effort. The static capacitance Cs models the electrical behaviour of the sensor. The test
being conducted in the frequency domain, a modulated source represented by the
sinusoidal shape is used with a MSe element which provides a modulated effort. The
resistive load appears in these models and will be developed in the next section.
electromechanical
conversion
mechanical part electrical part
vdu I1 C1 iS
10 θ1
dt
compression F1 CS VS Rload
x-axis
v2 0
dv I2 C2 θ2
dt
expansion F2
y-axis
Figure 3: equivalent circuit representation of the piezoelectric power harvester
C
C1
F1 θ1
compression
x-axis
MSe 1 TF
V1
du
Sine 1 0 MSe1
dt
C
I Vs CS
I1 is
0
C P
C2
Rload R
F2
expansion
y-axis
MSe 1 TF
dvV20 θ2
Sine 2 MSe2
dt
Figure 4: Bond Graph model of the piezoelectric power harvester
621
From this Bond Graph model, one obtains the following equations, similar to the
equivalent circuit ones. Only one branch will be considered to describe the parameters.
d 2 u 0 (t ) 1
I1 + u 0 (t ) + Θ1 Vs (t ) = F1 (t ) (4.a)
dt 2 C1
du 0 (t ) dVs (t )
Θ1 = Cs (4.b)
dt dt
The density of the piezoelement is noted ρ and the stiffness matrix is (Cij)1<i,j<6
I-element is the mass of the piezoelement.
I1 = ρ L W T (5)
The mechanical stiffness is k1
C 11W T 1
k1 = = (6)
L C1
The static capacitance is CS
LW
C S = ε 33
T
(7)
T
Equation (3) can be written as
VS (t ) = e 31 u 0 (t )
T
(8)
ε 33
S
L
and (4.b) gives
θ1
VS (t ) = u 0 (t ) (9)
Cs
T e 31C S e 31 ε 33
T
W
θ1 = = (10)
ε 33
S
L ε 33
S
From (4.a), the force F1 becomes
θ2
F1 (t ) = − I 1 ω² + 1 u 0 (t )
1
(11)
C1 Cs
The same calculations have been performed to obtain k2, θ2 and F2.
622
MODEL VERIFICATION
To check the Bond Graph model, several sensors lengths have been tested. They
vary from 10mm to 30mm. For all these lengths, displacements applied to the sensors
remain linear. The thicknesses of the sensors are 0.5mm to allow plane stress
assumption and their widths are 3mm. A force of 10N has been applied to the plate at
its free edge at 589Hz, as shown in Figure 1. The displacements have been measured
with the FE model and applied to the analytic model which gives the voltage response
of a sensor submitted to displacement along its length and its width, as shown in (3). A
simplified FE model of the sensor alone has also been built and provides the voltage
response of the sensor subjected to the same displacements. The forces determined
with (11) have been applied to the Bond Graph model as the input forces F1 and F2.
The Bond Graph parameters have been calculated for the different sensors dimensions.
Figure 5 presents the voltage across the Cs element, i.e. across the piezoelement
without external load for the different models.
This result shows that the Bond Graph model correctly simulates the behaviour of
the piezoelectric harvester. The model has been able to predict the voltage variation
depending on the sensor dimensions and the displacements applied to the sensors.
Moreover, the voltage from the Bond Graph is close to the analytic and simplified FE
model results. The analytical and the simplified FE models give almost the same
voltage since curves are superimposed. The amplitude difference between the Bond
Graph and the complete FE models may be due to the displacement estimation. The
plane stress assumption and the displacement approximated as linear induce this
difference, as shown in Figure 5. However, with the Bond Graph model, one can
rapidly know which dimensions ensure the best voltage response for a given set-up.
The Bond Graph model is an efficient tool to work on design optimization.
Figure 5: voltage response of piezoelements power harvester using various models
623
POWER TRANSFER ESTIMATION
With the FE models, one can obtain the voltage response of the sensor but one
cannot directly study the power transfer to electrical loads. With the equivalent circuit
approach, it is possible to analytically carry out a study of power exchange [2, 3]. A
major feature of Bond Graph is that it also brings the possibility of easily and rapidly
measuring energy exchange between elements. As a result, with the power sensor and
the resistive load implemented in the Bond Graph model, one can measure the power
harvested and transferred by the piezoelectric sensor to the resistive load. Simulations
have been run for different load resistance values, as shown in Figure 6. For this
configuration, the sensor can harvest and transfer a maximum of 86µW to a 110kΩ
load. With the Bond Graph approach, one also has the possibility to monitor the power
distribution inside the model, as shown in Figure 7. It shows that the displacement
resulting from the force applied to the sensor is mainly converted into potential energy
due to the mechanical stiffness of the sensor. The mass does not have a significant
effect on power distribution since the working frequency is far below the sensor
resonant frequency. The Bond Graph model provides an idea of the electromechanical
efficiency of the piezoelectric power harvester since one knows the electrical power
transmitted as well as the initial available mechanical power.
Figure 6: power from Bond Graph model versus resistive load. Sensor length: 22.5mm
Figure 7: power distribution throughout the conversion process
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CONCLUSIONS
A Bond Graph model representing a piezoelectric element subjected to a two

dimensional deformation field has been proposed. By considering a thin sensor, it has
been possible to measure the displacements along the piezoelement length and width
with a FE model. The corresponding forces determined analytically have been used in
the Bond Graph model. The measured displacements have been applied to an analytic
model to obtain the voltage response of the sensor in open-circuit conditions. A
simplified FE model of the sensor itself has also been developed. Several lengths have
been tested to validate the Bond Graph model. A good correlation has been obtained
between all-models behaviours. There is still an amplitude difference between the
approximated models and the complete FE model. Assumptions made for the
displacement measurements may explain this difference. Further work will focus on
the improvement of these measures and will include an experimental verification.
Nevertheless, the Bond Graph model provides the voltage level for a given mechanical
excitation and also provides the amount of harvested power from mechanical
vibrations for all sensors tested. The simulation time of the Bond Graph model is
approximately 0.06 seconds when the FE provides the results in 26 seconds.
Moreover, it has been possible to monitor the power distribution and highlight the
effects of the geometric and mechanical parameters on the power transmitted to a
resistive load. As a result, one can estimate the efficiency of the piezoelectric
conversion for various mechanical excitation levels and this Bond Graph model may
serve as a tool to find an efficient geometrical configuration to optimize the level of
harvested energy. The Bond Graph model is a good candidate to optimize a power
harvesting piezoelectric sensor and its conditioning electrical circuit.
REFERENCES
1. Sainthuile, T. Delebarre, C. Grondel, S and Paget, C. 2010. Vibrational Power Harvesting for
Wireless PZT-based SHM applications. Proceedings of the 5th European Workshop on Structural
Health Monitoring, Sorrento, Italy, 679-684
2. Roundy, S and Wright, P.K. 2004. A piezoelectric vibration based generator for wireless
electronics. Smart Materials And Structures, 13: 1131-1142.
3. Yang, Y and Tang, L. 2009. Equivalent Circuit Modeling of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters. J. of
Intelligent Material, Systems and Structures, 20: 2223-2235.
4. Elvin, N.G. and Elvin, A.A. 2009 A General Equivalent Circuit Model for Piezoelectric Generators.
J. of Intelligent Material, Systems and Structures, 20: 3-9.
5. Vergé, M. and Jaume, D. 2004. Modélisation Structurée des systèmes avec les Bond Graphs.
6. Di Scalea, S.L. Matt, H. and Bartoli, I. 2006. The response of rectangular piezoelectric sensors to
Rayleigh and Lamb ultrasonic waves. J. Acoust. Soc. Am, 1: 175-187
7. Chapuis, B. Contrôle Santé Intégré par méthode ultrasonore des réparations composites collées sur
des structures métalliques. 2010. PhD thesis. Université Denis Diderot - Paris VII.
8. Lefeuvre, E. Badel,, A. Richard, C. Petit, L. and Guyomar, D. 2006. A comparison between several
piezoelectric generators for standalone vibration-powered systems. Sensors and Actuators, A 126:
405-416.
625
Impact Location Based on Multi-Agent
Coordination and Fusion for Large Structures
L. DONG and S.-F. YUAN
ABSTRACT
In practical applications of structural health monitoring technology, a large

number of distributed sensors are usually adopted to monitor the big dimension
structures and different kinds of damages. The monitored structures are usually
divided into different sub-structures and monitored by different sensor set. Under this
situation, how to manage the different sensor set and fuse the distributed information
to obtain a fast and accurate evaluation is an important problem to be addressed
deeply. In the paper, multi-agent framework based impact monitoring method is
presented to deal with the impact damage location problem in the large structure. The
monitoring system firstly self-judges whether the impact event happens in monitored
sub-region, and focuses on the impact source on the sub-region boundary to obtain the
sensor network information with blackboard model. Then the service directory is used
to dynamically distribute the damage location function module. Lastly a reliable
assessment for the whole structure is given by fusing the sub-regions’ evaluation
results. The proposed multi-agent approach is illustrated through a large aerospace
aluminum plate structure experiment. The result shows that the method can
automatically and effectively monitor the impact source in each sub-region,
particularly near the border upon sub-region in the large-scale structure.
INTRODUCTION
It is well known that aviation materials and structure is suspicious to the various
impact events. The impact-induced damages might cause the degradation of structural
strength or stiffness [1]. Structural health monitoring (SHM) for impact damage is a
research focus in the engineering and academia at present. However, for the
application, the integration of a wide range of sensors must be done. In the actual
large-scale structure, there are a number of sensors, which are distributed and
dispersed. Hence, how to effectively coordinate and manage the distributed
monitoring network in the large-scale structure and how to fusion different
information source is a critical problem now.
_____________
Liang Dong, the Aeronautic Key Laboratory of Smart Material and Structure, Nanjing
University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 241#, 29# Yu Dao Street, Nanjing, 210016,
People’s Republic of China.
626
In recent years, with the development of distributed artificial intelligence and
computer science, multi-agent system (MAS) is presented [2]. The agent is an
autonomous, reactive, spontaneous and social entity. They communicate with the
message. Through the multi-agent’s coordination, the system is more efficient, robust
and flexible. Multi-agent framework has been a natural model for developing a large-
scale, complex, distributed system, which is loosely coupled and heterogeneous.
Hence, MAS can be adopted to solve the impact monitoring problem for the large
structure.
In the literature on the MAS technology, several researches related to mechanical
fault diagnosis and health monitoring can be found [3-7]. Their research focused on
the construction of a single monitoring agent, the design and the functional
verification of the MAS for their fields.
In our past work, the MAS for SHM is utilized for the localization of impact loads
on structures [7]. Therein, the diagnostic agent is actually an expert system, and is
used to monitor the impact event for different materials. However, it does not consider
that the how the piezoelectric (PZT) sensors are managed and how the distributed
information is coordinated and fused for the accurate localization in the whole large
complicated structure. To solve the problem, this paper presents a Structure Health
Monitoring based on Multi-Agent System (SHM MAS) for the impact monitoring,
and gives the system implementation and experimental verification. The rest of this
paper is structured in the following manner. Section 1 introduces the framework of
SHM MAS, and presents the SHM MAS for the impact monitoring. Section 2 gives
the system implementation and experimental verification. Finally, Section 3 concludes
the paper.
1 SHM MAS for impact monitoring
Considering a typical SHM system, a large-scale structure can be divided into

several subareas monitored. The sensors are placed in or on the structure to acquire the
data on the structural status parameters. The appropriate signal or information
processing methods are adopted to analyze and extract the damage-sensitive features
from the sensing data. The corresponding damage evaluation methods can obtain the
structure health status using the key feature. Thus, according to the three typical parts,
three layers can be defined to form the SHM MAS. They are data monitoring layer,
data interpretation and damage diagnostic layer. Considering a large scale structure
diveided into some subareas, an information layer is needed to fuse the damage
information from the local subareas and provide the whole information to the user.
1.1 Multi-agent development
A MAS has been developed to aid in the SHM [7]. The SHM architecture based
on MAS for the impact monitoring is shown in Figure 1.
In the MAS, each of the layers contains a number of agents performing different
functions. The social ability and cooperation between the agents leads to the final
damage estimation. The functionality of the agent within each layer is described
below.
A. Data monitoring layer agents
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(1) PZT sensing agent (PZT SA): The agent contains four PZT sensors in the rectangle
sensor array, and is responsible for measuring the strain response of the structure
User Interface
Agent
Central Information Fusion Central Coordination

Agent Agent
TL DEA
TL DEA
TL DEA
Facilitator
Facilitator1 Facilitator2 ………… N
WT SPA WT SPA WT SPA

DMA DMA DMA
SIMA SIMA SIMA
PZT SA1 PZT SA2 ………… PZT SAN
Large
structure
Subsystem Subsyste ………… Subsystem
1 m2 N
Figure 1. Developed SHM MAS for impact monitoring
subarea for impact event.

(2) District monitor agent (DMA): The agent takes over the supervision of four
adjacent PZT SAs, focuses the region in which the impact happens, and gets the
important data. Then it can distribute the data to the agents in the higher layer.
B. Data interpretation agents
Wavelet transform signal processing agent (WT SPA): The agent applies the
Gabor wavelet transform to extract the arrival time t of group velocity at each
frequency for dispersive plate waves related to the signals collected by the PZT SA.
The t is corresponding to the maximum peak of the wavelet coefficients [8], and is
used to identify the exact location of any impact event.
C. Damage diagnostic agents
Triangulation localization damage estimation agent (TL DEA): The agent adoptes
the triangulation method to estimate the impact position [9]. In the triangulation
method, three PZT sensors are used to monitor the impact event A( x, y ) , as shown in
Figure 2, where Sij is the distance between sensor i and j , li is the distance between
the impact source and sensor i , and  i is the angle defined in figure, where
i, j  1, 2,3 . Also, with the triangle geometry relation between the impact position and
sensors, we know:
l1 sin 1  l2 sin  2
(1)
l1 sin 1  l2 sin  2  S12
628
PZT3
3
l3 S32
S13 A( x, y )
Y
l1 l2
PZT1
1 2
PZT2
S12
O X
Figure 2. The diagram of triangulation method

When the wave propagation time from the impact source to PZT sensor 1, 2, 3 is
known, the arrival time difference tij , i, j  1, 2,3 between two sensors is easily
derived. By finding the arrival time of each sensor for frequency f, one can find:
l1 l2
t12 ( f )  t1 ( f )  t2 ( f )  
Cg1 ( f ) Cg2 ( f )
(2)
l2 l3
t23 ( f )  t2 ( f )  t3 ( f )  
C g 2 ( f ) C g3 ( f )
where Cgi is the wave velocity on the direction from impact source to sensor i . By
solving the above set of nonlinear Equations (1) and (2), 1 ,  2 can be found, from
which the coordinate A( x, y ) of the impact load location can be determined for each
frequency f .
D.Information layer agents
(1) Facilitator agent (FA): Every subsystem should host a default FA. The FAs in
different subsystems can be federated to provide a single distributed yellow pages
catalogue, which is the service directory. It is useful for the cooperation between
different TL DEA in different subsystems.
(2) Sharing information management agent (SIMA): A default SIMA should host in
every subsystem, and manages all the agent’s IDs and addresses in the subsystem.
(3) Central information fusion agent (CIFA): When the impact happens in the edge of
two adjacent subareas, the agent fuses the damage information from the subareas to
give an exact location estimation.
(4) Central coordiantion agent (CCRA): The agent is responsible for the coordination
among subsystems, such as conflict solving, time synchronization, resource
distribution, negotiation strategy, etc.
(5) User interface agent (UIA): The agent provides information to the user and accepts
the user’s instruction.
1.2 Multi-agent coordination and fusion
The MAS comprises a number of agents, which is to solve the complex problem
not finished by a single agent, and is the coordination network among agents. The
coordination mechanism is the key issue in MAS research. A blackboard is an
effective communication mode for the agent collaboration [10]. In MAS, the
blackboard is the system's shared database, with which the agent can exchange data,
information and knowledge. It is divided into a number of information layers, which
correspond to the intermediate representation of the problem, used to record raw data,
intermediate results and final conclusions, so it is various solutions set of problems.
Each agent monitors the state of the blackboard, and seeks the chance to solve the
629
problems. Once the agent finds that the blackboard information can support it to
further solve the problem, it begins to solve it, and the results are recorded in the
blackboard. The new additional information is useful for the other agent to continually
solve. Repeat this process until the problem is completely resolved.
In the SHM MAS for the impact monitoring, the blackboard coordination is
applied among the sensing agent, and the service directory is employed for task
distribution among DMA, WT SPA, TL DMA, and CCRA. The agent in the lower
layer requests the Facilitator agent to search the service in the higher layer. The result
PZT sensor 3 6 9 12
Piezoelectric sensors
2 5 8 11 Impact source in the region or the adjacent area
Propagation path from impact source to four
piezoelectric sensors
1 4 7 10
Figure 3. The impact monitoring in the sub-region or the adjacent area of the large plate
of the search is a list of agent IDs that match the service.Then the agent queries the
SIMA about its addresses of the agent ID. Once it knows the address, the agent sends
the related data to the higher layer service agent.
For the impact monitoring in the large structure, PZT sensors are responsible for
detecting the subarea’s strain, and are conceptualized as the agent, that is PZT SA, and
wrapped with the measuring circuit, the aquirement and self-checking code to realize
the agent abstraction. Four PZT sensors are grouped to correspond to a PZT SA. The
agent may provide two service, that is the damage data publisher and the arbiter
whether damage is inside or outside the sub-area. The latter service uses the difference
of the arrival time at which the signal reaches the sensors to judge the damage existing
range.
For the rectangular sensors array in Figure 3, the distance differences between the
impact location inside the subarea and four sensors are smaller than the ones between
the impact location outside the subarea and sensors. Hence, for the isotropic plate or
the anisotropic plate, whether the impact occurs in the region can be estimated using
the time lag between the arrival times at which the signal reaches the sensors. Here,
the threshold crossing method is used to obtain the signal arrival time.
Then, the maximum of the arrival time differences for four PZT sensors is
defined as an index w, which is used to determine whether the impact happens inside
the region. When the impact source moves from the sub-region center towards the
boundary, w gradually increases. In order to determine the range of w in the sub-area,
the structure finite element model need be performed to obtain the simulated strain
responses of four sensors under the standard impact force, which is at the node in the
sub-area or on the border. The upper bound of w is set to be the time lag threshold. If
w is less than the threshold, PZT SA thinks that the impact occurs in the area, else out.
The DMA uses the blackboard to manage the neighboring PZT SAs. Each PZT
SA’s state “damage” and “no damage” are stored in the share units of the blackboard.
The “damage” shows that the damage event happens in its subarea, nor it is out.
Hense, the DMA chooses the relevant data from the SAs in the light of their
630
states.When the impact damage occurs, the SA senses the structure strain, and sends
the “damage” state and the strain data to the DMA’s blackboard. If the DMA finds the
change of the blackboard state, it reads the blackboard and finds the Agent ID of the
damage subarea. Then the DMA goes to read the blackboard unit of its adjacent agent.
If its state is “no damage”, that is, there is not impact damage in that subarea, the
DMA thinks the damage occurs in the first monitored subarea. Otherwise, the damage
is considered to happen near the boundary between two agents. After the judgement,
the DMA extracts the data from the SAs. The DMA sends the damage status to
CCRA, and passes the damage data to WT SPA. Meanwhile, the “damage” state in the
blackboard is set to the “no damage” state. After the WT SPA processes the data of
DMA for the arrival time, it sends the result to TL DEA.
If the damage occurs on the sub-region boundary, the CCRA waits and orderly
accepts two results of the TL DEAs for two nerborhood PZT SAs, and notifies the
“damage close to boundary” state and two locations to the CIFA. Because two
position are in the different coordinate systems, a coordinate transformation is needed.
The CIFA can finish the work, use the avarage to fusion the data, and send the result
to the UIA.
If the damage happens in the sub-area, the CCRA gets only one location. It
directly sends its coordinate to the UIA.
2 Experiment validation
In order to verify the effectiveness of the SHM MAS for the impact monitoring,
in this paper, the large aerospace aluminum plate structure as the experimental object
is studied using multi-agent technology. In Figure 4 a plate structure and the sensor
layout diagram, and the photo of the structure are given. The structural material is the
aerospace hard aluminum LY12. Its basic dimension is 200cm×120cm×0.25cm. The
64 M6-bolts are deployed around the structure with the distance of 10cm, which are
used to fix the plate with bracket. The bracket is put on the ground vertically,
supporting the aluminum structure. The structure is divided into eight sub-regions,
each of which is 49cm×45cm except its edge. A strain network is utilized to measure
strain responses, in which the piezoelectric sensors with a 0.8cm diameter and the
0.04cm thickness are laid on the vertices of each sub-region. In addition, each sub-area
is divided into nine regional units.
The SHM MAS for the impact monitoring consists of a large aerospace aluminum
plate specimen, an impact bar, nine charge amplifiers, three data acquisition cards and
an industrial control computer, whose CPU is Dual-Core 2.5GHz, memory is 2G
bytes, and operating system is window XP. Bisides SA composes of the hardware and
software, other agent consisits of software, which is programmed with Labview and
Matlab in the industry control computer.
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PZT 3 PZT 6 PZT 9
Subarea 2 Subarea 4
Y1 Y2
X1 X2
PZT 2 PZT 5 PZT 8
Subarea 6 Subarea 7 Subarea 8
Y5
PZT 1 PZT 4 PZT 7
Y X5
X Bolt
(a) (b)
Figure 4. The picture of the aluminium plate and the sensror distribution
In the hardware, multiple sensor responses due to the applied impact are amplified
through the charge amplifiers (Yangzhou Electric Company, YE5853). Multi-channel
digital trigger receives the output signal from the charge amplifier. A/D conversion is
conducted through quad-channel data acquisition (National Instrument Company,
PCI-6115). Three data acquisition cards are linked with RTSI bus cables. They are
synchronously triggered by the multi-channel digital trigger, and acquire the voltage
signal of the charge amplifier. Finally, strain responses are inputted into a computer
with PCI bus. The number of pre-acquisition points of the Data Acquisition is 800,
and the sampling frequency is 1MHz, and the total measurement time is 0.012s. The
acquired signal is as shown in Figure 5.
To have a better show of the advantages of the SHM MAS, a monitoring case is
given. It is to monitor the impact source near the boundary between subarea 1 and 2 or
5 to validate the effectiveness of the agent coordination and fusion.
The local coordinate systems are used for the difference subarea evaluation as
shown in Figure 4. The location errors are compared for the given impact locations to
determine the effectiveness of the multi-agent method. The error is defined as the
Euclid distance from the actual impact location to the calculated location.
Figure 6 shows the location results of twelve impact points in the sub-region and
near the boundary. Figure 6 (a) and (b) show that the results in the subarea are better
than the ones close to the boundary. Figure 6 (a) shows that for PZT SA 1, the location
results in the subarea are consistent with the actual ones, and its location errors are less
than 2.0 cm, while the location errors near the boundary are generally greater than 3.0
cm. In addition, the location errors of some points near the border for PZT SA 2 and 5
are very large as shown in Figure 6 (b). Figure 6 (c) shows the location results of
fusing the strain data from PZT SA 1 and PZT SA 5 or 2. For the boundary points
between the PZT SA 1 and 5, the location errors are 3.8 cm, 1.4 cm, 2.5 cm, 3.7 cm,
3.1 cm and 1.8 cm. For the boundary points between the PZT SA 1 and 2, the location
errors are 1.8 cm, 0.6 cm and 0.2 cm. Most results are better than the PZT SA 1’s. In
summary, the collaborative localization method is effective for internal sub-region and
especially the boundary.
632
3 Conclusion
This paper shows that the multi-agent technology can improve the impact
localization preciseness for the large structure. In the future work, the validation work
2 2
1.5
1.5
1
1
0.5
Amplitude （ V）
Amplitude（ V ）
0 0.5
-0.5 0
-1
-0.5
-1.5
-1
-2
-2.5 -1.5
0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012
Time（ s ） Time（ s ）
(a) PZT2 (b) PZT 3

Figure 5. The acquired signal
of multi-agent impact monitoring on large scale composite material structure will be
studied deeply.
60 60
PZT2 PZT3 PZT2 PZT3

50 50
40 40
30 30
SA5 SA1 SA5 SA1
20
Y(cm)
20
Y(cm)
10 10
0 0
PZT5 PZT6 PZT5 PZT6
-10 SA2 -10 SA2
Actual impact location
Actual impact location SA5 calculated location
-20 SA1 calculated location -20 SA2 calculated location
-20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
X(cm)
X(cm)
(a) SA1 calculated location (b) SA2 and SA5 calculated location near
boundary
60
PZT2 PZT3
50
40
30
SA5 SA1
20
Y(cm)
10
PZT5 PZT6
-10 SA2
Actual impact location

-20 Agent fusion location
-20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
X(cm)
(c) Agent fusion location close to boundary

Figure 6. The multi-agent coordination localization results for the subarea boundary
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by European Union 7th Framework Programme

International Cooperation Project (Grant Nos. FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IRSES-269202),
Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 60772072, 50830201 and
10872217), Funding of Jiangsu Innovation Program for Graduate Education (Grant
633
Nos. CX10B_097Z), and Funding for International Academic Exchange Program for
Doctoral Students in NUAA.
REFERENCES
1. Boller, C., and Buderath, M. 2007. Fatigue in aerostructures-where structural health monitoring can
contribute to a complex subject. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 365, 561-587.
2. Wooldridge, Michael, and Jennings, Nicholas, R. 1995. Intelligent agents: theory and practice.
Knowledge Engineering Review, 10(2): 115-152.
3. Lyell, M. J., Krueger, W., Zhang, G., Xu, R., and Haynes, L. 2008. An agent-based approach to
health monitoring systems applied to the ISS power system. The 45th AIAA Aerospace Sciences
Meeting and Exhibit. Reno, Nevada, USA, 1-17.
4. Yew, Seng, Ng, and Rajagopalan, Srinivasan. 2010. Multi-agent based collaborative fault detection
and identification in chemical processes. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 23 (6):
934-949.
5. Abbott, David et al. 2002. Development and Evaluation of sensor concepts for ageless aerospace
vehicles. NASA technical report NASA/CR-2002-211773, Langley Research Center,
Hampton,Virginia.
6. Albert, Esterline, Bhanu, Gandluri, and Mannur, Sundaresan, Characterizing environmental
information for monitoring agents. 2006. In Hinchey, M. G., et al., Innovative Concepts for
Autonomic and Agent-Based Systems, Springer: 74-85.
7. Zhao, Xia, Yuan, Shenfang, Zhou, Hengbao, Sun, Hongbing, and Lei, Qiu. 2009. An evaluation on
the multi-agent system based structural health monitoring for large scale structures. Expert Systems
With Applications, 36(3): 4900-4914.
8. Jeong, Hyunjo, and Jang, Young-Su. 2000. Wavelet analysis of plate wave propagation in
composite laminates. Composite Structures, 49(4): 443-450.
9. Armaghan, Salehian. 2003. Identifying the location of a sudden damage in composite laminates
using wavelet approach. Worcester polytechnic institute, USA.
10. Corkill, Daniel, D. 1991. Blackboard Systems. AI Expert, 6(9): 40-47.
634
An Integrated Monitoring System for Damage
Detection by Carbon Fibers and Optical Fibers
H. HUANG, Z. WU and C. YANG
ABSTRACT
An integrated real-time continuous monitoring system is proposed with two
types of sensors to detect damage through global and local monitoring of
structures in this paper. This method combines a fast-response and
easy-to-operate carbon fiber (CF) sensor and an optical fiber (OF) sensor with
long-distance monitoring capacity and high spatial resolution. The distributed
CF sensor monitoring system can undertake global and local monitoring, and the
OF sensor monitoring system with a long sensing distance can monitor
full-scale and local strain response. The measured signals of the CF and OF
sensors include the strain response, the external condition response and the
monitoring system noise. Towards the measuring capability in detecting
low-level strain, the static measured signal of CF and OF sensor in a variable
external condition is compared. Based on the relationship between sensing
performance and monitoring numbers, a similar true value analysis method was
developed from the measured signal, and then a wavelet transform based
de-noising method was also developed. The effective high-confidence integrated
monitoring system of CF and OF sensors is established and discussed along with
the similar true value and the de-noised signal. Finally, this integrated system
was installed on a concrete beam to determine its damage detection capability. It
is found experimentally that the integrated monitoring with CF and OF sensors
achieved high-confidence signals in detecting the damage location.
INTRODUCTION
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is a process of providing in-time

information concerning structural performance based on sensors [1]. When the
number of sensors used in SHM process increases, more information can be gained
_____________
H. HUANG, Z. WU, Dept. of Urban & Civil Eng., Ibaraki Univ., Hitachi 3168511, Japan
C. YANG, Inter. Inst. for Urban System Eng., Southeast Univ., Nanjing 210096, China
635
In an actual application of SHM for a large structure, thousands of sensors
connect to form a global monitoring network. This network provides real-time
data to a damage evaluation system. The large quantity of data provides a full
global structural description to help identify possible damage but makes the
evaluation system complicated and burdensome. Too much data is a nuisance
for real-time SHM because most of the real-time data have no relationship to
probable future damage.
Optical fiber (OF) sensors are being widely developed and used to measure
strains and deformations in concrete structures. Recently, an optical fiber
monitoring system based on a high spatial resolution, Pulse-Pre-Pump Brillouin
Optical Time Domain Analysis (PPP-BOTDA) system was investigated. The
PPP-BOTDA based commercial product achieved a spatial resolution of 10 cm,
a strain measurement precision of ±0.0025% F.S., and a sensing distance of
more than 1 km. However, to achieve high precision, the system requires a long
measuring time. For example, for a 50-m optical sensor, when the count time is
set at 2^20 the measuring time is over 5 minutes. The measuring time doubles as
the count time and sensing distance increase. For a long-sensing-distance
structure, it is difficult for the PPP-BOTDA system to satisfy the requirement of
real-time monitoring of all sensing parts.
Recently, a high-frequency-response carbon fiber (CF) sensor has been
developed in our laboratory [2]. The CF sensor is a type of electrical resistance
sensor, and the resistance change ratio (R/R) of CF increases linearly with
strain. The response time of CF is very short and is sufficient for real-time
continuous monitoring where high frequency monitoring is required.
The main purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated method of
detecting low-level strains over long distances by comparing advantages and
disadvantages of OF and CF sensors. Firstly, the sensitivities of CF and OF
sensors in low strain ranges were studied, and their continuous monitoring
capacity was shown. Next, the measurement precision of CF and OF was
defined over different monitoring times. Then, a wavelet de-noising method was
developed to improve confidence of CF and OF sensors. Finally an integrated
system was installed in a concrete beam to study sensing performance.
CONFIDENCE PERFORMANCES OF CF & OF SENSORS
The main object of continuous monitoring in SHM is the stress and/or strain
response of structural objects. For a monitoring sensor attached to the surface of
one structure object, the measured signal from the sensors is related to the
change in strain on the structure object, the external condition response and the
noise of the monitoring system. The external condition response and the noise of
the monitoring system affect the confidence of the result calculated from the
measured signal. During actual monitoring, the external condition response is
mainly caused by changes in temperature conditions. The integrated signal can
be expressed as follows:
S  S  S t  S n (1)
where S denotes the total response, Se is the strain response, St is the temperature
response, and Sn is the system background noise.
The sensor used in this study is designed for use in long-term SHM, and it is
required to monitor the strain state of structural objects continuously, over
several terms. The CF strain sensor signals are related to changes in the strain
636
and in the temperature conditions. As an electrical sensor, the output signal of a
CF sensor is related to the R/R. A CF sensor comprises numerous continuous
micro carbon fibers. Each fiber can be considered a sensing cell, such that the
CF sensor`s output signal is the integrated response from all of the sensing cells.
For a single micro carbon fiber, the R is related to the change in resistivity, the
length, and the cross-section of the micro carbon fiber. Carbon fiber composite
has been found to be a good semiconductor material for conductivity detection.
Because of the Poisson effect and the piezoresistive effect, the R of each fiber
that is caused by strain change has a linear relationship with the applied stress
during elastic deformation. Moreover, the R of a CF sensor is inversely
proportional to temperature change because of the negative temperature
resistivity of micro carbon fiber. Conversely, the thermal geometry changes (in
length and cross section) of the CF sensor can only cause a very small R in a
normal temperature environment. The change in thermal resistivity is the major
factor that affects R if the temperature changes. For a CF sensor, the
relationship between the R/R, , and T can be expressed as follows:
R
S CF   K     K T * T (2)
R
where SCF represents the signals from the CF sensor, K is the gauge factor of
strain, and KT is the gauge factor of temperature.
However, OF strain sensor signals respond to mechanical strain and thermal
strain. The OF sensor in this study is measured by a PPP-BOTDA system. The
zero brillouin frequency shift and center frequency shift of the OF strain sensor
are measured based on the reference temperature, where real-time strain and
temperature can be calculated by the following expressions:

center frequency    zero frequency shift 
C (3)
T
center frequency    zero frequency shift 
 reference temperatur e
CT
where C and CT are the coefficient of strain and temperature, respectively.

When a sensor is installed on a structure, any change in the signal is due to
both thermal and mechanical changes in structure. The strain response is equal
to the difference between the installed sensor and a temperature reference signal.
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Figure 1. Results of temperature compensation
Figure 1 shows the continuous signal flow of a OF and a CF sensor during a

test with 100 cycles of loading-unloading. Subfigures ‘1-1’ and ‘1-2’ show the
load flow and the temperature flow, respectively. An OF and a CF sensor were
installed on an elastic uniform simple tension test specimen. Because of the
influence of temperature, the signal flows from the OF and CF sensors are in
poor agreement with the load, which is plotted in subfigures ‘1-3’ and ‘1-4’.
Because the influence of temperature can be compensated for with a reference
sensor, the signals resulting from such compensation are plotted in subfigures
‘1-5’ and ‘1-6’. As shown in these figures, the temperature effect of the OF and
CF sensors is reduced.
ANALYSIS OF THE DEGREES OF CONFIDENCE
The SHM process is detecting a possible damage by continuously

monitoring structural responses. In ordinary, the measured signals of a concrete
structure are small. To detect and identify microstrain changes from a concrete
structure, the monitoring sensor should have a corresponding precision. Because
the tensile strain limit of normal concrete is 100-200 , we mainly discuss
monitoring accuracy under 200 . The confidence of a small signal determines
the calculated result from the measured signal. Usually a highly sensitive sensor
is used for the long-term monitoring of SHM to gain a high-confidence signal.
Consider the highly sensitive sensor is easily affected by changes in the external
environment, another solution that to denoise the measured signal is used in this
study to increase the degree of confidence of signals .
Figure 2. Normal probability plot of OF and CF signals
638
Figure 2 shows the normal probability plot of 100 continuously measured
signals under 100  conditions. Because both the CF and OF signals are linear,
the graph indicates that the signal follows a normal distribution. For a group of
normal distributed discrete signals, only the true value of these signals can
characterize the response to the applied strain. Usually a large number of signals
will improve the degree of confidence of the true value. However, in a real-time
monitoring process, only a limited number of signals can be measured during a
limited monitoring time. Therefore, we first used a large number of signals to
determine the confidence level of the sensor. With the knowledge of this
confidence level, any abnormal value can be singled out. Then, the true value
can be calculated from the original discrete signals without the selected
abnormal value. The degree of confidence of the true value coming from a
limited number of signals will be in accordance with that determined from a
large number of signals.
To investigate the confidence levels of the CF and OF sensors, a 100-cycles
tension experiment with an elastic specimen was conducted. The maximum
applied strain of this experiment was 200 . The experiment included four
parts, and monitoring-time for each loading point of each part was tested at 1, 25,
50, 75 and 100 times. The signal distributions of each part are compared in
Figure 3 and Table 1.
As shown in Figure 3, the signal concentration increases with a concomitant
increase in monitoring time. For the experiment involving 1-monitoring time at
each strained point, the CF sensor signal was in the range of ± 6 , and the OF
sensor signal was in the range of ± 25 . For the experiment involving
25-monitoring time at each strained point, the signals from both the CF and the
OF were concentrated in a smaller range, and the probability density clearly
increased. For the 50, 75, and 100 monitoring-time experiments, the signal
concentration and probability density still increased; for these experiments, the
shapes of the corresponding probability density functions were similar. It can be
concluded that variance and bandwidth decrease with increased monitoring time.
For the 100 monitoring-time experiment, the CF sensor’s signal range was
concentrated within ± 1 , and the OF sensor`s was concentrated within ± 6 .
As shown in Table 1, the signal variance shows a decreasing trend with
increased monitoring-time: when the monitoring-time exceeds 50, the signals
are concentrated. The value obtained from the 100 monitoring-time experiment
can be considered very close to the true strain response of the corresponding
strain state. By increasing the monitoring time from 1 to 100, the variance of the
continuously measured CF sensor`s signal is limited from ± 6  to ± 1 , and
that of the OF sensor is limited from ± 25  to ± 6 
Figure 3. Distributions of OF and CF Signals
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TABLE I. DISTRIBUTIONS OF MEASURED SIGNALS
Number of Monitoring CF Sensor OF Sensor
Times Variance Bandwidth Variance Bandwidth
1 1.97 12 12.89 66.7

25 0.45 2.16 3.56 16.73
50 0.33 1.68 2.46 14.78
75 0.27 1.36 2.52 14.2
100 0.24 1.04 2.309 12.5
For a normally-distributed noise signal, a full sample number is infinite.

Although it is impossible to describe the complete data distribution, the
distribution can be concentrated within a certain range as the sample number
increases. As shown in Figure 3, the signal distribution of OF and CF sensors
becomes concentrated with increased monitoring-time. It can be concluded that
when the monitoring-time is greater than 100, the signal distribution can
describe the complete noise distribution. With this conclusion, a wavelet
transform based denoising method is used. The wavelet transform is a
recently-developed method that can be used to shrink normally distributed noise.
The wavelet shrinkage function can be given by
 j ,k  j ,k  
ˆ j ,k   (4)
 0  j ,k  
where ̂ j,k is the probably wavelet coefficient,  j,k is the wavelet coefficient,
and  is the threshold. The value of  is a presented value, to shrink the effect
of the possible noise, and  can be calculated as follows:
   2 ln N (5)
where  is the variance of the noise and N is the selected signal number. When a
signal is decomposed by wavelet transform a set of wavelet coefficients are used
to remove noise. The signal can be reconstructed by comparing the wavelet
coefficients with a pre-set  determined by the noise distribution. With the
options above, a similar true signal value can be determined, and a de-noised
signal with a threshold can be determined from the noise distribution detected
over a 100- monitoring-time experiment. The comparison is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Comparison of Original Signals, True Values, and De-noised Signals
640
Figure 5. Fidelity of original signals, true values and de-noised signals
In Figure 4, original signals, true values and de-noised signals are compared.
Noise is shown to be reduced to a varying degree. To examine the fidelity of the
true value and the de-noised signal, the strain gauge signal is used as a reference
signal. The original signal, the true value and the de-noised signal are compared
with the reference strain signal. In Figure 5, the path of the original signal from
the CF sensor has some noisy points, and these points are random distributed. In
the true value signal, the noisy points have been completely removed, and the
signal path is linear compared with the reference strain signal. In the de-noised
signal path, the result is not obvious as in true value signal path, but the linearity
of the de-noised signal is improved, such that the R-squared value is more than
0.99.
PERFORMANCE VERIFICATION
To study the performance of CF-OF sensors for the structural assessment of

a concrete beam, three CF-OF sensors for a gauge length of 50 cm were
installed on the surface of a 1.8 m-long RC specimen. There is a pre-cast groove
in the middle of the RC specimen, which is designed to be the damaged part of
the specimen. The CF-OF sensor which named ’50-100 cm’ covered this
damaged part. The CF sensors and the OF sensors on the CF-OF monitored the
full scale of the RC specimen respectively. The results from the three CF-OF
sensors were compared to identify the location of the damaged part. Figure 6
shows the obtained strain signals from the CF-OF sensors during the tensile
experiment. With the additional reporting of the true value and the de-noised
signals, it is clear that the signal from the 50-100 cm damaged part was higher
than the signals from the other parts. When the tensile load is over than 20 KN,
the signal from the 50-100 cm damaged portion was clearly higher than the
other signals, and a clear sign of cracking are shown in the plots. Because of the
high response frequency of the CF sensor, it measured more signal than the OF
sensor. The OF sensor’s signal path is also smoother than that of the CF. This
result is in accordance with observations in practice and indicates that the
integrated system is reasonable.
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Figure 6. Damage identification with integrated sensors
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, an integrated CF-OF system was developed. From the

experimental results, the following conclusions can be drawn:
1. In detecting static low-level strain (less than 200 , the continuous
measuring capability of CF and OF sensors under variable natural
conditions has been shown.
2. By increasing the monitoring time from 1 to 100 at each strained point, the
range of variation of the continuously measured CF sensor’s signal is
limited from ± 6  to ± 1 , and the range of variation of the OF sensor’s
signal is limited from ± 25  to ± 6 The convergence of the measured
signal distribution is defined. With the signal distribution, a true value and a
denoised signal can be calculated, and the linear correlation coefficients of
them are more than 0.99.
3. From an experimental study on damage detection in a concrete beam, it was
confirmed that the developed integrated CF-OF system could detect damage
through real-time monitoring and locate the damage.
REFERENCES
1. B. Glisic, D. Inaudi, Fibre Optic Methods for Structural Health Monitoring, John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., pp.5-10.
2. C.Q. Yang, Z.S. Wu and Y.F. Zhang. 2008 “Structural health monitoring of an existing pc
box girder bridge with distributed HCFRP sensors during a destructive test”, Smart
Materials and Structures, 17(3), pp.035032 (10pp)
642
Advanced Approach for Multi-Site Damage
Monitoring on Aircraft Fuselage Panel Using
Sparse PZT Actuator/Sensor Arrays
R. HEDL, J. FINDA and G. PARTHASARATHY
ABSTRACT
The paper deals with an approach to automated in-situ monitoring of corrosion

damage on Aluminum alloy aircraft fuselage panel. In order to monitor the panel,
an array of sparsely distributed PZT actuators/sensors is used. The sensor array is
designed to enclose the whole investigated area, whose health status is interrogated
by means of generation and registration of ultrasonic guided waves.
The status of the monitored area is visualized by a fast and robust algorithm
called WEMAT. The algorithm produces an image map representing spatial
distribution of a damage index using signal difference coefficients (SDC), which
are calculated using correlation analysis of baseline and actual sensor response. The
SDCs are further used by an advance signal processing based on Principle
Component Analysis. The aim of the processing is to achieve automated and robust
indication, localization and estimation of size of multiple defects, which can emerge
in the monitored area. The algorithm is capable of reliable detection of very small
defect located in vicinity of relatively large defect. The designed approach was
tested on a fuselage panel specimen. Testing results are presented in the paper.
INTRODUCTION
Corrosion is a serious concern for metallic aircraft parts. It can have significant
impact on the aircraft performance and flight safety. Therefore, aircraft operators
spend a lot of money and time for inspection and maintenance of corrosion related
damage. The annual direct cost of corrosion to the U.S. aircraft industry is
estimated at $2.2 billion [1]. Considerable R&D effort is expended advancing
corrosion detection and monitoring techniques to mitigate impact of the corrosion
damage [1].
Hedl, R., Honeywell International, Turanka 100, 627 00 Brno, Czech Republic.
Finda, J., Honeywell International, Turanka 100, 627 00 Brno, Czech Republic.
Parthasarathy, G., Ho neywell International, 1985 D ouglas Drive, Golden V alley ( MN),
55422, USA.
643
The aim of this work is to design an approach for automated in-situ monitoring
of corrosion damage on an Aluminum alloy aircraft fuselage panel by means of
ultrasonic guided waves [2]. The panel is a part of the L-410 UVP-E airplane which
is an all-metal high-wing monoplane powered by two turboprop engines. The
airplane is certified in the commuter category in accordance with FAR 23
requirements. The panel cut was taken from the rear part of the aircraft fuselage in
the area of toilet. The location is exposed to adverse corrosive environment due to
leakage of corrosive liquids from the toilet. Moreover, the location is hard to reach
for visual or other types of NDT inspection during common maintenance checks. A
series of preliminary tests was conducted separately on the skin plate and stringer
under various corrosion conditions [3]. On the basis of these tests, we expect
emergence of corrosion mainly in the contacts between fuselage skin and stringers.
Taking this into consideration, an array of sparse distributed PZT actuators/sensors
enclosing monitored area was designed. The array interrogates state of the material
through generation and registration of ultrasonic guided waves (Lamb waves).
Figure 1 Aircraft Industries a. s. L-410 UVP-E airplane and detail of the corrosion damage on
the fuselage panel.
An aircraft panel of size 500 mm by 500 mm is being monitored by the sensor

array in the laboratory. The panel consists of two lap-jointed sheets stiffened by two
stringers. Thus, an automated, reliable and robust defect monitoring approach on
the panel should account for emergence of multiple defects. Simple analysis of
direct path image, which is based on signals collected by the sparse sensor array,
could result in missed detection of small defects if a bigger defect is located in their
vicinity. We have developed a more sophisticated anomaly detection approach that
allows calculation of individual WEMAT image representation for individual
defects emerging on the panel. This facilitates automated localization and size
estimation of individual defects. This would allow the operator to estimate the
extent and severity of corrosion damage more accurately, which is essential for
scheduling appropriate and timely maintenance actions. The approach is tested on
the fuselage panel specimen with several defect simulated at various panel
locations.
644
SENSOR NETWORK FOR THE PANEL MONITORING
For the purpose of generation and registration of ultrasonic Lamb waves, Shear
plate PZT actuators from Noliac were used. Characteristics of the particular PZT
actuator used are shown in the Table 1. The actuators are characterized by small
dimensions, low weight, and low cost. This allows installation of large and non-
expensive sensor arrays on airframe with reasonable cost and small impact on the
structure performance and aerodynamic properties.
Table 1 Characteristics of the Noliac PZT actuator.

Length Width Height Maximum Free stroke Capacitance
Type
[mm] [mm] [mm] voltage [V] [µm] [pF]
CSAP02 5 5 0.5 +/- 320 1.5 830
With respect to the most corrosion prone area of the panel, i.e. skin-stringer
contact, the sensor network topology was designed. The complete sensor network
involves three linear sensor arrays enclosing both the stringers, which are part of the
panel. The linear arrays are installed symmetrically in regards of the longitudinal
axis of stringers to assure optimal sensitivity and spatial resolution in the area of the
stringers. Each of the three linear sensor arrays consists of 8 pieces of Noliac’s
CSAP02 PZT shear plate actuator. Distance between individual array elements
(centers of the PZTs) is 60 mm. The picture of the panel specimen with installed
sensor array is shown in the Figure 2. There are also indicated locations of three
defects artificially created on one of the stringers in the picture. These artificial
defects were used for testing the defect detection and localization capabilities of the
designed sensor network and of the developed algorithm for the signal processing.
1 3 2
Figure 2 Test panel specimen with installed sensor arrays and indication of position of
artificial defects.
645
ADVANCED ALGORITHM FOR THE DEFECT MONIORING
A block diagram of the advanced signal and image processing for the automated
monitoring of structural integrity of the aircraft fuselage panel is shown in Figure 3.
A sparse sensor array enclosing the monitored area is used for collection of the data
for evaluation of actual state of the structure. Therefore, the automated defect
detection/sizing is based on evaluation of changes in direct path signals, i.e. signals
between individual pairs of PZT actuators where one PZT actuator works as source
of the ultrasonic pulse and the second one as sensor.
First, Signal Difference Coefficients (SDCs) for individual paths are calculated
evaluating differences between baseline and actual signals measured on the
monitored structure. These SDCs represent a Damage Indices (DIs), which give
information on the extent of the structure damage. Since multi-site damage can
occur on the monitored panel, indication and localization of individual defects is the
next step of the signal processing. The algorithm that we developed for this purpose
is based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) [4]. Potential defects identified by
the previous analysis are visualized using WEMAT algorithm (Weighted Spatial
Mapping of SDCs using Triangulation), which was developed for this purpose.
Finally, defect size is estimated using Artificial Neural Network, which transforms
the feature vector capturing significant features of identified defect to space of the
defect sizes. The WEMAT and the PCA based defect identification algorithms are
described below.
Figure 3 Block scheme of the developed technology for monitoring of the aircraft panel.
646
WEMAT algorithm
Potential defects are visualized using WEMAT algorithm. The SDC is a

measure of difference between the baseline signal, i.e. signal collected on defect
free structure, and actual signal. SDCs are calculated for each actuator / sensor pair
using cross-correlation function.
To determine the spatial map of the damage in the monitored area, it is assumed
that a defect changes the SDC values in the direct wave paths. The impact on the
SDC decreases with increasing distance of the defect from the direct path. Based on
this, we define a basis function
d ij ( x, y )
Bij ( x, y ) wij ( x, y ) (1)
d i ( x, y ) d j ( x, y ) ,
where x, y are spatial coordinates, i and j are indices of particular actuator and
sensor, dij is length of the direct path, dj is distance from the actuator to the point
with coordinates (x,y), dj is distance from sensor to the point with coordinates (x,y),
and wij(x,y) is 2D cosine window. The weighting window assigns lower confidence
to SDCs at the edges of the damage map and the confidence level increases with
moving to the image center. It results in suppression of false artifacts generated by
non-uniform coverage of the monitored area by the signal paths. The resulting
damage map is a sum of contributions from all the actuator/sensor pairs.
D ( x, y ) (1 SDCij ) Bwij ( x, y )
ij
(2)
.
Defect detection and localization algorithm
The damage detection and localization algorithm is based on Principle

Component Analysis (PCA) and image segmentation methods. A schematic of the
algorithm is depicted in Figure 4.
The PCA is used as a principal tool for a damage identification and localization
in the algorithm. The basis of the application of the PCA is its capability for
assessing of relations in the matrix organized data. The input matrix consists of a set
Figure 4 Block scheme of PCA based algorithm for multiple defect detection and localization.
647
of Signal Difference Coefficients (SDCs). Since any quantity reflecting degree of
the damage can be used in the algorithm, we will use general term Damage Index
(DI) instead of the SDC hereinafter, i.e. DI = SDC in our case. DIs in each input
matrix row correspond to one particular actuator / sensor pair, i.e. one measurement
path. The matrix column index represents a sequence of measurements at defined
instants of time. Thus, a set of DIs in one column describes state of the monitored
panel for the given time instant, and variation between individual columns reflects
emergence and growth of single defect between the consecutive measurements.
Time interval between two consecutive measurements (columns) should be short
enough to capture emergence of each single defect. Otherwise, two defects
emerging in one measurement interval are evaluated as just one defect. Using PCA,
principal components describing relations between DI matrix columns are
calculated. Each principal component is characterized by its own eigenvector,
which has its eigenvalue. The eigenvalues are thresholded using experimentally
defined threshold value. This provides just first few principal components
corresponding to the most significant changes of the panel state captured by the
sequence of measurements. Each selected principal component gives a column
vector of Transformed DIs (TDIs), which is attributed to one potential defect.
Each TDI vector is used for calculation of an individual WEMAT image, which
is then processed by means of common image segmentation algorithm in order to
define boundaries of the corresponding defect. Using the defect boundaries,
particular defect position is evaluated and a feature vector describing the defect is
derived. The feature vector is then utilized for defect size estimation.
EXPERIMENTAL EXAMPLE
Experimental measurements were taken in our SHM/VHM laboratory. The

laboratory is equipped with Acellent’s ScanGenie® plus switch amplifier. Noliac
CSAP02 Ceramic Shear Plate Actuator of dimension 5 mm x 5 mm and 0.5 mm
thickness were used as actuators and sensors. Tests were conducted on an aircraft
panel of size 500 mm by 500 mm and 0.8 mm thickness. The panel consists of two
lap-jointed Duralumin sheets plated by Aluminum and stiffened by two riveted and
point-welded Duralumin stringers. Three linear sensor arrays each of 8 PZT
actuators was fixed on to the surface of the panel as it is shown in the Figure 2. A
burst of 3 cycles of sine wave weighted by Gaussian window was used to excite the
transducers. Main frequency of the excitation pulse was tuned to 200 kHz and 500
kHz, respectively. Signal sampling frequency was 6 MS/s.
a) b) c)
Figure 5 Defect tested on the panel: a) hole in the rivet (Φ2.6 mm, through), b) material
ground out from the stringer, c) a hole in the spot weld (Φ2.6 mm, 2 mm depth).
648
Three defects of various sizes and their combinations were used to simulate
multi-site damage: damaged rivet (a hole with 2.6 mm diameter, depth 1 mm, 2 mm
and through), grinding out a part of material from vertical part of the stringer (four
different extents of the damage), and damaged spot weld (the same as for the rivet).
Examples of these defects are shown in the Figure 5.
a) b)
c) d)
e) f)
Figure 6 Example of results of the PCA algorithm for defect detection. a) original WEMAT
image, b) eigenvalues of the significant PCA components, c) WEMAT image for the
first principal component, d) WEMAT image for the second principal component, e)
WEMAT image for the third principal component, f) segmented WEMAT image.
649
Results of the processing for three defects located at positions as it is depicted in
the Figure 2 are shown in the Figure 6. Defect no. 1 simulates failure of a rivet by
drilling a through-the-thickness hole with diameter 2.6 mm in the panel-stiffener lap
joint; defect no. 2 represents removed material on the stiffener top, and defect no. 3
simulates point weld failure using hole with diameter 2.6 mm and 2 mm depth
drilled in the lap joint. The panel was interrogated using 200 kHz excitation pulse.
The figure shows original WEMAT image of the panel, eigenvalues of the most
significant principal components obtained by the PCA, three WEMAT images
corresponding to the selected significant principal components, and the result of the
segmentation of the original WEMAT image, which indicates presence of the
defects.
SUMMARY
A system and an algorithm for automated in-situ monitoring of corrosion

damage on Aluminum alloy aircraft fuselage panel is presented in the paper. The
system uses a number of PZT actuators/sensors arranged in the shape of sparse
distributed linear arrays. The sensor arrays are mounted on the panel surface in
order to interrogate panel integrity by means of ultrasonic guided waves. An
advanced signal/image processing method was developed for detection and
localization of the multiple defects on the panel. The method involves WEMAT
algorithm for calculation of a damage map representing spatial distribution of a
damage index on the monitored area; and an image segmentation algorithm based
on the PCA analysis. The method was tested on a specimen of aircraft panel, which
consisted of two lap-jointed Duralumin sheets stiffened by two stringers. Several
defects were simulated at various positions on the panel. The test proved capability
of the method to detect very small defect located in vicinity of relatively large
defect, so that automated and robust indication, localization and estimation of size
of multiple defects, which can emerge in the monitored area, can be achieved.
REFERENCES
1. Koch, G.H., Brongers, M.P.H., Thompson, N.G., Virmani, Y.P., Payer, J.H. 2000. "Corrosion costs
and prevention strategies in the United States", http://www.corrosioncost.com/home.html, Report
FHWA-RD-01-156, Federal Highway Admin., McLean VA, USA.
2. Krautkraemer, J., Krautkraemer, H. 1990. Ultrasonic Testing of Materials, 4th ed., Springer-Verlag,
New York.
3. NĚMCOVÁ, A., GEJDOŠ, P., ZMRZLÝ, M., DOLEŽAL, P., PACAL, B.: The study of corrosion
behaviour of Al Alloy with pure Al on the surface. In Annals of DAAAM for 2010 and proceedings.
20. – 25.10. 2010 Zadar, pp. 1019-1020, ISBN: 978-3-901509-73- 5.
4. Smith, L. I. “A tutorial on Principal Components Analysis,”
http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/cosc453/student_tutorials/principal_components.pdf, 2002.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The presented work has been supported by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Czech
Republic by grant project no. FR-TI1//274 under framework program TIP.
650
Anomalous Wave Propagation Imaging with
Adjacent Wave Subtraction: Composite
Wing Application
C. C. CHIA, J.-R. LEE, C.-Y. PARK and H.-J. SHIN
ABSTRACT
Application of the laser ultrasonic wave propagation imaging to field structures is

challenging because the structure-wave interaction generates complex wave patterns.
We developed the anomalous wave propagation imaging method with adjacent wave
subtraction to alleviate this problem in our previous work. It highlights the
propagation of anomalous waves related to structural discontinuities, and suppresses
incident waves without the need for pre-stored reference data. Based on this method,
we proposed a wing test setup for automatic NDE, and applied it to a composite wing
with manufacturing defect and then to another wing underwent bending and impact
tests. The results enhanced the visibility of the anomalous waves related to the
damages such as stringer tip debonding, skin-spar debonding, and invisible impact
damage. Based on these anomalous waves, variable time window amplitude mapping
was performed to show the location, size, and shape of the damage resemble to the
actual damage. The presence of structural elements such as spars, stringers, ribs, lugs,
inspection windows, and integrated sensors did not adversely affect the inspection
process. The proposed automatic wing NDE test setup could be expanded in a whole
hanger easily for the manufacturing quality or maintenance inspection process.
Keywords: laser ultrasonic propagation imaging system, composite aircraft wing, field-test,
anomalous wave propagation imaging
INTRODUCTION
The anomalous wave propagation imaging (AWPI) method with adjacent wave
subtraction [1] was developed to highlight the ultrasonic waves related to structural
anomaly (anomalous waves), hence facilitate the signal interpretation, and anomaly
detection and evaluation. The results from the laboratory tests were compared
favorably with the results of an immersion ultrasonic C-scan. In order to evaluate the
performance of the method in the field-test condition for real structures, a systematic
_____________
Chen Ciang Chia, Jung-Ryul Lee* and He-Jin Shin, Dept. of Aerospace Eng., Chonbuk
National University, Jeonju, Jeonbuk 561-756, Korea. *E-mail: leejrr@jbnu.ac.kr
Chan-Yik Park, Aeronautical Technology Directorate, Agency for Defense Development,
Daejeon, 305-600, Korea.
651
field-tests for the detection and evaluation of real defect and damage was conducted in
this study. A wing test setup with a built-in laser ultrasonic propagation imaging
system for automatic NDE was proposed for this field-test, as shown in Fig. 1.
FIELD-TEST SETUP
Case I: Evaluation of manufacturing defect

The first test was conducted to show the performance of the developed method
through the evaluation of manufacturing defect in a 10 m long carbon fiber reinforced
plastic (CFRP) wingbox of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The inspection area
was selected to include a skin-spar bonding repair, as shown in Fig. 2. The repair was
intended to fill the void of the adhesive detected during the manufacturing. The
ultrasonic generator was a Q-switched Nd:YAG diode-pumped solid-state laser (QL)
with a wavelength of 532 nm. The diameter of the laser beam at the exit port of the
laser head
LMS
H-beam test fixture
loading
forces
(a) (b)
Figure 1. Proposed wing test setup for automatic NDE. (LMS: laser mirror scanner)
CFRP wingbox with inspection area

repaired adhesive void.
(a)
sensor skin
position
spar web
spar flange area
inspection area
sign of
repair
repaired region attempt
sensor bonded
(b) (c) on spar web
Figure 2. AWPI inspection for the evaluation of a bonding repair.
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laser head was 0.7 mm, and its divergence was 1.6 mrad. The size of the inspection
area and the fluence of the QL were set to 300 mm × 150 mm and 27 mJ/cm2,
respectively. Optimum scanning grid with a pitch of Δ=1.0 mm and laser pulse
repetition frequency (PRF) of 1 kHz were used throughout this study after considering
the inspection speed, the resolution of the results, and the reverberation effect. The
ultrasonic sensor selected for this study was an omni-directional, amplifier-integrated,
broadband piezoelectric transducer with a cutoff frequency of 2 MHz. The signals
were filtered using a 200-320 kHz bandpass, and were sampled using sampling time
interval T=0.6 µs and signal length N=500. Consistent N=500 was used in this study.
Case II: Suitability for structures with integrated transducers

The rest of the tests were conducted on a CFRP wing testbed of an UAV
embedded with transducers for the purposes of integrated structural health monitoring
(ISHM). Case II was conducted when the testbed was in intact condition to show that
the developed method functions well even when large PZT transducers exist in the
testbed. Hence, the inspection area was selected to include three bare PZT elements
with a diameter of 18 mm bonded between the stringers, as shown in Fig. 3. These
PZT elements did not participated in the AWPI inspection, but were merely a type of
material discontinuity in this study. The ultrasonic sensor used for this inspection was
temporarily bonded onto the internal surface of the wing skin at the position shown in
Fig. 3. The size of the inspection area, the fluence of the QL, the bandpass, and the
sampling time interval were set to 300 mm × 300 mm, 37 mJ/cm2, 240-290 kHz, and
T=0.4 µs, respectively.
Case III: Evaluation of real debonding damage

Case III was conducted after the wing underwent a series of destructive bending
tests and damages were generated near the rear spar, front spar, and the landing gear
spar. The inspection area was selected at a damage hot spot, as shown in Fig. 4. This
inspection area was selected because an integrated ultrasonic sensor (IS1) was
available at the spar web, and more importantly, it included many other structural
elements, including the boundary of the inspection window, rib flange, and the lug. It
was selected intentionally to show that the high density of structural elements would
not interfere with the normal AWPI inspection. The size of the inspection area, the
fluence of the QL, the bandpass frequency, and the sampling time interval were set to
200 mm × 200 mm, 34 mJ/cm2, 60-200 kHz, and T=0.6 µs, respectively.
leading edge access door
temporary
stringers embedded sensor
transducers for this
for other inspection
Case I application
between
temporary stringers
sensor
rib
(a) (b)
Figure 3. AWPI inspection for a wing testbed with embedded transducers.
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(b)
(a) inspection
rib flange area

window
rivet
IS1= integrated sensor 1 IS1 lug

Figure 4. AWPI inspection for the evaluation of a real skin-spar debonding damage.
Case IV: Evaluation of real impact damage

Composite structures are susceptible to impact damage, which is also true for the
CRFP testbed used in this study. Impact tests were performed to test the impact
resistance of the testbed to the limit, and to validate the capability of the developed
AWPI method for real impact damage evaluation. The impact site was selected near
one of the most complex areas of the testbed, as shown in Fig. 5. Three impact events
tabulated in Table 1 were made between the rib and stringers using an indenter of 4
mm diameter. Two integrated sensors were available for the inspection of the impact
damages. The IS2 and IS3 were integrated at the web of the rib, 30 mm from the upper
skin, as shown in Fig. 5. The redundancy of the sensor within a small region of the
wing was designed to crosscheck the results obtained from two sensors. The size of
the inspection area, the fluence of the QL, the bandpass filtering, and the sampling
time interval were set to 300 mm × 300 mm, 75 mJ/cm2, 60-200 kHz, and T=0.8 µs,
respectively.
30 mm from ES2
rivet
top skin
IS3 ES2 IS2 IS3
stringer E1 E3 E2
rib
(b) Landing gear door opening

IS2
E1, E2, E3 = Impact event 1, 2 and 3.
rivet IS1, IS2 = integrated sensor 1 and 2.
300 x 300 ES2 = external sensor 2.
(a) All markings were removed before scan.
Figure 5. AWPI inspection for the evaluation of real impact damages.
Table 1. Details of impact events.

Event Energy Visual inspection
E1 15 J Invisible
E2 15 J Invisible
E3 25 J 13 mm diameter puncture
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RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Case I: Detection and evaluation of manufacturing defect

The freeze-frames of the AWPI movie at 82.8, 112.8, and 142.8 µs are given in
Figs. 6(a) to (c), respectively. The freeze-frames show the propagation of the residual
incident wave but no anomalous wave, which means all structural elements were in
intact condition. For defect evaluation, the variable time window amplitude map [1]
(VTWAM) was generated. The VTWAM in Fig. 6(d) shows high amplitude for the
region of good skin-spar bonding, but low amplitude near the repaired region, which
suggests that the void was not filled with enough adhesive during the repair. This
result proved that the proposed method could be used for the detection and evaluation
of the adhesive void defect commonly found in composite structures.
Case II: Suitability for structures with integrated transducers

The freeze-frames of the AWPI movie at 74, 82, and 114 µs are given in Figs. 7(a)
to (c), respectively. The residual of the incident wave is shown as if emanating from
the signal sensing position, and its encounter with the stringer tips generated scattering
waves as shown in Fig. 7(a). In addition, its encounter with the bare PZT elements as
no anomalous wave no anomalous wave
(a) (b)
no anomalous wave repair attempt
(c) (d) adhesive void
Figure 6. Results of field-test Case I. (a) to (c) Freeze-frames of the AWPI movie
show no anomalous wave, (d) the adhesive void shown clearly in VTWAM image.
(a) (b) (c)

scattering
due to two
stringer tips scattering
scattering due to three
due to the transducers
center
transducer
scattering due
to the center
transducer
Figure 7. Freeze-frames of the AWPI movie at (a) 74, (b) 82, and (c) 114 µs.
655
added masses generated another scattering wavefields, as shown in Figs. 7(b) and (c).
The freeze-frames show no occurrence of confining wave within the PZT transducers.
In other words, they were detected as simple structural discontinuities. This was an
encouraging result because it suggests that the AWPI method can be used to inspect
smart structures with integrated PZT elements. No confining wave is shown in the
freeze-frame after the residual of the incident wave swept through the area of
inspection. This result also proves that the system works well in the field environment.
Case III: Evaluation of real debonding damage

The freeze-frame of the AWPI movie at wave propagation time of 120 µs is given
in Fig. 8(a). It shows the anomalous wave at the bottom left. A part of the anomalous
wave with higher amplitude was due to the direct impingement of the laser on the IS1
and the lead wire used for this inspection. Also shown in this freeze-frame are the
confining wave for a small damage and the silhouette of the lug. The VTWAM in Fig.
8(b) shows clearly two damage events (with bright colors), corresponding to the rear
spar-skin debonding. The high amplitude due to the sensor and the lead wire is shown
in red, and the high amplitude due to a part of the lug is also shown. These results
show that the AWPI combined with the VTWAM method is effective in evaluating
the debonding damages, and the boundary of the inspection window, rib flange, and
lug would not adversely affect the inspection.
Case IV: Evaluation of real impact damage

For inspection based on IS2, the freeze-frame of the AWPI movie at wave
propagation time 168 µs is given in Fig. 9(a). It shows the confining anomalous waves
at the edges of the stringers and the impact location E1, which implies damages at
those locations. The VTWAM is shown in Fig. 9(b) with the outlines of the internal
structural elements. The VTWAM show two damages related to impact E1 and E3,
but no sign of damage for impact E2. In addition to the impact damages, it reveals the
debonding in the stringer edges in the wing tip direction. Since the damages in the
stringer tip were not found in inspection Case II before structural loading tests, it
provides strong evidence that the upward bending of the testbed at the wing tip
(a) (b)
rib flange area
high amplitude due to the

direct impingement of the
laser on the sensor high amplitude due to rivet
spar flange area

confining wave
due to debonding debonding
confining wave high

due to lug amplitude
due to lug
high amplitude due to sensor

Figure 8. Results of field-test Case III. (a) Freeze-frames of the AWPI movie at 120 µs,
(b) VTWAM showing two debonding damages.
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(a) (b)
rivet
debonding debonding
impact damage impact damage
rivet
debonding
debonding
confining waves
rivet
debonding
debonding 11 mm
Figure 9. Results of Case IV using IS2. (a) Freeze-frames of the AWPI movie at 168
µs, (b) VTWAM image showing six debonding damages and two impact damages.
generated debonding at the stringer tips. In fact, this type of damage is notorious in the
stiffened panels widely used in the aerospace industry. Three more areas with high
amplitudes are shown in the VTWAM at the side boundaries of the stringers. We
believe that stringer-skin debonding also occurred at these locations.
For the crosscheck based on IS3, the freeze-frame of the AWPI movie at wave
propagation time 220 µs is given in Fig. 10(a). Similar to the previous cases, the
confining anomalous waves are also shown in the freeze-frame at the edges of the
stringers and the location of impact E1 and E2. For better damage evaluation, the
VTWAM was generated and shown in Fig. 10(b). Comparison of Fig. 9(b) and Fig.
10(b) shows good agreement in the size of the damages. The size of the damage
exhibiting the maximum difference varied between 11 mm and 7 mm. The significant
of these two VTWAMs is the consistency of the presence and location of the damages,
which proved that the inspection is almost independent of the sensor position.
(a) (b)
debonding
rivet
debonding
impact damage impact damage

confining waves
rivet
debonding
debonding
confining waves
rivet
debonding
debonding 7 mm
Figure 10. Results of Case IV using IS3. (a) Freeze-frames of the AWPI movie at 220
µs, (b) VTWAM showing the same damages.
657
Inspection based on both IS2 and IS3 did not showed the presence of damage due to
impact E2 (see Fig. 5(a) for the event location). This suggests that impact E2 did not
damage the testbed. The impact energy of E1 and E2 was 15 J, hence it can be
deduced that the critical impact energy for the wing skin was 15 J.
CONCLUSION
We proposed a test setup with a built-in laser ultrasonic propagation imaging

system for automatic NDE of wing structures. The proposed system could be
expanded for laser-based NDE in a whole hanger easily. An AWPI method with
adjacent wave subtraction as an on-site in-situ NDE algorithm was adopted for the
proposed system. The method highlighted the propagation of anomalous waves related
to a structural discontinuity, and suppressed complex incident waves without the need
for pre-stored reference data. It was applied in the field-test of a real CFRP wingbox
for the evaluation of a common adhesive void manufacturing defect, and to another
real CFRP wing integrated with ultrasonic sensors at structural damage hot spots that
underwent bending and impact tests.
Our results proved that the system works well for on-site in-situ evaluation of
manufacturing defects and the evaluation of real debonding and impact damages. It is
particularly effective for composite damage evaluation by enhancing the visibility of
the confining wave in area-type composite damage, including stringer tip debonding,
skin-spar debonding, and invisible impact damage. Based on the understanding of
these anomalous waves, the VTWAM method was applied to visualize the location,
size, and shape of the damages resemble to the actual damages. The results show that
the common adhesive void defect can be evaluated even when there was no
anomalous wave. Other results show that the skin-spar debonding damage was always
located between two riveted locations, which inferred the skin buckling during
bending test. Also, the notorious stringer tip debonding damage due to wing bending
was detected, located, and size-evaluated. Another important finding from the
experiment was the critical impact energy: 15 J for this composite wing. The presence
of structural elements or features such as spars, stringers, ribs, lugs, inspection
windows, and even surface mounted PZT elements did not adversely affect the AWPI-
based inspection process. These results prove that the AWPI method with adjacent
wave subtraction combined with the VTWAM is very effective, and has high potential
as an on-site NDE method for other complex engineering structures.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We performed this study under the applied research project (UC080019JD) which
is supported by ADD (Agency for Defense Development) in Korea. This work was
also supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant (2011-
0010489) funded by the Korea government (MEST) and by Korea Ministry of Land,
Transport and Maritime Affairs as Haneul Project.
REFERENCES
1. Lee, J.-R., Chia, C. C., Park, C.-Y. and Jeong, H. 2011. “Laser ultrasonic anomalous wave
propagation imaging method with adjacent wave subtraction: algorithm,” (submitted to Optics &
Laser Technology.)
658
CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURES: FIELD
EVALUATION AND VALIDATION
659
Self Powered Wireless Sensor Network for
Structural Bridge Health Prognosis:
Achievements in the First Two Years
V. GODÍNEZ, A. POLLOCK, M. GONZALEZ, S. MOMENI,
R. GOSTAUTAS, R. FUSTOS, B. NEWLIN, D. INMAN,
J. FARMER, S. PRIYA, P. ZIEHL, J. CAICEDO, B. ZARATE,
L. YU, V. GIURGIUTIU and A. NANNI
ABSTRACT
In this paper, recent advances achieved on the development of a new system

capable of continuously monitoring the structural health of steel and concrete bridges
using wireless sensors are presented. This system will be able to harvest its own power
from structural vibration and wind energy and, based on the data collected and on
embedded algorithms, assess and predict the health of the structure. In order to reach
this objective, this five-year project includes a series of tasks that encompass a variety
of developments such as developing an ultra low power AE system, energy harvester
hardware and especial sensors for passive and active acoustic wave detection.
Thorough studies on acoustic emission produced by corrosion on reinforced concrete
and by crack propagation on steel components, and the development of models that
correlate AE data with component remaining life are also part of the project activities.
This project is funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
through its Technology Innovation Program (TIP) under grant # 70NANB9H007.
INTRODUCTION
In 2007 the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) National Bridge Inventory

(NBI) classified 72,524 of the nation’s bridges as structurally deficient. This, in
addition to the fact that about 10,000 bridges are being constructed, replaced or
rehabilitated annually in the United States, put a large strain on the resources assigned
to inspection of these bridges.
Valery Godinez, Adrian Pollock, Migue l Gonzalez, Richard Fustos, Brett Newlin, Mistras
Group Inc., 195 Clarksville Rd., Princeton Junction, NJ 08550, U.S.A
Daniel Inman, Justin Farmer, Shashank Priya, Virginia Tech, Mechanica l Engineering
Department, 100 Randolph Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061, U.S.A.
Paul Ziehl, Juan Caicedo, Boris Zarate, Lucy Yu, Victor Giurgiutiu, University of South
Carolina, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, 300 Main Street, Columbia, SC
29208, U.S.A.
Antonio Nanni, University of Miami, Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Department, Coral Gables, FL 33024, U.S.A.
661
In turn, the result is a lack of data that bridge owners need to make informed
decisions for maintenance prioritization [1]. As part of the national response to this
critical national need of the aging civil infrastructure, NIST funded the project “Self
Powered Wireless Sensor Network for Structural Health Prognosis.”
For this project, Mistras Group Inc. (MG), Virginia Tech (VT), University of
South Carolina (USC) and University of Miami (UM) proposed an ambitious plan
with two major goals: (a) transforming unused ambient structural energy into power
using energy harvesters for powering a newly developed data fusion wireless sensor
node, and (b) interpretation of fused sensor data for identifying structural damage
and deterioration though specially developed models and algorithms [2]. At the
conclusion of the project, the group will deliver a commercially ready self-powered
data fusion wireless sensor node with built-in predictive models and decision
algorithms for bridge component health prognosis.
During the first two years of this five-year project, the advances have been
substantial in several of the project tasks and can be summarized as follows:
 Development and test of an ultra-low power 4-channel AE wireless node
with capability for eight additional parametric inputs including strain gages.
 Development and test of a windmill with a power output of 166 mW at 7
mph wind speed with a cut-in wind speed of 3.8 mph.
 Successfully developed field-deployable prototype to interface with low
power 4-channel AE wireless node.
 Test of novel piezoelectric wafers as AE sensors in passive and active
modes.
 Test of several steel specimens for crack growth during fatigue test.
 Investigation and development of preliminary relationships between AE
and crack growth parameters.
 Development and implementation of a prognosis model to determine the
stress intensity range based on acoustic emission data.
 AE data collected and preliminary data analysis conducted in two bridges
using the prototype AE wireless nodes.
As the project goes into the third year, a series of preliminary field tests are
planned for the prototype wireless node integrated with the energy harvester. It is
expected this integrated prototype will be deployed in several bridges before the end
of 2011. Also, several prototype energy harvesters that combine nonlinear vibration of
piezoelectric elements and electromagnetic induction will be tested and eventually
integrated with the wireless nodes. As the fatigue and corrosion tests progresses and
the data are used to improve the prognosis models, these will provide a series of
algorithms that eventually will be embedded in the wireless node.
WIRELESS SENSOR NODE
The data acquisition platform being developed is a wireless node with Acoustic
Emission (AE) sensors, inputs parametric sensors and strain gages. The node also
includes on board signal processing and analysis capabilities, signal conditioning
electronics, power management circuits, wireless data transmission element and
inputs for energy harvesting units. The sensing elements act in passive (AE) and
active modes (Acousto-Ultrasonics).
662
The multiple parametric inputs are used to connect different sensors such as
temperature, strain, PH, etc. The outputs of all these sensors will be combined and
analyzed at the sensor node in order to minimize the data transmission rate which
consumes significant amount of power. Power management circuits are planned to
reduce the data collection intervals through selective data acquisition strategies in
order to minimize the power consumption of the wireless node.
4-Channel AE Node
Initially, a limited platform with one AE channel was developed, tested in the
laboratory and demonstrated at the 1st year review meeting [3]. It was decided to
use this one-channel node as a learning step to test the power consumption
reduction strategies and the wireless transmission protocols, and then extend the
capability of the node into a 4-AE channel node. In this way, the potential area
covered by a single node was increased and location capabilities added. These
increased the capability to track the evolution of defects in bridge components. The
newly designed 4-AE channel wireless node was designed, built and laboratory
tested [4]. The technical specifications of this node, designated by MG as the1284
AE wireless node, are shown in Table 1. Figure 1 shows the 1284 node in a weather
proof box with sensors and a notebook computer with the USB wireless receiver.
The prototype 1284 node was demonstrated in January 2011 during the
project’s second year review meeting. The node was packed with a set of
rechargeable batteries and it was installed on a small bridge undergoing repairs. The
netbook computer, with the USB wireless receiver and running the acquisition
program AEWin was located in a pier approximately 150 feet from the 1284 node
position, was used to receive the data collected. The data was produced by several
center punches done on one of the bridge girders where the sensors were located.
TABLE I. 1284 WIRELESS NODE SPECIFICATIONS.

Board Size 4in x 5.5in
Weight Less than 0.5 lbs
Power Requirements 5-18 volts (2 inputs, largest will power the node)
170 mW at full power (at 10 or less hits/sec)
Power Consumption 50 mW in sleep mode with parametric wakeup
10 mW in sleep mode with timer wakeup
Operating Temperature -40˚F to 158˚F (-40˚ to 75˚C)
AE bandwidth 1 kHz to 250 kHz
Adjustable voltage, 5 to 40 volts, and toneburst
Acousto-Ultrasonic Pulser (frequency, number of cycles) on each channel
Parametric Channels 6 (voltage & current), 1 specific for strain gage
Memory Card SD Memory card slot for mass storage
663
Figure 1. 4-channel acoustic emission wireless node with 4 sensors attached and
netbook computer with USB wireless receiver.
AE Sensors
Several AE sensors have been used in tests during the two first years of the
project. These are low power piezoelectric PK6 sensors, resonant at 60kHz, for
concrete samples, and PK15 sensors, resonant at 150kHz, for steel samples. These
sensors are manufactured by MG and they are regularly used in AE installations.
Even though they are proven in field installations, these sensors are more sensitive
to signals that produce out-of-plain particle motion in the samples under
monitoring. However, a large percentage of the energy released by propagating
cracks in steel plates produces to in-plane particle motion. Thus a sensor with better
sensitivity to this type of displacement is needed. Therefore a serious effort is
underway to habilitate Piezo-Wafers Acoustic Sensors (PWAS) as AE sensors [5].
Preliminary results indicate that although PWAS show lower general sensitivity
than regular PK sensors, they show better sensitivity to simulated in-plane
displacements. Figure 2 shows RF signals produced by simulated cracking in a
0.25” thick steel plate, as detected by a PWAS and a PK15 sensor. The results are
encouraging and show PWAS have the potential for becoming a good AE sensor.
However, before PWAS can be used as commercial AE sensors, some limitations
have to be resolved: vulnerability to electromagnetic interference (EMI), complex
installation, decrease of sensitivity with sample thickness and packaging. Solutions
to these limitations are currently being investigated and it is expected that a field
deployable PWAS AE sensor will be ready at the end of the 3rd year of the project.
ENERGY HARVESTING
Energy harvesting is a very important component of the project and the

advancement in this area during the first two years has been excellent.
664
Figure 2. Comparison of "in plane" RF signals
detected by PWAS and PK15 sensor.
Two different approaches to energy harvesting were investigated: wind and a

combination of electromagnetic-piezoelectrice-vibration energy harvesting. In both
cases several prototypes were designed built and tested. In the area of wind energy
harvesting, two prototypes were built: the first one, a traditional horizontal axis design
was demonstrated to produce 166mW of regulated power at a wind speed of 7 mph
with a cut-in speed of 3.8 mph. The second one, a vertical axis contactless type was
able to produced 9 mW at 7mph [6]. Both prototypes are shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Wind energy harvesters developed in the first two years of the project:
(a) Horizontal axis windmill and (b) vertical axis windmill.
665
In the case of the electromagnetic-piezoelectrice-vibration prototype harvester, over
10mW unregulated power was generated at accelerations of 0.1g and 7.2 Hz, typical
vibration values for a concrete bridge.
According to Table I, the improved hardware platform will consume
approximately 170mW, which could be provided by a combination of the horizontal
axis windmill and the electromagnetic-piezoelectrice-vibration prototype, provided
there is a constant 7mph wind. This assumption is unrealistic in most of the sites
considered for deployment of the system. Therefore, other energy harvesting
alternatives need to be explored. That is why during the 3rd year of the project, the
focus will be in investigating nonlinear effects on hybrid harvesters, which combine
electromagnetic with piezoelectric energy harvesting through random vibration. It is
expected that this type of harvester will increase energy generation by orders of
magnitude compared to simple vibration harvesters.
CRACK PROPAGATION AND C ORROSION DETECTION WITH

ACOUSTIC EMISSION
As indicated in the introduction section, the wireless node under development will
have built-in analysis and prognosis capabilities, based in a combination of AE and
external parametric sensor signals. In order to develop those capabilities, correlations
between the AE released by propagating damage such as cracking in steel and
concrete bridges, or by corrosion of steel reinforcement, as in the case of concrete
bridges, needed to be established. For this purpose extensive experimental work has
been undertaken in these two areas.
Crack Propagation in Steel Specimens
A series of notched steel specimens were fabricated and submitted to fatigue

cycling with the objective of growing cracks in a control manner and to monitor the
growth by an array of AE sensors mounted on the specimens. The data obtained
indicates that the increase of cyclic loads as well as the critical cracking level can
cause a rapid increase in AE signals as shown in Figure 4.
The data collected during these early fatigue experiments was used to develop a
model which associates absolute energy rate with crack growth parameters. This
model is able to predict fatigue life in terms of stress intensity factor range versus
load cycles as shown in Figure 5 [7]. It is expected that as more data is available
from upcoming tests, the model will become more robust and will be able to predict
remaining life of steel bridge components based on the AE activity detected while it
is monitoring in service using the 1284 AE wireless node.
Corrosion monitoring
Over 20 steel-reinforced concrete samples, cracked and un-cracked, have been

tested under accelerated corrosion tests and monitored with AE with the aim of
detecting the early stages of corrosion before it produces cracking in the concrete.
666
Figure 4. AE activity as function of cycling load of steel specimens
The AE parameter of interest for the early detection of corrosion is signal strength,
which correlates very well with the amount of impressed electric current passing
through the corrosion cell.
In addition, other AE parameters such as signal amplitude and absolute AE energy
are being observed for potential correlation with the different corrosion stages.
Preliminary results show that AE monitoring does detect corrosion earlier than
conventional electrochemical techniques, especially in un-cracked specimens. It is
expected that correlations between AE and the presence and severity of active
corrosion will be developed and incorporated into the 1284 node hardware calculation
capabilities. In this way, the 1284 will be able to determine whether active corrosion is
happening in reinforced concrete, and what is the severity of it.
350
Experimental Results
300 K = 1 + 2*u
3
2 3
K = 1 + 2*u + 3*u + 4*u
Stress Intensity (MPa*m0.5)
250 2 3 4
K = 1 + 2*u + 3*u + 4*u + 5*u
200
150
100
50
0
1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7
Number of cycles 4
x 10
Figure 5. Prognosis of Stress Intensity Range as a function of AE activity and

number of fatigue cycles.
667
CONCLUSIONS
At the end of the project’s second year, significant advances have taken place in the
development of the data acquisition platform for self-powered wireless node for
structural health prognosis. A four AE channel system has been developed and
demonstrated, and will be ready for field test during the second half of the project’s
third year.
The PWAS sensors show good potential to be implemented as AE sensors due their
sensitivity to in-plane displacement produced by crack growth. However, several
limitations of this type of sensor need to be overcome in order to substitute
traditional AE sensors.
Extensive tests have been completed in the area of crack growth and accelerated
corrosion monitoring with AE. The results indicate that good correlations between
AE and damage occurrence have been found. It is expected that these correlations
will evolve into solid models that will predict remaining life of concrete and steel
bridge components. These models will be incorporated into the hardware of the AE
wireless nodes.
It is important to mention that the impact of this project extends beyond the area
of bridge health monitoring. Several wireless prototype nodes have been already
requested for applications on offshore oil platforms, composite ships, combat
deployable bridges and wind turbines. Also, a prototype rotational motion energy
harvester for applications on turbine wind blades is being developed.
REFERENCES
1. Friedland, I. M., Ghasemi, H. and Chase, S.B. “The FHWA Long-Term Bridge Performance
Program” F, Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center, McLean, VA. 2007.
2. Godinez, V., Inman, D.J., Giurgiutiu, V., Zielh, P. and Nanni, A. 2011. “Recent Advances in the
Development of a Self Powered Wireless Sensor Network for Structural Health Prognosis,”
presented at the SPIE Smart Structures/NDE Conference, March 7-10, 2011.
3. Godinez, V. April 2011. “Self Powered Wireless Sensor Network for Structural Health
Prognosis,” First Quarterly Report Year 3, Mistras Group, Inc. Princeton Junction, NJ.
4. Godinez, V. December 2010. “Self Powered Wireless Sensor Network for Structural Health
Prognosis,” Fourth Quarterly Report Year 2 Mistras Group, Inc. Princeton Junction, NJ.
5. Yu, L., Momeni, S., Godinez, V., and Giurgiutiu, V. 2011. “Adaptation of PWAS Transducers
for Acoustic Emission Sensors,” presented at the SPIE Smart Structures/NDE Conference,
March 7-10, 2011.
6. Erturk A. and Inman, D.J. 2011. “Piezoelectric Power Generation for Civil Infrastructure
Systems,” presented at the SPIE Smart Structures/NDE Conference, March 7-10, 2011.
7. Zarate, B.A., Caicedo, J.M., Zielh, P. and Yu, J. 2011. “Model Updating and Prognosis of
Acoustic Emission Data in Compact Test Specimens under Cyclic Loading,” presented at the
SPIE Smart Structures/NDE Conference, March 7-10, 2011.
668
Fatigue Crack Monitoring with an Ultrasonic
Sparse Array on a Real Steel Structure
Component
M. VOSPERNIG, R. HEUER and M. REITERER
ABSTRACT
Based on the fundamental knowledge of guided waves (GW) and structural

health monitoring (SHM) a technique is presented, that monitors the structural
changes at the hotspot of a running steel component fatigue test. The fatigue test
is applied to a cantilever I-beam vibrating at its first natural frequency. A sparse
array, consisting of four capsuled piezoelectric (PZT) sensors, is used to detect
the initial flaw at a weld on the web of the beam and records the subsequent
crack growth. The influence of the mechanical stress in the structure to the
ultrasonic recordings is estimated. Thus the signals can be evaluated and the
signal changes regarding to a flaw are useful. These changes are used to
determine when and consequently where a flaw appears. The ellipse algorithm is
used to image the localization and the growth of the crack.
INTRODUCTION
The field of SHM and its concepts to integrate sensor systems in a structure
and monitoring permanently its actual state has increased enormity. Within this
field the GW methods have their distinct space with the focus on the detection
of flaws in thin-walled flat structures. Conventionally PZT-elements are attached
to the surface of the structure to transmit and receive ultrasonic waves traveling
over respectable distances [1] [2].
An application on civil structures is convenient to metallic components with its
big scale and plate like structures. Cyclic loads lead to fatigue problems affected
by notches, especially welds, that disturb the structure. The initial flaws are not
Michael Vospernig, RED Bernard GmbH, Nordbahnstr. 36/Top 2.7, A-1020 Vienna, Austria
Rudolf Heuer, Vienna University of Technology, Department of Civil Engineering, Center of
Mechanics and Structural Dynamics, Karlsplatz 13/E2063, A-1040 Vienna, Austria
Michael Reiterer, RED Bernard GmbH, Nordbahnstr. 36/Top 2.7, A-1020 Vienna, Austria
669
discovered by visual inspection and hence a sensitive technique, to monitor these
hot spots, is of high interest. Typical strategies to approach this problem are
presented in [3] and [4].
The intention of the present work is to introduce a sparse-guided wave sensor
network to the hot spot of a running fatigue test to estimate the initial flaw followed
by monitoring the crack growth. Regarding to a long term application on a real
structure exposed to climatically changes and cyclic loadings, the influence of
temperature effects and mechanical stress to the structure and the sensing system
have to be investigated. The influence of temperature changes that affect the
ultrasonic signals is documented in [5]. This present work focuses on the influence
of the mechanical stress due to a vibrating structure on the recorded sensor signals.
The host structure for the sparse array sensor network is a flange of HE-A 160 I-
beam. The cantilever beam represents a post of a noise barrier for high speed trains.
A large scale laboratory setup has been built up to perform fatigue tests on six HE-
A 160 specimens and provoke crack appearance at a weld. The sensor signals were
continuously recorded during the running fatigue test and also continued when the
test was stopped. The tests were terminated when a crack was visible or after 5
million load cycles at the fatigue endurance limit. The recorded signals were post
processed after each test to identify the initial flaw and its behavior.
FATUIGE CRACK MONITORING
Fatigue Test
As a consequence of problems with the fatigue test setup introduced in [6] the
experimental equipment for the cantilever bearing was redesigned. Six specimens
were clamped in an upright position with hydraulic jacks to prevent the fatigue of
the bearing. The specimens are 3.0m long HE-A 160 I-beams with a 15mm rod in
diameter welded on the flange of the beam representing the disturbing hot spot (see
Figure 1a).
As described in [6] the excitation is carried out with a linear motor at the first
natural frequency of every specimen in the range of 9.12 to 9.18Hz. Due to
harmonic excitation a maximal deflection at the top of the beam results, which is
calibrated by the stroke of the motor to estimate the stress at the flange of the beam
close to the clamped support. The test is monitored by a displacement transducer at
the post top, strain gauges in the fatigue zone and a PT100 temperature sensor (see
Figure 1b). The cyclic loaded stress range is kept constant by increasing the stroke
of the motor or decreasing the frequency as a consequence of the system softening
and a loss of deflection. Data acquisition is done by a conventional PC.
Sparse-Guided Wave Sensor Network
A detail of the size and layout of the array is given in Figure 1b. This array uses
the 9.0 mm thick flange of the beam as wave guide and is the result of an
optimization process regarding to the sensor signals. For the transmitting and
receiving of the ultrasonic waves, DuraAct [7] mechanical capsule PZT elements
were used with an active size of 10x10mm and a thickness 0.2mm. The
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(a) (b) 160 mm
LinMot Fatigue zone
0 x
w(t) F(t) T1/R4 T2/R3
transmitter
y
100 mm
additional
mass weld crack
weld
support rod
50 mm 50 mm
100 mm
3000 mm
receiver
HEA160
R1 R2
9 mm flange
PT100
strain gauges
hydraulic
jacks
Figure 1. (a) Cantilever beam with single mass oscillator, (b) detail of fatigue zone with sensors
optimization of the array is achieved by aligning the sensors with the edges of the
flange to reduce the reflection caused by a transmitting wave at every edge of the
beam. The size of the sensor is selected by the half wave length of the A0 mode (vg
=3150m/s, λ=18mm) of a Lamb wave for a 9 mm plate and an excitation frequency
of the transmitter at 166.6 kHz [6]. The A0 mode was selected to achieve shorter
wave lengths with respect to the sensitivity of the sensor system. To excite mainly
the A0 mode the transmitter consists of two PZT elements attached to both sides of
the flange surfaces (see Figure 1a). By exciting the elements simultaneously with
2.5 Sinus cycles phase shifted to each other the S0 mode will be suppressed.
Data acquisition is performed by means of the commercial SHM System USPC
5000 [8]. The system consists of a portable PC that communicates with a
transmitter-receiver unit (see Figure 2). This unit shows 8 transmitting and 8
receiving channels which stores all 64 possible combinations, of every
measurement. For this sparse array 3 actuator-sensor paths are in use regarding if
Figure 2. Commercial SHM system USPC 5000 with transmitter-receiver unit.
671
T1 or T2 is actuated (see Figure 1b). Additionally a simple multiplexer is used to
split the signal and to further phase shift one of the multiplexed signals to excite the
A0 Lamb wave mode with the two PZT element transmitter. The 3 respectively 6
actuator-sensor paths are recorded every 5 minutes or 2739 load cycles during the
running fatigue test.
Signal Processing Conventions
To harmonize the collected data from the ultrasonic receivers post processing is
performed with MATLAB. Best practice guidelines are documented in [2] and [5],
furthermore the author goes along with the SHM axioms proposed in [9]. Generally
all recorded signals are bandpass filtered and are described as sik(t), where i is the
index of the actuator-sensor path and k the index of the recorded signal beginning
with the start of the fatigue test. To calibrate the sensor signals among each other
the first arriving wave pack within the signal is normalized to amplitude 1. The
envelope of a signal is performed by the Hilbert transform and is called Sik(t). A
subtracted signal, rik(t), is defined as
rik(t) = si0(t) –sik(t) (1)

and
Rik(t) = IH{rik(t)}I (2)
where si0(t) stands for the baseline signal of the treat actuator-sensor path and Rik(t)
is the envelope of the subtracted signal.
BASELINE SIGNAL
For the experimental application two kinds of measurements have to be

distinguished. Signals that are recorded when the beam is vibrating and those that
are recorded when the beam is in a static position. It is evident that the vibration of
the beam affects the ultrasonic sensor system which can be interpreted as noise in
the signals. Also the mechanical stress caused by the bending beam on the PZT-
sensors lead to changes in the amplitudes but not in the phases of the signal. Hence
two kinds of baseline signals are defined. One is recorded before the test is started
and theoretically no flaws are present in the fatigue zone. The second is computed
by the mean of the first 25 recordings after the fatigue test is started. In summary
every actuator-sensor path shows two baseline signals one as reference for
recordings when the beam was vibrating s0k(t) and the other for those when the
fatigue test was interrupted s0k(t).
SPARSE ARRAY ALGORITHM
In order to locate the defects within the array on the flange of the beam a
triangulation with the ellipse algorithm [10] is performed. The imaging process is
complemented with the dispersion compensation [11] for the A0 Lamb wave mode
to transform the sensor signals from the time to the space domain. The 2D
technique is assumed to the section of the flange demonstrated in Figure 1b. The
image coordinates origin is defined in the upper left corner with a resolution of
672
1mm for the dimensions x and y. In the following the imaging process is described
and summarized.
After the subtracted signals rik(t) are computed the dispersion compensation is
performed and results the new function qik(x). The envelope Qik(x) is transformed to
a 2D function by calculating
,

.
. (3)
representing an array of concentric ellipses for the i-th actuator sensor path. The
coordinates xt, yt, xr,i and yr,i denote the position of the transmitter and the receiver
on the flange. Equation (3) is substituted in Qik(x) and lead to
Hik(x,y) = Qik(x = di(x,y)), (4)

hence

, ∑
, (5)

is the final image of the k-th measurement. For the chosen array configuration
minimum of 3 actuator-senor paths is used to quantify the sensitivity.
In the following the results of one of the six tested beams is presented. Beam
number 5 was tested at a first eigenfrequency of 9.13Hz, an average deflection on
top of the beam of 12mm and an average flexural stress measured at the position of
the strain gauges of ±80N/mm2. The appearance of a crack at the flange was
detected at the notch of the right weld (see Figure 1b). The transmitter receiver
configuration was chosen as demonstrated in Figure 1b with T1 as transmitter and 3
actuator-sensor paths. This configuration is preferable for the localization of flaws
on the right array half, because the triangulation algorithm is more sensitive to
flaws that appear not to close to the direct actuator-sensor path. Due to the focus on
estimating the influence of the mechanical stress of the beam to the sensor array
temperature effects were avoided. To eliminate these effects to the ultrasonic waves
the temperature in the test house was kept on a level of approximately 16°C and
was varying around ±2°C during the test. The temperature was recorded in the
vicinity of the sparse sensor array.
Results from the non vibrating beam
As described in the former sections the sensor signals were benchmarked to the
initial signal. In Figure 3 the subtracted signals of the 3 actuator-sensor paths after
86, 268 and 1118 measurements, respectively, 243599, 769524 and 2634278 load
cycles are demonstrated. Physically no flaw appeared between measurement 86
(blue lines) and 268 (green lines) although a slight change in the subtracted signals
is recognizable. This is attributed to structural changes in the crossover waveguide,
adhesive and the PZT-elements. Results from other tested beams, where no crack
after 5 million load cycle appeared, showed that a constant increase in amplitude
change is measureable. This is due to the fact that plastic strain yields from the long
673
damaged structure, 50mm
crack at one weld
undamaged structure
Figure 3. Envelopes Rik of the subtracted signals per actuator-sensor path at 3 stations of the fatigue
test.
term test in the structure and probably an alteration in the PZT elements and the
adhesive. The present of a crack is clearly visible after 1118 measurement (red
lines).
Results from the vibrating beam
Similar to Figure 3, 1118 subtracted signals recorded with receiver R1, R2 and
R3 are presented in Figure 4 and 5. The benchmark signals for the vibrating beam is
demonstrated to comprehend the affection within the signals when a crack appears.
Distinct changes in the amplitudes for actuator-sensor path 1 are demonstrated in
Figure 4c that represents a cross section along the amplitudes of Figure 4b at
127.5µs. According to this Figure it can clearly be seen that the subtracted signals
oscillate around 25dB before a flaw appears, which is about 15dB higher compared
to Figure 3. An increase of the amplitudes is recognizable after 400 measurements
(a) (b)
(c)
initial
undamaged flaw
structure
beam
vibration
stopped
crack growth 50 mm constant crack length
Figure 4. Benchmark signals of the vibrating beam for receiver (a) R1 and envelopes (b) R1k of the
subtracted signals and (c) the amplitudes of R1k at 127.5 µs.
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(a) (c)
(b) (d)
Figure 5. Benchmark signals of the vibrating beam for receiver (a) R2 and (b) R3. Envelopes (c) R2k
and (d) R3k of the subtracted signals.
or 1099200 load cycles. The resulting crack growth is also illustrated. At the end of
the fatigue test the crack has a length of 50mm across the flange. On closer
examination of Figure 4b, 5c and 5d it is remarkable that the actuator- sensor paths
show varying sensitivity. First the crack growth does not start at every record at the
same time, and second the change of amplitudes does not have the same intensity.
In Figure 4c coherence between the oscillation of the amplitudes and the
mechanical stress is observable, because with increasing crack length the deflection
and the bending stress of the beam decreases. As a consequence the oscillation of
the subtracted signals decreases to a constant level when the fatigue test is stopped.
The detection of the crack is illustrated in Figure 6 and the peaks of the
triangulation define the location of the crack. Peaks at a certain low amplitude level
close to the transmitter are defined as phantom flaws (see Figure 6a). Flaws can be
interpreted as cracks when their location circles around a weld, and the amplitude
level rises (see Figure 6b and 6c). The uncertainties in the location result from
decelerated waves when passing the web of the beam. This is estimated by time of
flight (TOF) measurements of each sensor-actuator path. The first wave pack at R1
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 6. Crack detection with 4 PZT-element (symbol □) sparse array at the right weld (symbol +).
(a) No crack after 55 measurements, (b) crack detection after 463 and (c) after 563 measurements.
675
matches quite well with the group velocities of the dispersion curves whereas the
TOF measurements for R2 and R3 result 200m/s slower group velocities.
CONCLUSIONS
In the present work an application of ultrasonic sparse array is presented which

detects flaws at an ongoing fatigue test. A spares guided wave sensor array
consisting of 4 PZT elements shows sufficient sensitivity to detect flaws in steel
structures and to monitor the crack growth. The sensitivity of the array is influenced
and lowered by mechanical stress in the structure. This influence could be
overcome if the structure is continuously monitored, the noise is determined and an
adequate benchmark is defined. Furthermore it could be estimated that changes at
the adhesive regarding to fatigue have negligible effects on the sensor signals. The
detection of flaws with the array is optimized to detect cracks at the notch of a
weld. Increased sensitivity could be achieved when more sensors are used.
REFERENCES
1. Giurgiutiu, V. 2008. Structural Health Monitoring with Piezoelectric Waver Active Sensors.
Academic Press
2. Croxford, A. J., P. D. Wilcox, B. G. Drinkwater, and G. Konstantinidis. 2007. “Strategies for
guided-wave Structural Health Monitoring.” Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 463:2961-
2981.
3. Peil, U., and S. Loppe. 2006. “Detection and Localization of Damages by Means of Guided
Waves.” J. Stahlbau., 75(10):851-857.
4. Park, S., C. Yun, Y. Roh, and J. Lee. 2006. “PZT-based Active Damage Detection Techniques
for Steel Bridge Components.” J. Smart Materials and Structures. 15(4):957-966
5. Clarke, T., F. Simometti, and P. Crawley. 2010 “Guided Wave Health Monitoring of Complex
Structures by Sparse Array Systems: Influence of Temperature Changes on Performance.”
Journal of Sound and Vibration. 329:2306-2322
6. Vospernig, M., R. Heuer, and M. Reiterer. 2010. “Notch Case Monitoring by Means of
Ultrasonic Guided Waves in Steel Structures.” in Proceedings of the 5th European Workshop on
Structural Health Monitoring, F. Casciati, M. Giordano, eds. Lancaster: DEStech, pp. 560-565.
7. PI Ceramic. 2009. Piezokeramische Materialien und Bauelemente. PI Ceramic GmbH
8. Ingenieurbüro Dr. Hillger. 2006. Manual of the USPC 5000. Ingeneurbüro Dr. W. Hillger.
9. Worden, K., C. R. Farrar, G. Manson, and G. Park. 2007 “The Fundamental Axioms of
Structural Health Monitoring.” Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 463:1639-1664.
10. Su, Z., and L. Ye. 2009 “Identification of Damage Using Lamb Waves.” In Lecture Notes in
Applied and Computational Mechanics Vol. 48, F. Pfeifer, P. Wriggers, eds. Heidelberg:
Springer.
11. Wilcox, P. D. 2003. “A Rapid Signal Processing Technique to Remove the Effect of Dispersion
from Guided Waves.” IEEE Transaction on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control.
50(4):419.427.
676
Challenges and Strategies in Remote Sensing
Implementation for Bridge Monitoring
S.-E. CHEN, E. HAUSER, K. REHM and C. BOYLE
ABSTRACT
Commercial remote sensing (CRS) technologies are ideal to help states to evaluate
conditions of major bridge elements. The technology challenges regarding conventional
remote sensors include the lack of high resolution and low cost techniques and the
interpretation of damages identified. The educational and administrative challenges
include the lack of experience of bridge engineers with remote sensing and geospatial
technologies, few vendors that have invested time in “marketing” these technologies to the
public sector, and a general lack of using remote data in bridge management software.
While challenges are currently restricting the short-term commercialization of CRS for
bridge monitoring, it is argued in this paper that the adoption of these technologies will be
much fast-paced than other technologies. One recent informal survey taken of the
AASHTO Subcommittee on Bridges and Structures members (39 states and the US Corps
of Engineers responding) indicates that LiDAR technology is already being implemented
and is even being used for bridge inspection. The lessons learned and applied are very
important for bridge managers who may be struggling with implementation of CRS and
other advanced technologies by the bridge management and preservation functions in the
nations DOTs. It is envisioned that the adoption of the technology by DOTs will happen in
the very near future.
INTRODUCTION
Bridge management is a multi-faceted operation that blends complex domain

knowledge and analytical and operative techniques with the most rigid data fusion
approaches. The bridge inventory and inspection data are unified by the National Bridge
Inspection Standards (NBIS), which is a numeric-based rating and information system that
only captures partial bridge information. Detailed information such as damage
quantification information and incident records that critically capture bridge conditions are
currently not considered in the database.
Current bridge management and preservation is highly data-driven and lagging behind
in technology reliance. For example, conventional bridge inspection is predominantly
based on close-up visual-inspection and component-level evaluation that does not capture
bridge global performance. While the bridge inspection manuals [1][2] do address
________________
Chen, S.E. and Hauser, E., Center for Transportation Policy Studies, University of North
Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA.
Kelley Rehm, AASHTO, Washington DC, USA.
Boyle, C. Boyle Consulting Inc., 4340 H Taggart Creek Road, Charlotte, NC 28208, USA.
677
advanced techniques such as Nondestructive Testing (NDT) methods, actual integration of
the results of NDT to bridge rating is in its infancy in terms of implementation.
Similar observations can be said about electronic database and Bridge Management
Systems (BMS). While most BMS provide database support, they are not versatile enough
to document the complex interactions involved in management between inspection,
preservation and prioritization actions. These functions are critically influenced by
individual’s management philosophy, policy, financial, technical and institutional
environment [4]. Advanced data analysis using peer-level annotations to interactively
capture and annotate findings, share findings, and construct decision-making reports based
on the collaborations, are currently not embedded in the BMS that we have encountered.
Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is currently attempting to incorporate new
technologies in BMS/BPS to provide oversight of states’ use of HBP funding [5].
After the I-35 bridge incident in Minnesota, the Office of the U.S. Inspector General
recommended in 2010 that FHWA collaborate with states in setting quantifiable
performance targets to measure progress in improving the condition of deficient bridges
[5]. Our review of the literature suggests that bridge condition quantifiers can be achieved
using innovative condition measurement technologies. For example, commercial remote
sensing-spatial information (CRS-SI) technologies for wide-bandwidth spectral sensing
have been developed integrally with satellite / airborne / ground based surveillance
platforms and are technically-proven and available commercially [6]. Several of these
CRS-SI technologies have been implemented for traffic management and environmental
studies [7].
However, adoption of new technologies is challenging, especially if the technology is
classified as “radical innovation” (as contrasted with incremental innovations). However,
the rewards for adopting radical innovations are typically significant. Figure 1 suggests
that radical innovation can bring dramatic benefits or efficiency to the industry.
This paper discusses the technology challenges and educational/ administrative
challenges in promoting a technology-driven bridge management/ bridge preservation
industry (In this case, CRS-SI). Since 2007, a research partnership between University of
North Carolina at Charlotte, ImageCat Inc., Boyle Consulting, Charlotte DOT and North
Carolina DOT, has completed a proof-of-concept study to explore potential uses of remote
sensors for bridge health monitoring. Remote Sensing in the context of our work refers to
any sensing technology where the instrument used to document the condition of a bridge is
applied without actually touching the bridge. Through the partnership, an Integrated
Remote Sensing and Visualization (IRSV) System that integrates aerial photographical
imaging, LiDAR bridge scan and damage evaluation, large data and spatial display, and an
ontology-based knowledge evaluation system, has been developed [8].
The commercialization of the CRS technologies faces significant technology
challenges, as well as education/training and administrative challenges: The technology
challenges regarding conventional remote sensors include the lack of high resolution, lack
of low cost techniques, the interpretation of damages identified. The education, training,
and inadequate administrative support (also called “business challenges,” are also
significant [9]. It needs to be qualified that commercialization of CRS technology is
loosely defined as encouraging CRS technology implementation into transportation
applications. This paper reflects a systematic study of the CRS technology implementation
potential. The study also included the examination of technology implementation impacts,
and identification of solutions to address potential risks. The lessons learned are very
important for DOTs that may be struggling with implementation of advanced technologies.
678
CRS TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATION INTO BRIDGE
MANAGEMENT
To address the issue of implementing innovative remote sensing technologies into

bridge management systems, a four-step model can be used [10]:
1) Gather the facts about market, client and the process involved.
2) Answer what is the underlying tasks that the process really providing?
3) Answer the question: what can be done to improve the process?
4) Answer the question: how does the technology benefit the clients?
There are over 600,000 bridges in the national bridge inventory. The bridge
management community is varied across the country, and is defined by the state and local
bridge owners. A typical bridge management model can be generalized as shown in Figure
2, from a knowledge domain perspective [8]. Different DOTs may have slightly different
responsibility models, which range from heavily centralized, mixed, to decentralized [4].
The bridge inspection and management process can be loosely described as the
collection of bridge data, the processing of bridge data into bridge ratings, the maintenance/
repair /rehabilitation prioritization process, and finally the documentation of the bridge
preservation or rehabilitation actions. A centralized BMS is typically being used to store
data. Bridges are spatially scattered and differ in age, operations and conditions.
Technologies that can facilitate the tracking and recording of the geospatial-temporal-
operative-environmental aspects of the bridge inventory are widely recognized as being
beneficial to the bridge management process. The underlying necessary tasks assigned to
the bridge managers are to ensure reliable, accurate bridge conditions are being quantified,
documented and appropriately reflected in bridge rating.
Figure 2: Radical and incremental innovations Figure 1: Charlotte area bridge management
[3] domain model
CRS technology refers to the remote measurement techniques that loosely include
range-finding, object-tracking and motion-detection functionalities. The CRS-SI
technology naturally addresses the critical attributes of bridge inventory data. More
importantly, CRS technology is developed as measurement techniques. It can provide
quantifiable data that visual inspections and photo documentation together cannot provide.
However, conventional CRS technologies do not have the resolution to address the
need for bridge health monitoring. In our study, we have identified two technologies that
may be refined for bridge monitoring applications: 1) terrestrial LiDAR bridge scans
[11][12] and 2) Spatially Integrated Small Format Aerial Photography (SI-SFAP) [13].
679
Both technologies are able to achieve a resolution of 3 mm, which is sufficient for bridge
damage evaluation. Table 1 shows example CRS applications to AASHTO CoRe bridge
element inspections:
Table 1 CRS applications to CoRe element: decks/slabs [8]
Core Element Decks/Slabs Potential CRS Applications Covered in Current Study
Concrete (bare) Flyover, LiDAR Yes
Concrete with overlay Flyover, LiDAR Yes
Steel – open grid Flyover, LiDAR No
Steel – concrete filled Flyover, LiDAR No
Steel – corrugated Flyover, LiDAR No
Timber (Bare) Flyover, LiDAR No
Figure 3 shows a SI-SFAP aerial imaging of a bridge deck with concrete wear and
exposed rebar. Images such as this can be used for diagnostics of possible inadequate
concrete coating, among other evaluations.
The two CRS technologies developed enhance the bridge management process by
adding quantifiable condition data to the bridge database, reduce inspection time and
minimize risks to the bridge inspectors. Since CRS technologies that were examined in this
study involve no contact with the structure, (in contrast to several conventional
nondestructive evaluation techniques), significant time savings are associated with test
setup for data collection. This allows bridge managers to schedule more frequent inspection
cycles, perhaps applying these techniques bi-annually in between the two-year cycle NBIS
inspections. The performance profiles without maintenance, with conventional two-year
maintenance inspections and with reduced time maintenance inspections, are shown in
Figure 4.
The social and economic returns from CRS technologies can be measured from two
aspects [15]: 1) product innovation and 2) process enhancement. Social benefits can also
be measured using unit price comparisons between conventional processes and enhanced
processes with technology innovations. Figure 5 shows the supply lines (S1 and S2) for
different unit prices P1 and P2: The two supply curves are S1 for conventional processes and
S2 for after the advent of innovation. The social benefits can be measured by the shaded
area. If resource saving, f, is registered, further benefits are measured by the lower shaded
area. [16]
The specific benefits from product innovation of the CRS-SI technologies can be
summarized as:
1. Integrated geo-spatial vision concepts (SI technology) can provide DOTs with
enhanced insight through visualization and geo-referenced data.
2. Remote sensing can provide temporal data to quantify rates of deterioration.
3. Remote sensing can enhance bridge inspection by providing detailed bridge damage
data.
OUTREACH AND COMMERCIALIZATION
Observations from discussions with representatives from approximately two dozen state
DOTs and four local governments (City of Charlotte (NC), Los Angeles County (CA),
Shelby County (AL), and Osceola County (FL)) describe the current climate for change
types that are needed to implement the CRS-SI technologies:
1. A number of initiatives are currently underway to use new technologies that would
make bridge management and bridge preservation more cost effective and maintain
safer bridge decks and structures.
680
2. Given the significant budget shortfalls and difficult financial situation of most, if not
all, state governments, there is limited time for already time-stressed staff to investigate
or be trained in the use of new technologies such as LiDAR and SI-SFAP.
3. The history of major “sea change” approaches to new procedures and advanced
technology implementation for transportation improvements favors the lead role of the
Federal government (including AASHTO as the representative of state-level partners).
4. Therefore, the leadership role in financing and technical training for improved bridge
programs in states and local governments should be the responsibility and initiative
undertaken by this federal-state-local partnership, with technical assistance and training
of the end users supplied by university consortia and private consultants such as the
current outreach component of the UNC Charlotte – IRSV project.
Figure 3: High resolution bridge deck imaging using the SI-SFAP technology indicating wear
Table 3 LiDAR Use Amongst State DOTs
(out of 40 responses)
LiDAR Use % of Number of
Responding Responding States
States
Bridge 53.3% 16
Clearances
Bridge 10.0% 3
Inspection
Roadway 53.3% 16
Survey
Bridge Survey 46.7% 14
Other 46.7% 14
Figure 4: Performance profiles with and without

According to interviews and documented research, scheduled maintenance inspections [14]
the most important step to adoption and integration
of new technology into DOTs is the recruitment of a “champion”. A product champion
facilitates processes to overcome the organizational and financial barriers to transfer. [18]
To recruit a successful champion, the product provider must first be able to market the
681
process or product to the targeted champion. The key to having a successful marketing
plan is to promote an understanding of the technology, promote the benefits of that
technology clearly and concisely, compare the benefits of the technology over other
alternatives, and then measure success and follow-through [19]. These tasks often may
need to be done, as mentioned above, through the leadership roles of a university consortia
and consultant partnerships. Figure 5 gives an idea of how this leadership role works
throughout the implementation process.
Another important thing to note in implementation is that the use of commercialized
remote sensing equipment is already taking place in many states: Recent informal survey
taken of all 50 state departments of transportation (45 states responding) indicates that
LiDAR technology is already being implemented and is even being used for bridge
inspection in some cases:
1) 21 States and US Corps of Engineers responded that they are using LiDAR
technology.
2) Of the 18 Responders that replied that they were NOT using LiDAR, 5 of those States
indicated that they had used LiDAR experimentally.
3) Of the 18 Responders that replied that they were NOT using LiDAR, 5 of those states
gave examples of how they had used LiDAR - so they should have replied that they
ARE using LiDAR.
4) Overall, with states that have used LiDAR experimentally, 32 states showed some
level of use of the technology (Table 3 shows levels of LiDAR implementation).
Figure 5: Model for implementation of new technology and process in government bridge offices
CONCLUSION
A systematic study of the CRS-SI technology implementation potentials has been
performed by a partnership including researchers, government agencies, and
vendors/consultants, which includes development of innovative technologies,
determination of technology implementation impacts, and identification of solutions to
address potential risks. The lessons learned are important for future technologists to
identify critical development strategies that can minimize risk, but more importantly
identify critical enhancements to existing practices.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project is supported by grant number DTOS59-07-H-0005 from the United States
Department of Transportation (USDOT), Research and Innovative Technology
Administration (RITA). The views, opinions, findings and conclusions reflected in this
presentation or publication are the responsibility of the authors or presenters only and do
not represent the official policy or position of the USDOT, RITA, or any State or other
entity. The authors also would like to acknowledge the guidance and contributions of Mr.
Caesar Singh, the Program Manager at USDOT. We also like to acknowledge our national
advisory board for their wisdom and advices.
REFERENCES
1. AASHTO 1994. Manual for Condition Evaluation of Bridge, 2nd edition with 2000 and 2003
interim revisions, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
2. FHWA 2006. Bridge Inspector’s Reference Manual. US Department of Transportation.
3. O’Sulliva, D. and Dooley, L. 2009. Applying Innovation, Sage Publishing, London, U.K.
4. Markow, M.J. and Hyman, W.A. 2009. Bridge Management Systems for Transportation Agency
Decision Making, NCHRP Synthesis 397, Transportation Research Board, Washington DC.
5. Comé, J.W. 2010. Assessment of FHWA Oversight of the Highway Bridge Program and the
National Bridge Inspection Program, Office of Inspector General, MH-2010-039.
6. Uddin, W. 2011. “Remote Sensing Laser and Imagery Data for Inventory and Condition
Assessment of Road and Airport Infrastructure and GIS Visualization,” International Journal of
Roads and Airports, 1(1), 53-67.
7. NCRST. 2001. “Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Technologies in Transportation,”
Synthesis Report.
8. Hauser, E. and Chen, S.E. 2010. Integrated Remote Sensing and Visualization (IRSV) System
for Transportation Infrastructure Operations and Management – Phase 1, vol. 1 Summary
Report, Center for Transportation Policy Studies.
9. American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. 2008. Nationwide Bridge
Management Survey, Dec 9th to Dec 19th 2008.
10. Hauptly, D.J. 2008. Something Really New: Three Simple Steps to Creating Truly Innovative
Products, American Management Association, New York, NY.
11. Liu, W., Chen, S.E., Boyajian D. and Hauser, E. 2010. “Application of 3D LiDAR Scan of
Bridge Under Static Load Testing,” Materials Evaluation,68(12), 1359-1367.
12. Liu, W., Chen, S.E. and Hauser, E. 2010. “LiDAR-Based Bridge Structure Defect Detection.”
Experimental Technique, doi: 10.1111/j.1747-1567.2010.00644.x.
13. Chen, S.E., C. Rice, and E. Hauser, 2011. “Small-Format Aerial Photography for Highway-
Bridge Monitoring,” Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, 25(2), 105-112.
14. Frangopol, D. and Neves, L.C. 2004. “Probabilistic Performance Prediction of Deteriorating
Structures Under Different Maintenance Strategies: Condition, Safety and Cost,” Birk, R.J., T.
Stanley, G. I. Snyder, T. A. Hennig, M. M. Fladeland, and F. Policelli. 2003. “Government
Programs for Research and Operational Uses of Commercial Remote Sensing Data,” Remote
Sensing of Environment, 88: 3-16.
15. Link, A.N. and Siegel, D.S. 2009. “Evaluating the Social Returns to Innovation: An Application
to University Technology Transfer,” Liebecap, G.D. ed. Measuring the Social Value of
Innovation, Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth, vol.
19, EmeraldGroup Pub. 171-188.
16. Manfield, E. 1996. “Contributions of New Technology to the Economy,” Smith, B.L.R.,
Barfield, C.E. ed. Technology, R & D, and the Economy, The Brookings Institution and the
American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, 114-139.
17. Focardi, S. and Jonas, C. 1998. Risk Management: Framework, Methods, and Practice, Frank J.
Fabozzi Associates, new Hope, PA.
18. Mogavero, L., R. Shane. 1982. Technology Transfer and Innovation. Marcel Dekker.
19. Eixenberger, D. 2010. Marketing Bridge Preservation. Presentation given at the Southeast
Bridge Preservation Partnership Meeting, Orlando, FL.
683
An Innovative Method to Measure Bridge
Deflection Using Single Telecom Fiber
P. KUNG, L. WANG and M. I. COMANICI
ABSTRACT
The Vibrofiber sensor is a Fabry-Perot cavity formed between two broad

band fiber gratings creating interference fringes. It was introduced three years
ago to monitor the vibration and temperature rise of the stator end winding in a
power generator. [1] This paper will discuss the use of Vibrofiber to monitor the
deflection of the bridge under adverse conditions: wide temperature swings,
excess load, strong winds, earth quakes, etc. The fringes in these cavity sensors
have features like peaks and valleys, which are sensitive to temperature and
strain. When the bridge becomes over loaded, we are interested in knowing the
extent of the deflections; in addition, we might want to locate the cause of the
overload. A simple Sagnac FBG interferometer has been invented to provide
such diagnostics. A pair of long fiber with such cavity sensors can be installed
on the underside of the target bridge segment between two supporting columns.
The objective is to monitor the deflection together with any torsion in the bridge
deck. Each of these 2 long fiber segments has a pair of cavity sensors, one to
measure the deflection as a result of the excess strain, another to measure
temperature and provide compensation for the deflection data. An array of
cavity sensors with different center wavelengths will be used to support the
typical multi-segment bridge structure. The interrogation unit is based on a
tunable laser that can be programmed to hop to different ITU grids. A separate
DFB laser will run a grating based Sagnac interferometer, measuring weight in
motion, identifying the speed and the maker of vehicle in traffic, and providing
deflection diagnostics. Overloaded trucks and speeding vehicles can be captured
and tagged for corrective actions. The interrogation unit is equipped with
wireless Ethernet communication enabling the monitoring of many bridges from
a central location; similarly, warning can be initiated to alert the central traffic
control ahead of any problems.
INTRODUCTION
While fiber optics have gained acceptance over the last 20 years in the real
time structural monitoring of critical assets like bridges and dams, large scale
deployment of these solutions remained elusive. One of the reasons may be
historical: we have always started with discrete and special function sensors.
Both fiber optics sensors and interrogation systems have remained expensive
and sensor installation remained cumbersome and time consuming at best. There
________________
Peter Kung, Lutang Wang, QPS Photronics, Pointe-Claire, QC, Canada
Maria Iulia Comanici, McGill University, Mointreal, QC, Canada
684
have been large scale demonstration projects around the world with
hundreds of sensors involving different technologies, making the integration of
the results very difficult. The future might lie in distributed sensing using fiber
optics interferometers. With respect to structural health monitoring of the
bridge, the best macro-parameter is the bridge deflection.
The Sagnac Interferometers
The Sagnac fiber optic interferometer is the simplest interferometer: it

involves a 2x 2 coupler with one arm fed with a coherent laser light, split into
two arms, which are spliced together at the output; it is a self balancing
structure. In our invention, we use a grating to form a single fiber Sagnac
interferometer. To facilitate optimal interference, one of the arms is equipped
with a delay so the reflected beam will have time to interfere with the oncoming
beam. Since the fiber is terminated by a grating, there is only one path that
would always be matched and balanced.
When the sensing fiber experiences an external event at any position, a
phase difference and interference is created between the out-going light beam
and the returning light beam. This is then transformed into a light intensity
change through the couplers and detected at the output port of the Sagnac
interferometer. The intensity of this detected signal is proportional to the phase
difference and can be used to calculate the event intensity, as shown in Figure 2.
On the other hand, such event location can also be determined as an inverse
function of the average frequency interval between two null frequency points
obtained through the FFT processing of the time domain waveforms. All these
data are processed further by an onsite computer or sent to a remote server for
further analysis, alarm, or corrective actions. The signature of each event
occurring in the sensing fiber can be differentiated by integrating the detected
signal over a time period in the form of energy under the curve.
MEASURING BRIDGE DEFLECTION USING VIBROFIBRE
Operating Principle and Detection Measurement
As illustrated in Figure 1, the cavity sensor consists of two low reflectivity,

identical FBGs written on the same single mode fiber and spaced by 5 mm to 20
mm. This structure forms a low-finesse cavity and thus, the overall reflection
spectrum consists of interference fringes within an envelope corresponding to
the reflection spectrum of the individual FBGs. The cavity modes are separated
by the free spectral range (FSR)
λ2
∆λ = (1),
2nL
where λ is the center wavelength of the reflection spectrum, n is the effective

mode index of the fiber, and L is the spatial separation between the FBGs. This
separation L changes in response to a large strain applied to the fiber and results
in a movement of the fringe pattern.
685
Figure 1. Schematic for the VibroFiberTM deflection sensor.
Figure 2. Reflection Spectrum for a VibroFiberTM bridge deflection sensor.
To detect these fringe movements, we have developed a demodulation unit

that supports two channels: each channel consists of an array of cavity sensors
with different center wavelengths. For each sensor, as illustrated in the inset of
Figure 2, the optical (laser) is wavelength tuned and modulated to form a scan
signal covering all the interference fringes, as shown in Figure 2. An algorithm
will create a window tracking the peak of a selected fringe and will follow the
movement lof lthis lpeak with lstrain. lAnother lalgorithm lwill lkeep ltrack of lthe
number of fringe hops resulting from the strain, and the result is translated into
an loutput lvoltage. lFurthermore, la lLabView luser-interface lprogram lhas lbeen
written to display the measured data showing the trend of these time stamped
and temperature stamped strain measurements, comparing the result of the north
sensor lwith lthe lsouth sensor and calculating the ldifference ldue lto torsion. lA
calibration has to be performed relating the detected fringe movement into an
electrical lsignal l(measured lin lVolts). lFigure l3 lshows lthe lshift lof lthe lfringe
pattern as strain increases in the case of increasing bridge deflection.
Figure 3. Shift of the fringe pattern as bridge deflection increases.
686
This algorithm consists of a frequency modulated laser which will track the
movement of the fringe. Another cavity sensor, which is made to be free from
strain, will measure lthe temperature change lby lusing la lsimilar algorithm. To
differentiate strain and temperature, the temperature data can be routed through
a l4 lto l20 lmA loutput lif lso lrequired. lThe lstrain lresult ldisplayed lis lto lbe
temperature compensated. As a result, the user interface is calibrated to display
the changes in the measured strain.
APPLICATIONS AND TEST RESULTS
FBG-Sagnac Interferometer
TRAFFIC MANGEMENT
Figure 4. The installation of the FBG-Sagnac sensor to obtain a weight-in-motion system plus
traffic management.
Figure l5 lshows lhow lthe lsame linterferometer lcan lbe lused lto lmonitor
vibration on the bridge. In this case the sensing fibre is encased in a hermetic
sealed stainless steel tube and forms a meander pattern on the underside. The
fibre is loose inside the tube, allowing the detection of low frequency vibration.
Figure 5. Monitoring bridge vibration.
687
When the sensing fiber is loose, it will be able to respond to vibration down to a
fraction of 1 Hz, such as those created by traffic and seismic events.
BRIDGE DEFLECTION
In the measurement of bridge deflection, one sensing cable is installed on

the northern edge, and another sensing cable is installed on the southern edge.
The two sensing cables provide a redundant setup, so even if one of the fibers
gets ldamaged, lmeasurements lcan lcontinue. lAny ldifferential lstrain lmeasured
would show the bridge is under torsion. Figure 6 shows the conceptual diagram
of how we measure bridge deflection.
Figure 6. Conceptual drawing showing bridge deflection.
THEORY BEHIND BRIDGE DEFLECTION MEASUREMENT
The system shown in Figure 7a) was used to monitor bridge deflection. The
method typically involves a custom solution. A detailed study of the targeted
bridge should be made ahead of installation, identifying the number of spans
susceptible to deflection and exacting measurement of these spans. If we use a 4
nm wide spectral range for each cavity sensor, it will occupy about 5100 GHz
ITU lgrids lin lthe ltunable laser linside lthe lC lband l(1530 lnm lto l1565 lnm)
communication lwindow. lIn lother lwords, lthe ltunable l aser lshould lbe lable lto
support 6 zones. Typically, the deflection found in each bridge deck should be
less than 1000 microstrains, which translate into 1.2 to 1.3 nm of wavelength
change. lSelecting la lseparation lof l4 lnm leaves la lot lof lroom lfor lcenter
wavelength ltolerances land lmakes lthe lmanufacturing lof lthese ltwin lgrating
cavities lquite leasy. lFor lcases lwhere lthe lbridge lcontains lmore lspans, la l3 lnm
separation per zone should still be adequate.
Referring to Figure 6, the deflection of the bridge can be expressed as the
maximum ldeformation lof lbridge ldeck lbetween ltwo lpillars, l∆D. lThe loriginal
length of lthe lbridge ldeck is lL land lthe lsensing lfiber lcable is installed on lthe
underside of the bridge deck. When tan a < 0.01 (Figure 7b), this deformation
can be approximated as
∆D ≈ ∆l /2 (2),
where l∆l lis lthe ltotal lextension lof lthe lbridge ldeck lin lthe l ength, lcaused lby
external lpressures las loads lperpendicularly lexerted lon lthe lbridge. l∆ll lcan lbe
obtained las la lmeasure lof lextensional lstrain le lat lthe lFBG lcavity lsensor las
changes in the interference fringes.
688
In our strain measurement technology with VibroFiber sensors,
the extension length of the fiber cable with a length of L can be expressed as
∆l = eL (3)
and
e = <∆q / q > (4).
Here q is the original phase of VibroFiber sensor without external strains, ∆q

denotes a phase change given by
∆q = q1 – q (5),
where q1 is a measure of current phase value, and <·> denotes a sample average
for all measured phase values. It should be noted that, owing to the shake of
bridge body itself with time under different loads, the fringe varies within a
fairly large range; therefore, a sample average will be necessary to remove this
fluctuation factor in measured phase values.
a) b)
c)
Figure 7. (a) Schematic for the VibroFiberTM deflection measurement system; (b) Theory behind
the deflection measurement ; (c) Detailed mounting location for the sensor cable.
The sensitivity of phase changes under external strains will mainly be

dependent on the cavity length of the VibroFiber sensor and the fiber cable
structure.
The important tests that need to be performed are calibration tests and
linearity tests. Alarm should be set such that the deflection should be less than
0.1% of the span length. In the mean time, the weight-in motion and vibration
sensing subsystem will provide additional information leading to the cause of
the excessive deflection. The linearity test will show that the cavity sensor is
689
staying in the linear region. A model bridge has been constructed to
illustrate this concept.
0.6
0.4
Output Voltage (V)

0.2
0.0
-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Time (ms)
Figure 8. Change in fringe pattern as the strain increases due to deeper deflection.
The second test represents the sensor calibration, which verifies that the
sensor is functional and establishes the sensor sensitivity.
Figure 9. Model Bridge showing fringe movement as more weights are added.
For both tests, repeatability is an important measure of sensor reliability, and

thus the maximum required error between several repeated measurements is 5%.
CONCLUSION
I.
The measurement systems—the Bridge deflection plus Traffic monitor—
presented in this paper show promising results in the field of structural health
monitoring of highway and railroad bridges, especially those having multi-span,
and suspected to age and become distorted by overload. It involves the
VibroFiberTM, which is already established to monitor the vibration of the end
windings inside the power generators and it is based on the simple and reliable
690
fiber optic technology. In particular, the proposed sensor uses FBGs, which
are reliable in hostile environments exposed to EMI and to high temperatures.
The sensor is packaged to make its use practical for monitoring low frequency
vibration due to traffic and seismic activities. The technology involved is
basically proven by use and has come from the telecom industry, which has
enforced a rigorous reliability qualification program. The invention of the FBG
Sagnac sensor has simplified the set up and installation of interference sensors.
More adaptations of the current invention should be found in other related areas,
such as landslides and dam movements. Each of these adaptations would require
deep application knowledge in the niche industry. QPS wishes to cooperate with
strategic partners to develop these turnkey solutions. The objective of these
solutions is to make the assets smart and able to report its structural health
online, and warn against any disaster causing any loss of lives.
REFERENCES
1. T. K. Gangopadhyay, “Prospects for fibre Bragg gratings and Fabry-Perot interferometers in

fibre-optic vibration sensing,” Sensors and Actuators A, vol. 113, pp. 20–38, 2004.
2. H. Fan, J. Qian, Y. Zhang, and L. Shen, “FBG sensors for flexible surface vibration test,” in
Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Information Acquisition, Jeju City,
Korea, July 9-11, 2007.
3. H. Fan, J. Qian, Y. Zhang, and L. Shen, “A novel FBG sensors network for smart structure
vibration test,” in Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Biomimetics, Sanya, China, December 15 -18, 2007.
4. X. Wan, “Monitoring fiber Bragg grating pair ,in interferometer sensor with a modulated
diode laser,” Optics Communications, no. 218, pp. 311–315, 2003.
5. D. J. F. Cooper and P. W. E. Smith, “Simple high-performance method for large-scale time
division multiplexing of fibre Bragg grating sensors,” Meas. Sci. Technol., vol. 14 pp. 965–
974, 2003.
6. H.-J. Bang, S.-M. Jun and C.-G. Kim, “Stabilized interrogation and multiplexing techniques
for fibre Bragg grating vibration sensors,” Meas. Sci. Technol., vol.16, pp. 813–820, 2005.
7. F. Xie, J. Ren, Z. Chen, and Q. Feng, “Vibration-displacement measurements with a highly
stabilised optical fiber Michelson interferometer system,” Optics and Laser Technology, no.
42, pp. 208–213, 2010.
8. Q. Jiang, Q. Sui, and J. Wang, “Technical and experimental study of fiber Bragg grating
vibration sensor based on matching demodulation method,” in Proceedings of the IEEE
International Conference on Automation and Logistics, Jinan, China, August 18 - 21, 2007.
9. P. Kung, M.-I. Comanici, and L.R. Chen, “Fiber Bragg grating vibration sensors for
condition monitoring of hydro-electric turbine windings,” Photons, vol.7, no. 2, 2009.
691
Diagnostic Performance Indication Through
Field Testing of a Bridge Superstructure
M. V. GANGONE1,*, M. J. WHELAN2 and K. D. JANOYAN1

ABSTRACT
Presented in this paper is the use of existing bridge load testing parameters in a
new quantitative diagnostic performance indication system that is based on
measured response data. Two test cases of a densely instrumented reinforced
concrete deck on steel girder bridge are used to demonstrate the applicability of the
approach. Each bridge field test utilized a dense deployment of a wired and/or
wireless sensor system that provided real-time strain readings from full-scale load
tests. Strain gauges were placed at the mid-span of the steel girders to measure
neutral axis locations, transverse distribution and impact factors. Highlighted will
be the results from field testing of a superstructure at the end of its service life.
Controlled progressive damage of an external bearing and multiple diaphragm-
girder connections were implemented to monitor the change in behavioral response.
The results from the multiple tests helped to provide an inventory rating factor of
the steel girder. A Performance Index (PI) was establish based solely on the
measured response parameters and calibrated to load rating results. The neutral
axis (NA) and distribution factor (DF) are two directly measured input parameters
representing the capacity and demand of the girder similar to rating factor.
_____________________________________________________________
1
Clarkson University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Potsdam, NY 13699.
Email: {gangonmv, kerop}@clarkson.edu
Phone: (315) 268-6525; Fax: (315) 268-7985
*Corresponding Author
2
University of North Carolina at Charlotte Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Charlotte, NC 28223
Email: mwhelan3@uncc.edu
692
INTRODUCTION
The national bridge inspection standards (NBIS) were established in 1968 as a

result of the collapse of the Silver Bridge in Ohio killing 47. As part of the NBIS,
bridges are required to be inspected at a frequency of at least once every two years
by qualified inspectors. In many states, such as New York, lead inspectors are
mandated to have a professional engineering license. However, as a result of
certain drawbacks in the inspection process, such as from time constraints,
restricted access to various parts of the bridge and subjectivity of the visual
assessment by the inspectors, some bridges are not adequately accessed. In 2001
the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) completed a study which found that
56 percent of medium to short span bridges given an average condition rating were
improperly assessed [1]. With nearly 25 percent of bridges in the United States
classified as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete [2], the need for more
accurate assessment methods is a must. Downfalls, such as these, as well as the
collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minnesota in 2008 were contributing factors leading
to the development of the American Society of Civil Engineer (ASCE)/Structural
Engineering Institute (SEI)-American Association of State Highway and
Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Ad-Hoc Group on Bridge Inspection, Rating,
Rehabilitation and Replacement chaired by Dr. Sreenivas Alampalli of the New
York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT). This group was established
to discuss, among other things, the various “gaps, needs and issues” related to the
condition assessment process. Amid the many recommendations to come out of
this group, improvement in providing accurate load ratings that are well
documented for effective bridge management, implement new technology in the
field to improve the assessment process, and develop improved methods to better
describe the overall condition of a bridge were three suggestions for improving
condition assessment [3].
Currently, many state transportation agencies including the NYSDOT utilize

diagnostic load testing with strain transducers to measure the performance and
capacity of a bridge [4]. Load distribution, dynamic impact factors, end fixity levels
and composite action between the deck and girders are evaluated to quantify the
structural stiffness as well as load transfer and redundancy of the system. Load
testing and performance monitoring systems have been employed by numerous
researchers as well [5-8].
This paper focuses on using strain data for providing a quantitative index for
assessing the performance of a bridge. A performance index (PI) is developed
based on measured load testing parameters from field tests and calibrated with load
rating data. Data collected from a superstructure undergoing controlled progressive
damage is also presented to show a change in behavioral response.
FIELD DEPLOYMENTS
Experimental field testing of a bridge superstructure has been undertaken to

obtain actual quantitative performance data under controlled loading conditions.
This paper will focus on testing from a stringer/multi-girder bridge in Upstate New
693
York for developing a PI. Stringer/multi-girder bridges comprise nearly 42 percent
of the over 600,000 bridges in the US. Of the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient
bridges, 54 percent are stringer/multi-girder bridges [2]. Therefore, developing
improved methods of condition assessment and damage detection for this type of
bridge is of high importance. The monitoring used either a wired system or custom
developed wireless sensor system (WSS) acquiring strain at the midspan of a girder
for determining neutral axis (NA) of bending, transverse load distribution factors
(DF) and in one case dynamic impact response. These factors are commonly
acquired for diagnostic load ratings. While this paper mentions the WSS, there is
no detailed discussion presented. Information about the system can be found in the
literature [9], [10].
Bridge over Big Sucker Brook
The highway bridge investigated, located on RT345 in upstate New York,

consists of a 19.1 cm (7.5 in) thick reinforced concrete slab supported by three
interior W33x152 and two W33x131 exterior steel girders over each span (figure
1). The bridge is a two-lane structure consisting of three 13.7 m (45 ft) simply
supported spans carrying a total span of 41.7 m (137 ft) at an elevation of
approximately 1.2 m (4 ft) from the waterline. The girders have a center-to-center
spacing of 2.1 m (7 ft) and are supported by fixed and rocker steel bearings. End
and midspan intermediate diaphragms are constructed of C15x33.9 sections that are
bolted to transverse plates welded to the girders. Prior to the scheduled closure for
replacement, the structure serviced New York State Route 345 over Big Sucker
Brook in the town of Waddington. Constructed in 1957, the bridge maintained a
sufficiency rating of 61.2%, an operational rating of 44.5 metric tons, and an
average daily traffic estimate of 1169 vehicles. The bridge is “R Posted” by New
York State, indicating the limitations in the bridge’s capacity to carry certain
loading levels. Multiple tests for strain and acceleration [10], [11] over the a period of
a week were undertaken. A diagnostic load test and rating using 2-H trucks each
weighing 21.75 metric ton (23.97 tons) was performed prior to testing of a single
span under controlled progressive damage.
Figure 1. RT345 Bridge over Big Sucker Brook.
Static and dynamic measurements were taken from 39 wired and wireless BDI
strain transducers using the WSS during the initial load testing. NA and DF
responses were monitored at the midspan of the girders. In addition, dynamic
impact factor response was measured from a series of tests run at different speeds.
The data indicated a significant difference in the response of the three identical
694
simply supported spans under the same loading conditions. The inventory rating
for the superstructure was found to be 29.36 metric ton (32.35 tons). Details on the
instrumentation plan for each stage of the testing as well as the load testing results
can be found in Gangone et al. [12].

Controlled Progressive Damage of Bridge over Big Sucker Brook
Subsequent to the full scale load testing mentioned previously, controlled

progressive damage was implemented at various locations of the northern most
span. The first level of damage consisted of hydraulically jacking the bridge under
the outer east rocker bearing at the north abutment. The next level was to remove a
remove and sever a series of diaphragm-girder connections. Further information
pertaining to the damage implemented and current condition of the structure can be
found in Whelan and Janoyan [11]. Figure 2 indicates the locations of the damage
where “Bearing Elevation” represents bearing displacement, and “Damage”
indicates removal of the diaphragm-girder connection. Ten wired strain transducers
were mounted on the top and bottom flange at the midspan of each of the 5 girders
to monitor a change in NA and DF response as a result of the implemented damage.
A NYSDOT maintenance transport truck was used to provide excitation to the
structure in three testing lanes. Additional details of the instrumentation and testing
protocol used can be found in Gangone et al. [13].
Figure 2. Locations of implemented damage (note: 1ft = 0.305m).
Due to the limitations in the length of this paper, only the response from one test
is presented. “Damage 2” corresponds to the complete severing of the diaphragm-
girder connection between the exterior and interior girders at the east side of the
bridge (figure 2). A baseline response was recorded prior to implementing the
damage. The NA of bending was measured in relation to the bottom flange of the
girder. An upward shift from 82.83 cm (32.16 in) to 34.17 cm (34.17 in) was
noticed for the baseline and damage measurements respectively when the vehicle
was in the east testing lane directly over the damage lcoation. As the steel
695
connection was severed, the flexural stiffness of the girder was reduced, shifting the
NA up towards the bridge deck. Additionally, by cutting this connection the
transverse load distribution path was also altered. The bending moment DF was
computed from equation 1 where Sx is the section modulus calculated using the NA,
E is the elastic modulus of the steel girder, and ϵ is the strain measured at the
bottom flange. The results are shown in figure 3 for two loading cases: (a) vehicle
in the east lane and (b) vehicle in the center lane. The vertical dashed line
represents the location of the severed diaphragm-girder connection.
S x ,i E i  i (1)
DFi 
S x ,i Ei  i
Wheel Wheel
Line Line
(a)
Wheel Wheel
Line Line
(b)
Figure 3. Distribution factors for loading in (a) east lane, (b) center lane.
696
From the two cases presented, it is apparent that when the loading is applied
directly over the damaged location (figure 3a) the change in load demand is
greatest. Nearly a 5 and 7 percent change between the baseline and damage case is
seen on girders 4 and 5 respectively. A minimal change is seen in the center lane
load case (figure 3b). With the removal of the diaphragm-girder connection,
stiffness is not only reduced at that location but also load shedding across the
superstructure has changed.
PERFORMANCE INDEX
Methods of improving current condition based assessment protocols is

recognized as a necessity within the civil engineering community [3]. Providing a
quantitative performance measurement is one way to help improve the overall
process. A PI is developed with the data obtained from both the load test and
controlled damage testing of the RT345 Bridge over Big Sucker Brook. The PI
utilizes load testing parameters which are determined directly from the acquired
strain measurements. Of particular interest are parameters related to the flexural
capacity and demand of a structural element, such as NA location and load DF, both
independent of the vehicle weight.
From a mechanics of materials discussion the ratio of the capacity to the

demand is the factor of safety against failure for that member. This is similar to a
rating factor in bridge engineering. Consequently, a rating factor was calculated for
each girder from measurements taken by the midspan gauges as well as information
from the as-built design drawings. The AASHTO Manual for Condition Evaluation
of Bridges [14] provided the basis for the ASD load rating. Equation 2 is the rating
factor (RF) for live load carrying capacity defined in the AASHTO code for ASD
where C is the capacity of the member, D is the dead load effect on the member, L
is the live load effect on the member, I is the impact factor, A1 is the factor for dead
loads (A1 = 1.0 for ASD) and A2 is the factor for live load (A2 = 1.0 for ASD) [14].
Since the impact response was not recorded for the destructive testing, the
maximum allowable value under the code of 0.3 was used to provide a conservative
response.
C  A1 D
RF 
A2 L(1  I ) (2)
Similar to a rating factor, the PI will be a function of a capacity measurement

(NA) a demand measurement (DF) as PI = f(NA/DF). Therefore, the ratio NA/DF
for a particular load case is evaluated against the rating factor of the girder for that
same load case. However, since two different vehicle weights were used for the
two testing periods, the rating factor was multiplied by the vehicle weight to
produce the load rating. This is necessary for combining both data sets since a
rating factor is dependent on the vehicle used in the testing. The results are shown
in figure 4 where the NA is measured in centimeters from the base of the girder. A
power regression model was initially chosen to relate the two variables. However,
the analysis shows that due to the low correlation coefficient (R2 = 0.4756) a better
regression model is needed and will be developed in future work. Equation 3
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represents the PI based on the measured NA (in centimeters from the bottom
flange) and DF. Additionally, the truck test weight is also included to convert the
load rating component (i.e. numerator) back to a rating factor equivalent. This
normalizes the results to allow it to be used for any H-truck load. It should be noted
that a PI must be greater than 1 to maintain structural integrity.
The PI in its current state is only valid for bridges of similar design to the
RT345 Bridge that was tested. Future work will look to develop a PI which is valid
for all multi-girder/stringer bridges which will involve additional input parameters.
It is important to note that each bridge type will have a PI model associated with it.
Further improvements to this model are needed before it can be used in the field.
(3)
Figure 4. Performance index calibration curve.
Implementation into inspection protocols
As previously stated, current inspection methods rely on visual observations by

trained inspectors. As wireless sensor technology matures and new miniature
devices are developed, the ease of deployment improves. The vision is to have
inspectors mount the wireless strain devices on the steel girders in the appropriate
locations while completing the visual inspection. A wireless system, such as the
proven WSS used in numerous field tests by the authors [9-12, 15], would be an
example of a system that could be used. For the multi-girder/stringer bridge, the
midspan is typically of greatest interest for maximum flexural response. The
gauges should be placed on the top and bottom flange of the girder similar to the
testing mentioned in this paper. Then, with the sensors recording, a test vehicle of
known weight can drive onto the bridge to predetermined location(s) to excite a
response. The strains will provide a NA and DF to be used in computing the PI.
Additionally, sensors can be placed at other locations which appear to require
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monitoring, such for monitoring the effects of deterioration. A shift in NA, for
example, could indicate loss of composite action or section loss. Monitoring the
NA location would allow engineers to see the actual effect of this deterioration
between inspection periods.
CONCLUSION
Experimental load testing and a controlled progressive damage study of a bridge

superstructure in upstate New York was undertaken. A diagnostic load test was
first completed of the three-span simply supported bridge to determine its inventory
and operating load rating using strain measurements acquired from a custom
developed WSS. Upon completion of the load test, controlled progressive damage
was implemented to the north span of the bridge. Strain measurements were
recorded as various bearing and diaphragm connections were altered. DF and NA
locations were measured from a wired strain system to detect the change in the
various capacity and demand levels of the structure. The results showed a slight
change in both the NA locations and load shedding characteristics based on the
presented damage scenario. While the difference in the damage response, when
compared to the baseline behavior, appeared minimal, the results illustrate the
importance in the diaphragm connection for transferring the loads among the
girders and providing some structural stiffness to the girder. However, as the
damage implemented in this study was not significant enough to cause drastic
change in superstructure response, it is difficult to say at this time if these methods
of strain monitoring can detect damage in the structure. A PI was proposed and
developed based on the acquired testing data. The PI will help provide a
quantitative assessment into the bridge performance based on measured parameters
found during typical load testing. The PI can be used to complement existing
qualitative data obtained during routine bridge inspections. As much of this theory
is still in the early stages of research, addition work needs to be completed to
establish a more refined and universal PI for the multi-girder/stringer bridge as well
as appropriate protocols for its implementation into the bridge inspection process.
Nonetheless, it is the goal of this work to help improve the current state of bridge
inspections by providing additional tools for engineers assess more accurately the
true performance of the bridge.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the New York State Department of
Transportation and, in particular, the Region 7 engineers and bridge maintenance
crew for facilitating and assisting with the field testing. Additionally, the authors
also wish to thank graduate students, Wei Chen and Jessica Rocheleau, and
undergraduate students, Francis Dayamba and Sarah Marin, for their on-site
assistance during the sensor installation.
REFERENCES
[1] Phares, B.M., Rolander, D.D., Graybeal, B.A., Washer, G.A. 2001. “Reliability of Visual
Bridge Inspection,” Public Roads, 64(5): 22-29.
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[2] Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). 2009. “Deficient Bridges by State and
Highway System,” Online, World Wide Web, Available at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/. Date
Accessed: 26 February 2010.
[3] ASCE/SEI-AASHTO Ad-hoc Group. 2008. “White Paper on Bridge Inspection and
Rating,” August.
[4] Hag-Elsafi, O, Kunin, J. 2006. “Load testing for Bridge Rating: Route 22 over Swamp
River,” New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), Special Report.
[5] Chakraborty, S. and DeWolf, J.T. 2006. “Development and Implementation of a
Continuous Strain Monitoring System on a Mult-Girder Composite Steel Bridge,” ASCE
Journal of Bridge Engineering, 11(6): pgs. 753-762.
[6] Chajes, M.J., Mertz, D.R., and Commander, B. 1997. “Experimental Load Rating of a
Posted Bridge,” ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering, 2(1): pgs. 1-10.
[7] Howell, D.A., and Shenton III, H.W. 2006. “System for In-Service Strain Monitoring of
Ordinary Bridges,” ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering, 11(6): pgs. 673-680.
[8] Jáuregui, D.V., and Barr, P.J. 2004. “Nondestructive Evaluation of the I-40 Bridge Over the
Rio Grande River,” ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, 18(4): pgs.
195-204.
[9] Whelan, M.J. and Janoyan, K.D. 2009. “Design of a Robust, High-Rate Wireless Sensor
Network for Static and Dynamic Structural Health Monitoring,” Sage Journals, Journal of
Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, 20(7): pgs. 849-864.
[10] Whelan, M.J., Gangone, M.V., and Janoyan, K.D. 2009. “Highway Bridge Assessment
using an Adaptive Real-Time Wireless Sensor Network,” IEEE Sensors, 9(11): pgs. 1450-
1413.
[11] Whelan, M.J. and Janoyan, K.D. 2010. “In-Service Diagnostics of a Highway Bride from a
Progressive Damage Case Study,” ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering, 15(5): pgs. 597-
607.
[12] Gangone, M.V., Whelan, M.J., Janoyan, K.D. 2010. “Diagnostic Load Testing and System
Identification Using Wireless Sensors,” Computer Aided Civil and Infrastructure
Engineering (CACIE), accepted for publication.
[13] Gangone, M.V., Whelan, M.J., Janoyan, K.D. 2010. “Damage Detection of Highway
Bridges Using Wireless Strain and Acceleration Measurements,” NDE/NDT for Highways
and Bridges: Structural Materials Technology (SMT), New York, NY 16-20 August.
[14] American Association for State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). 2000.
“Manual for Condition Evaluation of Bridges,” Washington, DC.
[15] Gangone, M.V., Whelan, M.J., Janoyan, K.D. 2011. “Deployment of a Dense Hybrid
Wireless Sensing System for Bridge Assessment,” Structure and Infrastructure
Engineering: Maintenance, Management, Life-Cycle Design and Performance, 7(5): pgs.
369-378.
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Development of Reliable and Low-Power
Wireless Health Monitoring Systems for
Highway Bridges
D. POTTER, J. FASL, V. SAMARAS, T. HELWIG, S. WOOD,
R. LINDENBERG and K. FRANK
ABSTRACT
This paper provides a summary of ongoing research sponsored by the National

Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that seeks to improve inspection
practices for steel bridges by providing the technology and methodology for real-
time monitoring. In order to reduce the time and cost of installing a traditional
monitoring system, the research team is investigating the use of wireless
communications within the sensor network. To date, the research has included the
investigation of both IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.15.4 wireless communications,
identifying the latter as more practical for bridge monitoring applications. Studies
were conducted to characterize the performance of wireless communications in
various bridge types.
The paper also describes the development of a low-power wireless strain data
acquisition device. The intended bridge monitoring requires the continuous, non-
stop and reliable capture of live load data, while minimizing power consumption.
An intelligent wireless sensor node that can be programmed, using LabVIEW
graphical programming technology, to process and reduce the strain data in real-
time has been prototyped and is being tested on a highway bridge in Austin, TX.
The engineering challenges faced in trading off power consumption with
performance for strain gage measurements is discussed.
BACKGROUND
The US bridge inventory currently comprises over 600,000 bridges, and a

significant percentage of these bridges are nearing the end of their intended design life.
Currently, identification of structural issues and possible safety problems with aging
bridges relies on labor-intensive, visual inspections, which are required at least once
David Potter, National Instruments, 11500 North Mopac Expy., Austin, TX 78759, U.S.A..
Jeremiah Fasl, Vasilis Samaras, Todd Helwig, and Sharon L. Wood, The University of Texas
at Austin, 10100 Burnet Road, Austin, Texas 78758, U.S.A.
Richard Lindenberg, Wiss, Janney, Elst ner Assoicates, Inc., 330 Pfingsten Roard, Northbrook,
IL 60062, U.S.A.
Karl Frank, Hirschfeld Indus tries, 6300 Bridge Point Parkway, Austin, Tx 78730, U.S.A
701
every two years by the National Bridge Inspection Program [1]. Additionally, the
level of detail required for inspection of fracture-critical bridges is much more
significant than for non-fracture-critical systems. A fracture-critical bridge is one
that is vulnerable to collapse with the loss of a single structural member. For
example bridges composed of two girders are designated as fracture-critical because
the loss of one girder will likely lead to collapse of the bridge.
Current inspection protocols work on fixed inspection schedules, which have
three main limitations: (1) no distinction between high- and low-truck traffic
volumes (differing levels of damage accumulation), (2) no consideration of the age
of the bridge (damage is expected to escalate over time), and (3) the potential for
damage to escalate between inspections is not considered. However, inspection
practices can be improved through real-time monitoring of steel bridges. Measured
sensor data can be used by bridge owners to prioritize bridge inspections based
upon performance and traffic demand. However, the significant cost of
instrumentation and its installation has limited the use and feasibility of online
monitoring systems. In many situations, configuring and placing the wiring on large
structures is the most tedious, time consuming, and costly aspect of an
instrumentation project. A distributed wireless monitoring system, therefore, is
very attractive for the ease of installation on large bridge structures. The envisioned
system will have sensors, such as strain gages, crack propagation gages, or
accelerometers, connected to low power wireless data acquisition devices. Because
transmitting processed data is more power-efficient than transmitting entire data
histories [2], sensor measurements will be processed at the wireless devices and
transmitted to a controller. The data will be stored on the controller and then
periodically uploaded to an online database. An interface will be developed that
allows the bridge owner will be able to monitor the bridge condition and use the
measurements to make educated maintenance decisions for their bridge systems.
This paper highlights results from the ongoing research and development of
robust and reliable wireless monitoring system for application in fracture-critical
bridges. Specifically, the challenges of reliable wireless communications are
researched and characterized. The development of wireless sensor devices that
handle the acquisition requirements for continuous live load monitoring while also
minimizing power consumption is also described. Funding for the study is provided
by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) through the
Technical Innovation Program (TIP). The project represents a joint venture among
National Instruments (NI), the University of Texas of Austin, and Wiss, Janney,
Elstner Associates, Inc. (WJE).
MESH NETWORKS FOR WIRELESS SENSING
The initial phase of this project investigated and evalutaed the performance of
two common wireless networking standards, IEEE 802.11, or WiFi, and IEEE
802.15.4. One of the early conclusions from this initial research was that IEEE
802.15.4 proved to deliver more robust and lower power communications for long
term wireless sensor monitoring on typical bridge structures[3].
The wireless field tests used the NI Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) platform
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Figure 1. A ZigBee mesh network can be useful to extend the reach of the network linearly.
which uses the IEEE 802.15.4 low-power wireless radio technology at 2.4 Ghz, with
the ZigBee network protocol. IEEE 802.15.4 wireless networking and ZigBee
together enable low-cost, low-power systems with high reliability through the support
of mesh networking. Using the network and application layers available with the
802.15.4 standard, the devices can be configured as either end nodes (only awake
when scanning and sending data) or mesh routers (always awake). Although mesh
routers in a ZigBee network must stay awake and therefore require more power to
operate, mesh routers increase the redundancy of the network and increase the area
that can be monitored because they can transfer data from end nodes or other routers
back to the gateway. Mesh networking can be particularly useful in bridge
environments as routers can be utilized to overcome obstructions that would otherwise
limit wireless communication. Figure 1 illustrates an example ZigBee mesh network
of routers and end nodes that might be used in a typical bridge monitoring
configuration.
RF SITE SURVEYS OF BRIDGES
A continuing challenge in using wireless sensing systems for structural

monitoring has been to provide reliable communication over relatively long
distances while minimizing the energy needed to operate the network. Steel bridges
present a unique challenge for wireless technology due to an environment with
significant potential for interference of the wireless signal. For example, a wireless
network was used to monitor strain gages in a study of a steel box girder system in
Houston [4]. The system worked very well during the initial stages of construction
when the trapezoidal box girders were open; however, once the concrete deck was
cast, more than 50% of the sensor nodes lost contact with the network. The
disruption was later attributed to a Faraday Interference field that developed within
the box girders.
The research team conducted several field studies on a variety of different
bridge systems to validate the operation of low-power mesh networks. In these
studies, the wireless equipment was moved around the bridge sites to determine where
703
communication issues might develop. The wireless equipment was evaluated at three
different steel bridges, representative of the types of bridges found in the field:
trapezoidal box girder, through truss, and I-girder. Results from the trapezoidal box
girder bridge are presented here.
The trapezoidal box girder bridge, shown in Figure 2, features four spans and
is the direct connector between Interstate Highway 35 North and US 290 East in
Austin, Texas. This bridge was used for the RF study and antenna testing. The 2 m
deep, twin trapezoidal box girders are spaced 4.8 m apart with span lengths of 64 m,
70 m, 70 m, and 64 m. The bridge is straight for approximately the first 90 m while
the remaining portion of the bridge has a horizontal radius of curvature of
approximately 140 m (center of the bridge). The inside of the box girder is mainly
open, except for intermediate cross-frames spaced along the length. At intermediate
supports, steel plate diaphragms are used to control box distortion. The diaphragms
have an access port (406 mm x 813 mm) to allow inspectors to move along the length
of the girder. All wireless tests were performed inside a single box girder.
An RF study was initiated at this site to measure path loss with distance and
interference of wireless signals due to reflections, which are termed multi-path effects.
The average signal strength represents the effect of path loss (more negative means
more path loss) while the deviation from a square wave represents the multi-path
effects. A signal generator was fixed at the south end of the bridge to create an
idealized square wave in the 2.4-GHz spectrum. The effect of wireless propagation in
terms of path loss and multi-path effects was measured by a spectrum analyzer that
moved along the length of the bridge. Example results of the RF study at three
locations along the bridge length are shown in Figure 3.
At 3 m from the signal generator, the signal strength was of course very high.
However, there are significant dips in the signal strength in the middle of the graph,
which represents disruption from multi-path effects. Data from other locations in the
first span have similar trends: high signal strength with large dips due to multi-path
effects. At intermediate supports in the box girders, the steel plate diaphragms have a
relatively small access port (406 mm x 813 mm) to allow inspectors to move along the
length of the girder. Measurements were taken before and after the diaphragm to
Figure 2. Trapezoidal Box girder bridge layout. Interior cross frames are not shown.
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Figure 3. Signal strength of the received signal at 3 m, 86 m, and 134 m from the signal generator
measure the impact of the diaphragm on the signal quality. Prior to the diaphragm, the
signal strength was approximately -40 dBm. After the diaphragm, the signal strength
dropped to -55 dBm over 6 m. Thus, the diaphragm with the small access port causes
significant attenuation of the signal. At 86 m away from the signal generator, the
majority of the signal strength is above -70 dBm; however, there is a small portion
below the level. Since ZigBee operates on a bandwidth of 5 MHz, it is more likely to
find a channel that is above -70 dBm. In contrast, Wi-Fi devices operate on 22 MHz
of bandwidth and would not be expected to work at this distance since a portion of the
signal is below the critical value. The results from this RF study explain why the
IEEE 802.15.4 devices performed better than the IEEE 802.11 devices in earlier
studies. Reflections (or multi-path effects) cause significant disruption in box girders.
The local loss in signal strength at locations due to multi-path allows the IEEE
802.15.4 devices to perform better since it needs to maintain a minimum signal
strength across a narrower bandwidth (5 MHz).
WIRELESS STRAIN MEASUREMENT MODULE
Following the decision that IEEE 802.15.4 provided the preferred communications
performance, the research team chose the National Instruments Wireless Sensor
Network (WSN) low-power platform. Standard WSN nodes provide four analog
inputs, A/D resolution of 16-bits or higher, and can be powered either by built-in
standard AA batteries or an external DC source. Existing measurement nodes for the
WSN platform are available for thermocouples, RTDs, voltage inputs, etc., and are
optimized for static monitoring [5]. For structural monitoring, however, a device
condition and acquire signals from standard strain gages at rates high enough to
capture live traffic loads.
Table 1 lists the top level requirements and specifications for an effective wireless
strain node. While very low power sensor modules are not uncommon, the goal of
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TABLE I. WIRELESS STRAIN MEASUREMENT REQUIREMENTS
Requirement Value
Number of input channels 4
Input configurations Quarter-bridge, half-bridge, full bridge
Bridge excitation 2.5 V
Sampling rate 30 samples per second
Noise reduction Inline lowpass digital filtering (configurable)
Optional powerline (50/60 Hz) noise rejection
Lead wire calibration Shunt calibration and remote sense terminals
Onboard data processing LabVIEW VIs for Rainflow counting, other
analysis locally on wireless node
Power Internal 4 AA batteries,
Option for external power (9-24V)
Operating Environment -40 to 70 °C
this research project was to design a robust node that delivered the required signal
conditioning and acquisition performance needed for standard structural analysis
functions, such as monitoring fatigue damage due to live traffic loads. Strain gage
measurements are also often challenging due to system noise. Therefore, the strain
node is designed with options for inline signal filtering that minimize power
consumption while maximizing noise rejection.
The low-power wireless strain node developed for this project is shown in Figure
4. The node, which will be released as the NI WSN-3214, is designed in the standard
WSN indoor package. Installations in bridges and outdoor environments can utilize
the IP65 enclosure, which was also developed and tested as part of this research. The
simplified block diagram of the wireless strain node is shown in Figure 5. Note that
only one channel of the 4-channel device is shown in the figure. The multiplexer
circuits used to expand the channel count to four inputs are omitted from this figure.
Embedded Graphical Programming for Local Data Processing
If a mesh network of wireless strain nodes collecting data at 30 Hz or higher are

required to transmit all of the acquired data back to the controller for processing, the
Figure 4. Low-Power WSN Wireless Strain Measurement Module.
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Figure 5. Simplified block diagram of WSN-3214 wireless strain measurement node.
wireless nodes would consume relatively high amounts of power the and the amount
of data traffic would quickly overwhelm a ZigBee network. Therefore, the strategy to
minimize wireless data traffic while maintaining continuous monitoring of live traffic
loads is to process the dynamic strain data on the node device.
The WSN platform, including the new WSN-3214 strain node, have the ability to
run LabVIEW graphical programs, known as Virtual Instruments (VIs) on embedded
microcontroller of the wireless node. This allows system integrators to easily
customize the operation of the WSN node. For this bridge monitoring project, the
WSN strain node will perform continuous, real-time rainflow counting of the acquired
strain data. By reducing the raw strain data to rainflow counts, and then only
transferring these rainflow counts to the controller for logging, the wireless system can
capture the needed dynamic information (strain cycles) while maintaining low levels
of power consumption.
WIRELESS MONITORING OF US 290 BOX GIRDER BRIDGE
The connector ramp of the US 290 and I-35 interchange is a trapezoidal box girder
bridge and been instrumented with the WSN wireless strain nodes for continuous
monitoring. The system consists of WSN-3214 strain measurement nodes configured
in a linear network, as illustrated in the preliminary network map of nodes in Figure 6.
Embedded graphical LabVIEW VIs are currently being developed to continuously
acquire and analyze real-time strain data, transmitting the results of a rainflow
counting algorithm back to the wireless network controller. The wireless network
controller for the system is the NI 9792 programmable gateway. The gateway is also
programmed with LabVIEW to collect the strain cycle counts from the wireless nodes,
and periodically transmit the compiled data to a server.
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Figure 6. WSN Mesh Network on US 290 connector ramp bridge.
Field studies show that the IEEE 802.15.4, with its relatively narrow bandwidth
and lower power mesh networking capabilities, provides a feasible and reliable low-
power wireless network technology for monitoring of bridges. A wireless strain gage
measurement node, based on the NI WSN platform and utilizing IEEE 802.15.4 and
ZigBee networking, has been developed to provide the higher performance data
acquisition needed for strain gages and bridge structure monitoring, while also
minimizing power consumption. The system has initially been deployed on the US
290 bridge to provide continuous monitoring and loading of live load stress cycles.
The research team plans to continue the development of the wireless system on
US-290 to add more measurement nodes and locations. The project will also be
expanded with fully integrated internet connectivity and automated storage of sensor
data in remote cloud servers. The use of energy harvesters based on wind, solar, and
bridge vibrations will also be studied and evaluated, with the goal of integrating these
technologies into the system.
REFERENCES
1. USDOT. 2004 Status of the nation's highways, bridges, and transit: conditions & performance.
Retrieved from http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/2004cpr/ (2006).
2. Lynch, J., Sundararajan, A., Law, K., Kiremidjian, A., & Carryer, E. “Embedding damage
detection algorithms in a wireless sensing unit for operation power efficiency,” Smart Materials
and Structures , 13, 800-810 (2004).
3. Fasl, J., Helwig, T., Wood, S., Potter, D., Samaras, V., & Frank, K. 2009. Development of
Rapid, Reliable, and Economical Methods for Inspection and Monitoring Fracture-Critical Steel
Bridges. World Steel Bridge Symposium; San Antonio, TX, 18-20 November 2009.
4. Helwig, T., Herman, R., & Li, D. “Behavior of Trapezoidal Box Girders with Skewed
Supports,” Research Report 4148-1, Report for Texas Department of Transportation (2004).
5. National Instruments. Retrieved from http://www.ni.com/wsn/ (2011).
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Design and Application of a Wireless Sensor
Network for Vibration-Based Performance
Assessment of a Tied Arch Bridge
M. J. WHELAN

ABSTRACT
Vibration-based damage detection methodologies have rapidly matured in

recent years coincident to improved sensor technologies and continued
development of novel experimental approaches. While diagnostic routines
leveraging baseline response measurements have been formulated and applied with
success, methods without reliance on a priori knowledge of the as-built structural
dynamics remain largely elusive and unproven. A steel tied arch bridge with
suspected susceptibilities is to be instrumented with MEMS accelerometers at
locations on the arch girder to reconstruct global and local modal response. A total
of forty-eight axes of accelerometers are slated to be deployed within a single star
topology wireless sensor network. To facilitate the testing of the 141m span, a
custom hardware solution, tailored specifically to address the network,
transmission, and power consumption requirements of the test program is designed,
fabricated in-house, and documented. The hardware platform interfaces an eight
channel simultaneous sampling analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with an 802.15.4
radio frequency (RF) chip transceiver, RF front end, and power management circuit
at each wireless sensor node. Priority in the hardware design was assigned to data
quality and noise rejection. Digital signal processing combined with a 16-bit ADC
with differential inputs provides a high-resolution interface for low-noise
accelerometers and offers 100dB out-of-band noise rejection. Adoption of 2nd
generation low-power RF technologies, including low-noise and power amplifiers,
serves to address prior range and reliability restrictions associated with wireless
sensor networks. Proprietary software was developed for the design to facilitate a
high-rate sampling routine, manage real-time network traffic, and employ informed
power conservation strategies. The design and validation of the wireless sensor
network will be documented to present the tailored approach to addressing the
condition assessment needs of a site-specific application. In the structure
instrumented, diaphragm openings were cut in the as-built bridge after years of
service to install access hatches. The study aims to quantify the influence of this

Matthew J. Whelan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte,
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte,
N.C., 28223, U.S.A.
709
structural retrofit on the performance of the span without a priori knowledge of the
baseline response. A methodology that couples controlled traffic loading with
geometric symmetry is proposed for exploration within the context of statistical
pattern recognition from state-space formulations.
INTRODUCTION
Field studies using wireless sensor networks (WSN) on highway bridges have
predominantly leveraged first-generation IEEE802.15.4 transceivers that typically
offer a maximum output power of 0dBm (1mW). In fact, many commonly utilized
2.4GHz wireless sensing platforms, including the Telos/TmoteSky, MicaZ, and
iMote2, all integrate the same CC2420 chip transceiver. With the advent of 2nd
generation chip transceivers with improved sensitivity as well as integrated RF
front-ends, the link budget of IEEE802.15.4 sensor networks can be improved by as
much as 27dBm to offer a single-hop solution to wireless SHM networks for long-
span highway bridges. Prior to this development, the permissible node-to-node
communication distance at the maximum output power of the first-generation
2.4GHz transceiver solutions has generally restricted deployments to moderately
short span bridges when star topology networks are used. A star topology is a
network structure wherein each mote communicates with the network coordinator
through single-hop communication. For ambient vibration monitoring, this is
generally a preferred topology as it maximizes the data throughput of the network,
which is imperative for achieving the sampling rates required for dynamic signal
acquisition. Furthermore, although contrary to theoretical predictions, experimental
evidence and network simulation have shown that single-hop communication over
long distances is significantly more efficient than multi-hop messaging when the
characteristics of real-world transceivers is considered [1].
Some noteworthy case studies have emerged in recent years that have
demonstrated feasibility of real-time wireless sensing of longer span bridges, albeit
with innovative network topologies to accommodate for the limited communication
range of standard mote platforms. Cho, et al. [2] performed operational modal
analysis of a 484m (1588ft) cable-stayed bridge in Korea by dividing the sensor
array into two networks operating at different carrier frequencies. Whelan, et al. [3]
employed a similar approach using two simultaneous networks operating at
different carrier frequencies to acquire measurements from 60 accelerometers
distributed across a 110m (360ft) steel girder bridge. Paek, et al. [4] paired motes
with IEEE802.11b radios within a multi-tier strategy to facilitate a WSN on 174m
(570ft) portion of a suspension bridge. However cost, complexity, time
synchronization, and data throughput considerations yield these approaches to be
less attractive than a homogenous network.
HARDWARE DESIGN
A customized wireless sensing platform for vibration-based structural health

monitoring of highway bridges was designed and developed at the University of
North Carolina at Charlotte to facilitate ambient vibration monitoring of long span
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Figure 1. Prototype wireless sensor node for precision, simultaneous-sampling acquisition of
ambient vibration measurements on long span bridges
bridges (Figure 1). The platform targets real-time, high-rate, and lossless
communication to facilitate operational modal analysis from large arrays of
distributed accelerometers. The platform builds on the author’s prior experience in
developing and deploying the Wireless Sensor Solution (WSS) at Clarkson
University, which has been successfully deployed on five highway bridges for
operational modal analysis and experimental load rating [5], [6]. By leveraging 2nd
generation RF chip transceiver technology, integrated RF front-end circuitry, and
precision external data conversion, advancements have been achieved in data
throughput, communication range, sampling characteristics, and idle power
consumption.
Wireless Sensor Network Platform
The microcontroller (MCU) core of the platform resides within the CC2530
system-on-chip RF transceiver solution offered by Texas Instruments. The CC2530
pairs a 8051 MCU with a 2nd generation IEEE802.15.4 chip transceiver for 250kbps
RF communication in the 2.4GHz unlicensed bandwidth. Power and computational
efficiency is achieved through this integration as the architecture affords data
transfer between the first-in-first-out (FIFO) buffer of the transceiver and the RAM
of the microcontroller through direct memory access (DMA). The DMA controller
provides this transfer of packet data independent of the central processor unit (CPU)
to either relieve the MCU for handling concurrent tasks or yield increased time in a
low-power mode for improved power consumption. In contrast, the majority of
prior mote platforms pair a stand-alone microcontroller with an external RF chip
transceiver, which requires the instruction of commands and data transfer to/from
the transceiver over a serial bus. Even with high-speed bus clocks, these transfers
require significantly more time than CPU transfers, let alone DMA transfers,
thereby increasing power consumption and often restricting achievable data
throughput.
The introduction of integrated RF front-end solutions is undoubtedly a
significant development for the field of structural health monitoring through
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application of wireless sensor networking. As previously detailed, permissible
node-to-node communication distance has restricted the use of wireless sensor
networks with star topologies, preferred for maximum data throughput, to
moderately short span bridges. Range extension is afforded in the current hardware
platform through the Texas Instruments CC2591, an integrated RF front-end
compatible with 2.4GHz chip transceivers. The CC2591 provides power
amplification of the RF signal to increase the output power to 22dBm (158mW).
Additionally, the CC2591 provides a low-noise amplifier that provides a 6dB
improvement in the sensitivity of the CC2530 receiver, which further improves the
permissible node-to-node communication distance. Using a simple free-space loss
model with a scattering exponent of three, the estimated transceiver range should
provide an approximate 440m improvement over the CC2420. Although this
improvement is at the expense of increased power consumption, the duration of a
single packet transmission when the power amplifier is active is only the order of
milliseconds. To leverage this state-of-the-art advancement, the prototype
hardware platform incorporates a CC2530-CC2591EMK as a motherboard, while a
custom daughterboard provides power regulation and signal acquisition for analog
accelerometers.
Sensor Interface and Signal Conditioning
Operational modal analysis of civil structures, such as highway bridges, necessitates

a high-resolution, low-noise measurement as the dynamic response of such
structures if often very low magnitude under operational loads and, furthermore,
system identification of large structures is generally limited to output-only methods.
To achieve sufficient resolution, precision analog-to-digital converters (ADCs),
anti-alias filtering, and signal amplification are often incorporated into SHM-
specific wireless sensing platforms. Lynch et al. [7] highlighted such resolution
concerns for wireless vibration monitoring of highway bridges and presented an
analog signal conditioning circuit to provide amplification and band-pass filtering
of accelerometer signals while coupling it with a 16-bit ADC to achieve sufficient
resolution of low-amplitude bridge vibrations. However, as technology and
techniques have matured, the low-cost and low-power objectives of such systems
have driven a tendency towards minimal analog conditioning and increased digital
signal processing. Rice and Spencer [8] incorporated an integrated signal
conditioning ADC into their hardware design that employs an over-sampling,
digital filtering, and decimation approach to improve the resolution and noise-
rejection of the measurement circuit. Such digital implementations of low-pass
filters relax the order of required analog anti-aliasing filters, improve passband
flatness, and afford the ability to reprogram sampling frequency without adjustment
of the analog electronics. By over-sampling at four times the desired sampling rate,
the effective resolution of the ADC is improved by one bit. Whelan and Janoyan
[5] employed a similar over-sampling approach wherein analog conditioned signals
were over-sampled at a rate of four times the desired sampling rate and then the
digital measurements were passed through a 56th-order digital low-pass filter
implemented within an MCU hardware multiplier before down-sampling for
transmission. By implementing the digital filtering routine using a hardware
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multiplier, power consumption is reduced by nearly 60mW/channel in comparison
to the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) used by [8].
The hardware platform developed within the current study sought to address
resolution and alias-rejection considerations while also addressing simultaneous
sampling for multi-channel measurements at the node. The Texas Instruments
ADS1178 was selected as a state-of-the-art solution to achieving high resolution,
excellent noise rejection, and optimal passband characteristics while balancing low
current consumption requirements. The ADS1178 is an eight-channel ADC
offering the simultaneous sampling capability required for multi-channel vibration
measurement within modal analysis. In the current embodiment, it was desired to
cluster eight axes of accelerometers with each mote, however the same ADC
architecture is available in single channel and four channel packages as well.
Furthermore, although the noise floor of the MEMS accelerometers used would not
warrant greater converter resolution, the same ADC is also available in a fully
compatible 24-bit device that would permit a drop-in solution for strain gauge, or
other Wheatstone bridge, sensors.
In contrast to prior sampling approaches taken by [5] and [8], the ADS1178
provides a fully integrated solution providing essentially complete signal
conditioning and precision conversion within a single IC. The ADC is a delta-
sigma architecture providing a fixed oversampling ratio of 64, which greatly relaxes
the requirements for analog low-pass filtering. Furthermore, unlike the majority of
delta-sigma ADCs, a finite impulse response (FIR) digital low pass filter is
employed on-chip to achieve excellent alias rejection while preserving a wide
usable signal bandwidth. The digital filter is specified to provide 100dB of
stopband attenuation while achieving less than 0.005dB of passband ripple over a
bandwidth that is 90% of the Nyquist frequency [9]. Maximizing the non-
attenuated signal bandwidth is critical for wireless sensor networks monitoring
dynamic sensors due to the undesirability of sampling greater than necessary due to
data throughput limitations. The FIR filters are also linear phase within this
passband to achieve constant group delay for the signals of interest which is also
highly desirable for modal analysis applications. In addition to these capabilities
well suited for wireless ambient vibration monitoring, the ADS1178 is also a low-
power alternative as it draws only 50mW in low-power mode and less than 10μW
in power-down.
The prototype sensor node provides an ADS1178 fully enabled for simultaneous
sampling across eight channels interfaced with each node. A low-power precision
voltage reference with excellent drift characteristics is used to provide an external
voltage reference of 1.25V to yield a full-scale differential analog input range of
±1.25V and a converter resolution of 38μV/bit. When using typical low-g MEMS
accelerometers with typical sensitivities around 1000mV/g, this converter
resolution corresponds to approximately 38μg/bit. The prototype provides a user-
defined sampling clock sourced from a timer driven by the main clock crystal
oscillator and handles sampling over an interrupt-driven SPI interface bus to
maintain strict task handling within the embedded firmware.
Embedded Software
Embedded software applications for both the remote and network coordinator nodes
were developed in C using the IAR Embedded Workbench for 8051
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Microcontrollers. The software handles bi-directional communication with the
network coordinator including response to status queries, remote programming of
sampling parameters, and real-time data transmission during active sampling. All
packet handling is interrupt-driven to approach near-simultaneous initiation of the
sampling clocks. The proprietary network transmission protocol developed in [5]
was adopted to provide lossless, real-time and high-rate simultaneous data
transmission over large channel counts. This network transmission protocol
employs transmission scheduling, packet queuing informed by acknowledgements,
and continuous retransmission of packets failing to receive acknowledgement
during pre-allocated slots of radio inactivity. Transmission scheduling is interrupt-
driven and is synchronized with the sampling clock in a load-balancing round-robin
sequence referenced to the local address of the mote.
Enhanced functionality of the hardware is afforded through a breakout header
providing access to the UART serial bus on the CC2530. In addition to
transmitting acquired samples to the RF transceiver, the embedded software was
developed such that data is sent over this serial bus to a UART-to-USB converter
for optional cable-based acquisition of data. This functionality also permits any
sensor node to be reprogrammed as the network coordinator for USB-based bi-
directional control of the network at a local microcomputer.
Power Consumption
Power consumption is a critical consideration for wireless sensor networks as

battery-powered deployments remain commonplace while energy harvesting
technology continues to mature. Design of the prototype and embedded software
incorporated several features to conserve energy resources at the mote. As the radio
is the largest consumer of energy in the system, minimizing time in active
transmission and reception is critical. Upon start-up and during idle periods, a
wake-on-radio functionality is implemented in the embedded software. During
such periods, the MCU, RF transceiver, ADC, and voltage regulators for the analog
circuitry are all powered down or held in low-power mode to maintain total current
consumption at the node of approximately 35μA. Although this functionality is not
built into the CC2530 like some chip transceivers, a sleep timer is implemented in
the MCU to periodically power on the RF transceiver for a mere 2 milliseconds to
listen for a specific broadcast command packet from the network coordinator
instructing nodes to wake-up. If the command is received, the node exits the low-
power mode and listens for further commands from the coordinator, while if it is
not received it returns to the ultra-low power sleep mode. Since instrumentation of
highway bridges for ambient vibration monitoring involves long periods of network
inactivity, such as during sensor installation, this functionality offers a dramatic
improvement in battery lifetime for this application by keeping the transceiver out
of reception mode, associated with a 24mA draw, when no network traffic is
expected.
The analog electronics associated with the sensing circuitry are the second
largest power consumer, so measures were also taken to curtail energy consumption
of this sub-circuit when sampling is inactive. Hardware features include linear
voltage regulators for the analog circuitry featuring shut-down mode and use of a
photorelay to turn off excitation to the sensors during inactivity. The ADS1178
714
Figure 2. Ruggedized prototype wireless sensor node housed in waterproof, dustproof, and air-
tight enclosure with external accelerometer
also provides a power-down mode wherein current consumption is reduced to less

than 3μA. During sampling, radio activity is duty cycled such that the power
amplifier and transmitter section are only active during the approximate 4ms
transmission window, while the receiver is active only until the acknowledgement
message is received or until a timeout is reached.
Field Ruggedization of Platform

Survivability is a critical consideration for field-ready wireless sensor networks
and was accounted for in the present design. Waterproof, dustproof, and airtight
enclosures were provided to protect the prototype from environmental influences.
All external connectors were selected based on IP68 protection ratings including
panel-mount connectors for the analog sensors, optional external power, and
optional USB data interface. The enclosure also houses a 9V NiMH rechargeable
battery for battery powered operation.
PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF A TIED ARCH BRIDGE
Span five of the Mississippi River Bridge over Prairie Du Chien on USH 18
E/W will be instrumented with an array of six prototype wireless sensor nodes to
facilitate ambient vibration monitoring of the bridge using a total of 48
accelerometers. The bridge is a 141m (462 ft) span steel tied-arch design opened to
service in 1975. Measurement Specialties 4000A accelerometers with full-scale
measurement range of ±2g, bandwidth of 0-200Hz, and low 35μg/√Hz spectral
noise have been selected for the testing due to the moderate cost for such a ruggedly
housed sensor over sufficient specifications for the anticipated testing. The
accelerometers are single-axis piezoresistive sensors with a temperature
compensated and signal conditioned output. The sensors provide both an analog
output signal proportional to the acceleration and a 2.5V fixed reference signal to
permit each sensor to be interfaced directly to the ADS1178 as a differential pair for
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improved rejection of common mode noise in comparison to single-ended
alternatives.
Ambient vibration monitoring will be carried out within two distinct test
methodologies: a global response characterization for modal parameter extraction,
and a local response study for performance assessment near suspected
vulnerabilities. Global characterization will involve placement of accelerometers
oriented in the vertical and transverse directions at uniform spatial intervals along
both tie girders to capture the low-frequency mode shapes. Modal parameters
extracted through operational modal analysis will be used for comparison with and
model updating of a finite element model of the structure. Subsequent ambient
vibration monitoring will be performed at local regions of the arch girder using
accelerometers placed at high spatial density. This testing aims to exploit the
doubly symmetric design of the bridge to evaluate diagnostic testing for the
identification of structural anomalies. The intent is to develop a state-space
prediction model of the local response of the box girder in regions where no
susceptibility is suspected and then utilize statistical pattern recognition techniques
to identify potential deficiency in symmetrically opposite instrumented regions. It
is hypothesized that stochastic system identification methods can be applied to
develop such a prediction model given controlled traffic excitation to replicate lane
loads over corresponding time series.
REFERENCES
1. Haenggi, M. and Puccinelli, D. 2005. “Routing in Ad Hoc Networks: A Case for Long Hops,”
IEEE Communications Magazine, October: 93-101.
2. Cho, S., Jang, S.A., Jo, H., Mechitov, K., Rice, J.A., Jung, H-J, Yun, C-B, Spencer, B.F.,
Nagayama, T., and Seo, J. 2010 “Structural health monitoring system of a cable-stayed bridge using
a dense array of scalable smart sensor network, Proceedings of SPIE Smart Structures/NDE San
Diego, CA.
3. Whelan, M.J., Gangone, M.V., Janoyan, K.D., and Jha, R. 2010 “Operational modal analysis of
a multi-span skew bridge using real-time wireless sensor networks,” Journal of Vibration and
Control, DOI: 10.1177/1077546310373058, published online first ahead of print.
4. Paek, J., Jang, O.G.K-Y., Nishimura, D., Govindan, R., Caffrey, J., Wahbeh, M. and Masri, S.
2006. “A Programmable Wireless Sensing System for Structural Monitoring,” 4th World Conference
on Structural Control and Monitoring, San Diego, CA.
5. Whelan, M.J. and Janoyan, K.D. 2009. “Design of a Robust, High-rate Wireless Sensor Network
for Static and Dynamic Structural Monitoring,” Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and
Structures, 20(7): 849-863.
6. Whelan, M.J., Gangone, M.V., Janoyan, K.D., Hoult, N. Middleton, C.R., and Soga, K. 2010.
“Wireless Operational Modal Analysis of a Multi-Span Prestressed Concrete Bridge for Structural
Identification,” Smart Structures and Systems 6(5-6).
7. Lynch, J.P., Wang, Y., Loh, K.J., Yi, J.-H., and Yun, C.-B. 2006 “Performance monitoring of the
Geumdang Bridge using a dense network of high-resolution wireless sensors.” Smart Materials and
Structures 15(6): 1561-1575.
8. Rice, J.A. and Spencer, B.F. 2008 “Structural health monitoring sensor development for the
Imote2 platform.” Proceedings of SPIE Smart Structures/NDE.
9. Texas Instruments 2008. “Quad/Octal Simultaneous Sampling 16-Bit Analog-to-Digital
Converters,” Datasheet SBAS373B.
716
Risk Based Civil SHM and Life
Cycle Management
H. WENZEL, R. VEIT-EGERER and M. WIDMANN
ABSTRACT
After initial success stories structural health monitoring saw some setback due
to the miss match between costumer’s expectations and practical performance.
These deficits are mainly attributable to the fact that monitoring and
engineering expertise for structures does not go hand in hand. Monitoring shall not
replace visual inspection but rather improve it. Therefore it is essential that
inspectors see the benefit from monitoring and apply it. Not enough has been done
to offer them services in a way they need it and where the impact is clearly visible.
SHM requires international guidelines, which structure the process from the
initial concept to system installation, engineering services till the periodic
maintenance and update activities. The co-existence with visual inspection and
traditional methods has to be demonstrated. Finally the interface to the clients and
owners has to be put into the focus of our community. They are neither interested
in data nor in complicated explanations. They require information on which
decisions can be made. This has to be targeted and concise expertise which fits into
their working process.
The paper will show how a monitoring process can lead to a condition
assessment which is needed to improve the life cycle assessment.
INTRODUCTION
Shrinking budgets and aging structures require beside the assessment also an
economic approach that leads to a ranking of the structures to be rehabilitated. The
condition of bridges is normally assessed through a condition index, as a ranking
of a bridge condition in comparison to others of a bridge stock. The prediction of
the remaining service life of a structure is an important issue for decision making.
_____________
Wenzel, H.; Veit-Egerer, R.;Widmann, M.; VCE, A-1140 Vienna; Hadikgasse 60.
717
BRIDGE MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY
The two basic values budget and function are what bridge management
philosophies base on. Aesthetics can be another important driver, but applies
mainly to the few flagship structures. The engineering community has accepted the
principles of preventive maintenance, meaning that investment into structural
health in time keeps the safety level of a structure constant. Another valid strategy
is to let bridges deteriorate until they reach the safety limit and are replaced. Both
philosophies require SHM. In preventive maintenance it is required to detect the
point of intervention, where rehabilitation shows the highest effect. The functional
driven philosophy requires SHM in order to detect when safety limits are reached.
The knowledge about the condition of a bridge or its elements is most wanted
information. SHM provides the opportunity to quantify the condition and to
provide the basis for decisions. The methodology and tools are described on the
following pages.
CONDITION ASSESSMENT
Determination of the presence, the location and the quantification of damage

are included in what can be called condition assessment. The prediction of the
remaining service life of a structure can be called life cycle assessment and
includes predictions and recommendations like a maintenance plan for the future.
The key issue for good predictions is a correct condition assessment.
A well-defined rating system based on ambient vibration monitoring for

investigated structures has to be applied. The classification allows a fast
identification on the structure’s integrity as well as the corresponding risk level
based on measured dynamic parameters, an accompanying visual inspection, a
Finite Element Model-update and reference data. Furthermore the structure is
classified according to a predefined risk level.
RATING
The ranking of the bridges is based on one or more rating systems. The rating
is better the more information is provided and can be improved if it is based on
three approaches, namely
· The existing conventional inspection. Conditional assessment is

traditionally based on visual inspections that are used to determine obvious
damages and irregularities. The conventional inspection is subjective and
the rating is also influenced by the condition rating technique used by the
respective administration.
· The computation of a rating out of measured values from bridge tests. The
quality of the rating deduced from a measured value depends on the quality
of the measured signal, that is e.g. for a vibrational signature of a structure
the length of the records, the sample rating, the energy content and the
existence of ambient sections in the signal – or at least well defined and
comparable sections, as well as the identification of drifts spikes and noise
and other external input. The quality of the measurement is also up to the
718
sensor types and the calibration, the monitoring system and conditions as
well as on the monitoring layout.
· The rating arising from comparison of measurements with computed
models. Using numerical methods a reference model can be created, e.g.
FE-model, which should reflect the behaviour of a real structure. A
technique to minimize the differences between the real structure and the
FE-model is called the Finite element model updating (FEMU). This
means modifying selected structural parameters and boundary conditions
of the FE-model in order to come to an agreement of the measured and
simulated results. Thus, this method can also be used in order to provide
information about damages of a structure by identifying deficiencies of the
structural properties.
Structural Parameters, like the type of the structure, the material properties, the
load transfers and redundancy as well as environmental conditions like the
temperature and the location of the structure influence the prediction of the
remaining lifetime considerably.
To select a suitable observation concept for the measurement campaign

depends on the structure itself, the available budget, the condition and the
importance.
DYNAMIC PARAMETERS FOR STRUCTURAL MONITORING
Out of the measured signature various parameters/damage indicators can be

derived.
The most common method for determining the structural parameters is the
Ambient Vibration Monitoring; this means monitoring the vibration behaviour of
the structure under ambient influences, like wind, traffic, waves, etc.. The response
of the structure is recorded with highly sensitive sensors and the resulting dynamic
characteristics can be used to check the calculation models as well as for observing
of the chronological development of the load-bearing capacity. Systematic
assessment is therefore a necessity to be able to detect damage as early as possible.
By determining these parameters an estimation of the remaining service life is
possible. The parameters which should be taken into consideration for evaluation
of the structural health conditions are generally the Key performance indicators,
see Figure 1.
Figure 1: Parameters for structural monitoring: Key Performance Indicators
719
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT
Current practices in risk assessment and management for our infrastructure are
characterised by methodical diversity and fragmented approaches. In retrospect
these risk and safety paradigms resulted from diverse industries driven and limited
by available knowledge and technologies. The European stakeholders recognise
their obligation to reconsider risk and safety policies, having a more competitive
industry and more risk informed and innovation accepting society in focus.
Managing assets is about making decisions.
Therefore the current and future condition of a structure is wanted to be known

as precise as possible. The current development is based on the following strategy:
· The basis shall be a generic degradation model which represents an
average performance as experienced and documented in various sources
· A broad set of parameters is defined that influences the actual condition.
This set is kept flexible to accommodate any future parameters that might
appear
· The parameters are grouped in a way that existing assessment routines like
visual inspection, system identification by monitoring or damage detection
methodologies are covered
· National or local conditions have to be considered separately covering the
subjects of design philosophy or extreme micro climates on the other hand
· Analytical results like the comparison of design codes at the time of
construction compared to current use profiles have to be introduced
· The utilization of the structure (load demand) and the respective history are
to be introduced
There is a simple basic model with considerable uncertainties, which is

improved step by step through introduction and evaluation of new knowledge
gained about a structure. The ideal result is a precise assessment of the condition
with reasonable margins of uncertainty. The model will be able to show the effect
of retrofit actions as well as resulting degradation from accidents or natural
disasters. It is recognized that the individual results from visual inspection and
assessment will influence the quality of the prediction. Nevertheless after a number
of assessments these uncertainties will be reduced to reasonable levels.
It is acknowledged that the basic model shall be kept simple and transparent
for the end users. In return the background computation is expected to become
more and more complex with every new knowledge and methodology developed.
Methodologies for the management of the constructed infrastructure are

developed in the IRIS Project (CP-IP 213968-2). The basis is the consideration of
the entire lifecycle of a structure. In bridge management this is performed based on
the BRIMOS® method developed by VCE, which allows introducing additional
quantitative parameters through monitoring techniques.
The latest research covers all aspects of appropriate lifecycle analysis for
engineering structures. In order to meet the governing requirements regarding
integral life cycle analysis, durability, the real degradation process and residual
720
lifetime considerations the following major aspects are to be considered for life
cycle modelling:
a) The determination/estimation of the design life of new structures

b) The determination/estimation of the residual life of existing structures
c) Assessment criteria whether the real degradation process – determined by
· Dynamic Bridge Monitoring
· Visual Bridge Inspection
· Material tests assessing chloride intrusion, compressive strength,
carbonatisation (Durability)
corresponds with the assumed and applied life cycle model, in order to take
corrective measures in cases of accelerated ageing
d) Maintenance instructions to guarantee the original design life and
preservation of functions
Ad a) The determination/estimation of the design life of new structures
The starting point of the bridge’s service life – in terms of the safety level – is
according to the initial overdesign and depends on the applied design code and
certain safety consideration in the course of the static calculations.
Figure 2: Expected (analytical) lifeline of new structures
To estimate the range of lifetime in the first step, statistic analyses using
probability density functions are applied. A basic model covering the operational
lifetime of every investigated structure is composed out of the following
parameters:
· Year of construction
· Static system
· Material
· Typical cross section
To guarantee these stated ranges of theoretical design life of new structures, the
assessment is refined by the consideration of the following additional aspects
regarding individual minimum requirements:
721
· Concrete cover
· Concrete quality
· Environment influences
· Maintenance history
· Monitoring activities
To address the deterioration process properly, the following sources of impact

affecting the Structural Performance (t) are to be considered in detail:
· freight traffic volume
· level of freight traffic impact
· environmental influences
· (temperature, radiation, frost action)
· degradation due to chemical exposure
For demonstration purposes, a well established approach is used, that covers

all the major sources of deterioration impact. For the present demands this
suggestions will necessarily have to be broadened and refined due to each of the
above listed major issues.
It has to be mentioned, that a structure usually consists of a number of

components which interact. For each of the components individual performance
curves are determined. The structural lifecycle curve is the combination of the
individual component curves.
Figure 3: Telescoping of the individual structural members lifelines in the

course of the whole timeframe of service life of the bridge itself - causing
numerous theoretical points of intervention
Ad b) The determination/estimation of the residual life of existing structures
Basically for primary load bearing members as well as for secondary load
bearing members the same methodology and the same sources of impact are
utilized. What makes the difference for the analysis itself is the fact, that design
assumptions are replaced as good as possible by everything, supporting a deeper
understanding about the previous lifeline of the investigated structure.
722
For the determination of a methodically refined prediction of the lifecycle
curve any additional information will be used, which is able to contribute to a
better understanding of a structure. These are:
A) Original Static Calculation (Structural Design)

· Possible reduction of safety level reflecting a paradigm change from
previous binding codes to the current ones
B) Judgement / Rating from Bridge Inspections (Reports)
C) Performed Monitoring Campaigns
D) Schedule of Performed Maintenance and Rehabilitation Measures
E) Loading History (Historical Traffic Data)
F) Material Tests (Chloride Intrusion / Compressive Strength,
Carbonatisation, etc.)
G) Data on the Environmental Conditions
These datasets are merged via maintenance condition matrix in order to

determine the respective lifecycle curve analytically. The corresponding safety
level is defined as the offset between the initial safety level in the year of
construction until the present date of judgement.
Any change in assessment, for every element separately, generates a new
assessment routine and changes the character of the life curve. The continuative
progression is derived in a similar way to new structure – but of course depends on
the former impact. Eventual improvements through upgrade or repair works are
also considered.
Figure 4: Enhanced Lifetime Prognosis of an existing bridge by means of

visual inspection 2008 and static safety evaluation - reflecting a paradigm change
from previous binding design code to Eurocode
à spread of remaining lifetime 16 / 30 / 40 years
The model is constructed in a fully dynamic manner and runs the life curve
processing anytime after a parameter update is received. Depending on the quality
of the received information the standard deviation is increased or decreased
respectively.
723
Ad c) Assessment criteria whether the real degradation process which
corresponds with the assumed and applied life cycle model in order to take
corrective measures in case of accelerated ageing
Continuous condition assessment is a basic prerequisite for an adjusted

maintenance planning within the upcoming service life. In the course of being
exposed to operational service life new structures are becoming existing structures.
Thus the methodological approach based on section b has necessarily to be used
and adapted due to section c.
A constant comparison between expected and measured structural integrity
(multi-level assessment of the investigated Lifeline) is done to be aware of the
velocity of structural ageing.
Ad d) Maintenance instructions to guarantee the original design life and

preservation of functions
Regarding Life Cycle and Maintenance projects – the contractors are usually
obligated to supply principal maintenance instructions for the investigated
infrastructure to guarantee that the original design life of the structures can be
achieved.
In the course of the life cycle analysis maintenance plans by means of
intervention schedules and by means of corresponding bill of quantities are
prepared for the existing and the new structures.
REFERENCES
1. Kostenmodell für den Funktionserhalt von Straßenbrücken; M. Wicke, P. Kirsch,

W.Straninger, B. Scharitzer; Bauingenieur Band 76, Feb 2001
2. Bridge maintenance strategy based on life-cycle cost and rebuild cost stabilization; A.
Miyamoto J. Ishida; Bridge Maintenance, Safety, Management, Health Monitoring and
Informatics – Koh & Frangopol (eds) © 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-
415-46844-2
3. Reliability-based life-cycle bridge management using structural health monitoring;Thomas B.
Messervey, Dan M. Frangopol, Allen C. EstesBridge Maintenance, Safety, Management, Life-
Cycle Performance and Cost – Cruz, Frangopol & Neves (eds) © 2006 Taylor & Francis
Group, London, ISBN 0-415-40315-4
4. Reliability based Life Cycle Management of Highway Bridges; Dan M. Frangopol, Jung S.
Kong, and Emhaidy S. Gharaibeh; JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING /
JANUARY 2001
724
Integration of SHM into Bridge Management
Systems: Case Study–Z24 Bridge
E. FIGUEIREDO, L. RADU, G. PARK and C. FARRAR
ABSTRACT
Bridge Management System (BMS) is a decision-support tool developed to assist

the authorities in determining how and when to make decisions regarding
maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation of structures in a systematic way. However,
despite the advances in BMS modeling, the condition assessment activities still rely
heavily on visual inspections, which inherently produce widely variable results. On
the other hand, the goal of Structural Health Monitoring is to improve the safety and
reliability of aerospace, civil, and mechanical infrastructure by detecting damage
before it reaches a critical state. To achieve this goal, technology is being developed to
replace qualitative visual inspection and time-based maintenance procedures with
more quantifiable and automated damage assessment processes. It is the authors’
belief that for the activities related to bridge safety and maintenance should be based
on visual inspections along with results from long-term monitoring. Over the last
decade, the authors have realized that research in both fields has been conducted
separately. Therefore, in order to develop a more reliable bridge safety and
maintenance process, this paper summarizes the foundation of an approach to
integrate both fields. The applicability of this approach is then demonstrated on data
from the Z24 Bridge in Switzerland.
INTRODUCTION
The continuous condition assessment of bridges has been society-serving to face

an aging infrastructure that endorses bridge collapses. Indeed, the recent collapses of
the Hintze Ribeiro Bridge that killed 59 people in Portugal, and the I-35W Bridge
over the Mississippi River that killed 13 people in the United States of America
(USA), pointed out the need for new and more reliable tools to prevent these events.
Herein, we propose to conceive a methodology that can make a major contribution to
the prediction of bridge collapses.
Eloi Figueired o and Lucian Radu, Catholic Universit y of Portugal, Faculty of Engineering,
Estrada Octávio Pato, 2635-631 Rio de Mouro, Portugal.
Gyuhae Park and Charles Farrar, The Engineering Institute, MS T001 Los Alamos National
Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA.
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Nowadays, research for bridge condition assessment has been performed on two
fields, namely, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Bridge Management System
(BMS) modeling. The SHM is referred to the process of implementing a damage
detection strategy for aerospace, civil, and mechanical infrastructure. This process is
implemented using both hardware and software with the intent of achieving more
cost-effective condition-based maintenance [1]. The term “damage” in such systems-
level assessments is used to condition a performance criterion, namely that changes to
the system (e.g., stiffness loss, connectivity change, boundary condition change, etc.)
must adversely affect the system’s current or future performance. The authors have
posed the SHM process in the context of the statistical pattern recognition (SPR)
paradigm comprised of four steps: (i) operational evaluation; (ii) data acquisition; (iii)
feature extraction; and (iv) statistical modeling for feature classification. A more
detailed discussion of this paradigm can be found in Farrar et al. [2]. On the other
hand, BMS modeling is a visual-inspection-based decision-support tool developed to
analyze engineering and economic factors and to assist the authorities in determining
how and when to make decisions regarding maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation of
structures in a systematic way. However, as the community assists to developments
on long-term monitoring, the current practice of visual inspection has been identified
as a shortcoming in BMS modeling. At the 50th anniversary of the Interstate Highway
System, Walther and Chase [3] stated that despite the advances in BMS modeling, the
condition assessment activities still rely heavily on visual inspections, which
inherently produces widely variable results. The same authors argued that the
challenge would be to develop better assessment methodologies that can generate
better prediction models to support the owners’ decisions regarding bridge safety
assessment and maintenance.
Therefore, in an effort to create a more robust BMS modeling to prevent
catastrophic events, the authors believe that the concepts of SHM should be integrated
into BMS. An approach to integrate SHM into BMS was already initiated by the
authors in a recent publication [4]. In a subsequent one [5], the applicability of the
approach was validated on standard data sets from laboratory frame structure, which
permitted to bridge the gap between theoretical formulations and real-world
applications. The standard data sets were composed of acceleration time series from
undamaged and damaged conditions under simulated operational and environmental
variability as well as damage scenarios [6]. The outcome of those results permitted to
validate the applicability the Mahalanobis Squared Distance (MSD) as an appropriate
method when data from the undamaged condition are available and the extracted
feature vectors are multi-dimensional Gaussian distributed. Nonetheless, further
analyzes were required on data from more complex and realistic bridge structures.
In this paper, the applicability of this approach is investigated on long-term
monitoring data sets from the Z24 Bridge in Switzerland [7]. The data sets are unique
in the sense that they combine long-term monitoring with realistic damage scenarios
(such as settlements, spalling of concrete, failure of a concrete hinge, failure of anchor
heads, and failure of tendon wires) and effects of the environmental variability.
This paper is summarized as follows. First, the layout of the SHM-BMS
integration is discussed. Second, a brief description of the bridge is given. And finally,
the one-year SHM data is treated in such a way that it can be introduced periodically
into the BMS. The damage detection is carried out on the basis of an outlier detection
strategy under operational and environmental variability, using an MSD-based
726
algorithm. It is also given an approach to reduce daily global damage indicators (DIs)
into a score that can be introduced into the sufficiency rating (SR) formula, currently
outputted by the BMS modeling, which intends to introduce more reliable information
into the condition assessment.
In the hierarchical structure of damage identification [8], this paper addresses the
need for robust incipient damage detection methods. Therefore, it is essentially
concerned with determining the existence of damage in the test structure. Even though
localization, type, and severity of damage are important in terms of estimating the
residual lifetime of the structures, the reliable detection of damage must precede these
more detailed damage descriptions.
SHM-BMS INTEGRATION APPROACH
In the USA, states annually submit to the Federal Highway Administration

(FHWA) all the required information for each bridge based on the visual inspections
results. Then, the FHWA uses those results to calculate the SR and determine which
bridge may need repair or replacement [9]. Basically, the SR formula takes into
account four separate factors to obtain a score, indicative of bridge sufficiency to
remain in service, which ranges between 0% (entirely insufficient or deficient bridge)
and 100% (entirely sufficient bridge)
SR = S1 + S 2 + S 3 " S 4 , (1)
where S1 is the Structural Adequacy and Safety (0-55%), S2 is the Serviceability and
Functional Obsolescence (0-30%), S3 is the Essentiality for Public Use (0-15%), and
! Reductions (0-13%, only when S1+S2+S3 !50%).
S4 corresponds to Special
In order to incorporate the quantitative information from SHM systems, a
correction factor " is introduced into Equation (1) to increase the reliability of S1 and
when the bridge safety is the main concern for deploying a SHM system. Thus, a new
health sufficiency rating (HSR) formula can be derived in the form of
! HSR = S1 (1" # ) + S 2 + S 3 " S 4 . (2)
Note that the correction factor might be tailored to better gather damage-related
information or to address specific reasons for deploying SHM systems. For instance,
! factor might be used to adjust S2, when the goal of the SHM
another correlation
system is to preserve the serviceability of the bridge.
A methodology to obtain the correction factor can be given as a weighted score of
the global daily DIs in the form of
" = f (DI1 , DI 2 ,..., DI k ) . (3)
where k is the number of days within the observed period of reference. The weight of
this correction, or the maximum reduction rate, depends on the reliability of the SHM
system and on the type
! of structure.
An outlier detection approach was also presented to obtain the DIs. Basically, the
MSD is used as DI [10], because it is well known its applicability for data
normalization and to reduce each feature vector (which might gather information from
several sensors) into a score. Thus, considering the a training matrix X " # m$n
!
727
composed of n feature vectors, of dimension m, extracted under operational and
environmental variability, with a multivariate mean vector x " # m$1 and covariance
matrix " X # $ m%m , the MSD for each feature vector of the test matrix, Z " # m$k , is
defined as
DI (z j ) = (z j " x )T #"1
X j
(z "!x ) , (4)
!
! where z ( j =1,..., k ) is a m-dimensional potential outlier feature vector. In the context
j
of data normalization, the mean vector and covariance matrix should represent all the
structural responses
! available under varying operational and environmental effects
and when the structure is in its undamaged condition. If the null hypothesis is true,
!
that is a new feature vector z j is extracted from the same multivariate normal
distribution as the undamaged training data X , then the test statistic DI (z j ) will be
Chi-square distributed with m degrees-of-freedom,
! DI ~ " m2 . (5)
A multivariate outlier can now simply be defined as a feature
! ! vector with large DI.
(Note that m is equal to the length of the feature vector.) The assumption of a Chi-
square distribution is important for outlier detection because it permits to define a cut-
!
off value (threshold or critical value) for a level of significance. Note that in the
context of the SHM-SPR paradigm, this algorithm comprises feature extraction (with
data normalization) and statistical modeling for feature classification. Basically, the
MSD-based algorithm can be summarized in the following steps. First, the extracted
feature vectors (e.g. natural frequencies) from time series are divided into training
matrix X , composed solely of feature vectors from the undamaged condition, and test
data Z , composed of both undamaged and damaged conditions. The training matrix
should be representative of the operational and environmental variations present in the
! structure. Second, the mean vector and covariance matrix of X are computed as
! parameters of the MSD (4). Third, a DI for each feature vector of the test matrix is
computed. If DI is below the chosen threshold the null hypothesis is not rejected.
!
Z24 BRIDGE DESCRIPTION
The Z24 Bridge was a standard post-tensioned concrete box girder bridge
composed of a main span of 30m and two side-spans of 14m, as shown in Figure 1.
The bridge, before complete demolition, was extensively instrumented and tested with
the aim of providing a “feasibility tool” for vibration-based SHM in civil engineering
[11]. A long-term monitoring test was carried out, from 11 November 1997 until 11
September 1998, to quantify the operational and environmental variability present on
the bridge and to detect the existence of damage artificially introduced in the last
month, roughly. Every hour, environmental quantities, such as temperature at several
locations, were measured from sensors. Additionally, every hour, eight accelerometers
captured the vibrations of the bridge for 11 minutes.
Progressive damage tests were carried out in a one-month time period shortly
before the demolition of the bridge in order to prove that realistic damage has a
measurable influence on the bridge dynamics. Note that the continuous monitoring
system was still running during the progressive damage tests, which permits to
validate the SHM system to detect accumulative damage in long-term monitoring.
728
Figure 1. Longitudinal section and top view of the Z24 Bridge [11].
DATA ANALYSIS
Herein, daily monitoring data at 5am (lower differential temperature on the

bridge) is used to extract damage-sensitive features, namely ambient temperature and
natural frequencies. An automatic modal analysis procedure, based on the frequency
domain decomposition, was developed to extract the natural frequencies. It was
verified that the automatic procedure was only able to estimate with high reliability
the first three frequencies, as also denoted by Peeters et al. [12]. Figure 2 plots the
natural frequencies along with the ambient temperature during the entire period of
observation, from 11 November 1997 to 10 September 1998. The last 38 points
correspond to the damage progressive testing period, which is highlighted, especially
in the second frequency, by a clearly drop in the magnitude of the frequency. Note
that the damage scenarios are carried out in a sequence manner, which cause an
accumulative degradation of the bridge. (The features are plotted in concatenated
format, which does not permit to highlight the existence of gaps caused by
interruptions in the power supply during the acquisition.) The observed jumps in the
natural frequencies are related to asphalt layer in cold periods that contributes
significantly to the stiffness of the bridge. Actually, Peeters et al. [12] showed the
existence of a bilinear behavior in the natural frequencies for below and above
freezing temperature.
In this study, it is assumed that the bridge operates within its undamaged condition
(baseline condition) from November 1997 to the end of July 1998 (1-197 days) under
operational and environmental variability. On the other hand, the bridge is assumed in
its damaged condition from August to September 1997 (198-235 days). For statistical
modeling for feature classification, the MSD-based algorithm is used to classify
observations by taking into account the effects of the operational and environmental
variability. The parameters of the MSD are estimated based on a training matrix
composed of the entire undamaged observations. On the other hand, the test matrix is
composed of all the undamaged and damaged observations.
729
Figure 2. First three natural frequencies and ambient temperature estimated daily at 5am from 11 Nov.
1997 to 10 Sep. 1998 (1-197 undamaged; and 198-235 damaged).
Figure 3 plots the DIs along with upper-bound threshold (horizontal dashed line)
found from the false alarm constraint (undamaged condition) for a level of
significance equals to 5% of a Chi-square distribution, " 32 . The figure gives
indications that the MSD neither remove the extreme effects of the temperature from
the structural responses nor detect the first observations related to the damaged
condition. However, two remarks must be done, namely, (i) MSD-based algorithm
!
only takes into account the natural frequencies, and so it does not include
measurements from the ambient temperature; and (ii) the MSD-based algorithm
assumes multivariate distributed features, which is compromised by the extreme
events. (The authors are investigating some advantages of eliminating extreme events
from the training data.)
In order to overcome the temperature-related issues, Peeters et al. [7] already
proposed the Autoregressive Models with Exogenous Inputs, where the temperature is
the input and each natural frequency is the output. Herein, we propose a method based
on the assumption that (i) damage, in some manner, imposes permanent and
irreversible changes into the structural responses, which seems fairly reasonable,
when damage is associated with changes in mass or stiffness and (ii) the operational
and environmental variability normally impose reversible changes, i.e., when those
temporarily actions disappear from the bridge, the structural responses go back to the
normal condition, which might follow a very defined pattern. In fact, Figure 3
730
indicates that outliers caused by extreme temperature variations tend to vanish and last
for few days. On the other hand, outliers caused by damage, above the sensitivity
threshold, tend to impose permanent changes. In order to highlight the sequence of
outliers, Figure 4 shows the classification of the observations in terms of a binary
classification (0 – undamaged and 1 – damaged). In the undamaged condition, there is
a maximum of ten outliers in a row. On the other hand, in the damaged condition,
there are 24 outliers in a row, which indicates that damage, permanently, affected the
structural response. Note that this approach has some advantages over others, because
it can be used to remove extreme events not taken into account in the training process.
Finally, the DIs computed above are compressed into a correction factor, " , and
introduced into the HSR in Equation (2). Actually, determination of this factor is part
of an on going research topic by the authors. Note that the weight of this factor
depends on the reliability of the SHM system and on the type of structure. For
!
instance, assuming 30% of reliability to detect the presence of damage, and taking into
account the existence of a sequence of 24 outliers well above a sequence of ten
outliers caused by cold temperatures, one might assume a correction factor " = 0.30 .
Note that this procedure, in the context of BMS modeling, can be carried out every
two years along with the visual inspections often required by the authorities.
!
Figure 3. Daily DIs based on the MSD.
Figure 4. Binary classification based on the DIs below and above threshold (0 - undamaged and 1
- damaged).
731
CONCLUSIONS
This paper summarizes an approach to integrate SHM data into BMS modeling.
Basically, this paper proposes an MSD-based damage detection algorithm to create a
thresholdable daily DI that takes into account operational and environmental
variability and outlines a procedure to integrate it into BMS modeling, which can be
used to overcome some of the limitations posed by the visual inspections.
The applicability of SHM-BMS approach was validated on standard data sets
from a real-world bridge, namely the Z24 Bridge. The MSD-based algorithm showed
to be an appropriate method when data from the undamaged condition are available,
even though it generated some outliers when the bridge faces extreme weather
conditions. However, we also proposed an approach to remove false outliers based on
the assumption that damage imposes permanent and irreversible changes into the
structural responses.
REFERENCES
1. Farrar, C., & Worden, K. (2007). An Introduction to Structural Health Monitoring. Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society, 365, 303-315.
2. Farrar, C. R., Doebling, S. W., & Nix, D. A. (2001). Vibration-based Structural Damage
Identification. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Mathematical, Physical &
Engineering Sciences , 356 (1778), 131-149.
3. Walther, R. A., & Chase, S. B. (2006). Condition Assessment of Highway Structures: Past, Present,
and Future. Transportation Research Circular - 50 Years of Interstate Structures: Past, Present, and
Future (E-C104), 67-78.
4. Figueiredo, E. (2010). Damage Identification in Civil Engineering Infrastructure under Operational
and Environmental Conditions. Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation in Civil Engineering, University
of Porto, Faculty of Engineering.
5. Figueiredo, E.; Radu, L.; Park, G.; Farrar, C. R.; Figueiras, J. (2011). An Approach to Integrate
Structural Health Monitoring with Bridge Management Systems. Submitted to the International
Conference on Structural Engineering Dynamics European Workshop on Structural Health
Monitoring, 20-22 June, Tavira, Portugal.
6. Figueiredo, E.; Todd, M. D.; Farrar, C. R.; Flynn, E. (2010). Autoregressive Modeling with State-
space Embedding Vectors for Damage Detection under Operational and Environmental Variability.
International Journal of Engineering Science, 48, 822-834.
7. Peeters, B., & De Roeck, G. (2001). One-year Monitoring of the Z24-Bridge: Environmental
Effects versus Damage Events. Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, 30, 149-171.
8. Worden, K., & Dulieu-Barton, J. M. (2004). An Overview of Intelligent Fault Detection in Systems
and Structures. International Journal of Structural Health Monitoring, 3 (1), 85-98.
9. US Department of Transportation. (1995). Recording and Coding Guide for the Structure Inventory
and Appraisal of the Nation's Bridges. Federal Highway Administration, Office of Engineering
Bridge Division, FHWA-PD-96-001.
10. Figueiredo, E.; Park, G.; Farrar, C. R.; Worden, K.; Figueiras, J. (2010). Machine Learning
Algorithms for Damage Detection under Operational and Environmental Variability. International
Journal of Structural Health Monitoring, doi: 10.1177/1475921710388971.
11. Krämer C. Brite-EuRam Project SIMCES, Task A1 and A2: Long Term Monitoring and Bridge
Tests. Technical report 168'349/21, EMPA, Dübendorf, Switzerland, January 1999.
12. Peeters, B., Maeck, J., & De Roeck, G. (2001). Vibratio-based Damage Detection in Civil
Engineering: Excitation Sources and Temperature Effects. Smart Materials and Structures, 10,
518-527.
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RAPID System for Hot Spot Corrosion
Monitoring of Gas Pipelines
F. LI1, S. BANERJEE1, M. PAPPAKOSTAS1. H. CHUNG1,
S. BEARD1 and G. CHANG2
ABSTRACT
Monitoring the structural integrity of the elbow area of a gas pipeline is

challenging. Utilizing SMART Layer® sensing technology, a Real-time Active
Pipeline Integrity Detection (RAPID) system is developed for in-situ structural
integrity assessment of a pipeline. This system can evaluate and diagnose the
structural integrity of a pipeline’s elbow area and welding interface joints. The
RAPID system is comprised of a SMART Layer® sensor network permanently
mounted on the structure, ScanSentry hardware—Acellent’s proprietary active-
sensing Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) hardware, and intelligent diagnostic
software operated via a portable handheld tablet computer. Acellent has performed
this study with the support of ConocoPhillips. Previous research has shown that the
SMART Layer sensing network technology can survive harsh environmental
conditions that a pipeline undergoes throughout its operational lifetime. The RAPID
system has been validated on a metallic pipeline structure in a cylindrical pipe and
an elbow-shaped pipe. Damage simulation via drilling, grinding, and saw-cutting on
the pipeline specimen, demonstrated the RAPID system detection functionality as
effective in diagnosis of the corrosion growth in a pipeline elbow joint area.
INTRODUCTION
A pipeline system is a network of pipes, joints, flow controlling mechanisms

and other connection components joined together to transport fluid products from a
source to one or several destinations. A critical concern for pipeline operators is to
identify, in advance, potential pipeline structural failures by detecting damages due
to corrosion growth, and other aging and use factors leading to component
degradation. The valuable information gained from the pipeline inspection processes
can support proactive mitigation, maintenance, repair and/or replacement of
damaged and failing pipeline components.
1
Acellent Technologies, Inc. 835 Stewart Dr. Sunnyvale, CA 94085
2
Acellent Intern from the King’s Academy, 562 N. Britton Ave., Sunnyvale, CA 94085-3841
733
One of the leading areas of concern for pipeline failures is on the welded joints
on L-shaped elbows (in addition to more complex connection areas). Current
inspection techniques for corrosion on the welds may require the pipeline to be
shutdown during inspection, resulting in loss of revenue. Furthermore, in-service
conditions and failure modes experienced by pipeline structures are generally
complex and unknown, and conservative calendar-based or usage-based scheduled
maintenance practices can be overly time-consuming, labor-intensive and very
expensive. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) offers the promise of a paradigm
shift from schedule-driven maintenance to condition-based maintenance (CBM) of
pipeline structures. Built-in sensor networks integrated with the pipeline can
provide crucial information regarding the condition and damage state of the
structure. Figure 1 illustrates the proposed RAPID system model designed for in-
field pipeline monitoring applications. The SMART Layers are mounted on the
surface of the pipeline structure for sensing. The compact ruggedized hardware
system is deployed in a field-ready enclosure and mounting fixture system.
Powered by a long-life rechargeable battery, a solar-powered energy-harvesting
module is used to charge the battery during the sunny non-winter months. By
capturing and storing a reserve of power, the system is able to operate without
requiring external power through the non-sunny winter months. Through the
wireless communication, the information gathered from inspection can be
transmitted remotely after local processing of the sensor data is used for diagnostics
and prognostic evaluation. This determination of the health of the structure supports
the pipeline operator’s decision-making processes, allowing continued inspections
on user defined interval or scheduling a repair or replacement during non-peak
operational hours. Asset management can be performed based on the actual health
and usage of the structure, thereby minimizing in-service failures and maintenance
costs, while maximizing reliability and readiness.
In this study, the SMART Layer sensor network technology is utilized as
foundation of the RAPID system. The system is ideal for in-situ assessment of
existing pipelines because of the ease of installation and in-service reliability over
the life span of a pipeline system component.
Figure 1: RAPID System Model for Monitoring Pipeline
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SYSTEM OVERVIEW
Figure 2 shows the operational principle of a built-in RAPID system for in-situ
assessment of the health of new and existing pipelines. The RAPID system
incorporates the SMART Layer sensor network, ScanSentry portable diagnostic
hardware and data analysis software to achieve health monitoring of the pipeline
system. The function of the RAPID system is analogous to that of a built-in
acousto-ultrasonic NDE with a network of miniaturized piezoelectric sensors. The
signal generator produces five-peak sine waves or modulated sine waves that are
short-burst, transient signals. The signal wave generated by the diagnostic hardware
drives the actuator to produce a stress wave that propagates across the structure and
is measured by the sensors. When a propagating stress wave encounters a
discontinuity in the geometric or material properties of the structure, the wave is
reflected or scattered, and the wave speed can also be affected. The methodology
used in the diagnostic process is based on comparing the current sensor responses to
previously recorded baseline sensor responses from the undamaged structure. The
differences between the two sets of signals are what contain the information about
any existing damage or other anomalies.
SMART Layer
The SMART Layer is a well established technology in the field of Structural

Health Monitoring and is currently known for its unique ability to provide a wide
structural coverage for gathering data with its network of sensors/actuators
embedded on a layer [1, 2]. The application of using SMART Layers for pipelines
eliminates the need for each sensor to be installed individually. The layer consists
of a number of sensors forming a network, which has the embedded and distributed
piezoelectric discs acting as both sensors and actuators for active and passive
sensing in real-time.
Diagnostic Hardware
Portable active diagnostic hardware, called the ScanSentry (as shown in Figure
2), is designed to provide extremely low noise and crosstalk. The ScanSentry drives
each piezoelectric disc in the SMART Layer , one-by-one, and records
measurements from the adjacent piezoelectric discs. It facilitates the sensory data
collection and allows for real-time data analysis. The current active hardware model
can connect up to 32 PZT actuators/sensors (supports up to 16 actuators and 16
sensors). The piezoelectric actuators are driven with a specific pre-programmed
diagnostic waveform as the neighboring sensors record the data for real-time or
future evaluation [3].
Corrosion Detection Algorithm
The diagnostic software “SmartCorrosion” was developed based on Acellent’s

SmartComposite software program [3]. Key features of the software include: sensor
self-diagnostics with an adaptive algorithm to automatically compensate for
735
Figure 2: The Operational Validation for the RAPID System
damaged sensors, reliable damage detection under different environmental

conditions, and generation of POD curves at the operator’s request. The state-of-
the-art techniques to optimize sensor placement, automated calibration, and
automated damage detection with no user interpretation of data, make it an efficient
and user-friendly system.
A damage index (DI), developed to extract features in sensor signals related to
damage in the structure [4, 5] is used to determine the corrosion depth. The DI is
calculated for each affected actuator-sensor path by
fd T * fb
DI= 1 − (1)
fbLT * fbL
Where fd = frequency response at damaged state, fbL = frequency response at

undamaged state.
Image Display
The image display technique is used to indicate the presence of damage. The
scatter signals for all possible diagnostic paths on the structure are processed and
displayed at the same time to produce a comprehensive image that illustrates the
location and size of the damage. The signals from all paths are first normalized,
compensating for differences in signal strength due to respective distances between
actuators and sensors. Once normalized, all paths show similar signal amplitude no
matter how long the actuator-sensor path is. The amplitude of the scatter signal for
each diagnostic path is then plotted as a color gradient contour on the panel. When
multiple paths are affected by the damage, the net effect is cumulative, and is
represented as a heightened intensity of colors where the paths intersect. This
display technology can be used as a fast imaging method to help visualize the
approximate location and extent of corrosion.
736
Damage Sizing
In addition to the generated image, the statistical size is computed for every
damage detected. For each damage, a probability density curve for the damage size
is determined, giving lower and upper bounds on the size, as well as the most
probable size, as shown in Figure 3. Along with most probable damage size, the
percentage chance that it is smaller or larger than the most probable size is
computed from the area under the curve. The damage is assumed to be a circle and
the calculations for the damage size are based on the geometry of the actuator
sensor path.
EXPERIMENTS
Cast Iron Pipe Test
A 22 ft (~6.7m) long case iron pipe with a diameter of 2 ft (.61m) and a wall
thickness of 0.28 inch (7.14 mm) was used in the laboratory testing. As shown in
Figure 4, there are 16 SMART Layer strips used and mounted on the pipe surface
by using Hysol EA 9394 adhesives. Each strip has eight piezoelectric disks, each
having a diameter of ¼ inch (6.35 mm) and thickness of 30 mil (0.76 mm).
TEST PROCEDURE
Ten defects were induced in the pipe as shown in Figure 4. Five of them were
along with line 1, and the other five defects were along with line 2. The types and
sizes of defects are listed in Table 1.
In this study, five-peak waveforms with a center frequency of 350 kHz were
generated as input to excite the piezoelectric actuators on the pipe. The curvilinear
crossing actuator-sensor paths were formed based on the neighboring sensors
receiving from the stress waves propagating through the pipe material. The sensor
signals were recorded before and after the defects were introduced. The signals
were then analyzed to identify the location and size of defects.
Figure 3: The Analytical Flowchart of Smart Corrosion Software
737
24” diameter
and 0.28” thick
pipe
Figure 4: The 22-ft steel pipe with 16 SMART Layers
TEST RESULTS
The sensor signals were collected every time a defect was introduced on the
pipe. The differences in the time history between the “before” and “after” signals
were plotted as scatter signals. The scatter signals for all possible diagnostic paths
on the pipe were processed and displayed at the same time to produce a
comprehensive image that clearly illustrates the location and size of the damage.
Care was to be taken in account for the difference in propagation distance between
actuator-sensor pairs in order to make the signals from different paths directly
comparable. To do so, the signals from all paths are first normalized using their
respective distance so that all paths show similar signal amplitude no matter how
long the actuator-sensor path was. Following this, the amplitude of the scatter signal
for each diagnostic path was plotted as a color gradient contour on the pipe as
shown in Figure 5. When multiple paths are affected by the defect, which results in
significantly large scatter, their effects add up to show a heightened intensity of
colors. This clearly indicates the presence of damage. This display technique was
used as a fast imaging method to help visualize the approximate location and extent
of corrosion damage. Figure 5 shows the detection of a pitting defect. Figure 6
shows the estimated size of corrosion area with probability of 53% to have damage
size of 0.785 in2.
TABLE 1 DEFECT TYPE AND SIZE (UNIT: MM2, 25 MM ≈ 1 INCH)

Detection No 1 2 3 4 5
Defect Type Pinhole General Axial groove Circum. slot General
corrosion 2 corrosion 3
Defect Size Dia.=6.35 40 × 50 70 × 20 5 × 50 70 × 50
Detection No 6 7 8 9 10
Defect Type Circum. General Pitting Axial slot General
groove corrosion 1 corrosion 4
Defect Size 20 × 70 60 × 60 20 × 30 50 × 5 50 × 80
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(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Figure 5: Pitting (Defect No. 8) manufactured on the pipe and image of detection final state of the
pitting defect; (b) Distribution of depth; (c) Image of pitting detection at 0.01” deep; (d) Image of
pitting detection at 0.14” deep.
1” diameter
Figure 6: Damage size estimation for Pitting Corrosion
Elbow-shaped Steel Pipe Test
A 66-inch long elbow-shaped stainless steel pipe with a diameter of 3.57-inch

and a wall thickness of 0.32 inch was used for the test. As shown in Figure 7, there
are four rings of SMART Layer single sensors mounted around the elbow joint
area. Each ring area had 8 PZT sensors. Hysol EA 9394 adhesive was used for
bonding the sensors. Sensors were protected by the rubber pad and metal strap
fixture band.
The areas of interest in this study are at the two weld joint interfaces and
bending section of the elbow-shaped pipe. Each weld interface had two sets of
SMART Layer strips. The 1/8” diameter piezoelectric disks were used for the
actuator side and the ¼” diameter were used for sensors. The actuator and sensor
arrangement is shown as in Figure 7.
TEST PROCEDURE
The workspaces for the SmartCorrosion software setup were Area-1 and Area-2
as indicated in Figure 8. At each area, damage was simulated using sticky patches
and saw cuts were made in the pipe. In Area-1, a 1” diameter sticky patches were
applied onto the weld interfaces at the angular locations of 0°, 90°, 180° and 270°.
After the patch testing, at 135°, the surface was cut by 1/8”, and increased to ¼”,
and 3/8”, ½” and 9/16” long. The data was collected after each damage simulation
and cut. The sticky patches were also applied to Area-2 at 0°, 90° and 180°
locations. In Area-2, the damage on the surface of the elbow area was introduced
by surface grinding. The diameter of the grinding area was initially 1”. The depth
of the grinding damage was grown from 1/64”, 1/32”, and 1/16” deep.
739
Area-1
180
° 8@ 1/8” Dia.
90° Disks
Area-2
0°
8@ ¼” Dia.
Disks
Figure 7: Sensor Layout for Elbow-shaped Pipe
TEST RESULTS
Table 2 summarizes the results of elbow-shaped steel pipe tests. The detection
on circumferential direction is presented in a linear angular coordinate in the
increasing order from bottom to top.
TABLE 2: SUMMARY OF RESULTS FOR ELBOW-SHAPED PIPE TESTS

Test SmartCorrosion Damage Loca Test Loca
Type Detection Image -tion Type -tion
Area-1 360° Area-2 360°
Patch 315° Patch 315°
Test 270° Test 270°
225° 225°
180° 180°
135° 135°
90° 90°
45° 45°
0° 0°
0° 90° 180° 270° 0° 90° 180°
Area-1 360° Area-2 360°
Saw- 315° Grind- 315°
cut 270° ing 270°
225° 225°
Test at Sur-
180° 180°
135° 135° face 135°
90° Test at 90°
45° 100° 45°
0° 0°
0.25” 0.375” 0.50” 0.563” Length
1/64” 1/32” 1/16”
1/32” 1/32” 1/16” 3/16” Depth
(DI<0.001) (DI <0.001) (DI=0.001)
Damage Index
0.25
Damage Index
0.0035
0.2
0.0030
0.15 0.0025
0.0020
0.1
0.0015
0.05 0.0010
0.0005
0
0.0000
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
Crack Length Hole Depth
740
SUMMARY
The RAPID system used for built-in in-situ assessment of the health of new and
existing pipelines has been validated. The main advantages of the RAPID system
includes: 1) inspection on demand or preset interval, 2) provides well-defined
damage resolution, 3) is very reliable with self-diagnostics and environmental
compensation, and 4) quantifies corrosion sizing. The detection capability of the
RAPID system on the simulated corrosion flaws has been demonstrated.
The future work includes integrating the RAPID system into a pipe in the field,
and testing its ability to compensate for flow-noise, thermal and force-loading
effects caused from the materials being transported through the pipeline.
REFERENCES
1. Qing, X., Beard, S., Kumar, A., Li, I., Lin, M. and Chang, F.-K. (2009). SMART Layer
Technology and Its Applications, Encyclopedia of Structural Health Monitoring, 2009.
2. Zhang, D., Liu, P., Beard, S, Qing, X, Kumar, A. and Ouyang, L. (2008). SMART solutions
for composite structures, Proc. SPIE, Vol. 6934, 69341C.
3. Qing, X., Beard, S., Pinsonnault, J. and Banerjee. S. (2009). SmartComposite system for
impact damage detection on composite structures, Proc. SPIE, Vol. 7295, 729506.
4. Ihn, J. and Chang, F.-K. (2004). Detection and monitoring of hidden fatigue crack growth
using a built-in piezoelectric sensor/actuator network: I. Diagnostics, Smart Mater. and
Struct., 13(3), pp. 609-620.
5. Beard, S., Qing, X., Hamilton, M. and Zhang, D. (2004). Multifunctional Software Suite for
Structural Health Monitoring Using SMART Technology, Proceedings of the 2nd European
Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, Germany.
741
Acoustic Emission Evaluation of Cavitation
Erosion in Hydraulic Turbines
F. R. QUEIROZ, E. B. MEDEIROS, L. V. DONADON
and M. T. CORRÉA DE FARIA
ABSTRACT
The present study represents part of a research effort having the objective to
correlate cavitation with the associated hydraulic turbine erosion and associated
performance degrading. The present analysis concentrates on field studies carried
out in a large hydroelectric plant with the use of Acoustic Emission monitoring
which is associated with turbine running parameters. Three identical Francis
turbines but presenting different stages of wear have been considered in the present
text. Initial analyses of the problem show that there is a clear association between
acoustic emission average signals obtained during standard loading and the degree
of turbine blade wear.
INTRODUCTION
Cavitation induced damage in hydraulic turbines has been a matter for concern in
hydraulic power generating systems [1]. In addition to other undesirable effects this
phenomenon may introduce severe erosion in the turbine, particularly in the blades,
resulting in structural damage and performance losses, which in turn introduce major
problems in maintenance and power generation production.
Although cavitation is not severe enough to be a matter for concern for all the
hydraulic plants, the detrimental effects if present can be so serious that control and
monitoring of this phenomenon is a key issue for the most of the hydraulic power
generation authorities. This involves not only the detection of cavitation, but also
the assessment of erosion damage for each operational condition. This is achieved
by operational monitoring, model monitoring together with simulation studies [2].
Monitoring is normally a multiple strategy multi-transducer action, due to the
complex nature of the phenomenon, the presence of considerable noise and also
because of the complexity of the transfer paths going from the cavitation region up
to the area where the sensors are positioned [3],[4].
Fernando Ribeiro Q ueiroz, CTE.O Fur nas C entrais Elétricas, 37 945-970 S. José da Ba rra,
Brazil
Eduardo Bauzer Medeiros, Lázaro Valentim Donadon, Marco Túlio Corrêa de Faria, Dept. of
Mechanical Engineering, UFMG, Av. Antônio Carlos 6627, 31270-901, Belo Horizonte, MG,
Brazil
742
Now, the detection of cavitation has become a more straightforward action but
perhaps the greatest problem is to exactly associate the extent of damage with
cavitation activity. Some sensing strategies are useful in the detection of activity but
are hardly suitable as a damage indicator.
Acoustic emission techniques are intrinsically suited to assess cavitation erosion
due to a variety of reasons but mainly because it is a high frequency technique,
therefore useful for the analysis of a high frequency problem [5]. It should be
mentioned however that other complementary techniques are required in order to
define a variety of machine operational parameters.
CAVITATION PHENOMENA
Cavitation describes the process of nucleation growth and implosion of vapor and
gas filled cavities, resulting from certain pressure distributions in a liquid [2]. When
cavities are carried to a region where the pressure is higher implosion and subsequent
very high local pressures may occur.
Cavitation Erosion
Cavitation erosion is the name given to the mechanical degradation of a surface

due to its contact with cavitation. Even though the phenomenon of cavitation erosion
has been extensively investigated at least for the last two decades the exact damage
mechanism is still controversial. What is known for certain is that depending on the
position where a cavitation bubble or cloud collapse generated waves impact the
nearby surface causing erosion.
Cavitation Erosion in Francis Turbines
Cavitation erosion characteristics depend on the machine, which is subjected to

this attack. In Francis turbines the damage tends to be more concentrated on the
runner, on the blade suction side [1]. Also, low load inter-blade cavitation vortices
may occur, giving rise to erosion of the runner hub wall [1]. Evaluation of this
condition is usually associated with specific energy, flow coefficients and the cavity
whirl. Figure 1 shows typical cavitation erosion damage in a Francis rotor.
Figure 1. Typical blade damage introduced by cavitation erosion
743
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND PROCEDURE
The monitoring of three Francis turbines, running at the same electric power plant
installation, but having different stages of cavitation erosion exposure has been carried
out. One turbine was brand new, the other had been running for about 9000 hours and
the last had been running for nearly 34000 hours, the latter at the end of its running life
just before being removed for major maintenance and blade repair.
The monitoring has been carried out with each turbine running at different
operational regimes. The monitoring started at zero load condition, and continued in
10 MW steps up to the overload case of 180 MW. Acoustic Emission AE monitoring
has been carried out for all the conditions using Physical Acoustics Corporation
(PASA) WDI-AST AE sensors. The AE monitoring was carried out at draft tube.
Figure 2 provides a general idea of the positioning of the AE sensors ate the draft tube.
The turbine running parameters were obtained directly from the Power Plant
monitoring facility.
Figure 2. Positioning of AE sensors at the draft tube.
RESULTS
Figures 3 to 5 are representative of the results obtained during the previously

described monitoring. They show how the acoustic emission output in Volts RMS
varies as the load conditions are varied from zero load to maximum overload.
Figure 3 shows results for the brand new turbine, Figure 4 for the recently
commissioned turbine and Figure 5 for the heavily damaged turbine.
It should be mentioned that the results obtained in the intermediate range should
not be taken into account, as they represent a region of hydraulic instability where the
turbine becomes dynamically unstable.
744
Figure 3. Acoustic emission values for a brand new turbine.
The results for the meaningful range, 150 MW to 160 MW which is the normal
operational condition, are highlighted for the three cases.
Figure 4. Acoustic Emission values for a recently commissioned turbine.
745
Figure 5. Acoustic Emission values for an aging and damaged turbine
It is possible to observe that in the useful operational range of the turbine the A E
values increase as turbine blade wear increases. Wear is associated with fluid flow
instability, which increases as the geometry of the blades becomes more irregular as a
function of cavitation erosion damage. This is a most important and promising result
since cavitation detection is seldom the main objective in a full scale installation. The
important factors are associated with the extent of wear and performance deterioration
for a given turbine, parameters which tend to be more difficult to evaluate.
CONCLUSIONS
A preliminary set of Acoustic Emission results has been obtained when

monitoring Francis turbines for the full range of operational conditions, ranging from
zero load to full overload. These turbines have all been subjected to cavitation erosion.
It has been observed that the averaged RMS A E output increases with wear, the
service time of the turbine, and hence blade damage, being directly associated with the
observed A E. sensor output. Apparently the A E activity is associated with flow
disturbances resulting from surface degrading of the turbine blade profiles. Cavitation
erosion can consequently be associated with the extent of cavitation erosion damage.
Additional secondary response is probably also present. However, as it is also
coherent with fluid flow excitation, separate analysis is not needed at least for this
initial study.
It is essential to emphasize that relevant monitoring has to be carried out under
stable turbine loading conditions. Fluid flow instabilities resulting from unstable
turbine loading and running may provide unreliable results
Even though further testing with statistical analysis is still required in order to
obtain reliable quantitative relationships between A E signals and blade wear the
described technique appears to be most promising, particularly as it is associated with
746
wear and operational instability both of which are more relevant than the common
detecting of incipient cavitation in turbo machinery.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are indebted to CTE.O Furnas Centrais Elétricas for the support
provided when carrying out the experimental work.
REFERENCES
1. Avellan, F.(2004), “Introduction to Cavitation in Hydraulic Machinery” , in The 6th Intenational

Conference on Hydraulic Machinery and Hydrodynamics, Scientific Bulletin of the Politehnica
University of Timisoara ed., Timissoara (2004), pp.11-22
2. Koivula, T.(2000), “ On Cavitation Fluid Power”, Proceedings of the 1o FPNI-PhD Symposium,
Hamburg , pp. 371-382.
3. Bajic, B.(2002), “Multidimensional monitors for hydroelectric powerplants”, presented at the
Hydro 2002 Conference ,Kiris, Novermber 2002.
4. Genhua, Y. (2009), “Development of Monitoring and Researching on Cavitation and Vibration of
Water Pump and Hydroturbine”, SHP News, 43: 20-24 .
5. Alfayez1, L., Mba, D., and Dyson, G. (2005), “The application of Acoustic Emission for Detecting
Incipient Cavitation and the Best Efficiency Point of a 60KW Centrifugal Pump: Case Study”, NDT
& E International, 38(5): 3 54-358.
747
Structural Health Monitoring During
Progressive Damage Test of S101 Bridge
M. DÖHLER, F. HILLE, L. MEVEL and W. RÜCKER
ABSTRACT
For the last decades vibration based identification of damage on civil engineering
structures has become an important issue for maintenance operations on transport in-
frastructure. Research in that field has been rapidly expanding from classic modal pa-
rameter estimation using measured excitation to modern operational monitoring. Here
the difficulty is to regard to the specific environmental and operational influence to the
structure under observation. In this paper, two methods accounting for statistical
and/or operational uncertainties are applied to measurement data of a progressive
damage test on a prestressed concrete bridge. On the base of covariance driven Sto-
chastic Subspace Identification (SSI) an algorithm is developed to monitor and auto-
matically compute confidence intervals of the obtained modal parameters. Further-
more, a null space based non-parametric damage detection method, utilizing a statis-
tical χ2 type test is applied to the measurement data. It can be shown that for concrete
bridges the proposed methodology is able to clearly indicate the presence of structural
damage, if the damage leads to a change of the structural system.
INTRODUCTION
In Germany and other European countries the majority of highway bridges are
made of prestressed concrete. From the today’s point of experience the structural de-
signs of that time comprised several deficiencies, which results in a limited durability
or even reduced load carrying capacity of the now 40 to 50 year old prestressed con-
crete bridges. Besides the natural degradation processes the operational loading and
the associated dynamic stressing of the bridge structures is increasing. To provide an
unrestricted operational availability as well as to protect the high investment costs, the
early detection of structural damage is of great interest. Currently the detection and
evaluation of the degree of damage and structural safety of bridge structures is accom-
plished by visual inspections. Since this approach is highly dependent on the know-
ledge and experience of the inspecting individuals, several especially vibration based
_____________
Michael Döhler, Laurent Mevel, INRIA, Campus de Beaulieu, 35700 Rennes, France.
Falk Hille, Werner Rücker, BAM, Division Buildings and Structures, 12200 Berlin, Germany
748
approaches for automatic identification of structural damage in early stages have been
developed in recent years [1], [2].
Within the European joint research project IRIS a prestressed concrete bridge in
Austria, the S101 Bridge, was artificially damaged with two scenarios. During the
progressive damage test the dynamic as well as the static behavior of the structure was
measured extensively. This paper presents the adoption of two stochastic subspace
based damage identification methods to the obtained measurement data.
Subspace-based linear system identification methods have been proven efficient
for the identification of the eigenstructure of linear multivariable systems. The ob-
tained modal parameters are afflicted with statistical uncertainty, e.g. due to measure-
ment noise, unstationarities in the excitation, etc. For evaluating the quality of the
identified modal parameters it is essential to know their confidence intervals, especial-
ly when evaluating system changes due to damage. In [3], an algorithm was derived to
automatically compute confidence intervals in covariance driven SSI.
Additionally, a stochastic subspace based output-only damage detection method is
applied, where, instead of identifying the dynamic system a nonparametric χ2-type
hypothesis test is used to analyze changes in the response of the system [4-6]. The me-
thod has been successfully applied to several laboratory and real applications from
aerospace as well as mechanical and civil engineering [7].
Using covariance driven SSI, both algorithms are applied to the S101 Bridge.
STOCHASTIC SUBSPACE IDENTIFICATION (SSI)
Models and Parameters
The behavior of a mechanical system is assumed to be described by a stationary

linear dynamical system
MZɺɺ(t ) + CZ (t ) + KZ (t ) = v(t ), Y (t ) = LZ (t ) , (1)
where t denotes continuous time, M, C and K are the mass, damping and stiffness ma-
trices, high-dimensional vector Z collects the displacements of the degrees of freedom
of the structure, the non-measured external force v modeled as non-stationary
Gaussian white noise, the measurements are collected in the vector Y and matrix L in-
dicates the sensor locations.
The eigenstructure of (1) with the modes µ and mode shapes ϕµ is a solution of
det( µ 2 M + µC + K ) = 0, ( µ 2 M + µ C + K )φµ = 0, ϕ µ = Lφµ . (2)
Sampling model (1) at some rate 1/τ yields the discrete model in state-space form
X k +1 = FX k + Vk +1 , Yk = HX k , (3)
whose eigenstructure is given by
det( F − λ I ) = 0, ( F − λ I )φλ = 0, ϕλ = H φλ . (4)
Then, the eigenstructure of the continuous system (1) is related to the eigenstructure of
the discrete system (3) by
eτµ = λ , ϕ µ = ϕλ . (5)
749
The collection of modes and mode shapes (λ,ϕλ) is a canonical parameterization of
system (3). From the eigenvalues λ, the natural frequencies f and damping ratios d of
the system are directly recovered from f = a / (2πτ) and d = 100|b|/(a2 + b2)1/2, where
a = |arctan Re(λ)/Im(λ)| and b = ln |λ|.
Covariance-Driven SSI
To obtain the eigenstructure of system (3) from measurements (Yk)k=1,…,N, the

covariance-driven output-only subspace identification algorithm [8], [9] is used.
From the data, a block Hankel matrix H is filled with the correlation lags
Ri = E(YkYk-iT) of the output data
 R0 R1 ⋯ Rq −1 
 
R1 R2 ⋯ Rq  N
H= , Ri = ∑YY T
k k −i . (6)
 ⋮ ⋮ ⋱  k = i +1
 
 Rp R p +1 R p + q 
It possesses the factorization property H = O C into observability matrix O and con-

trollability matrix C, where O is obtained from H by a singular value decomposition
(SVD) and truncation at the desired model order
∆  T
H = (U1 U 0 )  1  V , O = U1∆1/1 2 = ( H T ( HF )T ... ( HF p )T ) .
def T
(7)
 ∆0 
From the observability matrix O the matrices H in the first block row and F from a
least squares solution of
 H   HF 
   
 HF   HF 2 
O F = O with O = , O= (8)
 ⋮  ⋮ 
 
p −1 
 
 HF p 
 HF   
are obtained. The eigenstructure (λ,φλ) and thus the system parameter θ of the system
(3) is then obtained from (4). Note that parameters p and q in (6) need to be chosen
such that (p + 1)r ≥ qr ≥ n, where r is the number of sensors and n is the assumed
model order of system (3). It is recommended to set p + 1 = q.
MONITORING OF MODAL PARAMETERS – CONFIDENCE INTERVALS
The classical form of structural health monitoring consists in the monitoring of the
modal parameters of a structure. Although they are influenced by changes in the envi-
ronmental conditions, abrupt changes might indicate changes in the structure due to
damage. However, for evaluating a change in a modal parameter it is necessary to
know its standard deviation, as all parameters are estimated from measured data and
are thus subject to statistical uncertainty. This uncertainty may result from finite num-
ber of data samples, measurement noises, non-stationary excitations, nonlinear struc-
ture, model order reduction and further sources.
750
For the computation of the confidence intervals the algorithm of [3] is used with
an advanced sensitivity computation from [10]. It computes the uncertainties of the
modal parameters at a chosen system order from the uncertainty of the Hankel matrix
H. The covariance of the Hankel matrix ΣH itself can be evaluated by cutting the sen-
sor data into blocks on which instances of the Hankel matrix are computed. It holds
∆f j = J f j ∆(vec H), ∆d j = J d j ∆ (vec H), ∆ϕ j = Jϕ j ∆ (vec H), (9)
with the frequencies fj, damping ratios dj and mode shapes ϕj, and their sensitivities J
with respect to vec H. It follows
cov f j = J f j Σ H J Tf j , cov d j = J d j Σ H J dTj , cov ϕ j = Jϕ j Σ H JϕT j , (10)
from where the standard deviations of the modal parameters are obtained. This offers a
possibility to compute confidence intervals on the modal parameters at a certain sys-
tem order in a fully automated way, without repeating the system identification.
STATISTICAL SUBSPACE-BASED DAMAGE DETECTION TEST
Instead of extracting modal parameters and comparing them in reference and pos-
sibly damaged states of a structure, the statistical subspace-based damage detection
algorithm from [4] compares different structural states by using a χ2 test on a residual
function. This algorithm has the advantage that no modal parameter extraction is ne-
cessary. Furthermore, the whole system response is compared implicitly and not only
the first modes as it is often the case when monitoring modal parameters.
The algorithm consists of the following steps. In the reference state, a Hankel ma-
trix H0 is computed from the output data of the system as in (6). Note that reference
scenarios with different environmental conditions can be mixed when computing H0,
see [6]. Then, the left null space S of H0 is computed and the characteristic property of
a system in the reference state writes S T H = 0 . The null space S can be obtained with
an SVD of H0 as in (7) from S = U0. The associated residual function [4] writes
ζ N = N vec( S T H) , (11)
where N is the number of samples, on which H is computed. Furthermore, compute
the residual’s covariance Σ = E[ζNζNT], where E denotes the expectation operator.
The residual function is asymptotically Gaussian. It manifests itself to damage by
a change in its mean value, also corresponding to an increase of the χ2 test statistics
χ 2 = ζ NT Σ −1ζ N . (12)
The monitoring of the system consists in calculating the χ2 test value on the Han-
kel matrices estimated from newly recorded output data and comparing it to a thre-
shold. A significant increase in the χ2 value indicates that the system has changed.
Note that using a large number of sensors, the dimensions of the residual function
and hence its covariance can get very large as well. In this case, it is preferable to use
reference sensors or projection channels [9] in the computation of the Hankel matrix,
reducing the size of the involved matrices significantly. The adaption to the residual is
described and evaluated in [11]. Furthermore, the inversion of the covariance matrix
can pose a problem. A numerically robust computation is described in [10].
751
PROGRESSIVE DAMAGE TEST ON S101 BRIDGE
Within the European research project “Integrated European Industrial Risk Reduc-
tion System (IRIS)” a prestressed concrete bridge was artificially damaged [12]. The
intention was to provide a complete set of monitoring data during a defined loss of
structural integrity for testing and evaluation of various SHM methods and applica-
tions. The progressive damage campaign was planned and organized by the Austrian
company VCE and accomplished by VCE and the University of Tokyo [12].
S101 Bridge
The S101 was a prestressed concrete bridge from the early 1960th spanning over
the 4-lane highway A1 in Austria. During recurring technical inspections of the bridge
several deficiencies as cracks and spellings have been found and it was decided to re-
place the structure. Before the demolition of the bridge a progressive damage test for
measuring and investigating the structural behavior during the degradation processes
could be arranged and carried out.
Figure 1. S101 Bridge during damage test [12].
Damage Description
The damage test took place from 10-13 December 2008. During the test the high-
way beneath the bridge was open in one direction. The second direction was closed for
traffic because of construction work which in addition took place near the bridge.
Two major damage scenarios were artificially induced. First, a significant damage
of one of the four columns was inserted by cutting through the column on its lower
end. With this action a change in the global structural system was implemented. After
a second cut a 5 cm thick slice of the column was removed and the column was lo-
wered for altogether 3 cm. Afterwards the column was uplifted again to its original
TABLE 1. NOTATION OF CONSECUTIVE DAMAGE ACTIONS.

Damage Action Damage Action
A Begin of cutting through column G Uplifting column
B End of second cut through column H Exposing cables and cutting of 1st cable
st
C Lowering of column – 1 step (10mm) I Cutting through 2nd cable
nd
D Lowering of column – 2 step (20mm) J Cutting through 3rd cable
rd
E Lowering of column – 3 step (27mm) K Partly cutting of 4th cable
F Inserting steel plates
752
position and secured there by steel plates. In a second damage scenario prestressing
tendons of one of the beams were cut successively. All in all three and a quarter of a
wire bundle were cut through. Between each intersection pauses of several hours were
kept to let the structural system change into a new state of equilibrium. In Table 1 all
damage actions are sorted in chronological order.
Measurement description
For vibration measurement a BRIMOS® measurement system containing a perma-

nent sensor grid was used. The grid consisted of 15 sensor locations on the bridge
deck, in each location three sensors for measurement in the bridge deck’s vertical,
longitudinal and transversal direction. Altogether, 45 acceleration sensors were used.
All values were recorded permanently with a sampling frequency of 500 Hz. Dur-
ing the three days measurement campaign 714 data files each containing 48 channels
with 165 000 data points were produced.
Because of the time of year and because of the cloudy weather the variation of the
bridge temperature over the test period was minimal. During the test the highway be-
neath the bridge was open in one direction. The second direction was closed for traffic
because of construction work which in addition took place near the bridge. Perturba-
tion of the measurement signals by the undergoing road construction work is possible.
NUMERICAL RESULTS
Monitoring of Modal Parameters with Confidence Intervals
For each of the 714 data sets the modal parameters of the first 5 modes are ob-
tained from SSI using a stabilization diagram of model orders n = 1,…,70. Their con-
fidence bounds (± one standard deviation) are computed using [3], [10]. With these
results, the stabilization diagrams (Figure 2) are cleaned as spurious modes have large
standard deviations. With this procedure, the modal parameters are automatically ex-
tracted for each of the datasets and their confidence intervals are computed. In Figure
3, the evolution of the first 5 frequencies during the progressive damage test is pre-
sented. The impact of the introduced damage on the frequencies can be clearly seen.
Figure 2: Stabilization diagram of natural frequencies and their confidence intervals (horizontal bars) for
first dataset. Left: Original diagram, Right: Cleaned diagram with threshold on confidence intervals.
753
Figure 3: Automatically extracted natural frequencies and their confidence bounds (bar on the right indi-
cates their percentage) during progressive damage test.
Damage Detection
Figure 4 (left) shows a bar plot of χ2 values as damage indicators of all consecutive
tests within the three days campaign. The associated analysis used all 45 sensors. The
abscissa of the plot describes the chronological sequence of the damage activities as
well as the 6am and 6pm points of time for orientation. Table 1 gives the explanation
to the used notation of the damage activities. The right side of Figure 4 shows in detail
the damage indicator during the several steps of the first damage scenario, the cutting
and settling of one of the four bridge columns. Although not distinctively visible, also
the cutting of the column (A+B) caused an increase of the indicator of approximately
75%. Though, the absolute effect is superimposed by the traffic excitation noise. The
inlay in Figure 4, right, shows a detail of that time period. The three steps of the col-
umn settlement action are very distinctive in influencing the computed damage indica-
tor. Obviously, the dynamic system has changed to quite some extend and the alto-
gether 27mm of elastic settlement can be detected clearly.
The cutting of the prestressing tendons did not lead to a significant change in the
damage indicator after the single cutting steps (H, I, J, K in Fig. 4). It is assumed that
the cutting of the tendons during the damage test did not lead to a significant change of
the structural system, because the loading of the structure was not high enough to acti-
vate the damage right after its insertion. The increase of the indicator at the end of the
7 7
x 10 x 10
4
5
x 10
8
4 7
6
Damage Indicator
3 4
Damage Indicator
3 3
Damage Indicator
0
2 A B
Time
1
1
0 0
6am AB CD EF 6pm 6am G H I 6pm 6am J K A B C D E
Time Time
Figure 4. Results of damage detection; left: course of the damage indicator over the 3-day damage test,
right: damage indicator for cutting and settling of one bridge column.
754
test series might be the result of a delayed rearrangement of the structural system by a
reduction of stresses under generation of cracks in the concrete of the bridge deck (far
right on Fig. 4, left). Though, a clear evidence of that assumption could not be found.
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper two strategies for structural health monitoring are applied to a pro-
gressive damage test of S101 Bridge. Both take the uncertainties in the output-only
vibration data into account. With an automated procedure, the modal parameters of the
first five modes and their confidence intervals were extracted when the bridge was
damaged. A clear link between the change in the modal parameters and the destruction
states can be made. The computed confidence intervals are necessary to evaluate
changes in the modal parameters. With the damage detection test, the change in the
system response of the entire structure is evaluated. Again, a clear link between the χ2
test values and the destruction states of the S101 Bridge could be made.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was partially supported by the European projects FP7-NMP CP-IP
213968-2 IRIS and FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IAPP 251515 ISMS. We also thank VCE for
providing the data from S101 Bridge.
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1. C. R. Farrar, S. W. Doebling and D. A. Nix, Vibration-based structural damage identification. Phi-
losophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences,
359: 131-149, 2001.
2. H. Sohn, C. R. Farrar, F. M. Hemez, D. D. Shunk, et al., A Review of Structural Health Monitoring
Literature: 1996–2001. Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2003.
3. Reynders, E., Pintelon, R., De Roeck, G., Uncertainty bounds on modal parameters obtained from
stochastic subspace identification. Mech. Systems and Signal Processing, 22(4): 948–969, 2008.
4. M. Basseville, M. Abdelghani and A. Benveniste, Subspace-Based Fault Detection Algorithms for
Vibration Monitoring. Automatica, 36(1): 101-109, 2000.
5. M. Basseville, L. Mevel and M. Goursat, Statistical model-based damage detection and localization:
subspace-based residuals and damage-to-noise sensitivity ratios. Journal of Sound and Vibration,
275(3-5): 769-794, 2004.
6. É. Balmès, M. Basseville, F. Bourquin, L. Mevel, H. Nasser and F. Treyssède, Merging Sensor
Data from Multiple Temperature Scenarios for Vibration Monitoring of Civil Structures. Structural
Health Monitoring, 7(2): 129-142, 2008.
7. É. Balmès, M. Basseville, L. Mevel, H. Nasser and W. Zhou. Statistical model-based damage loca-
lization: a combined subspace-based and substructuring approach. Structural Control and Health
Monitoring, 15(6): 857-875, 2008.
8. A. Benveniste and J.J. Fuchs, Single sample modal identification of a non-stationary stochastic
process. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, AC-30(1): 66–74, 1985.
9. B. Peeters and G. De Roeck, Reference-based stochastic subspace identification for output-only
modal analysis. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 13(6): 855–878, 1999.
10. M. Döhler and L. Mevel, Robust subspace based fault detection. In: Proc. 18th IFAC World Con-
gress, Milan, Italy, 2011.
11. F. Hille, M. Döhler, L. Mevel and W. Rücker, Subspace based damage detection methods on a pre-
stressed concrete bridge. Proc. 8th Int. Conf. on Structural Dynamics EURODYN, Belgium, 2011
12. VCE, Progressive Damage Test S101 Flyover Reibersdorf (draft), Tech. Report 08/2308, 2009.
755
CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURES: LAB
DEMONSTRATION
757
Sensing Resolution and Measurement Range
of a Passive Wireless Strain Sensor
X. YI, T. WU, G. LANTZ, J. COOPER, C. CHO, Y. WANG,

M. M. TENTZERIS and R. T. LEON
ABSTRACT
In this research, folded patch antennas are explored for the development of low-
cost and wireless smart-skin sensors that monitor the strain in metallic structures.
When the patch antenna is under strain/deformation, its resonance frequency varies
accordingly. The variation can be easily interrogated and recorded by a wireless reader
that also wirelessly delivers power for the antenna operation. The patch antenna adopts
a specially selected substrate material with low dielectric constant, as well as an
inexpensive off-the-shelf radiofrequency identification (RFID) chip for signal
modulation. This paper reports latest tensile test results on the strain sensing limit of
the prototype folded patch antenna. In particular, it is shown that the passive wireless
sensor can detect small strain changes lower than 20 με, and can perform well at a
strain range higher than 10,000 με.
INTRODUCTION
Nearly one third of the 604,426 bridges in the U.S. are made of steel and
aluminum iron, among which almost 20% are rated as structurally deficient and 17.7%
functionally obsolete [1]. For all deficient bridges, fatigue-induced fracture/crack is
among the most common concerns for inspectors and owners [2]. Current biennial
bridge deck evaluation and assessment methods are mainly based on visual inspection
[3], which cannot detect small-size cracks hidden under paint. The cracks may grow to
critical and dangerous sizes before the next inspection cycle. Early detection of cracks
for fracture-critical-members of steel bridges has long been a challenging issue in
bridge health monitoring. Some existing technologies, including metal foil strain
gages, fiber optic sensors, or ultrasonic testing, may assist in crack monitoring.
However, most sensing systems either require running lengthy cables in the structure
_______________________
Xiaohua Yi, Gabriel Lantz, Chunhee Cho, Yang Wang and Roberto T. Leon, School of Civil
and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
Terence Wu, James Cooper and Manos M. Tentzeris, School of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
759
[4], or cover only very limited areas of the structure, or involve human-operated
equipment that is not convenient for in-situ continuous application. As a result, these
technologies suffer from their high instrumentation and monitoring cost and are not
practical for large-scale/large-area deployment and continuous monitoring in the field.
This research investigates a different approach of exploiting wireless
electromagnetic (EM) waves for strain sensing through the development of “smart
skins” made of radiofrequency identification (RFID)-enabled patch antennas. The
dimension-dependent behavior of EM waves with the antenna is exploited as the
sensing mechanism. The basic concept is that when a small piece of antenna (usually
with 2D shape) is under strain/deformation, its EM resonance frequency can change
accordingly. Such change can be interrogated by a wireless reader and used as a strain
indicator. Loh et al. [5] developed inductively coupled wireless strain sensors to
measure the shift of resonance frequency under tensile strain, which shows an
approximately relationship. Chen et al. [6] successfully developed corrosion sensors
using the same inductive coupling concept. One drawback of inductively coupling,
however, is that the interrogation distance is usually limited.
To overcome the limitations in interrogation distance, EM backscattering
systems can provide an alternative [7]. For example, Deshmukh and Huang [8]
developed a microstrip patch antenna for measuring strain and detecting cracks in
metallic structures. In addition, Thomson et al. [9] developed a wireless strain sensor
based on RF cavity. The RF cavity sensor achieved an interrogation distance of 8m,
but the system requires an external regular antenna being connected outside the cavity
at the sensor side. More recently, Yi et al. [10] developed an RFID-based folded patch
antenna as a passive wireless strain sensor for metallic structures. The system utilizes
the principle of EM backscattering and adopts a low-cost off-the-shelf RFID chip to
reduce the design and manufacturing cost. The RFID-based technology allows the
sensor to be passive, i.e. to operate without other power source such as batteries [11].
Instead, the sensor receives operation energy entirely from the wireless transmission
by the reader. Through experiments, the strain sensing resolution is previously
demonstrated to be under 50 µε, and the wireless interrogation distance is shown to be
over a few feet for this preliminary prototype.
In this research, the strain sensing resolution and measurement range of the
prototype sensor are further investigated. Both parameters are important metrics for
practical deployment of the sensor. An extensive suite of tensile tests are devised and
conducted to characterize the strain sensing performance. The rest of the paper is
organized as follows. First, the design and manufacturing of the prototype wireless
strain sensor are summarized. The operation principle of the system is then described.
Experimental results are presented illustrating excellent sensing performance in terms
of strain resolution and measurement range. Finally, a summary and discussion of this
work are provided.
STRAIN SENSING PRINCIPLE
As shown in Fig.1, the passive wireless strain sensing system consists of an

RFID reader and an RFID tag (i.e. wireless strain sensor), where the tag includes an
antenna and an integrated circuit (IC) chip. The operation of the system is based on
EM backscattering. The reader emits interrogation EM wave to the tag at power level
P1. If the power received by the tag is larger than the activation power threshold of the
760
IC chip, the tag is activated and Interrogation distance d
reflects EM wave back to the
reader at power level P2. The first P1
subsection introduces the RFID tag
design and the basic formulation Tag antenna
for its resonance frequency. The Reader antenna
procedure for extracting the P2 IC chip
resonance frequency from the
reader measurement is described RFID reader RFID tag
(not to scale)
afterward. Fig.1. Power transmission and backscattering in a passive
RFID tag-reader system
RFID Tag Design
The RFID tag developed in this research utilizes RFID IC chips that usually
have very small feature sizes and are inexpensive to produce. The RFID IC chip for
this application is chosen as the SL3ICS1002 model from NXP Semiconductors. The
dimension of the chip, excluding the size of the pads for soldering, is 1 mm × 1 mm.
The impedance of the chip is 13.3-j122 Ω (“j” is the imaginary unit), which is low and
relatively easy to match during the tag antenna design. The broad operating frequency
range of the chip (from 840 MHz to 960 MHz) allows international usage.
The design drawing and picture of this prototype are shown in Fig. 2. Both the
design drawing and the picture illustrate the front/top side of the RFID tag, where the
IC chip is soldered on patterned copper cladding (as the conducting component of the
tag antenna). The dimension for each part is shown in this figure too. The adopted
substrate material is Rogers RT/duroid®5880, a glass microfiber reinforced poly-tetra-
fluoro-ethylene (PTFE) composite with a dielectric constant εr of 2.20 and a thickness
of 31 mils (0.79 mm). The RT/duroid®5880 material is used due to its low dielectric
attenuation, which improves the interrogation range and the quality factor of the RFID
tag. Furthermore, glass microfiber reinforced composites have more reliable
mechanical behavior under strain compared with ceramic-filled composites that can be
used for other antenna applications. Vias through the substrate are used for connecting
the top copper cladding with the ground plane on the back of the substrate, forming a
folded patch antenna. One pin of the IC chip is also connected with the ground plane
through a via.
The RFID tag design is 2.4 in.
based on a quarter-wave W=1.97 in. 31-mil substrate
rectangular patch antenna (folded- 31-mil substrate
(RT/duroid®5880)
patch) topology [7]. The topology Top copper
L= 2.22 in.
(RT/duroid®5880) IC chip
2.72 in.
cladding
is chosen for its good radiation Top copper
IC chip
cladding Vias
performance on top of metallic
Vias
objects, and because it enables
50% reduction to the footprint as
0.71 in.
compared with a regular patch
antenna. The antenna resonance (b) Picture of the
(a) Design drawing
frequency at zero strain level, fR0, manufactured tag
can be estimated as: Fig. 2. RFID tag as wireless strain sensor
761
c
fR0  (1)
4( L  L)  r
where c is the speed of light; L is the physical length of the top copper cladding (2.22
in. for this design); L is the additional electrical length compensating the fringing
effect. When the antenna experiences strain deformation of ε in the longitudinal
direction, the resonance frequency shifts to:
c fR0
fR   (2)
4(1   )( L  L)  r 1 
When strain ε is small, the resonance frequency changes approximately linearly with
respect to strain:
f R  f R 0 (1     2   3  )  f R 0 (1   ) (3)
This approximately linear relationship indicates that by measuring the antenna
resonance frequency, the applied strain can be derived.
Measurement of Resonance Frequency
The RFID reader (Fig.1) adopted in this application is the Tagformance unit
from Voyantic. The reader can sweep through an interrogation frequency range from
800 MHz to 1000 MHz at a frequency resolution of 0.1 MHz. At each interrogation
frequency, the reader emits different levels of power in order to identify the
transmitted power threshold (least transmitted power required to activate the IC chip).
The power measurement resolution is 0.1 dBm. Through a USB 2.0 port, a computer
interface is used to operate and retrieve measurement data from the reader.
The RFID tag antenna has been designed with one specific resonance frequency,
which provides best impedance matching between the tag antenna and the IC chip.
When the interrogation frequency f of reader is equal to the resonance frequency of the
RFID tag, the least amount of power needs to be transmitted by the reader for
activating the RFID tag. This means the transmitted power threshold plot P1(f)
(measured by the reader) reaches minimum value at the resonance frequency, which is
shown in Fig. 3. When there is no strain/deformation, the minimum occurs at
resonance frequency fR0 (Eq. (1)). When the antenna length changes due to strain ε in
the longitudinal direction, the resonance frequency changes accordingly to fR (Eq. (2)),
and the P1(f) plot for the antenna under strain reaches minimum at fR.
INVESTIGATION ON WIRELESS STRAIN SENSING RESOLUTION
Preliminarily study on the strain sensing P1 No strain

performance of the prototype sensor has been Strain ε
presented in [10]. The strain sensing results
demonstrate good linearity at 50 µε resolution. To
explore the performance limit in strain resolution,
similar test is conducted with reduced strain f
increment per loading step. Fig. 4(a) shows the
center area of the tensile testing specimen, with the fR fR0
wireless strain sensor and seven conventional strain Fig. 3. Conceptual illustration of
gages measuring the axial strain on the aluminum resonance frequency shift due to strain
762
specimen. Fig. 4 (b) shows the experimental setup for the tensile testing with a 22-kip
SATEC machine. The reader antenna is mounted on a tripod facing the wireless strain
sensor. The distance between the reader antenna and the wireless sensor is set as 12 in.
Through a coaxial cable, the reader antenna is connected with the Tagformance reader.
A National Instruments strain gage module (NI 9235), in combination with a
CompactDAQ Chassis (NI cDAQ-9172), is used for collecting data from conventional
metal foil strain gages.
The force applied by the testing machine is configured so that approximately a
20 µε increment is achieved at each loading step. The average interrogation power
threshold in dBm scale, P1 ( f ) , is measured by the Tagformance reader at each
loading step. Assuming P1 is the power threshold in milliwatt, the conversion to dBm
scale is defined as:
P1  10 log10 P1 (4)
To reduce the effect of measurement noise, five measurements are taken for each
strain level and the average is calculated at every interrogation frequency f:
1 5
P1 ( f )    P1i ( f )  (5)
5 i 1
where P1 is the average transmitted power threshold in dBm, P1i ( f ) is the transmitted
power threshold in dBm from the ith measurement. For clarity, the average transmitted
power threshold at 11 µε, 101 µε, and 193 µε are plotted in Fig. 5(a). The strain levels
are calculated as the average among the seven axial strain gages. A clear resonance
frequency shift is observed as strain increases. As described in the last section, the
transmitted power threshold reaches its minimum value at the resonance frequency. A
4th order polynomial curve fitting is performed to the valley area of the P1 ( f ) plot at
each strain level [10]. The value of the fitted 4th order polynomial is re-calculated at a
frequency step of 0.001 MHz for identifying the resonance frequency.
Wireless
Reader antenna strain sensor
Seven metal
foil strain Wireless strain sensor 12 in.
gages (i.e. RFID tag)
NI DAQ system
Loading
direction Tagformance reader
1 in
(a) Picture of the sensor instrumentation for

wireless sensing experiments (b) Picture of the experimental setup
Fig. 4. Experimental setup for the tensile tests
763
18
f = -0.000726  + 921.472
Resonance frequency f R (MHz)

11 R
Transmitted power (dBm)
17.5 921.46
101 R2 = 0.9915
17 921.44
193 STD = 4.06 
921.42
16.5
921.4
16
921.38
15.5 921.36
15 921.34
14.5 921.32
918 920 922 924 0 50 100 150 200
Frequency(MHz) Strain  ()
(a) Average transmitted power threshold P1 ( f ) (b) Resonance frequency fR versus strain ε
Fig. 5. Tensile testing results for the ~20 µε/step loading case at 12 in. interrogation distance
The resonance frequency fR, as determined through the 4th order curve fitting,
is plotted in Fig. 5(b) against the strain level. The ten data points correspond to ten
strain levels. As a result of linear regression, the slope parameter is identified as -726
Hz/µε (i.e. -0.000726 MHz/µε). This parameter corresponds to the strain sensitivity of
the wireless sensor, which means that 1 µε increment in the aluminum specimen
causes 726 Hz decrease in the resonance frequency of the wireless strain sensor.
According to Eq. (1) and the tag antenna dimensions provided in Fig. 2, the theoretical
resonance frequency of the sensor at zero strain level can be estimated in SI units as:
3 108
f R0   920.8 MHz (6)
4  (54.5  0.414) 103  2.2
The relative difference between the theoretical and the experimental resonance
frequency fR0 is within 0.1%, which shows a very close match. According to Eq. (3),
theoretically, the approximate strain sensitivity should equal to fR0, i.e., -920.8 Hz/µε.
The difference between the analytical and experimental strain sensitivities is partly
due to the strain transfer from the aluminum specimen to the top copper cladding.
Since the thickness of the RFID tag is over 30 mils, the strain experienced by the top
copper cladding is smaller than the strain occurring in the aluminum specimen (as
measured by the strain gages). This strain transfer process reduces the strain sensitivity
of the prototype sensor. In addition, the dielectric constant εr (which is assumed
constant in the analytical study) also changes with respect to strain. Different from an
ideal material, small voids always exist in the substrate. Distortion of the voids under
strain can affect εr. The dielectric constant change due to strain requires in-depth
studies in the future.
Fig. 5(b) also shows the coefficient of determination, R2, from the linear
regression [12]. A value of R2 = 0.9915 indicates a good level of linearity. In order to
further check the accuracy of the measurements, the standard deviation of the
measurement error is calculated as:
1 N

STD   i 
2
(7)
N  1 i 1
where  i is the difference between the measured strain and the strain estimated using
the linear relationship at the ith strain level, N is the total number of strain levels. As
764
shown in Fig. 5(b), the standard deviation is 4.06 µε, which shows an acceptable
accuracy for such a passive wireless strain sensor.
INVESTIGATION ON THE MEASUREMENT RANGE OF THE WIRELESS

STRAIN SENSOR
Similar experiment is performed to explore the range of the proposed

prototype sensor. The measurement range experiment is conducted on a MTS-810
tensile testing machine, which has a capacity of 55 kips. Most of the experimental
setup is similar to the previous experiments for strain sensing resolution, except for the
loading control and steps. During this experiment, the displacement control mode is
adopted for the testing machine, because the aluminum specimen is expected to yield
during the experiment. From 0 to 1,000 με, each loading step is configured to increase
the strain level by about 100 με; from 1,000 με to 10,000 με, each loading step
generates a strain increment of about 1,000 με.
The average transmitted power threshold at different strain levels are shown in
Fig. 6(a). For clarity, only five example strain levels are shown in the figure. The
resonance frequency fR is plotted in Fig. 6(b) against the strain level. Separate linear
regression is conducted to three segments of the plot. For segment ① with data points
from 0 to 1,000 µε, the sensitivity slope is -668 Hz/µε. For segment ② with data
points from 1,000 to 4,500 µε, the sensitivity slope is -709 Hz/µε, which is slightly
higher. The slightly different slope can be explained by Eq. (3), which shows that the
approximate linearity becomes weaker as strain increases. For segment ③, the
relatively low sensitivity is due to the yielding of both the aluminum specimen and the
copper antenna, as well as the dielectric property change of the Rogers 5880 substrate.
The coefficients of determination at these three segments are 0.9974, 0.9997, and
0.9864, respectively. The standard deviations for the first two segments are much
smaller than the third segment, due to more linear material property at lower strain
level.
912 1 f R = -0.000668  + 911.407

Transmitted power (dBm)
1
Resonance frequency f R (MHz)
13
911 R2 = 0.9974 STD = 16.3 
910 2 f = -0.000709  + 911.444

R
12
R2 = 0.9997 STD = 23.5 
0
909 2
11 489 908
959 3 3
907
4997 f = -0.000348  + 909.824
10 R
10751 906
R2 = 0.9864 STD = 257.9 
905 910 915 920 905
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000
Frequency(MHz) Strain  ()
(a) Average transmitted power threshold P1 ( f ) (b) Resonance frequency fR versus strain ε
Fig. 6. Tensile testing results for the strain sensing range case at 12 in. interrogation distance
765
SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION
This paper presents the strain sensing resolution and measurement range of a
prototype wireless strain sensor, whose design is based on a folded patch antenna.
Both analytical studies and tensile testing experiments demonstrate an approximately
linear relationship between the resonance frequency of the antenna and the strain
experienced by the sensor, particularly at small strain levels. It is shown that the
passive wireless sensor can detect small strain changes lower than 20 με, and can
perform well at a strain range higher than 10,000 με.
Since the resonance frequency of the wireless strain sensor is correlated with the
size of the patch antenna, the footprint of the sensor can be significantly reduced in
future studies by increasing the operating frequency. In addition, longer interrogation
distance can be achieved by adopting a high gain antenna or increasing the transmitted
power at the reader side.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This material is based upon work supported by the Federal Highway

Administration under agreement No. DTFH61-10-H-00004. Any opinions, findings,
and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Federal Highway Administration.
REFERENCES
1. FHWA. 2011. National Bridge Inventory. U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal
Highway Administration, Washington D.C.
2. ASCE. 2009. Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. American Society of Civil Engineers,
Reston, VA.
3. AASHTO. 2009. Manual of Bridge Evaluation. American Association of State Highway &
Transportation Officials, Washington D.C.
4. Çelebi, M. 2002. Seismic Instrumentation of Buildings (with Emphasis on Federal Buildings).
Report No. 0-7460-68170, United States Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA.
5. Loh, K.J., J.P. Lynch, and N.A. Kotov. 2008. "Inductively coupled nanocomposite wireless
strain and pH sensors," Smart Struct. Syst., 4(5):531-548.
6. Chen, Y., S. Munukutla, P. Pasupathy, D.P. Neikirk, and S.L. Wood. 2010. "Magneto-
inductive waveguide as a passive wireless sensor net for structural health monitoring," Proc.
SPIE, Sensor and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace
Systems 2010, March 8, 2010.
7. Finkenzeller, K. 2003. RFID Handbook. Wiley, New York.
8. Deshmukh, S. and H. Huang. 2010. "Wireless interrogation of passive antenna sensors," Meas.
Sci. Technol., 21(3):035201.
9. Thomson, D.J., D. Card, and G.E. Bridges. 2009. "RF cavity passive wireless sensors with
time-domain gating-based interrogation for SHM of civil structures," IEEE Sensors J.,
9(11):1430-1438.
10. Yi, X., T. Wu, Y. Wang, R.T. Leon, M.M. Tentzeris, and G. Lantz. 2011. "Passive wireless
smart-skin sensor using RFID-based folded patch antennas," Int. J. Smart Nano Mater,
2(1):22-38.
11. Balanis, C.A. 1997. Antenna Theory: Analysis and Design. John Wiley and Sons Inc., New
York.
12. Chatterjee, S. and A.S. Hadi. 1986. "Influential observations, high leverage points, and outliers
in linear regression," Stat. Sci., 1(3):379-416.
766
Ultrasonic Wall Thickness Monitoring at
High Temperatures (>500°C)
F. CEGLA, P. CAWLEY, J. ALLIN and J. DAVIES
ABSTRACT
Corrosion and erosion shorten the life of components that are used in the
petrochemical industry. In order to mitigate the safety and financial risks posed
by the degradation mechanisms, plant operators monitor wall thicknesses at
regular inspection intervals. In high temperature locations inspections have to be
carried out at plant shut downs because conventional ultrasonic sensors cannot
withstand the high operating temperatures. The authors have developed a
waveguide based high temperature thickness gauge for monitoring of wall
thicknesses in high temperature areas. The waveguide allows the use of
conventional transduction systems (max temp. 60°C) at one end and guides
ultrasonic waves into the high temperature region where the inspection is to be
carried out. Slender stainless steel waveguides allow a temperature drop of
~500-600°C per 200mm length to be sustained simply by natural convection
cooling. This paper describes the technical challenges that had to be overcome
(dispersion and source/receiver characteristics) in order to implement this
“acoustic cable”. A commercial system for wireless corrosion monitoring based
on the technology is now available. Experimental results of thickness
measurements on components of different thickness, furnace tests at different
temperatures and accelerated corrosion tests are presented as well as data from
sensors that have been installed in petrochemical plants. In addition to this it is
demonstrated how trending and multiple repeat measurements allow extraction
of more information from the measured data.
INTRODUCTION
Corrosion and erosion are major problems in the petro-chemical industry

and can lead to catastrophic failures of equipment leading to the loss of life,
environmental disasters and severe financial consequences for the parties
involved. Plant operators therefore carry out regular wall thickness surveys of
all their pipe work in order to mitigate these risks. The wall thickness surveys
__________________
Frederic Cegla and Peter Cawley, UK Research Centre in NDE, Imperial
College, London, SW7 2AZ.
Jon Allin and Jacob Davies, Permasense Ltd., Century House, 100 Station Road,
Horsham RH13 5UZ, UK
767
are currently carried out at plant shut down periods by manual ultrasonic wall
thickness measurements at predefined thickness monitoring locations (TMLs).
The measurements are carried out manually because conventional ultrasonic
transducers do not withstand elevated temperatures that can be reached on the
pipe work while the plant is operational. Ideally it would be possible to monitor
wall thickness during plant operation in order to gain more frequent
measurements and remove the cost of access to the TMLs (which can be larger
than the cost of the measurement itself). In this paper the development of a
permanently installable ultrasonic thickness gauge that allows thickness gauging
on hot pipe work is described. The thickness gauge consist of a conventional
transducer and electronics which are isolated from the harsh environment via a
waveguide (an ‘acoustic cable’) that allows transmission of the ultrasonic signal
from the transducer in a ‘safe’ and cold environment into the specimen at
elevated temperature. The device also contains a wireless radio that can form a
mesh network. This is important as the cost of cabling up transducers in a plant
is often prohibitive and an economic way of transmitting data back to the
control room is indispensible for any successful implementation of the
technology. Furthermore, the sensor is intrinsically safe so that it can be
deployed in hazardous environments. In the first part of this paper the working
principle of the ultrasonic high temperature waveguide sensor is presented and
in the second part considerations regarding the detection of statistically
significant corrosion rates from data acquired using the system are discussed.
ULTRASONINC WAVEGUIDE HIGH TEMPERATURE

MEASUREMENT PRINCIPLE
The concept of the use of an ultrasonic waveguide in order to carry out

thickness monitoring at elevated temperatures is not new and in the interest of
brevity the reader is referred to a previous publication by the authors [1] for a
comprehensive literature review of the subject. There are three key aspects that
make the system work and these are temperature isolation between specimen
and transducer, source characteristics of the waveguide on the specimen and
wave propagation along the waveguide. Each one will shortly be discussed here
before the implementation of a successful prototype sensor and experimental
results from it are presented.
Temperature Isolation
Temperature isolation is the most important task that the ultrasonic

waveguide performs and is the key feature that enables the device to function. A
long and slender waveguide can essentially be modelled by convective heat
transfer along a fin (see e.g. Mills [2]) which is attached to a constant
temperature heat source and surrounded by air at ambient temperature. This has
been done for rectangular stainless steel waveguides of different cross sections
and the results are displayed in figure 1. It is clearly visible that temperatures
decay very quickly from the constant temperature source along the length of the
waveguide, if the characteristic dimension (the smaller one) of the waveguide
cross section is small. When the thickness of the waveguide (or steel strip) is of
the order of 1mm a temperature drop of ~500˚C can be sustained over 200mm
of length of the waveguide. This allows the temperature to drop below 80˚C,
768
600
1 x15mm
5 x15mm
500 15x15mm
400
Temperature (° C)
300
200
100
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Distance along waveguide (m)
Figure 1. Temperature distribution along rectangular stainless steel (k=15 W/m/K) waveguides of
different cross section when attached to a heat source at constant temperature 600°C and
surrounded by air (h=1W/m/K) at 25°C: a) 1 x15mm (0.04x0.6”) cross section, b) 5 x 15mm
(0.2x0.6”) cross section, c) 15 x 15mm (0.6x0.6”) cross section
which can be sustained by conventional ultrasonic transducer materials and

conventional electronics components.
Source Characteristics
Once it was established that temperature isolation via slender, robust,

stainless steel waveguides is possible the ultrasonic source characteristics of a
waveguide on a steel component was considered. This subject has been
extensively discussed in the literature (see e.g. Miller and Pursey [3] or Graff
[4]) and it can be shown that most loading conditions and especially normal load
excitation mainly produce surface waves on the component that is to be tested if
the characteristic dimension (the smaller dimension of the waveguide cross
section) is smaller than the ultrasonic wavelength in the component. Surface
waves are not usable for thickness gauging purposes. Only the shear horizontal
type loading configuration (polarization of shear loads along the longer of the
cross sectional dimensions) is a suitable source that does not cause mode
conversion and acts as line source from which shear horizontal waves spread
cylindrically into the material.
Figure 2. Approximate SH wave source characteristics of a rectangular patch (1 by 15 mm,

polarisation along the 15mm dimension) on a steel half space at 2 MHz. Obtained by means of
two perpendicular Huygen’s models.
769
Wave propagation along the waveguide
The previous two sections have shown that a thin and slender waveguide
was required in order to guarantee temperature isolation and that shear
horizontal type forcing is most effective at transmitting the waves into the
component under test. Next it had to be analysed how an ultrasonic signal could
be propagated without excessive distortion and attenuation from one end of the
waveguide to the other while transmitting the required shear horizontal loads
onto the surface.
A semi analytical finite element (SAFE) model was set up in order to extract
the dispersion curves for the guided wave propagation along a stainless steel
waveguide of rectangular cross section. It was shown that one particular guided
wave mode exists in a large aspect ratio rectangular waveguide that fulfils all
the necessary criteria. This mode was termed the SH0* mode and it can
propagate non-dispersively (without distortion) along the steel strip and transmit
the necessary shear horizontal loads onto the component under test. An
extensive theoretical analysis of wave propagation in the strip is given in [5].
Once enough theoretical knowledge had been acquired to construct a

functioning transducer a prototype ultrasonic waveguide thickness sensor was
built and tested. Figure 3a shows a sensor attached to pipe specimen and figure
3b shows a schematic that illustrates the signal path of the ultrasonic signals.
The sensor consists of a sending and a receiving waveguide. Both waveguides
are dry coupled to the surface by means of two studs that were welded onto the
pipe (or are held in place by a clamp), the required contact force for good
transmission is >500N. The path in figure 3b shows that once the wave is
excited on the surface of the pipe the first arrival at the receiving waveguide is
due to the wave that travels the shortest distance along the surface of the pipe,
this is followed by the first and subsequent reflections from the inside pipe wall.
Figure 4 shows signals that were recorded on plates of different thickness,

the results show that the surface wave arrival remains at the same time (serving
as a reference signal) while the backwall reflections occur later and later for
thicker plates and the arrival time can be used to gauge the thickness of the pipe
wall.
Figure 3. a) Picture of a prototype waveguide sensor coupled to a pipe specimen; b) Sketch

illustrating the signal path that the ultrasonic signal takes in the pipe wall.
770
Figure 4. Ultrasonic signals collected with the waveguide sensor on steel plates of different
thicknesses.
Once it was ascertained that the thickness could be measured the sensor was
tested at elevated temperature in a furnace that contained a hole in the front door
so that a plate sample of 6mm thickness could be placed inside the furnace while
the sensor head remained outside the furnace (remaining voids in the door were
stuffed with mineral wool). Figure 5 shows the signals that were collected on a
heating cycle from 100˚C to 500˚C. The arrivals of the wave via the surface and
the consecutive backwall echoes are clearly visible. On heating up they shift
back in time, this is due to a reduction in ultrasonic velocity in the material as
the temperature is increased (~0.025%/˚C). Besides the time shift all signals
remained strong and clean allowing determination of the thickness at elevated
temperature by timing the difference between arrivals of the wave packets.
The sensor was also used in the laboratory to monitor wall thickness in an
accelerated corrosion test. Waveguides were attached to a carbon steel specimen
(collected every 5 mins during heating)
35
30
Sample number
25
20
15
10
0
330 335 340 345
Time (μs)
Figure 5. Ultrasonic signals acquired during heating (from ~100°C to 550°C) of a 6mm thick
steel plate in a furnace.
771
10
9.9
9.8
Thickness (mm)
9.7
9.6
9.5
9.4
0 200 400 600 800 1000
Time (min)
Figure 6. Ultrasonic thickness measurements using the waveguide sensor during an
artificially accelerated corrosion process.
and the specimen was half immersed in a salt water bath. An electrode was
placed in the water opposing the plate and sensor and a car battery charger was
used to drive a current across the plate and electrode. The applied current led to
artificially accelerated corrosion of the steel plate, i.e. oxidation of the iron in
the steel plate. Ultrasonic signals were acquired every minute over a whole day.
The resultant thickness readings are shown in figure 6.
TIME REQUIRED TO DETERMINE A STATISTICALLY

SIGNIFICANT CORROSION RATE
The previous section has shown that the developed sensor can successfully
monitor wall thicknesses to within a certain uncertainty (better than ~±0.1mm in
this case). When applying this type of technology in the field it is often used to
obtain a corrosion rate that allows extrapolation of the expected remaining
lifetime of the component. This process is illustrated in figure 7.
Figure 7. Illustration of the use of a corrosion rate to determine the remaining lifetime of a
component.
772
In order to get a good estimate of remaining life and better information on
how to fight corrosion it is therefore desirable to pick up a corrosion rate as
accurately as possible and as quickly as possible. When monitoring there exists
the possibility to improve on the inherent uncertainty of a measurement
technique by fitting a trend line to multiple measurements. When doing this, the
question of how many measurements with a particular technique are required to
pick up a statistically significant corrosion rate (trend) comes up. In order to
answer this question one needs to consider the variance of the slope of a
regression line as a function of n the number of measurements [6]:
Vmeasurement
Vslope = , (1)
∑
n
x =1
(x − x)2
where n is the number of measurements taken and x is a variable running from 1

to n, xbar is the mean of all x.
Equation 1 shows that the variance of the slope reduces as the number of
measurements is increased (since the quantity in brackets increases as n is
increased). It is now possible to construct a hypothesis test that determines if the
slope of a trend line of n measurements is statistically significant or whether it
could have arisen by chance due to the natural variation in the measurement
caused by the measurement uncertainty. Figure 8 illustrates this.
Finally, this statistical test can be used to work out how many measurements
with an underlying uncertainty (expressed by standard deviation σ) are required
over a certain measurement interval to detect a predefined corrosion rate. Figure
9 shows a contour plot that illustrates this. On the plot the vertical axis is the
corrosion rate (in mm/year) that needs to be detected and on the horizontal axis
the overall time frame is shown (in fractions of a year). The contours show the
number of measurements n that are required in order to detect the corrosion rate
that is shown on the y-axis over the time frame that is specified by the x-axis.
Figure 8. Illustration of statistical test to deduce that the measured slope is not occurring by
chance at a 97.5% confidence level.
773
0
Underlying measurement std=0.1 mm
10 80
5
10
70
5
20
Corrosion Rate (mm/year)
10 60
5
30
50
5
-1
10
40 50 60
5 40
10
20
30
70 10
80
10 20
30 20
10
-2 20
10
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Monitoring period (years)
Figure 9. Number of measurements (n) needed to detect a corrosion rate (y-axis, mm/year)
over time periods as a fraction of years (x-axis) for a measurement method with underlying
standard deviation 0.1mm.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper has presented the development of a wireless high temperature

thickness gauge based on an ultrasonic waveguide. The key aspects that make it
work (temperature isolation, source characteristics and guided wave propagation
in the waveguide) are discussed and experimental measurements with a
prototype sensor are presented. The sensor measures wall thicknesses to better
than ±0.1mm. In the second part of the paper it is then looked at how the trends
in data due to multiple measurements can be used to determine a statistically
significant corrosion rate over a range of measurement intervals.
REFERENCES
[1] – F.B. Cegla, P. Cawley, J.O. Davies, J. Allin, Ultrasonic thickness gauging
at high temperatures using dry coupled waveguide transducers, IEEE Trans.
Ultras. Ferr. Freq. Control, 58, 1, (2011) 156-167.
[2] – A.M. Mills, Heat Transfer, Prentice Hall, (1999).
[3] – G.F. Miller and H. Pursey, The field and radiation impedance of
mechanical radiators on the free surface of a semi-infinite isotropic solid, Proc.
Royal Soc., 223, (1954) 521–541
[4] – K. Graff, Wave motion in elastic solids, Dover Publications, (1973)
[5] – F.B. Cegla, Energy concentration at the center of large aspect
ratio rectangular waveguides at high frequencies, J. Acou. Soc. Am., 123, 6,
(2008) 4218-4226.
[6] – M.G. Bulmer, Principles of Statistics, Dover Publications, (1979)
774
Early Detection of Fatigue Damage in
Notched and Welded Steel Structures
Using Active Thermography
R. PLUM and T. UMMENHOFER
ABSTRACT
This contribution presents a recently developed infrared measurement and data

processing methodology that allows for early detection of localized metal fatigue
damage. As an extension of the classic Thermoelastic Stress Analysis (TSA) the use of
second harmonic temperature amplitudes for spatially resolved damage detection due
to cyclic plasticity or clapping of crack faces in specimens made of low-alloy carbon
steel is demonstrated. It is found that cyclic plastic material behavior significantly
contributes to the nonlinear thermal response with respect to loading in case of mildly
notched specimens. Magnitude and area size of the nonlinear temperature amplitude
are correlated with the actual material damage on the micro scale. In contrast, early
damaging of welded samples can be identified more easily by detection of a local drop
of the elastic temperature amplitude. This is verified by making use of ultrasound
excited thermography, an alternative method for crack detection. The exploitation of
thermo mechanical coupling effects exhibits great potential for damage detection and
quantification.
INTRODUCTION
Besides of the established NDT methods competitive new approaches based on

modern infrared thermography and image processing have been widely accepted in
many fields of engineering. Today, especially the progress and application of active
thermography methods utilizing optical, ultrasonic or eddy-current stimulation
represent focus areas of numerous research groups.
As a complementary method, the Thermoelastic Stress Analysis (TSA) of
structural members under low frequency mechanical loading contributes to further
understanding of material specific damage mechanisms.
_____________
Robin Plum and Thomas Ummenhofer, Research center for steel, timber and masonry,
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Otto-Ammann-Platz 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
775
The component’s thermal response due to different thermo-mechanical coupling
effects of the material is measured in full-field by means of infrared cameras resulting
in an unmatched spatial resolution.The well-known thermoelastic effect states that a
fully reversible change of the material volume is associated with a change in
temperature. Purely elastic loading therefore does not result in a net heating of the
component under investigation. According to [1, 2] the relation between a change of
mechanical stress and the change of temperature under adiabatic conditions is known
as
α
T& ≈ − T0 σ& I (1)
ρC p
Here, T is the temperature, α denotes the thermal expansion coefficient, ρ the

density, Cp the heat capacity at constant pressure, T0 the initial temperature and σI the
first invariant of the stress tensor. In the general non-adiabatic case elastic and plastic
heat generation can be included in the heat equation based on [3]
⎛ Eα ⎞ e
ρCε T& − k∇ 2T = T0 ⎜ − ⎟ε& I + α p σ ijε& ij
p
(2)
⎝ 1 − 2υ ⎠
εIe denotes the first invariant of the elastic strain tensor, εijp the irreversible part of
the strain tensor, E the Young’s modulus, υ the Poisson’s ratio, Cε the heat capacity at
constant strain and k the thermal conductivity tensor. The dimensionless coefficient αp
is the ratio of plastic work that is converted to heat and the total plastic work. αp is
typically very close to 1.0 since only a small fraction of the plastic work (the stored
energy of cold work) is used for altering the inner material properties e.g. the density
of dislocations or the hardening state.
THERMOGRAPHIC MEASUREMENT AND DATA PROCESSING
During high cycle fatigue testing infrared sequences are acquired using a cooled
640 x 512 pixel focal-plane infrared camera FLIR Phoenix DTS which offers a high
thermal sensitivity (NETD ≈ 20 mK) and high frame rates at the same time. Figure 1
shows the test setup and the dimensions of a typical steel specimen.
In earlier works [4, 5, 6] it has been shown that the onset of cyclic plastic
deformations in steel specimens leads to a significant generation of a thermal response
at the second harmonic of the loading frequency. In order to further analyze this
phenomenon a specialized data processing methodology was developed.
To compensate for specimen movements which blur the IR images a motion
compensation algorithm based on the two-dimensional cross-correlation is applied (for
details, see [6]). Although there is no strain compensation this measure leads to almost
perfectly stable IR sequences. Next, a point of the specimen is chosen which is known
to behave purely elastic. The IR pixel signal of this location is referred to as the linear
reference signal. Due to the thermomechanical coupling this signal directly
corresponds to the applied loading. The reference signal is now shifted in phase and
scaled in magnitude pixel by pixel to fit to every other signal in the sense of a least-
square minimization. This procedure results in the amplitude and phase mappings at
the loading frequency as it is known from TSA measurements.
776
Figure 1. Left: Laboratory setup consisting of a servo-hydraulic testing machine, infrared camera and
CCD camera with microscope optics mounted on a 3 axis positioning system; Right: Notched steel
specimen (type I)
Existing nonlinearities in the temperature signal due to cyclic plasticity are

assessable by evaluating the difference signal between the fitted reference signal and
the original pixel signal. A nonlinear temperature amplitude is introduced by fitting of
a sine curve with the double frequency to the difference signal. Amplitude and phase
values at the base frequency and at the second harmonic can also be achieved by
applying a discrete Fourier Transform to the IR sequence. However, tests revealed that
the proposed data processing leads to better results [7]. Furthermore, the procedure
can be applied to non perfect sinusoidal loading. Even in the case of more realistic
random loading the evaluation of the RMS value of the difference signal instead of the
nonlinear sine-based amplitude shows reasonable results.
INVESTIGATION OF SMOOTH AND NOTCHED SAMPLES
The proposed measurement and data processing was applied to smooth cylindrical
specimens made from carbon steel S355J2+N, first. Several one axial fatigue tests at
constant amplitude and stress ratio R = -1 were performed. During the test runs a
series of infrared sequences of about 2000 images each was acquired. The camera
frame rate has been set to 412 Hz which results in a reasonable oversampling of the
2.5 Hz loading frequency. The smooth specimens have been equipped with strain
gauges which were monitored during the tests as well. Figure 2 (left) depicts the
plastic strain history of five specimens tested at different load levels. The different
stages of primary softening, hardening and secondary softening which are typical for
the used steel grade are clearly resolved. As a direct comparison figure 2 (right) shows
the history of the evaluated nonlinear temperature amplitude averaged over an
expanded range of interest. The onset of increasing plastic strains in terms of the load
cycle number as well as the cyclic material behavior is very well reproduced by the
thermographical approach.
777
Figure 2. Left: Evolution of plastic strain; Right: Nonlinear temperature amplitude
The described methodology was also applied to notched steel samples. Figure 1
(right) illustrates a rendering of the specimen type. The geometrical notch at the center
of the cylindrical specimen results in a local stress concentration (factor 1.35). Due to
that the onset of cyclic plasticity and the accumulation of fatigue damage will be
strongly localized and limited to this hot-spot. As another consequence of the stress
concentration the assumption of adiabatic conditions is not valid. Thus, the loading
frequency strongly influences the linear temperature amplitudes achieved by TSA
measurements. Here, a higher loading frequency leads to a stronger thermoelastic
response. This has been proven by numerical and experimental analyses [6, 8].
N/Nf = 0.19 N/Nf = 0.88 N/Nf = 0.97
Figure 3. Distribution of linear elastic (top) and nonlinear (bottom) temperature

amplitudes in the notch region of specimen type I
778
However, the loading frequency of the available hydraulic testing machine is
limited to 25 Hz depending on the displacement amplitude. The notched steel
specimens have been fatigue tested until complete failure using R = -1 at a loading
frequency of 15 Hz. The load amplitude was adjusted by means of a FE simulation so
that the notch bottom was stressed no more than 85 % of the static yield limit.
The IR sequences were processed as described above. Figure 3 shows the
distribution of the linear (top) and nonlinear temperature amplitude (bottom) in the
notch region at different relative lifetimes N/Nf whereby N is the cycle number and Nf
the number of cycles to failure. The x and y location (0/0) corresponds to the center of
the notch, the x-axis is the longitudinal axis of the specimen. At the left side of the
notch bottom a rectangular area was not available for the IR measurement since it was
used for parallel microscopic imaging [6]. From the thermoelastic response in figure 3
(top) we can conclude that the notch clearly acts as a stress raiser and the edges above
and below are less strained. Nonlinearities in the thermal response can be found after
10 % of the specimen lifetime at the notch bottom indicating that cyclic plasticity is
present and micro structural damage is in progress. The initiation of a macroscopic
crack typically occurs at N/Nf = 0.85 which can be visualized by a local drop of the
thermoelastic temperature amplitude and a strong increase of the nonlinear response
(figure 3 bottom). During macroscopic crack propagation the nonlinear thermal
response is excessively amplified due to crack opening and closure [5]. At this time
the crack region cannot transmit the axial loads any longer. As a result the
thermoelastic signal decreases and load redistributes towards the outer region as can
be identified in figure 3 (top).
INVESTIGATION OF WELDED SAMPLES
The application of the same measurement routine to welded specimens with the
backside milled down to the nominal section (figure 4) resulted in totally different
findings.
Figure 4. Left: Welded steel specimen (type II); Right: Weld seam with high contrast marker used for
motion compensation
779
In contrast to the notched samples the welded specimens revealed that crack
propagation at the weld toe sets in early at 10 % of the relative lifetime. This is shown
by an early drop of the thermoelastic amplitude illustrated in figure 5 (top). The
accumulated damage at this state is not indicated by significant nonlinearities of the
thermal response. Therefore it can be concluded that cyclic plasticity does not play a
major role for the damage process at the weld seam transition. Instead, crack opening
and closure at a later state of the fatigue life seems to be the dominating effect since
clapping of the crack faces leads to a strong nonlinear thermal signal [5]. The
described data processing does not allow for distinguishing between the origins of
second harmonic amplitudes.
N/Nf = 0.10 N/Nf = 0.20 N/Nf = 0.41
Figure 5. Distribution of linear elastic (top) and nonlinear (bottom) temperature

amplitudes in the weld region of specimen type II [7]
In order to be certain that fatigue cracks indeed occur early after 10 % of the
fatigue life, we utilized an alternative thermographic approach for crack detection,
namely ultrasound excited thermography. Figure 6 shows the principle of this method
and the used test setup. After a certain percentage of the expected fatigue life the
780
investigated specimen was removed from the testing machine and mounted into a
supporting clamp. The ultrasonic transducer, which is working in the 20 kHz regime,
was pressed onto the welded specimens. During excitation by an ultrasonic frequency
sweep within the range of 19-21 kHz the weld region is thermographically recorded.
Afterwards, fatigue testing was continued and the routine was repeated until complete
failure of the specimen. Figure 7 depicts the distribution of the maximum achieved
temperature increase in the weld region. Line A-B corresponds to the upper weld toe.
Figure 6. Left: Principle of ultrasound excited thermography [9]; Right: Setup for ultrasound excitation
marker
N/Nf = 0.32 N/Nf = 0.65 N/Nf = 0.98
Figure 7. Distribution of max. temperature increase [K] in the weld region of specimen type II
An existing crack was successfully detected at 1/3 of the relative lifetime. This
finding confirmed the interpretation of the lockin-thermography results shown in
figure 5. Further crack propagation goes along with strongly increasing frictional heat
generation. However the TSA based approach was found to be much more sensitive
towards small cracks since the first indication of the damage could be found much
earlier.
781
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
To detect and quantify the inherent damage of fatigue loaded steel structures is
known to be a challenging task. The present work demonstrates the potential of active
thermography methods. In particular the TSA-based low frequency lockin approach
and the high frequency ultrasound excitation have been utilized to address the problem
of early damage detection. In the case of notched small scale steel specimens
subjected to high cycle fatigue loading the developed post-processing methodology
results in a direct visualization of the damage progress. Here, especially the nonlinear
temperature amplitude mapping is extremely valuable, since microstructural damage
can be identified at 10 % of the fatigue lifetime. It was found that the proposed method
is sensitive to periodic temperature deviations from a reference signal shape in the
order of a few mK. The application of the same measurement routine to welded
specimens showed that cyclic plasticity is not the dominating effect. Instead, an early
crack initiation and rather brittle crack propagation along the weld toe was observed
by TSA measurements. The presence of cracks at an early state was successfully
confirmed by ultrasound excited thermography, an alternative method which is
suitable for macro crack detection.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of this project by the
German Research Foundation (DFG) within the collaborative research center SFB 477
“life cycle assessment of structures via innovative monitoring” at the university
Braunschweig, Germany.
REFERENCES
1. Harwood, N. and Cummings, W.M. 1991: Thermoelastic stress analysis. Adam Hilger, Bristol.
2. Nowinski, J.L. 1978. Theory of thermoelasticity with applications. Noordhoff International
Publishing, Alphen aan den Rijn.
3. Lemaitre, J. and Chaboche, J.L. 1990. Mechanics of solid materials. Cambridge University Press.
4. Krapez, J.C. and Pacou, D. 2002. Thermography detection of damage initiation during fatigue tests.
Proceedings of SPIE 4710:435-449.
5. Huß, A. 1994. Rissdetektion und -bewertung mit dem Verfahren der Thermoelastischen
Spannungsanalyse. Fortschrittsberichte VDI, Reihe 18, No. 147, Düsseldorf, VDI-Verlag.
6. Medgenberg, J. 2008. Investigation of localized fatigue properties in unalloyed steels by infrared
thermography”. Dissertation, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig.
7. Ummenhofer, T. and Medgenberg, J. 2009. On the use of infrared thermography for the analysis of
fatigue damage processes in welded joints. International Journal of Fatigue 31:130–137.
8. Ummenhofer, T. and Medgenberg, J. 2006. Numerical modelling of thermoelasticity and plasticity
in fatigue-loaded low carbon steels. Studies for a thermographic approach. Qirt Journal 3(1):71-92.
9. Plum, R. and Ummenhofer, T. 2009. Ultrasound excited thermography of thick-walled steel load
bearing members. Qirt Journal 2009 6(1):79-100.
782
A Wavelet Based Methodology for Damage
Detection and Severity Assessment on the
ASCE Benchmark Structure using Phase II
Experimental Data
M. JAMAL-AHMAD and J. N. CARTER
ABSTRACT
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) have built a scale model
of a four story building and made available the acceleration data for the
undamaged structure and for eight different configurations of damage which is
used to assess techniques for damage detection, damage severity assessment,
damage localization and identification of damage type. Data representing Ambient,
Shaker and Hammer as input excitations are available. Previous publications that
have used the experimental data have reported limited success in the detection and
damage severity assessment. In this paper we describe a methodology that uses a
combination of wavelet multi-resolution analysis, principal component analysis,
the Welch spectrum estimation method and Adaptive filtering to track changes in
natural frequencies. We have successfully detected, for all three input types, all of
the damage configurations and completed a severity assessment. This is achieved
without explicitly using the input measurements, a mathematical model of the
structure or measurements from the damage cases.
INTRODUCTION
It is known that global damage in mechanical structures, which causes a

change in the stiffness properties, can be inferred by noting a change in the natural
frequencies [1]. A natural frequency is a frequency at which a system amplifies
the effect of its input. In the absence of measurements of the input acting on a
system, which is the usual situation in practice, it is not easy to determine the
relative importance of the dominant frequencies in the frequency spectrum to
determine which ones are the natural frequencies. In such circumstances it is
customary to assume that the input is a random noise with a flat energy spectrum
over the bandwidth of interest. We are then able to infer the natural frequencies
from the frequency spectrum of the output response by isolating the dominant
frequencies. This is relatively easy to do by visual inspection of the spectrum but
more difficult to program a computer to carry out due to the presence of noise and
disturbance which cause spurious frequency spikes, not associated with natural
_____________
Mohammad Jamal-Ahmad, Atomic Weapons Establishment, Reading, RG7 4PR, U.K.
Mohammad Jamal-Ahmad, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, U.K.
Jonathan N. Carter, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, U.K.
783
TABLE I. DESCRIPTION OF DAMAGE CASES IN THE ASCE STRUCTURE
CASE CONFIGURATION
Config 1 Fully braced configuration
Config 2 All east side braces removed
Config 3 Removed braces on all floors in one bay on South East corner
Config 4 Removed braces on 1st and 4th floors in one bay on South East corner
Config 5 Removed braces on 1st floor in one bay on southeast corner
Config 6 Removed braces on all floors on east face, and 2nd floor braces on north face
Config 7 All braces removed on all faces
Config 8 Configuration 7 + loosened bolts on all floors at both ends of beams on east face, north side
Config 9 Configuration 7 + loosened bolts on floors 1 and 2 at both ends of beams on east face, north side
frequencies, to appear in the spectrum. In this study, we show that using an off-line
analysis of the data from an undamaged structure, the natural frequencies can be
inferred from a visual inspection. Then with this knowledge, a computer is
programmed to automatically track the resonant frequencies in order to detect
changes. We show that the same methodology, that is used to clean up the
frequency spectrum to make visual identification of resonant frequencies possible,
is then extended with the addition of an adaptive filter to automate the detection of
damage in an on-line fashion. In this paper, we first describe the theoretical basis
of the method which is then applied to the ASCE data from the undamaged
structure allowing us to identify the natural frequencies. When the method is
applied to the data for the damaged structure as listed in TABLE I, we are able to
identify both the existence of the damage and rank the different cases in terms of
their level of damage severity. We are able to accomplish this for the three
different inputs to which the structure is subjected.
METHODOLOGY
We take the raw data from each sensor for the ASCE experimental
structure, truncate them into segments of N data points, remove the linear trend
and normalize the variance to 1. We then decompose each of these segments into
five individual signals composing of one level of approximation containing the low
frequency component and four levels of detail containing the high frequency
components using discrete wavelet analysis and synthesis. The Discrete Wavelet
coefficients for the approximation of a discrete sequence with index n, are
given by
∑ (1)
And the Discrete Wavelet coefficients for the details are given by
∑ { } (2)
Where and are filters whose coefficients are given by the choice of
wavelet basis which in our case is „Symlet 10‟ [2, 3]. The sequence can then be
reconstructed using the inverse Discrete Wavelet Transform by
784
∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ (3)
For the ASCE benchmark structure, each of the reconstructed signals in

Equation (3) for now contains energies in the following frequency ranges in
Hertz. from 0 to 6.25, from 6.25 to 12.5, from 12.5 to 25, from 25 to
50 and from 50 to 100. We have sixteen sensors which we denote as to
using the same numbering system as in [4]. In our investigation, we group the
sensors into three matrices , and containing respectively rows of data from
the sensors on the West face, the Centre and the East face of the structure. We have
not used the data from the first floor sensors , and because they are very
noisy. Thus we have the three matrices containing the sensor signals in rows,
[ ] [ ] [ ] (4)
where each matrix is of size 4 by N. Each of the sensor signals to is then

decomposed into one approximation and four detail signals. Thus matrix can be
represented using the approximations and details where is the
decomposition level and is the sensor numbering.
(5)
[ ]
For the purposes of identifying and tracking resonant frequencies, we are

interested in separating into matrices, each containing signals within the same
frequency bandwidth. For this reason, we create to contain only the first
components of the rows of . Thus,
̃
̃
, where ̃ is normalized to have variance 1. (6)
̃
[̃ ]
In the same way we create matrices , , and each containing the

normalized second, third, fourth and fifth components of .
Thus far our analysis has preserved all the information as guaranteed by the
wavelet decomposition. We are now in a position to use the redundancy
information across the rows of these matrices to remove some of the noise and
disturbance. We use Principal Component Analysis for this purpose where we
create the covariance matrix and then diagonalise it to find the direction in
which the variation of the data along its rows is most significant, thus implicitly
assuming that large variations embody the important dynamics. Thus,
̂ ̂ ̂̂̂ (7)
785
where is the number of columns in , ̂ is with its mean value for each
row subtracted, ̂ is a diagonal matrix of eigenvalues and ̂ is a matrix of
eigenvectors. We now reorder the matrix ̂ so that the eigenvectors are associated
with eigenvalues of decreasing magnitude and we call this reordered matrix . The
projection of ̂ along the principal components of is then given by
̂ (8)
The first row of Y containing the projection along the eigenvector

associated with the largest eigenvalue is called the sequence and is used in
further analysis. We now use the Welch method to identify the resonant
frequencies in by creating sections of data as follows,
(9)
For 0 , , where is a square window of length
, is an offset distance to allow overlapping of the sections and is the
number of sections that the sequence is broken into [5]. The ith periodogram
is then given by
( ) |∑ | (10)
and the average Welch periodogram is given by
( ) ∑ ( ) (11)
In our implementation, we have used =5120 and corresponding to an

overlapping ratio of 75%. Starting with matrix , we have now arrived at the
spectrum given by . We repeat the same analysis process for matrices and
to arrive at their respective averaged periodograms. We are then in a position to
detect the resonant frequencies contained in , and . Since and contain
essentially the same information i.e. resonant frequencies along the strong
direction, we show in Figure 1, the spectrum for matrices E and C which covers
the resonant frequencies in both the strong and weak directions.
Figure 1: Resonant frequencies for configurations 1 and 7 using the ambient input signal
786
TABLE II. LIST OF RESONANT FREQUENCIES
Frequency (Hz)
W1 S1 T1 W2 S2 T2
Config1.a 7.46 7.69 14.49 19.89 21.02 -
Config7.a 2.62 3.63 4.34 8.51 12.03 16.24
In Figure 1, plots (a) and (b) show the spectrum for Config1.a and plots (c)
and (d) the spectrum for Config7.a. The nomenclature, Configuration number
followed by a letter signify the configuration number according to TABLE I and
the letter denotes the input type, i.e. a for Ambient, s for Shaker and h for
Hammer. We consider Config1 as the undamaged structure for assessment of
damage in configurations 2 to 6(removal of braces), whilst we consider Config7 as
the undamaged structure for assessing damage configuration 8 and 9(loosening of
bolts). Using these four plots we establish what the resonant frequencies are by
visual inspection based on the fact that they are the dominant frequencies in the
spectrum. We tabulate these resonant frequencies in TABLE II, where to conform
with the literature for the benchmark problem we label the resonant frequencies by
a letter followed by a number, where the letter denotes the direction of vibration
and the number is a listing of the resonant frequencies [4]. For e.g., the first mode
in the weak direction is denoted by W1, the first Torsional mode is T1 and the first
mode in the strong direction is denoted by S1. Having thus identified the resonant
frequencies as shown in Figure 1 and listed in TABLE II, we are now in a
position to track them across the data for the Ambient, Shaker and Hammer inputs
for all configurations listed in TABLE I. Using our method, we are able to detect
damage for all configurations and for all three input data. We show in Figure 2,
the spectrum for Config1.s (Shaker data) in both the Weak and Strong directions
where in spite of the fact that there are spurious dominant frequencies present,
most of those that were identified using the Ambient data as being resonant
frequencies are still clearly detectable and are labeled as W1,W2,T1 and S1.
In order to track the resonant frequencies as identified in TABLE II, we
implement exponential adaptive filters whose centres are positioned at the
identified resonant frequencies initially but which are then made adaptive and
therefore updated to the current measurement of the resonant frequency as new
data comes in. The bandwidths of the filters are chosen to filter out nearby
dominant frequencies. We multiply each periodogram in Equation 10 with an
Figure 2. The natural frequencies of the undamaged case for the Shaker input
787
Figure 3. Filtered spectrum for the shaker input on the undamaged case
exponential filter to obtain a spectrum that contains only the dominant frequency
that is being tracked. Thus we have,
( ) ( |∑ | ) (12)
Where is the bandwidth and the centre frequency of the exponential filter. We
then average ( ) using Equation 11 and normalize it to have magnitude 1 to
obtain ( ), the normalized averaged periodogram for the filtered spectrum.
To show the effectiveness of our methodology in tracking resonant
frequencies we take the spectrum of Figure 2(b) and apply our filter to it and show
in Figure 3(a) mode S1 which has been magnified to an extent that it can be
clearly detected even though its magnitude relative to the other dominant
frequencies in Figure 2(b) was rather small. Figure 3(b) shows the resonant
frequency T1. Since we are able to isolate each resonant frequency in this fashion,
we are able to track them for each data section by picking the maximum value in
the spectrum ( ). Thus we obtain the resonant frequency R as,
( ( )) (13)
RESULTS
We have demonstrated how resonant frequencies can be identified and

tracked. Now, in order to identify the damage cases for Configurations 1 through 6
as per TABLE I(removal of braces), we concatenate the Ambient data for all the
damage configurations into a single data sequence. We do the same for the Shaker
and Hammer input data. When we process these three sequences of data through
the algorithm which implements our methodology as described above, we obtain
for each data section , a resonant frequency , resulting in a sequence of
numbers representing the changing resonant frequencies as the algorithm goes
though the data for all the damage configurations. We show in Figure 4, the
tracking of the resonant frequencies S1 and W1. The numbering appearing in the
figure corresponds to data belonging to the configurations of the same number as
in TABLE I. The four diagrams (a), (b), (c) and (d) in Figure 4 show how the
resonant frequency changes as the data for damage configurations 1 through 6 are
processed. In diagram (a) and (b), we note that all damage configurations for the
Ambient and Shaker inputs are clearly detected except for Config 6.
788
Figure 4. Changes in the natural frequency for removal of braces.
For the Hammer data in diagram (c), we observe that all damages from
configuration 1 through 6 are detected. Damage configuration 6 is clearly detected
from sensors in the Weak direction as shown in diagram (d). For damage
configurations 7 through 9 (loosening of bolts), we repeat the process by
concatenating the data for each input type Ambient, Shaker and Hammer into three
data sequences. The results are shown in Figure 5, where we observe that by
tracking the resonant frequency S1, we are able to detect damage for all the three
configurations. Observing the extent of the changes of the resonant frequencies in
Figures 4 and 5 and comparing them to the damage configurations in TABLE I,
we note that the changes in resonant frequency seem to have an additive property
in that the more severe the damage, the more is the change in resonant frequency.
To demonstrate this, we plot in Figure 6, the change in resonant frequency on the
y axis and the damage configurations on the x axis ordered in increasing severity.
In Figure 6, plot (a) shows that the change in resonant frequency increases when
the data on the x axis is ordered as Config1, Config5, Config4, Config3, Config6
and Config2. For plot (b), the order is Config7, Config9 and Config8. We observe
from this figure that indeed, as damage severity increases, so does the change in
resonant frequency.
Figure 5. Changes in the natural frequencies for loosening of bolts
789
Figure 6. Change in resonant frequency as a measure of damage severity
CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS
In this paper we have demonstrated a methodology using changes in the

resonant frequency that allow us to detect all the damage configurations and order
them in terms of severity for the ASCE structure. Previous publications have had
limited success in this regard [6, 7]. This is achieved without the need for either a
numerical model of the structure, examples of the structure response for damaged
states or availability of the input excitation. This, though, does not mean that such
information is not needed. We have in effect placed the burden of inference on the
analyst who has to make decisions on what is or is not a resonant frequency, what
extent of change in resonant frequency amounts to damage and whether the change
in frequency is attributable to damage or to changing environmental conditions.
Our paper shows that starting from the raw experimental data only, it is possible
for this benchmark structure, to detect all the damage for the three input types and
order them in terms of severity. We have been able to track all the resonant
frequencies listed in TABLE II and believe that our methodology is a useful
addition to the literature.
REFERENCES
1. Doebling, S. W., Farrar, C. R., Prime, M. B. & Shevitz, D. 1996 Damage identification and
health monitoring of structural and mechanical systems from changes in their vibration
characteristics: a literature review. Los Alamos National Laboratory report LA-13070-MS
2. Vitterli, M., Kovacevic J.,Goyal, V.K., Fourier and Wavelet Signal Processing, October 2010,
www.fourierandwavelets.org.
3. Mitsiti, M. 2010. Matlab Wavelet Toolbox 4 User Guide, The Mathworks Inc.
4. S. J. Dyke, D. Bernal, J. L. Beck, and C. Ventura, “Experimental Phase II of the Structural
Health Monitoring Benchmark Problem” in Proceedings of the 16th Engineering Mechanics
Conference, ,July 16-18 2003, University of Washington, Seattle.
5. Poularikas, A. 2009. Discrete Randon Signal Processing and Filtering Primer with Matlab,
CRC Press.
6. J. Ching and J. L. Beck, “Two-Step Bayesian structural health monitoring approach for IASC-
ASCE Phase II Simulated And Experimental benchmark studies”, Report No. EERL 2003-
02,California Institute of Technology.
7. Taha Reda Mahmoud, “A Neural-Wavelet Technique for Damage Identification in the ASCE
Benchmark Structure Using Phase II Experimental Data”, Hindawi Publishing Corporation,
Advances in Civil Engineering, Volume 2010, Article ID 675927, 13 pages,
doi:10.1155/2010/675927.
790
Integrate On-Line RSSA and RSSI-COV
Algorithms for Operational Modal
Analysis of Bridge Structures
C.-H. LOH, Y.-C. LIU and F.-M. WU
ABSTRACT
The objective of this paper is to develop on-line system parameter estimation and
damage detection technique from the response measurements through using both the
Stochastic Subspace identification (SSI) and Recursive Covariance-Driven Stochastic
Subspace identification (RSSI-COV) approaches. To avoid time-consumption of
SVD in RSSI the Extended Instrumental Variable version (EIV-PAST) is used in SSI-
COV. From numerical study the reliable control parameters of SSI and RSSI methods
are examined. To reduce the effect of noise on the results of identification, discussion
on the pre-processing of data using recursive singular spectrum analysis technique
(rSSA) is also presented to remove the noise contaminant measurements, so as to
enhance the stability of data analysis. Results from using both Data-drive and
Covariance-driven SSI methods are discussed. Finally, through experimental study,
the recursive rSSA-SSI-COV method is applied to identify the system dynamic
characteristics with time-varying model parameters.
INTRODUCTION
In operational modal analysis the Stochastic Subspace Identification (SSI) technique is

a well known multivariate identification technique by using the output-only
measurements. The stochastic realization algorithm mainly focused on SSI-DATA and
was fully enhanced by Van Overschee and De Moor [1] and Peeters, Bart [2-3]. The
merits of SSI are: (a) The identified modes are given in frequency stability diagram,
from which the operator can easily distinguish structural modes from the
computational ones, (b) Since the maximum model order is changeable foe the
operator, a relative large model order can improve the quality of the identified modal
parameters, (c) Mode shapes are simultaneously available with the poles, without
requiring a second step to identified them, (d) These methods are robust against non-
stationary excitation and thus are applicable to structural vibration study in the
presence of ambient excitation, (e) SSI can directly apply to real-time monitoring the
modal parameters As opposed to SSI-DATA the SSI-COV algorithm avoids the
computation of orthogonal projection,; instead, it is replaced by converting raw time
C.H. Loh, Y.C. Liu & F. M. Wu, Dept. of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University,
Taipei 10617, Taiwan (Loh e-mail: lohc0220@ccms.ntu.edu.tw).
791
histories in co-variances of the so-called Toeplitz matrix from which the system
dynamic characteristics can be extracted. Different from the off-line analysis, the on-
line system identification and damage detection based on vibration data measured has
also received considerable attention recently. In this paper, to avoid time-consumption
of SVD in RSSI the Extended Instrumental Variable version (EIV-PAST) is used in
SSI-COV. In addition, to consider the noise contaminated data, a recursive pre-
processing technique called recursive singular spectrum analysis technique (rSSA) is
introduced to enhance the accuracy and stability in the online tracking capability.
RECURSIVE COVARIANCE-DRIVEN SSI
The Covariance-Driven Stochastic Subspace Identification method (SSI-COV) stems

from the need to solve the problem through identifying a stochastic state-space model
(matrices A and C) from output-only data. For online application of SSI-COV, the
output covariance can be arranged in a form of a Hankel Covariance matrix, which is
used in ERA (Eigensystem Realization Algorithm). Through applying Singular Value
Decomposition to the Hankel covariance matrix, the system matrices (A and C) can be
obtained from the observation matrix Oi. The modal frequencies and effective
damping ratios can be computed through eigenvalue decomposition of the system
matrix A, and the corresponding eigenvectors multiplied by the output matrix C are
the observed mode shapes. However, considering the assumptions of the subspace
identification algorithm, a sliding window approach should be adopted to formulate
the adaptive Hankel matrix for RSSI-COV. This formulation requires 2 step of
computation for each incoming new data. The oldest data is removed from the
window (downdating) and a new data is incorporated (updating). Let the window
length be L [4]:
[
H N = E y k+ y k−
T
] = 1p ∑y
N
k = N − L +1
+
k y k−
T
(1a)
(
H N +1 = H N + y +N +1 y −N +1 )
T
(
− y +N − L +1 y −N − L +1 )
T
(1b)
⎡y k −i+1 ⎤
⎢y ⎥
where
⎢ ... ⎥
T
[
y k+ ≡ ⎢ k −i ⎥ , y −k ≡ yTk −i+1 yTk −i ... yTk −2i+2 ] (1c)
⎢ ⎥
⎣ yk ⎦
The software library LAPACK is used in MATLAB to compute SVD, which uses the
classical algorithms like Householder reflections and QR algorithm[5], but it is very
costly in the computation effort since it takes O(mn2) floating point operations to
compute SVD, and it is not suitable for online applications. For online application of
SVD the subspace estimation plays an important role. As a consequence, a new
approach called Projection Approximation Subspace Tracking (PAST) was initially
developed by Bin Yang [7], who takes advantage of a mathematical lemma to find the
required column subspace as an unconstrained optimization problem. Later the
algorithm is modified to its Extended Instrumental Variable version (EIV-PAST) by
Gustafsson [8], which is a suitable algorithm for the structure of SSI-COV. With the
extension to EIV-PAST, the method can be applied to recursive SSI-COV will be
792
described. If one review the SVD of the Hankel covariance matrix in terms of eigen-
decomposition:
H = USVT , HHT = USVT VST UT = U SST UT ( ) (2)
One should note that the IV-PAST compute the dominant eigenvectors of the
Hankel covariance matrix instead of the required column space U, because this
latter has to be computed via eigen-decomposition of the matrix multiplication HHT,
and the extended version of IV-PAST called EIV-PAST which just satisfies this
requirement. In terms of notation of SSI-COV, the objective function of EIV-PAST
to be minimized is:
t t +1 2
V [U 1 (t )] = ∑ y y +
k
−T
k − U 1 (t )U (t ) ∑
T
1 y y +
k
−T
k
k = 2 i +1 k = 2 i +1 F (3)
(t )U 1T (t )H (t )H t
2 2
= H t − U 1 t = H t − U 1 F
F
where the subscript F denotes the Frobenius norm defined as tr (AA H ) . The dominant
eigenvectors U1(t) found with this EIV-PAST formulation are the eigenvectors of the
“covariance” of the Hankel covariance matrix Ht, i.e., HtHtT. Therefore, U1(t) is the
desired column subspace of time instant t, and H t is defined by the following
approximation:
t
h (k ) = U 1T (k − 1 )y +k ⇒ H t = U 1T (t ) ∑μ t−k T
y +k y −k
k = 2 i −1
t (4)
≈ ∑μ t−k
U T
1 (k − 1 )y y +
k
−T
k = μ H t − 1 + h (t )y −T
t
k = 2 i −1
hk
Hence the so-called Extended Instrumental Variable Recursive Least Square (EIV-
RLS) algorithm can be applied to track the time-varying subspace U1(t), and its
explicit formulas to be implemented in RSSI-COV are shown below. Complete
derivation of these formulas of EIV-RLS algorithm can be found in [9].
RECURSIVE SINGULAR SPECTRUM ANALYSIS (RSSA)
In order to catch the stable vibration mode in RSSI, it is able to apply Singular
Spectrum Analysis [10] in real-time filtering of vibration measurements, so that an on-
line version of the algorithm that describes the current signal structure at each time
instant is required. For subspace-based algorithms, the moving window approach may
be preferred. The number of block rows is kept constant meanwhile a new data point
is added as a new column appended to the moving window Hankel matrix:
⎡ y N-P +1 y N-P + 2 ... y N − L +1 y N − L + 2 ⎤
⎢ ⎥
⎢ y N-P + 2 y N-P + 3 ... y N − L + 2 y N − L + 3 ⎥
X( N + 1) =
⎢ ... ... ... ... ... ⎥ (5)
⎢ ⎥
⎣⎢y N-P + L y N-P + L +1 ... yN y N +1 ⎦⎥
= [X N − P + L X N − P + L +1 ... X N X N +1 ] = [X( N ) X N +1 ]
793
where P is the length of moving window and for convenience, the subscript
notation for the sliding window vector become now XN-P+L+j , j =0,1,2, …, K-1,
where K=P-L+1 is the number of columns, with K >L.
S M ( N + 1) = X ( N ) X T ( N ) + X N +1 X TN +1 − X N − P + L X TN − P + L (6)
Since the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix SM(N+1) are desired, this is a
typical rank-two modification of the symmetric eigen-problem: meaning that a new
data column is appended to the Hankel matrix (i.e., rank-one modification), an old
data column is subtracted (i.e., rank-two modification). The above-mentioned
PAST algorithm can be used to perform this updating task. From Eq.(10), the
variable z(k) can be substituted by the vector Xk:
N 2
V [U ( N )] = ∑ X k − U ( N )U H
(N )X k
(7)
k=N −P+L
By introducing the same approximation:

h (k ) = U H (k − 1 )X k (8)
The original cost function is converted to a quadratic criterion:
N 2
V [U ( N )] = ∑ X k − U ( N )h (k ) (9)
k=N −P+L
This became a typical optimization function in Least Square problems which can be
minimized by:
U (N )= S Xh ( N )S −h 1 (N ) (10)
where SXh is the covariance matrix formed by Xk and h(k), and Sh is the covariance
matrix formed by h(k) and h(k)T. When the matrix inversion lemma is applied to
Eq.25, the well-known RLS algorithm can be easily derived.
To reconstruct an approximate Hankel data matrix by choosing a suitable
number of components, the recursive SSA applied here is somehow different than
the traditional SSA. The matrix V is difficult to be obtained recursively and since
RSSA is applied here as a preprocessing tool to filter out the undesired
measurement noise keeping the system related information, the “subspace filter”
concept mentioned in the section of RSSI-COV can be directly applied here:
X k = U ( N )U ( N )T X k
~ (11)
where X~ k is the reconstructed data vector. For each new incoming data, a new
vector column XN+1 is appended, the column subspace is updated to U(N+1), and
the reconstructed data vector X~ N + 1 can be obtained by the same procedure. Finally,
elements of the same time instant in Hankel data matrix (in the anti-diagonal
direction) are averaged to reconstruct the signal. It is important to emphasize here
that the RSSA algorithm explained here may be somehow different than the
algorithm used in SSA, more precisely, this is a combined approach of both SSA
and data compression based on the Karhunen-Loéve (KL) transformation, where a
sequence of data vectors is coded by their principal components.
794
Experimental setup on bridge scouring test A four span bridge model with simply
supported girder between each pier was constructed in the open field hydraulic lab.
The sketch and the dimension of this bridge are shown in Figure 1. The bridge piers
are embedded in sand with depth of 30 cm. 12 velocity sensors are deployed along the
bridge deck in transverse direction to collect the vibration response signal of the
bridge during scouring process. In order to focus the major scouring phenomenon
occurred on one particular single bridge pier, the major running stream water was
guided and focuses the scouring effect mainly on pier #3 by using brick wall settled at
the bottom of the river bed.
Figure 1: Bridge configuration and sensors location,
Before the identification from the response data, data with and without using SSA
pre-processing technique was discussed. Through experimental study it is proved
that by using recursive SSA as pre-processing the data from each time window can
improve the quality of identification without interferes the final result. Based on the
bridge scouring test data, the identified modal frequencies are plotted and shown in
Figure 2.With the consideration of using RSSA as pre-processing, 5000 points
moving window and 80 rows were used for RSSI-COV, system order was
determined to be 20. The sampling rate is 200 Hz. To clarify the frequency
tracking results, besides the poles with negative and damping ratio more than 50%
were discarded, a procedure to discriminate stable system poles from the spurious
poles was used. The procedure is to compare the poles of two successive time
instants. A pole will be marked as frequency stable if the percentage of difference
between two time instants is less than the specified criterion. Furthermore, from the
frequency stable poles, the same procedure can then be applied to damping ratios
and mode shapes with their respective criterions. The decrease in the natural
frequency of the bridge in the first 500 seconds is faster than the subsequent 5000
seconds. The reason is that the surface sands were whisked away by the stream and
the scouring depth increases rapidly. However, upon reaching a certain depth, the
scour rate was slowed down to a “stationary” stage, therefore the natural frequency
decreases very slow but uniformly during the subsequent 5000 seconds until a sharp
drop of 2nd modal frequency, which occurs at approximately 5500 seconds. The 1st
795
settlement event occurs in pier #3, as shown in the signal measured by the 9th sensor
indicates abnormal pier settlement around 5800 seconds (as shown is shown in
Figure 2).
Figure 2: Identified time-varying system frequencies from the bridge scouring test
using method of RSSA-RSSI-COV.
Identify damage using Damage location indicator In most of the studied on

damage detection indicated that mode shape is not a good indicator for structural
damage detection. Taking into account this fact, the concept of curvature of the
mode shape can be used and modified to a quantity which is independent of scaling,
can be used as an indicator for damage detection. Moreover, sign of the curvature
indicates the concavity. For mode shapes identified from field data, the concavity
could make the curvature useless to identify the damage location due to the sign
changes introduced by imperfections in the shape. To avoid all these
inconveniences, for discrete data measurement, the mode shape slope ratio between
two consecutive section can be defined as follows:
Figure 3: Identified mode shape slope change from the identified mode shapes.
796
If mi/mi+1> 0 and mi > mi+1 (concave downward), then slope ratio(i) = mi/mi+1
If mi/mi+1 > 0 and mi < mi+1 (concave upward), then slope ratio(i) = mi+1/mi
If mi/mi+1 < 0, then slope ratio(i) = {slope ratio(i) + slope ratio(i+1)}/2
where mi is the slope of the ith segment of the smoothed interpolated mode shape.
By defining the slope ratio in this way, the resultant slope ratio will only reflect
how big the slope change at a given point. At the peak point of the mode shape
where the slope sign changes, the 3rd criterion applies and it takes an average of the
adjacent slope ratios. Finally, to avoid the slope ratio increase disproportionately
comparing to the others, when slope in the divisor is near zero, a base 10 logarithm
can be applied. The computed time-dependent mode shapes are smoothed and the
results are shown in Figure 3. One should note that the 1st mode slope ratio is a
good indicator of the damage location. In the beginning of scouring test,
undamaged state was observed which show that no significant difference between
the slope ratios along the bridge; as scour occurs, the peak increases and it moves
rapidly to the region between 300 and 350 cm of the bridge from left to right, where
the peal location is precisely at pier #3. After 7000 seconds, again, the peak moves
to the region between 200 and 250 cm, where the location is at pier #2. This is
because the decks on the pier three got stuck and stiffness increased, as a
consequence of the fact, the peak of the slope ratio moves to pier two in which
scour continues. The result is in consistent with the change of recorded velocity
waveform. Two peaks are appeared in the slope ratio for the 2nd mode which is
reasonable for considering nature of the 2nd mode shape. Although a peak falls in
the same region between 300 and 350 cm, but there is no criterion to distinguish
where the damage is located from the two peaks, besides that the peak on the left
seems to be more sensible to the scour state.
Tow different indices are also proposed to detect the damage location. In
conducting the RSSA, with the concept of moving window (window length=40 sec)
the data Hankel matrix was formed. This analysis can be done either for each
sensing node or from all recorded sensing nodes. Through SVD the on the data
Hankel matrix and eigenvalues were calculated. Figure 4 shows the difference
between the first two largest eigenvalues from different sensing node (Node No.3, 6
and 9). This figure shows that prior to the significant settlement of the bridge pier
Figure 4: Difference between the 1st and 2nd eigenvalue-ratio from the recursive
Singular Spectrum Analysison each measurement (for Nodes 3, 6, and 9).
797
#3 at 7=7800 sec, the distinct feature of the difference between two largest
eigenvalues can be identified ( at about t=5800 sec). Besides, this difference intent
to have a larger value as the measurement location is close to the location of severe
damage. This feature can be served as an index for early warning.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents the on-line system parameter estimation technique from the
response measurements through Recursive Stochastic Subspace identification (RSSI)
approach. To avoid excessive time-consumption in Singular Value Decomposition,
Extended Instrumental Variable version of Projection Approximation Subspace
Tracking algorithm (EIV-PAST) is used for the purpose. Moreover, the recursive SSA
is incorporated as a subspace pre-processing tool and implemented with the PAST
algorithm to enhance the stability and accuracy on the estimation of the modal
parameters. Through the verification of using response data of the bridge scouring
experiment, the ability of rSSA-SSI-COV algorithm was proved to be robust to the
noise perturbations and offers a very good online tracking capability. The accuracy
and robustness offered by rSSA-SSI-COV seems to be the key to obtain evidences of
imminent bridge settlement and provides a very stable modal frequency tracking,
which enhanced the possibility of early warning for structure before collapse.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was supported by National Science Council, Taiwan, under grant
number NSC 98- 2625-M-002-018-MY3. The supports are acknowledged.
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Dissertation, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, December.
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5. Gene H. Golub, Charles F. Van Loan. Matrix computations. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
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Mathematics, 1997.
7. Bin Yang. Projection Approximation Subspace Tracking. IEEE transactions on signal processing, Vol.
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8. Tony Gustafsson. Instrumental Variable Subspace Tracking Using Projection Approximation. IEEE
transactions on signal processing, Vol. 46, No. 3, March 1998.
9. Torsten Söderström and Petre Stoica. System identification. Prentice-Hall International, 1989.
10. Alonso, F.J., J.M. Del Castillo, and P. Pintado, Application of singular spectrum analysis to the
smoothing of raw kinematic signals. Journal of Biomechanics, 38(5) 2005. 1085-1092.
798
Crack Growth Monitoring System for
Concrete Structures Based on Non-Contact
Displacement Measurements
T. KUSAKA, Y. NOMURA, T. SAKAMOTO and T. FUJII
ABSTRACT
A convenient and reliable SHM (Structural Health Monitoring) system based on

non-contact displacement measurements was proposed for applying to the real-time
crack growth monitoring of concrete structures in this work. The displacement vectors
of the nodes of discretized elements on digital image are measured with a CCD
camera and an image processor. The maximum principal strain and the principal
direction, which are calculated from the displacement vectors, are the prime
parameters for crack identification. The validity of the proposed SHM system was
demonstrated through the experimental results using a four-point bending specimen.
INTRODUCTION
Recently, assessing the integrity of the structures accurately and reliably has
become extremely important in various fields in order to increase operational lifetime
and improve safety. In such demands, numerous methods on structural health
monitoring (SHM) have been researched to establish alternatives to conventional time-
consuming methods. Among them, high-accuracy crack detection is ranked as one of
important SHM systems for assessing or monitoring the structural integrity. As for the
surface crack in concrete structures, non-contact methods such as infrared radiometer
or pattern recognition techniques [1]-[4] have been successfully utilized. However, the
applicability of the infrared radiometer technique is restricted by the convenience of
heating methods. Also, the reliability of the pattern recognition technique is influenced
by the surface condition of the objects.
To overcome these obstacles, an attempt is made in this study to propose a
convenient and reliable crack growth monitoring system for concrete structures based
on non-contact displacement measurements.
Takayuki Kusaka, Yasutoshi Nomura, Tomohiro Sakamoto, Toshifumi Fujii, Ritsumeikan

University, 1-1-1 Noji-Higashi, Kusatsu, 525-8577, Japan.
799
Figure 1. Flow of the crack monitoring system.
CRACK MONITORING SYTEM
Figure 1 shows the flowchart of the crack monitoring system. This proposed
system arranges nodes on the digital image of the object captured by a CCD camera,
and discretizes the digital image by using triangular elements, as shown in Figure 1(a)
and (b). The displacement vectors of nodes on the discretized element are calculated
through comparisons between reference image data and current image data. In our
proposed system, the apparent maximum principal strain, ε1*, and principal direction,
θ1*, are the prime parameters for crack identification, which are calculated from the
displacement vectors of each node. This study introduces the crack-opening parameter,
δcrk, which is calculated from the apparent maximum principal strain, ε1*, and principal
direction, θ1*, in order to detect crack initiation and growth behavior.
DATA REDUCTION SCHEME
Calculation of maximum principal strain and principal direction
As mentioned above, in our proposed system, the apparent maximum principal

strain, ε1*, and principal direction, θ1*, are the prime parameters for crack identification,
which are calculated from the displacement vectors of each node of discretized
elements on the digital image of the object through strain-displacement relation.
Suppose that an actual crack occurs in the discretized element, as shown in Figure 2.
In the element, the maximum principal strain apparently increases with the initiation
and growth of cracks, because the relative displacement of the nodes increases
proportionally to the crack opening width. Hence, the apparent maximum principal
strain, ε1*, can be divided into the actual strain of material induced by the external
force, εmat, and the apparent strain induced by the crack initiation, εcrk (crack-induced
800
Figure 2. Discretized element and crack.
i i i
δ
θ
θ θ
j L k j k j k
Crack path case 1 Crack path case 2 Crack path case 3
Figure 3. Positional relationship between the crack and the element.
strain). However, in this regard, considering that actual strain at neighboring area of
the crack except tip site is released due to the crack opening, the apparent maximum
principal strain, ε1*, can be approximated by the crack-induced strain, εcrk, as shown in
the following equation.
ε1* = εmat + εcrk ≅ εcrk (1)
The apparent principal direction, θ1*, is utilized to estimate the crack growth
direction, θcrk. Assuming that the crack initiation and growth behavior in brittle
material are dominated by the mode I (opening mode) component, the crack growth
direction, θcrk, can be estimated as follows.
θcrk =θ1* + π/2 (2)
Based on these estimations, the proposed system calculates the crack-opening

parameter, δcrk, and evaluates the crack initiation and growth behavior of the object
through comparisons with the threshold value introduced in advance as a crack
opening width.
Detection of crack growth behavior
This study introduces crack-opening parameter, δcrk, which is a criterion for crack
and calculated from the apparent maximum principal strain, ε1*, and principal direction,
801
)/
- crk
Error, (
Figure 4. Error between crack opening width, δ, and each crack-opening parameter, δcrk.
θ1*, estimated in previous section, in order to evaluate the crack initiation and growth
behavior. Considering the positional relationship between crack and the discretized
elements, three cases of the crack path can be expected as shown in Figure 3. δ, θ and
L mean the crack opening width, an angle of the crack from the base of the discretized
element and a length of one side of the element, respectively. Hence, crack-opening
parameter, δcrk, can be calculated using the apparent maximum principal strain ε1* and
the crack growth direction, θcrk, which is summarized in the following equations.
Crack path case 1:

ߜୡ୰୩ଵ ൌ ͸‫ߝܮ‬ଵ∗ /൫2√3 + 2√3|ߠୡ୰୩|൯ (0≤θcrk≤π/3, 2π/3≤θcrk≤π) (3)
Crack path case 2:
ߜୡ୰୩ଶ ൌ ͸‫ߝܮ‬ଵ∗ /൫2√3 + ห͵ ߠୡ୰୩ + √3ߠୡ୰୩ห൯ (π/3≤θcrk≤π) (4)
Crack path case 3:
ߜୡ୰୩ଷ ൌ ͸‫ߝܮ‬ଵ∗ /൫2√3 + ห͵ ߠୡ୰୩ − √3ߠୡ୰୩ห൯ (0≤θcrk≤2π/3) (5)
However, as shown in Figure 3, the crack direction, θ, and the crack path are not the
one-on-one relationship. Figure 4 shows the prediction error between crack opening
width, δ, and the crack-opening parameter, δcrk, by using above Equations (3), (4) and
(5) in each crack path. The vertical axis in each figure means the prediction error
which is calculated from (δcrk-δ)/δ. The horizontal axis means crack direction, θ, which
is the angle of the crack from one side of an element. As one of examples in Figure 4,
suppose that the situation where a crack with the opening width, δ, propagates on the
discretized element along with the crack path case 1 in the direction range 0 to π/3.
When crack growth direction, θcrk, was detected precisely from the apparent principal
direction, θ1*, Equations (3) and (5) are selected as candidates to calculate crack-
opening parameter, δcrk. However, in this regard, they cannot be uniquely-determined.
802
Figure 5. Error between crack opening width, δ, and integrated crack-opening parameter, δcrk.
In other words, it is impossible to determine which to use. In this case, prediction error
of crack opening width is in a margin of -25% to 33%. The same tendency is shown in
the crack path case 2 and case 3.
On the other hand, by setting each θcrk in Equations (3), (4) and (5) to be 0, 2π/3
and π/3, respectively, those equations can be integrated as shown in Equation (6).
ߜୡ୰୩ = √3‫ߝܮ‬ଵ∗ /2 (6)
Figure 5 shows the prediction error between crack opening width, δ, and the crack-
opening parameter, δcrk, by using Equation (6) in each crack path. The vertical axis in
each figure and the horizontal axis are the same as those in Figure 4. It is observed
from the figure that integrated Equation (6) can reduce the error to less than 25% in all
the crack path cases.
Based on these observations, this study calculates crack-opening parameter, δcrk,
using Equation (6), and evaluates the crack initiation and growth behavior of the
object through comparison with the threshold value introduced in advance as a crack
opening width.
EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
Concrete specimens reinforced with carbon fiber sheets were employed to

investigate the validity of the proposed system. Four-points bending load was applied
to the specimen with a hydraulic testing machine as shown in Figure 6. Also,
specimens were monitored successively during the tests at certain intervals with a
CCD camera, in which measurement region is an area with 170mm×100mm beneath
the loading points. The displacement vectors of each node at the elements were
calculated using digital image correlation method. The threshold value to identify a
crack opening width was set to be 0.2mm.
803
Load
Test piece (Concrete)
100
100
300 100
CF sheet 500
Figure 6. Four-points
Four bending specimen (unit: mm).
(a) Observed specimen
(b) crack distribution by crack gauge (c) crack distribution by proposed system
Figure 7. Cracked specimen and results of crack identification.
Figure 7 depicts the cracked specimen, crack distribution obtained by a crack

gauge and the proposed system,
system respectively. As shown in the figures 7(b) and 7(c),
7 it
is found that crack initiation sites,
site crack growth direction and crack length can be
detected accurately by the proposed system. This his result demonstrates that by
evaluating the crack-opening
opening parameter, δcrk, integrated in Equation (6) the proposed
system can identify the crack initiation and growth behavior successfully
essfully.
Figure 8 indicates the digital image of the specimen and crack distribution
obtained by a crack gauge and the proposed system.. In this case, to identify the crack
of this test piece is difficult visually because the surface of concrete has been
decorated by painting. The crack ddistribution depicted in Figure 8(b)(b) was detected
from the under area of the decorated surface after the loading test. From the
comparison of these crack
rack distribution
distributions obtained by a crack gauge and the proposed
system as shown in Figures 8(b) and 8(c), it is observed that the proposed system can
identify the crack initiation and growth behavior accurately,, in which the length and
804
Figure 8. Cracked specimen and results of crack identification
Figure 9. Cracked specimen and results of crack identification
locations of crack can be detected successfully although a few crack cannot be

detected. The result
esult proves that the proposed system can detect the crack initiation and
growth behavior even in such surface condition.
Figure 9 shows the digital image of the specimen and crack distribution obtained
by a crack gauge and the proposed system. Figure 9(b) shows the crack distribution of
the concrete under the tile after the loading test. Crack distribution evaluated by the
proposed
oposed system is shown in Figure
Fig 9(c). As shown in Figures 9(b) and 9(c),
9(c) it is
observed that the proposed system can predict the crack initiation successfully even
805
when the crack of the concrete cannot be inspected directly due to the tile of the
surface.
Through the experimental results, it is demonstrated that the proposed system can
identify the crack initiation and growth behavior successfully by evaluating crack-
opening parameter, δcrk regardless of the surface conditions.
CONCLUSIONS
A crack growth monitoring system was proposed for concrete structures based on
non-contact displacement measurements in this study. The validity of the proposed
system was demonstrated through several experimental studies. The major results are
summarized as follows:
(1) The apparent maximum principal strain ε1* and principal direction θ1* of the
discretized elements can be the prime parameters for crack identification.
(2) The crack initiation and growth behavior can be identified successfully by the
proposed system.
(3) The proposed system is effective even when the crack cannot be inspected
directly owing to the surface condition.
REFERENCES
1. Ito, A., Aoki, Y. and Hashimoto, S. 2002. “Accurate extraction and measurement of fine cracks
from concrete block surface image”, Proceedings IECON, Vol.3, pp.2202-2207.
2. Abdel-Qader, I., Abudayyeh, O. and Kelly, M. E. 2003. “Analysis of edge detection techniques for
crack identification in bridges”, Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, Vol. 17, No.3, pp.255-
263.
3. Hutchinson, T. C. and Chen, Z. 2006. “Improved image analysis for evaluating concrete damage”,
Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, Vol. 20, No3, pp.210-216.
4. Yamaguchi, T., Nakamura, S., Saegusa, R. and Hashimoto, S. 2008, “Image-based crack detection
for real concrete surfaces”, Transactions on Electrical and Electric Engineering, Vol. 3, pp. 128-135.
806
Experimental Verification of Controlled
Substructure Identification using Control
Devices: A Preliminary Simulation Study
C. DEVORE, E. A. JOHNSON and R. CHRISTENSON
ABSTRACT
High fidelity system identification is a prerequisite for successful damage detection. In real world
applications, signal noise is a major source of uncertainty and leads to poor results because many
methods are unable to accommodate low signal to noise ratios. Controlled substructure identification has
emerged as a technique to combat these limitations and provide accurate system identification with high
levels of noise (up to 40% rms). This method works by first isolating a substructure for identification.
Next, the commands to a structural control device are temporarily reconfigured with a specially
designed control law that has been shown to improve identification accuracy. This process is repeated on
other substructures until the entire structure is identified. Accurate identification has been demonstrated
in simulation for a variety of structural control devices and building systems (Zhang & Johnson, 2011).
Moreover, small scale experimental verification has taken place and simulation results were confirmed
(Zhang, DeVore, & Johnson, 2010). This paper builds on the body of knowledge by documenting
medium scale experimental testing undertaken at the University of Connecticut. Currently, a 12' steel
structure is being fabricated and configured as a four story shear building structure. This experimental
model represents a more realistic model of a civil building structure than previous work. Prior to
experimental testing, numerical simulation is performed to develop performance estimates and guide
testing procedure. This paper documents the numerical simulations and shows that controlled
substructure identification can improve identification accuracy in substructures with poor identification
accuracy.
INTRODUCTION
Following an earthquake, the affected area is at a higher risk for additional

earthquakes (aftershocks). This creates an additional demand on built infrastructure
that has survived the initial mainshock but may be damaged. Reasenberg and Jones
(1989) calculate that in the week directly following a typical California earthquake,
there is a 33.8% chance of a strong aftershock and a 4.9% chance of another larger
earthquake. Thus, it is essential for civil infrastructure operators to be able to
_____________
Charles DeVore, University of Southern California, 3620 S Vermont Ave, KAP210, Los
Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
Erik A Johnson, University of Southern California
Richard Christenson, University of Connecticut, 261 Glenbrook Road, Unit 2037, Storrs, CT
06269-2037, USA.
807
simultaneously detect damage from the mainshock and protect the structure from
continuing seismic hazards.
Yeo and Cornell (2009) proposed a decision analysis procedure based on a
dynamic programming model for building operators to determine the appropriate
response after an earthquake. To successfully use their model, knowledge about the
earthquake (magnitude, site distance from rupture, local geology, etc.) and knowledge
about the structure (damage state, damage transition probabilities, etc.) is required.
The model can then combine information about the costs of various alternatives and
recommend whether a building should be evacuated and for how long. Therefore, by
improving knowledge of the damage state of the structure, a more accurate model is
created and a better decision is reached.
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has developed many techniques to detect
damage in a structure. Of those, global vibration methods are best suited to quick
damage detection post-earthquake because there is no a priori assumption of damage
location. Unfortunately, global methods suffer inaccuracies caused by low ambient
excitation loads, model specification error, and numerical ill-conditioning. To
overcome these limitations, researchers have proposed temporarily using a structural
control device to improve identification accuracy (Zhang & Johnson, 2011).
This paper documents the preliminary design and numerical simulation of an
experiment intended to verify the validity of the controlled substructure identification
method. The experiment will be carried out at the Advanced Hazards Mitigation
Laboratory at the University of Connecticut by exciting a four story shear building
structure to low level excitation and using an active mass damper (AMD) for
structural control.
CONTROLLED SUBSTRUCTURE IDENTIFICATION
Controlled substructure identification has emerged as a new area of SHM. This

method works by first estimating the stiffness and damping parameters of a floor by
constructing an estimator consistent with measured responses. Second, a control
device is used to temporarily change the dynamics of the structure to make the
estimator less sensitive to noise sources. This section will summarize the derivation
and provide governing equations for a generic shear building.
First, start with the equation of motion of the substructure that is the ith floor of a
shear building.
mi ẍ ic i  ẋ i − ẋ i−1 k i  x i −x i−1 c i1  ẋ i − ẋ i1 k i1  x i −x i1 =0 (1)
Add −mi ẍ i−1 to each side and take the Fourier transform of (1). Initial conditions
are ignored because a tapered window is used. Therefore, Fourier transforms of
displacement and velocity can be written in terms of the Fourier transform of the
acceleration using the relations X =1/ j 2 Ẍ and Ẋ =1/ j  Ẍ . Further,
rearranging this equation, the measured quantities ( Ẍ i−1 , Ẍ i and Ẍ i1 ) and a
priori parameters ( c i1 and k i1 ) are collected on one side while the unknown
parameters ( k i and c i ) are collected on the other side. It is assumed that mi is
known.
808
1 Ẍ i−1− Ẍ i
=
1−
jci k
− i2
mi  mi 
Ẍ i−1 Ẍ i 1− Ẍ i 
 j c i1 k i1

mi  mi 2  (2)
This equation is rewritten in (3) using the frequency response function (FRF),
H ẍ , ẍ = Ẍ i / Ẍ i−1 . Note that, depending on the signal chosen ( x i−1 , xi , x i1 ) as the
i i−1
input, (3) can be rewritten three different ways. This trait can be exploited to improve
the FRF estimation by using the formulation with the least measurement noise.
1 1−H ẍ , ẍ
= i i−1
jc
mi  mi 
k
1− i − i 2 1 H ẍ , ẍ −H ẍ , ẍ 
j c i1 k i 1

mi  m 
i1 i−1 2 i
(3)
i−1
 i

A non-linear estimator is found relating the measured quantities and a priori
parameters to the identified parameters. By taking the square of the error between the
two sides of (3) and integrating over the frequency domain, optimization cost function
(4) is created that is used by various optimization techniques to solve for the optimal
values of k i and c i .
J  k i , ci =∫∣ f 1 k i , c i ; − f 2  H ẍ , ẍ , H ẍ , ẍ , k i1 , ci 1 ; ∣2 d 
i i−1 i i−1
(4)
1
f 1 k i , ci ;=
jci k (4a)
1− − i
m i  m i 2
1− H ẍ , ẍ
f 2  H ẍ , ẍ , H ẍ , ẍ , k i 1 , ci1 ; = i i −1
 j c i 1 k i1

i i−1 i i −1
1 H ẍ , ẍ i −1 − H ẍ , ẍ   (4b)
i 1 i i−1
m i  mi  2
By performing a first order error analysis of this estimator, the relative estimation
error can be written as
{ [ ]}
N i−1,l
{[ ]}
Ẍ i ,l − Ẍ i−1,l Ẍ i1,l − Ẍ i ,l
N N 
Ẍ i , l− Ẍ i−1,l k
[] k N i,l i1
=∑ ℜ Ul
i
∑ ℜ Ul (5)
 c l =1 Ẍ i ,l − Ẍ i−1,l l =1 Ẍ i1,l − Ẍ i , l
i

N i1,l Ẍ i ,l − Ẍ i −1, l c i1
Ẍ i ,l − Ẍ i−1,l
From this error analysis result, three properties can be identified. 1) Error is a
function of the measurement noise (first summation) and previous story uncertainty
(second summation). 2) Every term is multiplied by a matrix of weighting factors,
U l , which amplifies values near the interstory natural frequency which is the square
root of the story stiffness divided by the story mass (  i0= k i / mi ). 3) Each term has
the interstory acceleration response, Ẍ i , l− Ẍ i−1,l , in the denominator. Using these
three properties, a performance function can be formed that serves to increase the
interstory acceleration response in the narrow frequency band around the interstory
natural frequency. The system response is modified by changing the controller of the
809
structural control system parametrized by L . It is not necessary that the controller
take a particular form, just that it is able exert a force on the structure that is not local
to the substructure being identified. This is shown below:
2
2
J  L=∫ ∣w  j   Ẍ i − Ẍ i −1 ∣ d 1−∫
∣w j 
∣
ẍ i − ẍ i−1
ẍ i 1− ẍ i
d (6)
Thus, by changing L , to maximize (6), the interstory acceleration response is

increased in the narrow frequency band around the interstory natural frequency. As a
result, the estimation error will decrease. In this equation, w  j  is an appropriately
selected weighting function with similar properties to the elements of U l .
Additionally,  is taken to be 0.8 which makes (6) a single objective function.
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Experimental testing will be performed at the

Advanced Hazards Mitigation Laboratory at the
University of Connecticut. A four story building (see
Figure 1) will be constructed and excited by a
medium scale shake table. The shake table has a 5'×5'
slip table and is capable of 6" dynamic stroke and 2 g
acceleration. Structural control is provided by a 50 lb
dynamic shaker installed on the top floor of the
structure. The structural response is measured by
accelerometers installed at each floor level.
The test structure is designed as a four story shear
building. The lateral stiffness is provided by four
columns consisting of 1" steel threaded rods with
fixed boundary conditions at each floor. Story level
mass is provided by a 24"×24"×1" steel plate with
auxiliary mass attached. This auxiliary mass is Figure 1: Sketch of test structure
adjusted to ensure that the dynamics of the structure
is captured within the frequency range of 1–20 Hz. These bounds are selected because
it is difficult to measure low frequency response and because the shake table response
decreases above 20 Hz. This will ensure that all four natural frequencies will be
excited and properly measured.
CONTROL DESIGN
Structural control is provided by an AMD installed on the top story of the

structure. This is shown schematically in Figure 2. The system is excited by filtered
white noise, u g t  , at the base. Structural control is provided by an AMD installed on
the top of the structure. This device applies a force on the top floor which is a linear
combination of the states of the structure, f amd t=L x t . The output of the system,
y t , is the acceleration of each story level.
810
The full state feedback controller is designed by minimizing (7) with the constraint
that the real component of the closed loop poles, k , are in the left half plane by a
specified performance value,  . This value is set to the least negative real component
of the uncontrolled system poles which ensures that the closed loop system will be
minimally as stable as the uncontrolled system.
2 2
J  L=∫ ∣w  j  H 1  j ∣ d 1−∫∣w j  H 2  j ∣ d 
(7)
subject to: ℜ { k }−0 ∀ k =1,2,⋯ , 2n
where H 1  j =1/ H  ẍ − ẍ  ü and H 2  j =H  ẍ − ẍ   ẍ − ẍ  are the closed-loop
i i−1 g i1 i i i−1
transfer functions from the ground to the interstory acceleration below floor i and from
the interstory acceleration below floor i to the interstory acceleration above floor i,
respectively.
In addition to the stability constraints on k , an additional constraint is applied
C
such that the root mean square of the force is less than  f . The variance of the
AMD
AMD force is given by

 2f AMD
= E { f 2AMD }=LT K L (8)
where K is the covariance matrix of the state vector excited by base motion and L
is the feedback control gain matrix found in (7). The covariance matrix is found by
solving the Lyapunov equation and the force constraint is 100 N (~18% of total
structural weight) evaluated when the input ground motion has a standard deviation of
0.1 m/s2.
The optimal controller is the global minimum of (7) which is a non-convex
function of the controller space. Therefore, the optimization is implemented by using
the closed-loop pole locations as the input space. This results in an optimization that
has fewer local minimums and yields a better solution when using MATLAB's local
solver, fmincon. Once the optimal pole locations are determined, the controller gain
matrix can be directly calculated. The controller performance transfer functions,
H 1  j  and H 2  j  , are shown in Figure 3 for both the uncontrolled and
controlled scenarios.
Figure 2: Block Diagram of Closed Loop System
811
Figure 3: Comparison of controller performance transfer functions for 2nd floor identification. The left
transfer function is H 1  j  and the right transfer function is H 2  j  . Interstory natural frequency
is shown as the dotted vertical line.
SIMULATION
To test the performance of the controlled substructure identification method, a

numerical simulation is used. First, the stiffness and damping parameters will be
identified for each story using the substructure identification method on the
uncontrolled structure. 500 independent trials are run and the statistics are reported.
The statistics chosen are the median, inter-quartile range (IQR), and the ratio of the
sample standard deviation to the IQR estimated standard deviation. These robust
statistics are chosen because the distribution of the identified parameters is not
Gaussian as demonstrated by  STD /  IQR not equal to unity.
Each trial consists of an independent identification analysis. A thirty minute
acceleration time history is created with filtered white noise as the excitation source. A
sampling frequency of 100 Hz is selected to capture the system's dynamics. Then the
time histories are polluted with additive white sensor noise such that the standard
deviation of the sensor noise is 10% of the standard deviation of the corresponding
acceleration response (i.e., the signal to noise ratio is 20 dB). Then the component
FRFs are estimated using Welch’s method and the
optimal stiffness parameter is identified by solving (4)
Unknown Damping Parameter:
with MATLAB’s lsqcurvefit command. Because the c ~ Uniform [80 % , 120%]
i
damping is quite low (~1% modal damping), the
a priori Stiffness Parameter:
estimator is biased for identification of the damping k ~ Normal[0,  ]
i1 k
parameter. Therefore, the damping parameter is
a priori Damping Parameter:
modelled as a random variable. Likewise, the previous c ~ Normal[0,  ]
i1 c
floor uncertainty is incorporated by modelling the a
priori estimates as Gaussian random variables. This Figure 4: Distributions of
incorporates the damping and previous floor Simulation Random Variables
uncertainty into the model and insures meaningful expressed as normalized values
statistical results.
812
TABLE I: STATISTICS OF IDENTIFIED STIFFNESS PARAMETERS FOR THE
UNCONTROLLED SYSTEM. VALUES FOR THE MEDIAN AND IQR ARE NORMALIZED
SUCH THAT THE MEDIAN REPRESENTS THE MEDIAN PERCENT ERROR AND THE IQR
REPRESENTS THE IQR AS A PERCENTAGE OF THE ACTUAL VALUE.
STIFFNESS
FLOOR
MEDIAN IQR 
 STD / 
 IQR
1 0.07% 1.39% 1.25
2 -3.31% 11.1% 0.92
3 -0.15% 2.58% 1.23
4 -0.02% 1.55% 1.41
Within the simulation, random variables are incorporated by using a sample from
their distribution. For instance, the damping parameter is modelled as a Uniform
random variable centered on the true value and with lower and upper bounds at 20%
of the true value. For a particular trial, a value is randomly chosen from this
distribution and used as the damping parameter. Thus, the damping parameter
uncertainty is incorporated into the simulation which yields statistically meaningful
results. The same process is repeated for the a priori estimates. Distributions for each
random variable are shown in Figure 4.
From the results of Table I, the stiffness parameter is identified without bias and
minimal variance in floors 1, 3, and 4. In the case of floor 2, the bias error and
variance is significantly larger than the other floors which can be explained by the
presence of a zero directly at the interstory natural frequency (graphically
demonstrated by the uncontrolled curve in Figure 3a). This indicates that a controller
designed for the second floor identification could improve the identification accuracy.
A state feedback controller is designed for an AMD installed on the first floor
using the control design procedure described in the previous section. Then, 500
independent trials are run and the statistics are reported in Table II. There is significant
improvement in the accuracy and precision of the identified stiffness parameter.
TABLE II: STATISTICS OF IDENTIFIED STIFFNESS PARAMETERS FOR THE SECOND

FLOOR FOR THE UNCONTROLLED AND CONTROLLED CASES. VALUES FOR THE
MEDIAN AND IQR ARE NORMALIZED SUCH THAT THE MEDIAN REPRESENTS THE
MEDIAN PERCENT ERROR AND THE IQR REPRESENTS THE IQR AS A PERCENTAGE OF
THE ACTUAL VALUE.
CONTROL STIFFNESS
SCENARIO MEDIAN IQR 
 STD / 
 IQR
UNCONTROLLED -3.31% 11.1% 0.92
CONTROL -1.72% 6.88% 1.19
813
CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, a non-linear estimator, (4), is derived to estimate the stiffness and

damping parameters of a single floor of a shear building structure. Then, a first order
error analysis reveals the controller objective function, (6), which when maximized
will yield a controller with improved identification accuracy. Utilizing these
equations, a controller is designed for improving the second story identification
accuracy of a four story shear structure.
Numerical simulation demonstrates that the substructure identification method can
accurately identify the stiffness and damping parameters generally. However, some
structures will exhibit poor performance at a particular story which suggests that the
controlled substructure identification method should be used. Further simulation
confirms the effectiveness of the controlled substructure identification method by
temporarily changing the dynamics of the structure to improve identification accuracy
of the second floor. Experimental testing at the University of Connecticut will be
performed to validate these results.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge support provided by the National Science

Foundation (08-26634) and the University of Southern California Provost Fellowship.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
National Science Foundation.
REFERENCES
1. Reasenberg, P. A., & Jones, L. M. (1989). Earthquake Hazard After a Mainshock in California.
Science, 243(4895), 1173-1176. doi: 10.1126/science.243.4895.1173.
2. Yeo, G. L., & Cornell, C. A. (2009). Post-quake decision analysis using dynamic programming.
Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics, 38(1), 79-93. Wiley Online Library. doi:
10.1002/eqe.842.
3. Zhang, D., DeVore, C., & Johnson, E. A. (2010). Experimental Verification of Controlled
Substructure Identification for Shear Structures. 5th World Conference on Structural Control and
Monitoring. Tokyo, Japan.
4. Zhang, D., & Johnson, E. A. (2011). Substructure Identification for Shear Structures II: Controlled
Substructure Identification. Structural Control and Health Monitoring. Submitted.
814
High Frequency Axle Box Acceleration for
Early Detection of Squats: Numerical
Simulation, Prototype Development
and Testing
Z. LI, M. MOLODOVA and R. DOLLEVOET
ABSTRACT
Squats are a major type of rail rolling contact fatigue. The associated large
dynamic force causes rapid deterioration of track structure. The cracks can lead to
catastrophic rail break. It is a main cost drive for many railways worldwide. The
existing automatic detection methods can only reliably find squats in the later stages.
This paper discusses the detection of squat seeds by measurement and analysis of axle
box acceleration (ABA). First a model is developed to numerically reproduce ABA at
early squats so that their characteristic responses (signature tunes) can be determined
and can be isolated from noise. Based on this a new ABA measurement system is
designed and instrumented. Field testing is then performed.
INTRODUCTION
Squats are worldwide a major type of rail rolling contact fatigue. They initiate and
grow from squat seeds, or light squats – small rail surface defects which are larger
than a threshold size so that they will grow into squats [1]. Severe squats not only
cause high train-track interaction force, leading to rapid track quality deterioration, but
also contain cracks which may result in catastrophic fracture. Currently the most
widely used method of structural health monitoring method for detection of squats is
ultrasonic test by measuring trains. It can, however, only reliably detect severe squats
with cracks deeper than 7 mm. High maintenance costs are therefore the consequence.
In the Netherlands the direct squat related costs are more than 5,000 Euro/km per year.
There are other possible squat detection methods. Their application has been
limited due their respective shortcomings. Eddy current test can detect shallow cracks,
but squat seeds often do not have crack; lift-off of probes at squats also reduces the
reliability. Image recognition has difficulty in distinguishing between squats and
Zili Li and Marija Molodova, Section of Road and Railway Engineering, Faculty of Civil
Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Stevinweg 1, 2628 CN,
Delft, the Netherlands.
Rolf Dollevoet, Asset Management Railsystems, Department of Civil Technology B4.09,
ProRail, P.O. Box 2038, 3500 GA Utrecht, the Netherlands.
815
contaminations etc. All the above methods give no indication of the dynamic force
which causes the initiation and growth of squats, and therefore misses important
information for prognosis. Strain gage instrumented wheelset can measure the low and
medium frequency part of the force, but it is expensive, sensitive to wheel damage
such as wheel flats, and is not sensitive enough for small squats. Acoustic detection
requires that the squats must be severe enough so that the sound emission due to the
impact of wheel on rail is sufficiently strong. Another monitoring method is needed to
detect squats as early as possible, so that preventive and corrective measures can be
taken in time.
Axle box acceleration (ABA) measurement is cheap; the measurement system can
be mounted on almost any rail vehicles. It is therefore ideal for continuous monitoring.
It has been employed for detection of various wheel and track defects. In [2] detection
of corrugation by ABA is discussed. In [2, 3] detection of wheel flats by acceleration
measurement is considered. In [4] application of ABA to identification of track lateral
irregularities is discussed; it also reviews the applications of ABA to monitoring of
bearings and wheel quality. Among all these applications, the lateral irregularities are
of long wave nature. On the contrary, corrugation, defective wheels and bearing cause
mainly vertical vibrations, which usually contain short wave (high frequency)
components. The vibrations are characterized by two features: They are periodical
with (almost) constant wavelength, and they are repeated constantly for defective
wheels and bearings, or for long distance for corrugation. These make them relatively
easy to detect.
When a squat is large enough, the impact can also relatively easily be sensed by
accelerometers mounted on axle box [5], though it is usually randomly located in
isolation along the track. Since a squat seed is small, the resulting vibration can often
be submerged in noise. The noise can be caused by some or all of the following: (1)
the random “normal” surface asperities of rails and wheels; (2) local defects in ballast,
sleepers and fastening; (3) defective wheels and bearings. Hence squat seeds are
difficult to detect with the ABA measurement methods which have so far been
developed.
This paper reports recent efforts by the authors in developing a new ABA system
to detect squat seeds with high hit rate.
NUMERICAL MODELING
In [1] it was found that the wavelength of the dynamic contact force between
wheel and rail at squats is usually between 20 – 40 mm. This corresponds to the
frequency range of 1 – 2 kHz if the speed of the wheel is 40 m/s. Nowadays high
speed trains can be more than twice as faster, which means that the upper frequency of
the contact force can be higher than 4 kHz. It is expected that such a dynamic force
should excite ABA of the same frequency. Frequency components in that range was
indeed found in ABA measured at squats [1].
In order to ascertain that quantitative relationships between squats and ABA
indeed exist for general situations and that they are measurable, a numerical model is
needed. So far most of the models dealing with dynamic wheel-rail contact consider
the rail as an idealized beam and the wheel as a lumped mass, with Hertzian contact
spring between them [2, 6, 7]. The contact force is taken to be the ABA times the
816
lumped wheel mass [6]. This approach is not applicable in the high frequency range
where the vibration modes of the wheel have to be taken into account. In [7] it is
found that a beam model is insufficient for frequency higher than 1.5 kHz. Use of
ABA measurement higher than 1 kHz has therefore little been explored. In [8] it is
reported that with an upper frequency bound of 1 kHz, about 60 – 70% of moderate
and light squats can be detected. Such a hit rate is too low.
A full finite element (FE) model is therefore developed based on the model
employed in [5]. Figure 1(a) shows that it consists of a lumped mass MC of car body
and bogie, a wheel rolling along a rail which is supported on sleepers of lumped mass
M2. KC and CC, K1 and C1, K2 and C2 are the stiffness and damping of the primary
suspension of a railway vehicle, of the railpads between the rail and the sleepers, and
of the ballast between the sleepers and the ground, respectively. The wheel and rail are
modeled with full 3D FE elements; see Figure 1(b). The car body and bogie can be
considered as a mass point because their vibration frequencies are much lower (<
20Hz) owing to the primary suspension.
(a) Global
(b) Wheel-rail contact
Figure 1. The numerical model
817
This results in a model of more than 300,000 nodes. Frictional rolling contact
conditions between the wheel and the rail are fully satisfied in the solution process.
This is necessary because the vibration excited by a sliding wheel is very much
different from that by a rolling wheel, as is evidenced by the difference in acoustic
noise generation. Since the frequency concerned is up to 4 kHz or higher, the
computational costs would be very high if an implicit solution procedure is employed.
Therefore a central difference integration scheme is used.
This model can generally be applied to any ballasted track for relationships
between rail surface defects and ABA, and their dependencies on the parameters of the
train-track system. In this paper it is applied to an artificial defect made in the rail on a
revenue track as shown in Figure 2(a). This cut was made uniform in width and depth
across the rail to create a controlled condition to guarantee that measured ABA at it
would not be affected by the hunting motion of the wheel on which the accelerometer
is mounted. Figure 2(b) shows the measured vertical-longitudinal profile of the defect.
This defect is applied to the model of Figure 1. The simulated speed is 30 m/s, at
which ABA has been measured at the defect for validation. The blue curve in Figure 3
shows the simulated ABA, with its abscissa = 0 corresponds to abscissa = 0 in Figure
2. It can be seen that before the wheel hits the defect, the ABA is irregular with a low
magnitude – this corresponds to the random vibration of the train-track interaction. At
the defect the wheel and the track is excited, so that ABA is much increased and a
dominant wavelength of about 30 mm can be observed. The magnitude of the ABA
decreases gradually as the wheel rolls further from the defect, and its irregular pattern
starts to re-appear when abscissa is larger than about 120 mm, see Figure 3.
(a) The validation defect. Traffic was from left to right.

Vertical deviation, mm
0
-0,1
-0,2
-0,3
-0,4
-0,5
-40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40
Position, mm
(b) Vertical-longitudinal profile of the defect. Traffic was from left to right.
Figure 2. An artificial defect for validation
818
150
Simulat ion
100 Measurement
Acceleration, m/s 2
50
-50
-100
-150
-100 -50 0 50 100 150 200
Position, mm
Figure 3. Comparison of measured and simulated results in time domain
Figure 4(b) shows the wavelet power spectra (WPS). In Figure 5 power spectral
densities (PSD) are presented. A dominant vibration around 1 kHz can be seen in both
figures, corresponding to the dominant wavelength of 30 mm. It is noticed that the
width of the excitation cut is also about 30 mm (Figure 2). A secondary vibration
mode is between 250 – 350 Hz, depending on the parameters, see Figure 5 for the
results of 3 set of model parameters. In the WPS of Figure 4(b), it can be seen that the
upper frequency directly at the defect is about 1.5 kHz (the highest point of the red
part) and, the lower frequency bound is about 0.75 kHz (the bottom of the red area),
while these can not be seen in the PSD. This shows the advantage of WPS over PSD:
it can catch the very local frequency characteristic, while PSD depends on the width of
its window, i.e. the length of the signal used for the PSD. The 1.5 kHz and 0.75 kHz
correspond to the lower and upper wavelength bounds of 20 and 40 mm mentioned
above.
The simulation shows that at the defect the ABA has two characteristics: increased
ABA magnitude, and a dominant frequency component corresponding to the
wavelength of the characteristic vibration and wheel speed. Simulation of ABA at
squat of various sizes has confirmed these.
A PROTOTYPE MEASURING SYSTEM
Based on the numerically simulated signature tunes, a prototype measuring system

was developed, see Figure 6. Due to hunting, a measuring wheel does not necessarily
always roll over a squat seed in its middle. Therefore for reliable detection, multiple
measurements are needed. For data fusion purpose each measurement has to be
positioned accurately. Positioning by GPS alone is insufficient due to its random error;
hence an independently measured speed signal was also recorded for each ABA
signal.
Tools for data process and diagnosis were developed. Multiple measurements
could be merged to increase the hit rate. Noise caused by wheel flats etc. could be
filtered out.
819
Figure 4. Comparison of measured and simulated wavelet power spectrum (WPS)
250 Model 1
Model 2
200
Model 3
150
Measurement
100
50
0
0 250 500 750 1000 1250 1500 1750 2000
Frequency, Hz
Figure 5. Comparison of measured and simulated power spectral density (PSD)
Figure 6. A prototype ABA system
820
CONTROLLED AND FIELD VALIDATIONS
Controlled validation
The system was instrumented and measurement was made at the artificial defect of
Figure 2(a) to validate under controlled condition the numerical results. The
measurement is compared with the simulated results in Figures 3 – 5. In Figure 3 the
calculated wavelength of the ABA between position 0 and 120 mm, where the 30 mm
wave dominates, agrees very well with the measurement. Outside this range the
wavelength deviate from each other because the excitation effect of the defect was
either not present (before -20 mm) or had sufficiently decreased (after 120 mm). The
maximal magnitude agrees also well for the first two peaks. But in the calculated
signal the lower frequency component of 250 – 350 Hz is superposed on the high
frequency one, while in the measurement it is very weak. On the other hand there are
stronger frequency components at e.g. about 1.7 kHz and 1.9k Hz in the measurement,
so that in Figure 3 effect of superposition of different frequency components can be
seen after 120 mm in the measurement.
The difference between the simulation and the measurement should be due to
deviation of the parameters used in the calculation from the reality. One such
deviation is in the profile of the defect. The measurement of Figure 2(b) was taken
some time before the measuring train ran over it. In between the real profile had
changed due to traffic, so that wave pattern of wavelength 30 mm or so had developed
on the rail surface after (i.e. on the right side of) the defect (Figure 2(a)) due to the
dynamic contact force excited by the defect [1]. This wave pattern should have
intensified the high frequency vibration because it caused forced vibration of the
wavelength of the wave pattern, rendering the lower frequency component relatively
weaker. Another probable cause is deviation in track parameters. For the simulation
nominal track parameters were used. Some preliminary parameter variation study
showed that the frequency component of about 250 – 350 Hz can be influenced by the
parameters; see in Figure 5 the results of models 1 – 3.
This indicates that by sufficient parameter variations the simulation could be fine
tuned to match the reality. That is, however, not necessary here because railway track
is an open and non-linear system. Rail defects of precisely the same geometry can
cause different responses at different locations because of the random local track
conditions. For detection purpose the most important is to capture the signature tunes
of the squat seeds. This also suggests that by parameter variation the real track
parameters could be identified from ABA.
Field validation
Preliminary measurement on a randomly selected track showed that all squat seeds
could be detected. Further it was found that some small defects which disappeared
later due to wear were also detected. This means that threshold should be determined
to distinguish between real squat seeds and trivial defects. ABA can thus also provide
an objective classification of squats, which is done so far by visual inspection.
821
CONCLUSIONS
This paper first discussed the insufficiency of existing methods for early detection
of squat, and proposed measurement of axle box acceleration (ABA) as an alternative.
For the development of a suitable ABA detection system, a finite element (FE) model
was built up and was subsequently applied to the identification of signature tunes of
squat seeds. An ABA system was then designed and instrumented. The signature tunes
were validated under controlled condition with measurement obtained by the system.
Preliminary field test on randomly selected track showed that all squat seeds could be
detected.
The identified signature tunes corresponding to squat seeds are increased ABA
magnitude and frequency components which are related to the local characteristic
vibration wavelength of the track and the travelling speed.
The FE model can reproduce the signature tunes of ABA at squats. Measurement
and analysis of ABA at high frequency is a promising method for detection of squat
seeds. It may also be used for identification of some track parameters and their
deviation from nominal values. ABA can therefore be an important method for
continuous monitoring of railway track structure.
REFERENCES
1. Z. Li, R. Dollevoet, M. Molodova, X. Zhao, Squat growth–some observations and the validation of
numerical predictions, Wear 271 (2011) 148 - 157, doi:10.1016/j.wear.2010.10.051
2. Alex M. Remennikov and Sakdirat Kaewunruen, A review of loading conditions for railway track
structures due to train and track vertical interaction, Struct. Control Health Monit. 15 (2008), 207–
234, DOI: 10.1002/stc.227.
3. S. Jia and M. Dhanasekar, Detection of Rail Wheel Flats using Wavelet Approaches, Structural
Health Monitoring 6 (2007) 121–131, DOI: 10.1177/1475921706072066
4. T. Uhl, K. Mendrok and A. Chudzikiewicz, Rail Track and Rail Vehicle Intelligent Monitoring
System, in Fu-Kuo Chang (Ed.) Structural Health Monitoring 2009 - Proceedings of the 7th
International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring 2009, Stanford University, Stanford, CA,
USA, Sept. 9 – 11, 2009, pp. 617 – 624.
5. M. Molodova, Z. Li and R. Dollevoet, Axle box acceleration: Measurement and simulation for
detection of short track defects, Wear 271 (2011) 349 - 356, doi:10.1016/j.wear.2010.10.003
6. H. Wakui and H. Okuda. A study on limit-state design method for prestressed concrete sleepers.
Concrete Library of Japan Society of Civil Engineers 1999; 33(1):1–25.
7. L. Gry and C. Gontier, Dynamic modeling of railway track: a periodic model based on a
generalized beam formulation, Journal of Sound and Vibration (1997) 199 (4), 531 – 558.
8. Z. Li, M. Molodova and R. Dollevoet, Detectability of Isolated Short Wave Rail Surface Defects by
Way of Axle Box Acceleration, in Proceedings of the 21st International Symposium on Dynamics
of Vehicle on Roads and Tracks, Stockholm, 17 – 21, August, 2009. Proceedings on CD-rom
822
A Comparison of Experimental
Characterization Results for Multiple
Bridge Spans of the Same Design
R. MAESTRI, T. WANK and K. A. GRIMMELSMAN
ABSTRACT
The efficacy of Structural Health Monitoring applications for bridges is often

limited by both uncertainty related to the experimental methods used to characterize
the structure and uncertainty due to the constructed nature of these systems. A global
level characterization of a bridge structure serves as both a baseline for evaluating
future performance and condition, and as the primary source of quantitative data used
in structural identification of a structure. Bridges are usually characterized at the
global level by full-scale static or dynamic testing. The uncertainty associated with
full-scale static or dynamic testing methods has been discussed in numerous papers,
and in most cases can be quantified or bounded through laboratory evaluation studies.
The constructed nature of bridges can lead to uncertainty in their material and
mechanical characteristics. Furthermore, the ultimate effect on long-term performance
and condition of the various defect, deterioration and damage mechanisms that a
bridge may be exposed to over its relatively long service life is difficult to quantify,
particularly if the uncertainty associated with the constructed nature of a bridge has
not been characterized and evaluated.
The authors conducted a full-scale dynamic characterization by ambient vibration
testing of two bridges that each had multiple spans of the same design. The first
structure evaluated was constructed in 1987 and has ten identical, simply-supported
concrete deck on steel beam spans. The second structure was constructed in 1930 and
consists of three identical simply-supported Parker Pony Trusses. The bridges were
selected so that the consistency of the full-scale characterization results could be
compared and evaluated for both a modern and historic bridge structure. The ages of
the test structures is important characteristic as construction methods and material
technologies have evolved significantly over the 50+ years between the initial
construction of each structure. Another important consideration in selecting these
bridges was to evaluate the consistency of the characterization results for two
fundamentally different structural systems. This paper describes the field testing of
multiple spans of the two test structures and discusses the consistency of the
characterization results.
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Arkansas, 1 University of Arkansas, Fayetteville,

Arkansas, 72701, U.S.A.
823
INTRODUCTION
The uncertainty associated with the experimental methods used to characterize a

bridge at its global level and the uncertainty that results from the constructed nature of
these structures both limit the efficacy of Structural Identification and Structural
Health Monitoring applications for bridges [1, 2]. Bridge structures are generally
characterized at the global level for such applications by either full-scale static (or
quasi-static) testing or dynamic testing methods. The experimental uncertainties
associated with these methods are well-documented, and can be quantified and
evaluated through laboratory studies and probabilistic analyses. The epistemic
uncertainties associated with the constructed nature of these structures are more
challenging to quantify and evaluate [3, 4], and can potentially have a much greater
impact on the effectiveness of the structural identification or structural health
monitoring program.
The objective of this paper is to evaluate the variability in the dynamic
characteristics for two very different bridge structures established through ambient
vibration dynamic testing. Both of the bridges evaluated for this paper feature
multiple, simply supported spans with the same superstructure designs. Multiple spans
from each structure were tested using the same experimental setup and the variability
of their identified dynamic properties (natural frequencies and operating mode shapes)
was evaluated.
CHARACTERIZATION PROGRAM
The two bridges evaluated for this paper included a reinforced concrete deck on
steel beam bridge and a Parker Pony Truss bridge. The steel beam bridge was
constructed in 1987 and features 10 simply supported spans with individual span
lengths of 15.24 m. The superstructure details for each of the 10 spans are identical,
and include a 203.2 mm thick concrete deck with an overall width of 8.382 m. The
concrete deck is supported by a total of four W27x94 steel beams laterally spaced at
2.286 m. The top flanges of the steel beams were partially embedded in the concrete
deck, so they were considered to form a composite section with the concrete deck.
The second bridge evaluated was a Parker Pony Truss bridge that was constructed
in 1930. This bridge featured three simply supported truss spans of 30.48 m each. The
superstructure details for each truss span are identical, and consist of eleven panel
points spaced at 3.048 m intervals. The width of the bridge, measured from center to
center of the trusses is 6.706 m. Each span of the bridge also has a 203.2 mm thick
reinforced concrete deck that is supported by rolled steel floor beam sections that span
between the lower panel points of the upstream and downstream trusses.
Although the individual spans from each bridge are simply supported, adjacent
ends of the interior spans are supported by single reinforced concrete piers. The far
ends of the end spans in each bridge are supported by reinforced concrete abutment
substructures. The geometric characteristics and section properties for the
superstructure components of both bridges were established by measuring their sizes
in the field since design and construction documentation could not be located for
either bridge.
3D analytical models of the superstructure system for a single span of each bridge
were developed in SAP2000 to serve as a preliminary point of comparison for the
824
ambient vibration testing results. It should be noted that the analytical models are only
approximate representations of each bridge due to the lack of any material property
data for the bridges and due missing or un-measurable details for each bridge
(reinforcement details, foundation systems, etc.).
The analytical model for the steel beam bridge used frame elements to simulate the
steel beam sections and intermediate diaphragms. The concrete deck and parapet were
simulated with shell elements. Composite action between the deck and the steel beams
was simulated by connecting the shell elements to the frame elements with rigid links.
The substructure and foundation system were not simulated; idealized pin and roller
supports were used to simulate the boundary conditions for the span. The model was
analyzed using an assumed 50 ksi yield strength for the steel beams, and an assumed
compressive strength of 4000 psi for the concrete deck.
The 3D analytical model for the truss bridge was developed in SAP2000 using
similar idealizations. The truss members were modeled as frame elements connected
by frictionless pins. This was a reasonable idealization given the actual joint
connections for the truss members. The concrete deck was simulated with shell
elements and these were made composite with the transverse floor beams using rigid
links. The steel elements were assumed to have a yield strength of 36 ksi and the
compressive strength of the concrete deck was assumed to be 4000 psi.
Ambient Vibration Testing
Ambient vibration testing was performed on multiple spans from both bridges to
determine their dynamic characteristics (natural frequencies and operating mode
shapes). A total of four of the ten spans on the beam bridge were tested and evaluated.
Each span tested from the beam bridge was instrumented using a total of 20 uniaxial
accelerometers. These accelerometers were located along the length of the span and
were arranged such that the vertical modes could be identified from the measurement.
The specific sensors used for this bridge included of a combination of Model 393B05
and Model 3711 DC accelerometers from PCB Piezotronics, Inc. The nominal
sensitivities for these sensors are 10 V/g and 1 V/g, respectively. The same
instrumentation layout and sensor positions were used for each span of the bridge that
was tested. The sensor layout used for the beam bridge is shown in Figure 1.
All three of the truss spans were evaluated by ambient vibration testing. Each span
was instrumented using 23 accelerometers, with 18 oriented to measure
vertical/torsional vibrations, and 5 to measure lateral vibrations of the span. The
sensors used for testing this structure consisted of a combination of Model 393B05
and Model 393C accelerometers from PCB Piezotronics Inc. These accelerometers
have nominal sensitivities of 10V/g and 1 V/g, respectively. The exact same test setup
was used for testing all three spans. The layout of the vertical accelerometers used for
each span of the truss bridge is shown in Figure 2.
Data collection for the ambient vibration testing was accomplished using a
National Instruments PXI mainframe populated with Model 4472B Dynamic Signal
Acquisition Modules. The ICP type accelerometers were powered directly from these
modules. The DC accelerometers were powered by an external signal conditioner. The
acceleration measurements from both bridges were sampled at 1 kHz for five minute
intervals. A total of two hours of vibration data were recorded for each span of the
beam bridge. A total Vibration data was recorded for 2 hours for each of the beam
825
bridge spans. The truss bridge was subject to very low traffic usage; therefore, a total
of 4 hours of vibration data were recorded from each span. The ambient temperatures
during the testing of each span from the two bridges were within a few degrees of each
other.
3 Spa @ 2.286 m = 6.858 m
2.540 m 2.540 m 2.540 m 2.540 m 2.540 m 2.540 m
Plan View 3415

393B05
2.286 m 2.286 m 2.286 m

Cross Section
Figure 1. Accelerometer layout for each span of the beam bridge
A
U3 U4 U5 U6 U7
U2 U8
U1 U9
L0 L1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6 L7 L8 L9 L10
A
10 Panels @ 3.048 m = 30.48 m
BO5
Elevation 393C
Section A-A
Figure 2. Accelerometer layout for each span of the truss bridge
826
DATA PROCESSING AND ANALYSIS
The natural frequencies and operating mode shapes were identified from the
ambient vibration data using the peak-picking (PP) method. The raw data files were
first imported into MATLAB. The individual data files were each decimated from 1
kHz to a sampling rate of 200 Hz. The individual 5 minute data files for each span
were then combined into a single record. Autopower spectral density (ASD) and cross
power spectral density (CSD) matrices were computed from the decimated time data
in MATLAB. The resulting frequency resolution for the spectral data was 0.05 Hz.
The Autopower spectra computed for the individual sensors were then normalized and
summed together to create a single mode indicator function for the structure. The
peaks in this function were used to identify possible natural frequencies for the bridge
span. The operating mode shapes were estimated using the ASD magnitude for each
sensor at the identified natural frequencies to establish the amplitude of the mode
shapes and the CSD to establish the phase information relative to a selected reference
channel. A set of operating mode shapes was computed for each peak using all of the
accelerometers as reference channels.
The most consistent operating mode shapes identified from each span were
compared with the mode shapes identified from the analytical models created in
SAP2000. The first three vertical natural frequencies and mode shapes identified from
the test results from one span of each bridge are shown with their analytical
counterparts in Figure 3 and Figure 4. The natural frequencies identified for the first
six vertical modes of the beam and truss bridge spans are provided with the
corresponding values from the nominal analytical model in Table I and Table II,
respectively. The mean values and standard deviations for the experimental results are
also given in these tables.
The operating mode shapes identified from each span of the beam bridge and the
truss bridge were compared with their corresponding mode shapes from the analytical
models by computing the Modal Assurance Criterion (MAC) values for the vector
pairs. These results are summarized in Table III for the beam bridge spans and Table
V for the truss bridge spans. MAC values were also computed for experimentally
identified operating mode shape vectors from the different spans of each bridge. These
results are provided in Table IV for the beam bridge spans and Table VI for the truss
bridge spans. MAC is a scalar constant that compares the consistency between two
modal vectors. It takes on values between zero and one, with a former indicating no
consistent correspondence and the latter indicating good correspondence between the
vectors being compared [5].
These results presented in Tables I – VI were used to evaluate the variability of the
dynamic properties identified from the individual spans of two bridges tested. Then
natural frequencies and mode shapes identified from the individual spans of each
bridge show a reasonably good level of agreement with each other. The mean values
for the experimentally identified natural frequencies for the individual spans of both
bridges compare reasonably well with those identified from the analytical models of
each structure despite the high degree of uncertainty related to the material properties
in these models and the use of highly idealized boundary conditions. In general, the
natural frequencies identified from the different truss bridge spans were more
consistent as exemplified by the standard deviation values than those identified from
the different beam bridge spans. This indicates that the structural form (truss versus
827
beam structure) has a significant contribution to the variability in the identified natural
frequencies. The identified natural frequencies of the beam bridge may be more
sensitive to slight changes in temperature and differences in material properties than
the natural frequencies for the more flexible truss bridge. On the other hand, the MAC
values computed for the beam bridge mode shapes showed better consistency for the
different spans tested and with the nominal analytical model than those computed for
the truss bridge. The MAC values for experimental and analytical modes of the truss
spans show less consistency than the experimental comparisons between the different
spans. Mode 4 from the beam bridge spans and Mode 5 from the truss bridge spans
showed the most variation in terms of both the identified natural frequencies and mode
shapes; however, the data is not sufficient to indicate that this is related to the structure
and not due to these modes being poorly excited in one or more of the individual span
tests.
CONCLUSIONS
The writers have attempted to quantify and evaluate the variability in the behavior
of two very different bridge structures associated with the constructed nature of these
systems by experimental testing. This analysis proved less straightforward than was
initially anticipated. The generally small differences observed in the dynamic
properties identified for individual spans of each bridge structure did not indicate that
there were very significant differences in in-service characteristics of the individual
spans of each bridge. However, the writers believe that this evaluation could be
improved by performing a controlled dynamic test to enhance the level and
consistency of the dynamic excitation provided to the individual modes. The writers
attempted to minimize any variations in the dynamic characterization results by testing
the spans under similar ambient temperature conditions. Such effects would likely be
better minimized if the ambient vibration testing was performed simultaneously for
multiple spans from each structure. The experimental data was too limited to rule out
variations in the results due to temperature effects. The writers plan to collect and
analyze additional ambient vibration data from the individual spans of each structure
to determine if this will permit a more robust analysis of any differences in the in-
service characteristics of the individual spans from each bridge.
REFERENCES
1. Pan, Q. K. Grimmelsman, F. Moon, and E. Aktan. 2011. “Mitigating Epistemic Uncertainty in
Structural Identification: Case Study for a Long-Span Steel Arch Bridge,” J. Struct. Engrg., 137(1):
1-13.
2. Catbas, F.N., S.K. Ciloglu, O. Hasncebi, K. Grimmelsman, and A.E. Aktan, 2007. “Limitations in
Structural Identification of Large Constructed Structures,” J. Struct. Engrg., 133(8): 1051-1066.
3. Moon, F.L. and A.E. Aktan. 2006. “Impacts of Epistemic (Bias) Uncertainty on Structural
Identification of Constructed (Civil) Systems,” The Shock and Vibration Digest, 38: 399-420.
4. Catbas, F.N., M. Susoy and D. Frangopol, 2008. “Structural Health Monitoring and Reliability
Estimation: Long Span Truss Bridge Application with Environmental Monitoring Data,”
Engineering Structures, 30(9): 2347-2359.
5. Allemang, R.J. 2003. “The Modal Assurance Criterion (MAC) – Twenty Years of Use and Abuse”,
Sound and Vibration, 37(8): 14-21.
828
Figure 3. First three vertical modes for the beam bridge
Figure 4. First three vertical modes for the truss bridge
829
TABLE I. NATURAL FREQUENCIES FOR THE BEAM BRIDGE SPANS
Frequency (Hz)
Mode
SAP2000 Span 1 Span 2 Span 4 Span 5 Mean Std
1 5.4135 5.9082 6.0547 6.2012 6.2012 6.0913 0.1403
2 5.9323 7.6172 7.0313 7.2266 7.8613 7.4341 0.3748
3 14.719 12.4023 12.6953 12.9883 12.6465 12.6831 0.2405
4 20.392 17.0898 22.0215 21.9238 21.9238 20.7397 2.4337
5 28.487 25.8798 26.2695 26.6602 26.0254 26.2087 0.3412
6 48.705 44.1406 44.9707 44.4824 43.9941 44.3970 0.4338
TABLE II. NATURAL FREQUENCIES FOR THE TRUSS BRIDGE SPANS

Frequency (Hz)
Mode
SAP2000 Span 1 Span 2 Span 3 Mean Std
1 3.2712 4.2969 4.1504 4.1504 4.1992 0.0846
2 5.9898 6.6406 6.8359 6.9336 6.8034 0.1492
3 8.9160 9.5215 9.6191 9.5703 9.5703 0.0488
4 15.8360 17.1875 17.0898 16.9922 17.0898 0.0977
5 18.3140 19.873 18.1152 20.9473 19.6452 1.4297
6 22.4950 23.4863 23.8281 23.6816 23.6653 0.1715
TABLE III. MAC VALUES FOR MODEL AND BEAM BRIDGE SPANS
MAC Analytical-Experim ental
Mode
SAP-SP1 SAP-SP2 SAP-SP4 SAP-SP5 Mean Std
1 0.9443 0.9595 0.9544 0.9515 0.9524 0.0063
2 0.9430 0.9366 0.9162 0.9327 0.9321 0.0114
3 0.9125 0.8892 0.9156 0.9238 0.9103 0.0148
4 0.5256 0.9858 0.9135 0.8210 0.8115 0.2022
5 0.9194 0.9247 0.9690 0.9754 0.9471 0.0292
6 0.8503 0.8307 0.7649 0.9135 0.8399 0.0612
TABLE IV. MAC VALUES FOR DIFFERENT BEAM BRIDGE SPANS

MAC Experim ental-Experim ental
Mode
SP1-2 SP1-4 SP1-5 SP2-4 SP2-5 SP4-5 Mean Std
1 0.9730 0.9875 0.9883 0.9948 0.9918 0.9984 0.9890 0.0088
2 0.9874 0.9300 0.9883 0.9028 0.9616 0.9319 0.9503 0.0345
3 0.9834 0.9957 0.9911 0.9707 0.9915 0.9806 0.9855 0.0092
4 0.5508 0.5771 0.6267 0.9284 0.8724 0.9078 0.7439 0.1768
5 0.9672 0.9300 0.9365 0.9232 0.9225 0.9775 0.9428 0.0237
6 0.9052 0.8279 0.8957 0.8276 0.9286 0.7702 0.8592 0.0603
TABLE V. MAC VALUES FOR MODEL AND TRUSS BRIDGE SPANS

MAC Analytical-Experim ental
Mode
SAP-SP1 SAP-SP2 SAP-SP3 Mean Std
1 0.9193 0.8884 0.8320 0.8799 0.0443
2 0.8975 0.8504 0.7950 0.8477 0.0513
3 0.8233 0.8049 0.6628 0.7636 0.0878
4 0.8710 0.8138 0.6738 0.7862 0.1014
5 0.7386 0.6678 0.6759 0.6941 0.0388
6 0.8723 0.8493 0.7187 0.8134 0.0828
TABLE VI. MAC VALUES FOR DIFFERENT TRUSS BRIDGE SPANS

MAC Experim ental-Experim ental
Mode
SP1-2 SP1-3 SP2-3 Mean Std
1 0.9429 0.9300 0.9616 0.9448 0.0159
2 0.9456 0.9101 0.9610 0.9389 0.0261
3 0.9967 0.7519 0.7577 0.8354 0.1397
4 0.9633 0.8032 0.7620 0.8428 0.1064
5 0.6405 0.9625 0.5919 0.7316 0.2014
6 0.9439 0.6983 0.7427 0.7950 0.1309
830
Damage Assessment with Time Series Analysis
Using Wireless Sensors
M. GUL, T. TERRELL, M. J. LEVY and F. N. CATBAS
ABSTRACT
In this paper, results from an ongoing study, where acceleration data acquired with
wireless sensors is used for damage assessment, are presented. A time series analysis
based damage detection methodology that was previously developed by the authors
and tested with wired sensors is employed. The method is based on using ARX
models (Auto-Regressive models with eXogenous input) for different sensor clusters.
The acceleration outputs in each sensor cluster are used as the inputs to the ARX
model to predict the output of the reference channel of that sensor cluster. The
difference between the fit ratios is used as damage indicating feature. Laboratory
experiments using a large-scale bridge model are conducted to investigate the
effectiveness of the methodology for damage detection with wireless sensors.
Different global (boundary condition change by fixing different supports) and local
(local stiffness loss by removing bolts) damage cases are tested. The potential and
advantages of the methodology are discussed in light of the analysis results. The
limitations and shortcomings of the methodology are also addressed.
INTRODUCTION
Design of structures in the 21st Century has seen an ever increasing focus on
sustainability. Development of a sustainable infrastructure will utilize technological
advances from various fields and serve as a tremendous benefit to our society. Yet, the
condition of our current aging infrastructure and recent natural disasters highlight
safety as a current primary concern, calling for efficient inspection and maintenance
operations. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), the research area focusing on
condition assessment of different structures, offers a proactive approach to monitoring
the state of our infrastructure, aiding in both safety and sustainability.
Developing effective damage detection methodologies is one of the most critical
components of SHM systems. In this context, time series analysis is one of the most
common approaches to extract damage sensitive features from SHM data. First, a time
series model, which appropriately describes the healthy system, is defined. This model
is then used to identify when the system’s condition has changed. In this manner, a
________
Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, University of Central
Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA
831
model is constructed for a healthy/baseline condition, and when data from the
damaged structure is input into the model, the model outputs are likely classified as
outliers; thus, indicating the potential presence of damage. This can be described as a
“black box” model approach. Because the parameters in such models have usually no
direct physical interpretation, rather, only are used as a means to describe the
properties of the input-output relationships of the system, black-box models have
general applicability. These methodologies usually make use of AR (Auto-Regressive)
and ARX models (Auto-Regressive models with eXogenous outputs) to detect the
damage in a statistical manner [1-7]. Although these methodologies are generally
successful in identifying the presence of the damage (i.e. level 1 damage identification
as defined by Rytter [8]), most of them give limited information about the location
and/or severity of the damage (i.e. level 2 and/or level 3 damage identification).
Recently, the authors proposed a time series methodology where ARX models
were used to model the free response of different sensor clusters for damage detection
[9, 10]. The authors showed that the method was very successful in identifying and
locating the damage with different numerical and experimental data. Furthermore,
promising results for estimating the extent of the damage in a relative sense were
obtained. In the previous studies, the methodology was employed using traditional
wired accelerometers. In this paper however, the methodology is implemented on a
large scale complex laboratory structure for damage detection using wireless sensors
(Figure 1). The details of the methodology, theoretical background and experimental
results are given in the following sections.
0.03
0.02
Acceleration (g)
0.01
Wireless 0
sensor cluster -0.01
-0.02
-0.03
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
Record the free response
Data Points data for each
sensor cluster
Create the baseline ARX models for

Cover the whole
each sensor cluster for healthy structure
structure by mowing the
wireless sensors as
sensor clusters Use the baseline ARX models with the
data from unknown state for damage
detection and localization
Figure 1. The overview of the methodology and experimental setup
THEORY and METHODOLOGY
Time Series Analysis and Structural Dynamics
Time series modeling is the statistical modeling of a sequence of data points that
are measured at successive times spaced at uniform time intervals. A general form of a
832
time series model is shown in Eqn. (1). For the sake of brevity, the details will not be
discussed in this text and more detailed discussions can be found in the literature [11].
A(q)y(t) = B(q)u(t) + C(q)e(t) (1)
where, y(t) is the model output, u(t) is the input to the model, and e(t) is the error term.
A(q), B(q), and C(q) are polynomials with the shift, or delay, operator q-1. By adjusting
the model orders, different time series models can be defined. The ARX model, which
is used in this study, is obtained by setting the C(q) polynomial to unity. In other
words, the disturbance dynamics are not modeled. The ARX model structure is shown
in Eqn. (2).
A(q)y(t) = B(q)u(t) + e(t) (2)
It is seen from Eqn. (2) that a time-series ARX model describing a physical
structure can be developed if both the inputs and outputs of the system for a time
series are defined. The core premise of the methodology under investigation is that
output of a degree of freedom (DOF) for a linear dynamic system is related to the
outputs of the neighboring DOFs as follows (for free response).
x1 
m12 x2  m1N xN   c11x1  c1N xN   k11x1  k1N xN 
m11 (3)
where x, x, and x are acceleration, velocity and displacement, respectively In
other words, the neighboring DOFs outputs can be used as inputs in the development
of a time series model which would inherit the physical characteristics of the system.
Therefore, each DOF can be thought of as a sensor cluster, composed of a reference
DOF and its surrounding DOFs. Based on these concepts, if different ARX models are
created for different clusters of sensors, then damage features can be extracted from
these models to detect damage. In the ARX model expressed in Eqn. (2), the y(t) term
is the free-response acceleration of the reference channel of a sensor cluster, u(t) is the
free-response acceleration responses of all the DOFs in the same cluster, and e(t) is the
error term.
Extracting Damage Features
As mentioned earlier, numerous approaches exist for extracting damage features from
SHM data using a time series analysis. The damage feature(s) itself, however, also
varies. The approach implemented here uses the difference in the ARX model fit
ratios, Eqn. (4), as the DF [9].
FR Healthy  FR Damaged
Damage Feature (DF)   100 (4)
FR Healthy
where the fit ratio is expressed by Eqn. (5).
833
 y yˆ 
Fit Ratio (FR)   1    100 (5)
 y  y  
where {y} is the measured output, { ŷ } is the predicted output, { y } is the mean of
{y} and |{y}−{ ŷ }| is the norm of {y- ŷ }.
While the DF trend plot can be used for detecting damage at a particular sensor
location as successfully demonstrated in [9, 10], the authors further improved the
presentation of the DFs to display the presence and severity of damage at a particular
sensor location in a bar chart format [12]. This Averaged DF Distance plot condenses
the series of DF’s for a sensor location in the DF trend plot into a single representative
value. The averaged DF distance for each reference channel is determined by first
finding the mean of the inlier DF values for the set corresponding to t0<t< t1. A DF
value is an inlier if it is under the pre-determined threshold value and an outlier if it is
above the threshold. Next, the mean of the outlier DF values for the set corresponding
to t1<t<t2 is computed. The difference between the mean of the two sets is the
Averaged DF Distance.
EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES
The laboratory setup used in this study was a 4-span bridge-type structure, shown in
Figure 2. Its responses are representative of typical values for medium-span bridges
[13]. The structure serves as a platform for testing and evaluating new sensing
technologies, data collection systems, and damage detection algorithms, in a
controlled environment, prior to full-scale implementation. It has two 120 cm
approach end spans and two 304.8 cm main inner spans. Only the two inner spans
were instrumented with sensors and analyzed for damage. Two HSS 25x25x3 girders,
separated 60.96 cm from each other, support a 3.18 mm thick, 120 cm wide steel deck.
The steel deck is connected to the girders using sets of four ¼ inch bolts and plates.
Through this configuration the girders are only connected to one another by means of
the deck. The supports can easily be changed to roller, pin, or fixed boundary
conditions, and the girder deck connection can be adjusted at different locations by
removing bolts to modify the stiffness of the structure.
Figure 2: 4-Span bridge structure (left) and boundary condition change (right)
834
The wireless sensors used in the laboratory experiments were the Imote2
accelerometers, which consist of 4 main components: a main board that provides the
radio and processor, a sensor board, a battery board, and an external antenna. The
supplied battery board had an attached 3x AAA battery holder, however, due to short
battery lives these were replaced by aftermarket 3 x D battery holders. Each Imote2
sensor was attached securely to a circular aluminum base plate, which was then
affixed to the four-bolt deck-grid connection using hot glue. Due to the weight of the
battery packs, they were placed on the laboratory floor during testing, in order not to
add additional mass to the structure. Figure 3 shows installed Imote2 sensors for the
first sensor configuration. There were six sensor configurations allowing a 16 sensor
clustering schemes to cover the whole structure.
N4
N5
N6
N1
N2
N3
N7
Figure 3: Installed Imote2 Wireless Accelerometers

N5
N6
ANALYSIS RESULTS N4
N2
The Baseline ARX model parameters were determined throughN3 an iterative process.
N1
Model orders ofN7p=20, 30, 40, 50, 70, 100 and 120 were all investigated. However, a
model order of p=70 was selected due to optimization between high fit ratios and
processing time. This model order was used to develop all wireless sensor Baseline
ARX models. It should be noted that in order to eliminate problems with the ARX
model generation, a 3% white noise was added to the signal. While the addition of
noise may appear counter-intuitive, this procedure of adding noise was found to be
helpful in previous studies that had problems generating ARX models. Likewise, this
addition of noise is accounted for by development of the threshold level.
There are three different damage cases investigated in this paper. Based on
feedback from Department of Transportation (DOT) engineers, these damage cases
represent some of the most common damages affecting bridge performance. Damage
Cases 1 and 2 (DC1 and DC2) involve changes in the boundary conditions to fixed
connections, and can therefore be considered global damage. Damage of this type is
representative of when roller or pin supports of a bridge experience corrosion or are
blocked by debris. DC3 simulates localized damage with loss of connectivity between
the girder and deck, where a total of eight bolts were removed (four each) at two
girder-deck connections. The analysis results are summarized below.
835
Damage Case 1 (DC1)-Boundary fixity at the left supports: Damage detection results
for DC1 are displayed in Figure 4. It is shown that there is a higher concentration of
high Averaged DF Distance values at the left span sensor locations which is very
promising for localization of the damage. It was expected to see the highest DFs at the
nodes closest to the fixed supports. The reasons for this discrepancy are still under
investigation. It should be mentioned at this point that the same tests were also
conducted with wired accelerometers and more successful results were obtained,
especially for localization of the damage. Two important points are (1) the presence of
damage is indicated throughout the structure, and (2) the largest damage indication
values are located in the region of the global damage. Bearing both of these points in
mind, these results can be deemed successful.
DC1-Averaged Distances for Each Sensor Location
100
90 Lane 2 Lane 1
80
Averaged Distance
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Sensor No.
Fixed Roller Pin

Pinned
Fixed
Roller
Figure 4: Averaged DF distances for DC1
Damage Case 2 (DC2)-Boundary fixity at the right supports: DC2 is the symmetric
case of DC1 and it is seen that similar results to DC1 are observed on the other span of
the bridge. It is observed that localization of the damage is slightly better in this case
since the highest DFs are observed at the nodes closest to the damage location.
60
Lane 2 Lane 1
50
Averaged Distance
40
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Sensor No.
Fixed Roller Pin

Fixed
Pinned
Roller
836
Damage Case 3 (DC3)-Bolt Removal: This case presents the results for the localized
damage detection. The DFs plotted in Figure 6 show that the higher DFs are observed
around the damaged location, which indicates that the damage could be identified and
located for this case also. It should also be noted that the DFs around the supports are
very small since they are changed back to pinned condition.
80
70 Lane 2 Lane 1
Averaged Distance
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Sensor No.
Bolt Removal
Pinned
Pinned
Roller
CONCLUSIONS
A modified ARX model based method is employed for damage detection of a 4-

span bridge structure where wireless sensors are used to collect acceleration data. The
results indicated that damage could be successfully detected using output-only
acceleration data collected with wireless sensors. It was observed that damage could
also be located globally however this localization capability was lowered compared to
the results of the wired sensor tests (not presented in this paper for the sake of brevity).
Investigation of the differences between wired and wireless sensor tests results and the
reasons for these differences are still under investigation and results will be reported in
near future.
REFERENCES
1. Fassois, S.D. and S.J. S., (2007) "Time Series Methods for Fault Detection and Identification in
Vibrating Structures". The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 365(1851): pp.
411-448.
2. Carden, E.P. and J.M. Brownjohn, (2008) "ARMA Modelled Time-Series Classification for
Structural Health Monitoring of Civil Infrastructure". Mechanical Systems and Signal
Processing, 22(2): pp. 295-314.
3. Omenzetter, P. and J.M. Brownjohn, (2006) "Application of Time Series Analysis for Bridge
Monitoring". Smart Material and Structures, 15: pp. 129-138.
4. Sohn, H., et al., (2001) "Structural Health Monitoring Using Statistical Pattern Recognition
Techniques". Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control, ASME, 123: 706-711.
837
5. Nair, K.K., A.S. Kiremidjian, and K.H. Law, (2006) "Time Series-Based Damage Detection
and Localization Algorithm with Application to the ASCE Benchmark Structure". Journal of
Sound and Vibration, 291(1-2): pp. 349-368.
6. Zheng, H. and A. Mita, (2007) "Two-stage Damage Diagnosis Based on the Distance between
ARMA Models and Pre-whitening Filters". Smart Material and Structures, 16: pp. 1829-1836.
7. Gul, M. and F.N. Catbas, (2009) "Statistical Pattern Recognition for Structural Health
Monitoring using Time Series Modeling: Theory and Experimental Verifications". Mechanical
Systems and Signal Processing, 23(7): pp. 2192-2204.
8. Rytter, A., Vibration Based Inspection of Civil Engineering Structures, in Department of
Building Technology and Structural Engineering. 1993, University of Aalborg: Aalborg,
Denmark.
9. Gul, M. and F.N. Catbas, (2011) "Structural Health Monitoring and Damage Assessment using
a Novel Time Series Analysis Methodology with Sensor Clustering". Journal of Sound and
Vibration, 330(6): pp. 1196-1210.
10. Gul, M. and F.N. Catbas, (2011) "Damage Assessment with Ambient Vibration Data Using a
Novel Time Series Analysis Methodology". Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, (In
Press).
11. Ljung, L., System Identification: Theory for the User. 2 ed. 1999, Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
12. Terrell, T., Structural Health Monitoring for Damage Detection Using Wired And Wireless
Sensor Clusters, in Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering. 2011,
University of Central Florida: Orlando, FL.
13. Zaurin, R., Structural Health Monitoring with Emphasis on Computer Vision, Damage Indices
and Statistical Analysis, in Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering Dept. 2009,
University of Central Florida: Orlando, FL.
838
An Ultrasonic Guided Wave Sensor for
Gas Accumulation Detection in Nuclear
Emergency Core Cooling Systems
L. YU, Y.-J. SHIN, J. WANG and Y. SHEN
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an ultrasonic guided wave based inspection methodology for
detecting gas accumulation in the subject nuclear cooling pipe system to (1)
perform in-situ measurement of the gas accumulation in order to determine if
regulatory action is needed, and (2) permit verification that the subject systems are
in compliance with the regulatory requirements. This approach is highlighted by a
novel sensing technique using ultrasonic guided waves to perform long range long
term in-situ inspection in combination with an advanced cross time-frequency
analysis technique for an intelligent processing of the sensory data.
Keywords: embedded piezoelectric wafer sensors, ultrasonic wave, gas
accumulation, cross time-frequency analysis, nuclear cooling pipe.
INTRODUCTION
Gas accumulation in the emergency core cooling systems including decay heat
removal (DHR), and containment spray can cause water hammer, gas binding in
pumps, and inadvertent relief valve actuation that may critically damage pumps,
valves, piping, and supports and may lead to loss of system operability. Thus, the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued a generic letter to address
their concern about gas accumulation in cooling systems and temporal technical
guidelines. However, there is no system wide method to determine the existence
and location of gas voids and to quantify their volume accurately. Currently, some
common methods to determine gas quantity are to measure the volume of gas
released through vents or to determine the gas volume by ultrasonic testing (UT),
but performances of existing techniques are not satisfactory to warrant reliable and
safe operations of cooling systems in nuclear power plant.
The presented technique is a nondestructive reflectometry technique, which is
based on the radar principle. This reflectometry method will utilize a relatively low
energy ultrasonic pulse in order to transmit the pulse down a waveguide, and any
impedance discontinuity generates a reflection that one can detect; the impedance
discontinuity can be located and characterized from the reflected signal. In this
839
The 8th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring – 2011
application, the pipeline filled with cooling fluid corresponds to the waveguide, and
the gas accumulation causes the impedance discontinuity as illustrated in the Figure
1. Like other reflectometry techniques, the amplitude of the reflected waveform can
be used to measure the discontinuity, while the time delay of the reflected wave can
be used to locate it. Particularly, the phase difference between the measured
reflected signal and the reference signal will be related to the quantity of impedance
discontinuity, which reflects the volume of gas accumulation in the pipes. The gas
accumulation detector, piezoelectric wafer sensors, will be used to generate and/or
receive propagating guided wave in the pipe structures. Due to the multiple mode
and dispersive natures of guided wave, the analysis of guided wave detection is
complicated. We will use cross time-frequency analysis to relate the wave
signatures directly with the size of gas accumulation in the fluid. Cross time-
frequency analysis is capable of preserving the time- and frequency- varying phase
difference while traditional time-frequency distribution cannot. Simple controlled
proof-of-concept small scale tests have been conducted to evaluate the efficiency of
the presented ultrasonic detection method.
Figure 1 Transmission line model of the ultrasonic gas accumulation detection

system
SENSING WITH PIEZOELECTRIC THIN WAFERS
Piezoelectric Wafer Sensors
Piezoelectric wafer active sensor (PWAS) functions as an active sensing device or

network using piezoelectric principles and provides a tensorial relation between
mechanical and electrical variables [1]. They can be permanently attached to the
structure to monitor condition at will and can operate in propagating wave mode or
electromechanical impedance mode. For a piezoelectric wafer as depicted in Figure
2a, an electric field, E3, is applied parallel to the spontaneous polarization, Ps. If
polarization Ps is aligned with the x3 axis, then the application of field E3 is created
by applying a voltage, V, between the bottom and top electrodes. The situation of
E3//Ps results in a vertical (thickness-wise) expansion ε3 = d33E3 and a lateral (in
plane) contractions ε1 = d31E3 and ε2 = d32E3 (dij: piezoelectric coupling coefficients).
The strains experienced by PWAS are direct strains and such an arrangement can be
used to produce thickness-wise and in-plane vibration of PWAS.
840
x2 ta PWAS
tb (x)eit
y=+d
x3 ε3
- t=2d
V - - x
+ E3 Ps
+ + y=-d
x1
ε1, ε2 -a +a
(a) (b)
Figure 2 (a) Induced strain response of PWAS; (b) interaction between the PWAS
and the structure
The transmission of actuation and sensing between the PWAS and the host
structure is achieved through the bonding adhesive layer. The adhesive layer
(Figure 2b) acts as a shear layer, in which the mechanical effects are transmitted
through shear effects. Using 1-D plane-strain analysis [2] for static morphing and
the quasi-static low frequency vibrations, it has been found that the shear transfer
process is concentrated towards the PWAS ends at large values of the shear-lag
parameter. Shear-lag analysis indicates that at an infinitely large shear-lag
parameter value, all the load transfer can be assumed to take place at the PWAS
actuator ends. This leads to the concept of ideal bonding, also known as the pin-
force model, in which all the load transfer takes place over an infinitesimal region
at the PWAS ends, and the induced-strain action is assumed to consist of a pair of
concentrated forces applied at the ends.
Electromechanical Impedance Spectroscopy
The principles of electro-mechanical (E/M) impedance method are illustrated in

Figure 3. The drive-point impedance presented by the structure to the active sensor
can be expressed as the frequency dependent variable Zstr(ω)=kstr(ω)/jω=ke(ω)–
ω2m(ω)+jωce(ω). Through the mechanical coupling between PWAS and the host
structure, on one hand, and through the E/M transduction inside the PWAS, on the
other hand, the drive-point structural impedance is reflected directly in the electrical
impedance, Z(ω), at the PWAS terminals
1
   ( )  
Z ( )   jc 1   31
2

  1   ( )   (2)
where C is the zero-load capacitance of the PWAS and  31 is the E/M cross
coupling coefficient of the PWAS ( 31  d31 / s11 33 ), and  ()  kstr / kPWAS with kPWAS
being the static stiffness of the PWAS. During a frequency sweep, the real part of
the E/M impedance, Z(ω), follows the up and down variation as the structural
impedance as it goes through the peaks and valleys of the structural resonances and
anti-resonances [1]. The E/M impedance method is applied by scanning a
predetermined frequency range in the high kHz band (up to 10 MHz) and recording
the complex impedance spectrum. By comparing the real part of the impedance
841
spectra taken at various times during the service life of a structure, meaningful
information can be extracted pertinent to structural degradation and ongoing
damage development.
Figure 3 E/M coupling between PWAS and structure
Ultrasonic Guided Wave Propagation
For embedded NDE applications, PWAS can be used as embedded ultrasonic

transducers acting as either actuators to excite guided waves or as sensors to receive
the structural response in the pitch-catch mode (as illustrated in Figure 4). PWAS
couple their in-plane motion with the particle motion of Lamb waves on the
material surface while the in-plane motion is excited by the applied oscillatory
voltage through the d31 coefficient.
In plane pitch-catch
Vin(t) Vout(t)
In plane pulse-echo
Figure 4 PWAS embedded NDE in pitch-catch mode as actuator and sensor
For Lamb waves, there are at least two Lamb modes, A0 and S0, existing
simultaneously, where the product of the wave frequency and structure thickness
falls in the range of 0~1 MHz-mm. The process of Lamb wave tuning attempts to
modify the excitation parameters in such a way as to excite a certain mode for
detecting a specified type or instance of damage. With wedge-coupled conventional
ultrasonic transducers, guided wave tuning is performed by varying the frequency
and the wedge angle until a maximum response is recorded. The change in
frequency modifies the wave speed of the dispersive guided wave, while the change
of wedge angle modifies the wave conversion relationship in Snell’s law. Certain
combinations of wedge-angles and excitation frequencies were able to generate
increasing response in certain guided-wave modes. An important characteristic of
PWAS, which distinguishes them from conventional ultrasonic transducers, is their
capability of exciting multiple guided wave modes at a single frequency. A
comprehensive study of these prediction formulae in comparison with experimental
results has been given by [1]. By carefully selecting PWAS length at either an odd
or even multiple of the half wavelength, a complex pattern of strain maxima and
minima emerges. Since several Lamb modes, each with its own different
842
wavelength, coexist at the same time, a selected Lamb mode can be tuned by
choosing the appropriate frequency and PWAS dimensions.
An example of PWAS tuning is presented in Figure 5 for a 7-mm square
PWAS installed on a 1-mm aluminum alloy 2024-T3 plate. The experimental
amplitude plot in Figure 5a shows that for the plate being studied, a S0 tuning
frequency around 200 kHz can be identified, where the amplitude of the A0 mode is
minimized while that of the S0 mode is still strong. Therefore, by choosing the
excitation frequency, a single mode can be obtained for damage detection [3].
Theoretical prediction given in Figure 5b is consistent with the experimental results.
S0 A0
S0
A0
(a) (b)
Figure 5 Lamb wave mode tuning on a 1-mm thick aluminum alloy 2024-T3 using
7-mm PWAS. (a) Experimental wave amplitude within 0~700 kHz; (b)
predicted strain curves [3]
Initial Tests
Initial tests have been conducted to show the sensitivity of selected Lamb waves to
water permeation. An aluminum bucket is used as the test specimen and water
container. Two PWAS, one as transmitter and the other as receiver, are installed on
the bottom of the bucket as shown in Figure 6a. Lamb waves are excited at 120 kHz
using a 3-count Hanning window smoothed sine signal. Wave propagation and
reception tests are performed without water (baseline), with 0.5 liter, 1 liter, 2 liter,
and 3 liter water respectively. The results are shown in Figure 6b. It can be seen that
A0 mode shows greater sensitivity to the water permeation and increment.
843
S0 A0
120KHz
PWAS 45
40
3L
wave form for 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 3 L ( mV )

35
30
25 2L
20
15
1L
10
5 0.5 L
-5 0L
-10
30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140
(a) (b) Time (microsecond)
Figure 6 Test on Lamb wave sensitivity to water permeation. (a) test specimen; (b)
Lamb wave at 120 kHz without water (baseline), with 0.5 liter, 1 liter, 2
liter, and 3 liter water respectively
PHASE DIFFERENCE DETECTION
Cross Time-Frequency Analysis (CTFA)
Time-frequency analysis provides an effective tool for non-stationary signal

analysis by a time and frequency localized signal representation. Various methods
have been applied to a variety of applications; and Cohen’s class generalizes
various types of the time-frequency distributions in terms of a kernel [4]. The main
objectives of the various types of time-frequency distributions are to obtain time-
frequency localized energy distribution with high resolution and to overcome
interference effects within the limits of the uncertainty principle.
The limitation of Cohen’s class in our application is that the traditional
definition of the time-frequency distribution within Cohen’s class concerns a non-
stationary signal and generation of the time-varying energy spectrum. Thus, another
critical feature of the signal, the phase difference, is not available in the real-valued
time-frequency distribution function. Phase is meaningful when considering the
relative phase difference between the signals to represent propagation of a signal. In
particular, phase difference spectrum can reveal the dispersion phenomena and
direction of propagation in wave propagation analysis. The cross power spectrum in
frequency domain is usually used in the case of stationary signals. For non-
stationary signals such as Lamb waves in the corrosion application, it is necessary
to use time-frequency analysis in order to measure the relative phase difference in
the time and frequency domains. In this research, we proposed the cross time-
frequency distribution function to preserve the phase difference aspects of two
signals [5][6].
A type of cross time-frequency distributions has been suggested by Williams
[5] via the Hilbert transform. For a pair of complex analytic signal x1(t) and x2(t),
the cross Wigner distribution is expressed in terms of the ambiguity functions as
844
1
Wx1 , x2  t ,    x1  t   / 2  x2*  t   / 2  e j d
2  (1)
From the cross Wigner distribution, other types of generalized cross time-frequency
distribution functions, J x , x  t , ;  , can be obtained in terms of a kernel as
1 2
1
J x1 , x2  t , ;   W u,   t  u,    dud
4 2
x1 x2
(2)
where   t ,   is the 2D Fourier transform of the kernel   ,  , i.e.
  t ,       , e j  t   d d
(3)
In this study, we will employ reduced interference distribution (RID) kernel that
preserves time and frequency marginal properties. In particular, marginal properties
are critical kernel requirements for appropriate measurement of time- and
frequency- localized phase differences.
Phase difference measurement with CTFA
The CTFA was applied to two waveforms recorded between two PWAS installed
on an aluminum plate before and after some material was removed as shown in
Figure 7a. When cross time-frequency analysis is applied to the data set, study of
the phase difference of the excitation frequency, 57 kHz, and specific time duration
where A0 arrives can quantify the relationship of the material loss and phase
difference. The phase difference between the two signals is a function of time.
Figure 7b shows the time domain waveform of the baseline and the record 1. Figure
7c shows the corresponding phase of the cross time-frequency distribution between
the two signals as a function of time w.r.t. 57 kHz which indicates the phase
difference of the two signals changes with time. As observed from the figure, the
phase difference is essentially a constant during the A0 wave packet existence as
0.73 radian.
845
(b)
(a)
(c)
Figure 7 Phase of cross time-frequency distribution as function of time w.r.t. 57

kHz of pair 0-4 for record 1. (a) Specimen with material loss; (b) baseline
and record 1 signals in time domain; (c) the phase difference obtained
from CTFD. (The waveforms between the two vertical line is A0 wave
packets.)
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we introduced the principle of PWAS, its application for guided Lamb
wave generation and electromechanical impedance spectroscopy, and a cross time-
frequency phase detection approach. The advantage of the proposed technique is
that the gas accumulation inside a nuclear cooling pipe can be detected by a
network of sensors mounted on the outer surface where other methods focus on
surface and subsurface detection. The combination of wave propagation and
electromechanical impedance spectroscopy enables the estimation of gas
accumulation while the use of cross time-frequency analysis correlate the gas
quantity to measured sensor data. We will further our study to initiate the
relationship between the reflected wave characteristic and gas void volume.
Ultimately, an overall in-depth solution for a timely detection, localization, and
evaluation of the amount of gas accumulation in the pipe systems will be developed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was performed under the support of the US Nuclear Regulatory
Commission under the Grant # NRC-04-10-155.
REFERENCE
1. Giurgiutiu, V. (2008) Structural Health Monitoring with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors,
Academic Press, 747 pages, ISBN 9780120887606
2. Crawley, E. F. and de Luis, J. (1987) “Use of Piezoelectric Actuators as Elements of Intelligent
Structures,” AIAA Journal, Vol. 25, No. 10, pp.1373–1385.
846
3. Santoni, G.B.; Yu, L.; Xu, B.; Giurgiutiu, V. (2007) “Lamb Wave Mode Tuning of Piezoelectric
Wafer Active Sensors for Structural Health Monitoring”, Journal of Vibration and Acoustics, Vol.
129, No. 6, pp. 752-762
4. Cohen, L. (1989) “Time-Frequency Distributions – a Review”, Proceedings of IEEE, Vol.77,
pp.941-981
5. Williams, W. (1998) “Cross Hilbert Time-Frequency Distribution”, Advanced Signal Processing
Algorithms, Architectures and Implementations VIII, SPIE, Vol.3461, pp.120-129
6. Shin, Y.J.; Powers, E.J.; Grady, W.M. (2000) “On Definition of Cross Time-Frequency Distribution
Function”, Proceedings of SPIE Annual Meeting, Advanced Signal Processing Algorithms,
Architectures and Implementation, San Diego, CA, July 2000, pp.9-16
847
Understanding the Effects of a Breathing Crack
on the Dynamic Response of Cantilever-type
Structures for Damage Detection
ABSTRACT
The presence of a crack causes local variations in the stiffness of a system and thus
affects its mechanical behaviour. Considering a turbomachinery blisk as a cantilever-
type structure, an investigation into the effect of the presence of a breathing crack of
varying depth is carried out in this paper. This investigation provides the preliminary
basis for damage detection in turbomachinery blades. A dog-bone type specimen is
selected for this study. An impulsive excitation technique is used to excite the
specimen model and the response is obtained at different locations. Relationships
between the impulse response and crack depth/coefficient of friction are obtained. In
addition, crack-face tracking is also accomplished for different modes of vibrations.
The effect of crack depth and coefficient of friction on friction stresses, crack-face
pressures and damping levels is investigated. The obtained results are then correlated
to damage detection techniques in cantilever type structures.
INTRODUCTION
Breathing cracks have proved to be a significant source of possible failures in

vibrating/rotating engineering structures. Crack initiation and propagation causes local
variation in the stiffness and adversely affects the performance of the system by
altering the modal characteristics (natural frequencies, modes shapes, modal damping
ratios). Understanding the effect of crack initiation and propagation has attracted the
attention of many researchers in the past [1-6]. Some considered crack faces to remain
open (open cracks) [1, 4, and 5], while others focused on the opening-closing behavior
of crack faces (breathing cracks) [2, 3, and 6]. In the case of open cracks, an overall
effect of a stiffness loss on the structure is observed whereas in breathing cracks, the
interaction between the crack faces (sticking, sliding and friction) is considered. As
far as the finite element modeling of cracks is concerned, different techniques were
used in the past, keeping focus on the type of crack to be modelled i.e. the open crack
or breathing crack. Reduction in stiffness of selected elements at crack locations by
decreasing elastic modulus, defining a pinned joint at a crack location by a rotational
spring and simple material removal at the crack location are some of the methods of
representing an open crack in cantilever-type structures. For breathing cracks, bilinear
stiffness models have been used for the opening and closing of a crack [7]. Reduction
in the natural frequency, due to the presence of damage in the system, can also be
Rehman, A. U.1, 2, Worden, K.1 and Rongong, J. A.1

1
Dynamics Research Group, Mappin Building, University of Sheffield, S1-3JD, Sheffield, UK.
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore, Pakistan.
848
achieved by attaching a mass. This approach is quite useful for those structures where
it is not possible to damage the structure and then detect it [8].
Governing friction models between two contacting surfaces can be broadly
classified into two regimes: a)- Macroslip friction models, b)- Microslip friction
models. In macroslip friction models, as the tangential load is increased, a transition
occurs from the sticking to the sliding state, until the whole contact area starts sliding.
This model works well for low magnitudes of contact pressures. However, for higher
contact pressures, the microslip friction model predicts accurate results, which takes
into account the surface roughness of the contact surfaces. In microslip friction
models, some areas of the contact zone always remain in contact, while others start
sliding. If the relative displacement between the contact faces is high enough, both the
friction models can produce accurate results, but for very small interfacial motion in
the contact zone, only microslip based models can be used [9, 10]. Literature for
detailed insight into the role of friction at contact interfaces can be found explicitly in
[11, 12]; the authors modeled the friction behavior in underplatform dampers used in
turbines for reducing the forced response.
In this work, change in the dynamics of the cantilever-type structures due to the
presence of a breathing crack is investigated. A dog-bone type model is considered for
this study. Relationships between impulse response and crack depth/coefficient of
friction are obtained. In addition, crack face tracking is also accomplished for different
modes of vibrations. The effect of crack depth and coefficient of friction on friction
stresses, crack face pressures and damping levels is investigated and the possibility of
using this information as a basis for damage detection is indicated.
FE MODEL OF THE DOG-BONE SPECIMEN
The dog-bone specimen was modeled in ANSYS and meshed with a 3-D 20-node
structural solid element. The total number of elements along the thickness of the
model was set to be three; sixteen along the width of the specimen and twenty three
along the specimen neck width. The reason for choosing the higher number of
elements in the neck region was to model the cracks of various depths precisely,
without disturbing the mesh density of the model. This resulted in 2495 elements for
the whole of the dog-bone Finite Element (FE) model. The material assigned to this
FE model was steel (E = 200GPa, υ = 0.3). The dog-bone specimen was constrained in
all degrees of freedom from one end and an impulse force was applied on the opposite
end, as shown in the Figure 1.
Contact Pair at
Crack Location Target
Surface
Contact
Surface Constraint
Impulse Location
Excitation
Figure 1 Crack details in FE model of the dog-bone specimen.
849
The crack was modeled by two separate surfaces resting on each other with no
material removal between them. This represented a hair-line crack. The crack depths
considered were 1.5, 2.5, 5.0 and 8.0mm. A contact pair was generated between the
crack faces that was capable of taking into consideration the effect of friction when the
crack faces stick and/or slide against each other. A 3-D 8-node surface-to-surface
contact element was used to generate this contact pair. The contact between the crack
faces was classified as a ‘flexible-to-flexible’ contact because both the crack faces had
the same stiffnesses. In studying the contact between the crack faces of the dog-bone
specimen, the crack face on the clamping side of the specimen was designated as the
‘Target’ surface and the crack face on the free end of the specimen was designated as
the ‘Contact’ surface. Nodal components for both target and contact surfaces were
selected and the contact element meshed the two surfaces, forming a non-penetrating
contact pair. The contact and the target elements were constrained against penetration
into each other. The contact detection points, in this case, were located at Gauss points
and not at nodal points, as Gauss integration points provide more accurate results than
those using the nodes themselves.
MODAL ANALYSIS OF THE DOG-BONE SPECIMEN
A modal analysis determines the vibration characteristics (natural frequencies and

mode shapes) of a component. Modes, inherent properties of a structure, are
determined by the mass, damping, stiffness (material properties) and boundary
conditions of the structure. Modal analysis of the dog-bone specimen was obtained to
identify the first five natural frequencies and mode shapes (Figure 2).
Mode-1 (1st Bending) 93 Hz Mode-2 (Torsion) 269 Hz Mode-3 (2nd Bending) 661 Hz
Mode-4 (Swaying) 1159 Hz Mode-5 (3rd Bending)1429 Hz

Figure 2 First five mode shapes of the dog-bone specimen .
IMPULSE EXCITATION ANALYSIS DETAILS
A transient dynamic analysis technique is used to obtain a structure’s dynamic

response to any time dependent external boundary conditions (force, load, pressure
etc.). Transient dynamic analysis of the dog-bone specimen was carried out utilising
an impulse excitation technique numerically. The FE model of the dog-bone specimen
was subjected to an impulse excitation force of 250N for 1milli-second and then the
decay response was recorded for next the 2.5 seconds. The magnitude of the impulse
excitation force depends on the types of modes to be included in the response. By
applying a 250N impulse force, the first five modes of the dog-bone specimen (Figure
2) were excited. Impulse excitation analysis is obtained in two steps. In the first step,
the impulse force was applied to the location shown in Figure 1 for 1milli-second and
in the second step, the specimen was allowed to vibrate freely for the next 2.5 seconds,
850
till it decayed. The integration time step makes a major contribution towards the
accuracy of the transient dynamic solution: the smaller the time step, the higher would
be the accuracy. Using the same criterion, 40 substeps were allocated to the first
loadstep and 3500 substeps were assigned to the second loadstep.
IMPULSE RESPONSE COMPARISON
a. With and without Crack

An impulse response comparison for the dog-bone specimen with and without
crack is shown in Figure 3a. The crack depth considered is 8mm and, in both the
cases, the specimen is excited by the same impulse force of 250N at the same location.
The decaying response was obtained in the vertical direction of displacement at the
specimen edge. Peaks and troughs of the response were identified and a continuous
line was obtained by curve fitting. Vibration in the specimen with crack decays
quickly as compared to the specimen without crack. The presence of the crack resulted
in the rubbing of crack faces against each other, contributing towards relatively higher
damping levels. Consequently, the impulse response for the dog-bone specimen
without crack indicated a slightly steep gradient as compared to the with-crack case
and this difference is quite prominent for the 0-0.75 seconds range of vibration decay.
b. Varying Coefficient of Friction

Different coefficients of friction were assigned to a 8.0mm crack inside the dog-
bone specimen and its effect on the impulse response is shown in Figure 3b. For
clarifying the difference among the curves, a time range of 1.8 to 1.9 seconds is
selected. For a given excitation force of 250N and a given crack depth of 8.0mm,
increasing the coefficient of friction resulted in higher values of friction force at the
crack interface. This lead to slightly higher damping levels. Therefore, µ = 1 resulted
in a short vibration decay time as compared to frictionless contact between the crack
faces (µ = 0). Higher damping levels for increasing ‘µ’ resulted in lowering the
damped natural frequency of the system which is evident from the higher number of
cycles in a given range of time for µ = 1 as compared to frictionless crack interface.
a- With and without crack. b- Varying coefficient of friction.

Figure 3 Impulse response comparison.
TRACKING CRACK FACES
Movement of crack faces with respect to each other is of significant importance as

energy dissipation, damping levels and friction stresses at the crack interface are
highly dependent on the type and extent of crack face motion. The type of crack face
motion varies largely according to the type of mode of vibration. As mentioned earlier,
851
the bending, torsion and swaying modes were excited in the case of impulse excitation
analysis of the dog-bone specimen. Knowing the relative movement of the crack faces
is of great interest for these modes. To accomplish this, the dog-bone specimen
(having a crack of 8.0mm) was excited by an impulse force of 250N and the
coefficient of friction assigned to the crack faces was 0.5. Twelve different response
locations were identified on both of the crack faces; six on each face. The crack face
towards the clamping end was identified as Face-A and the crack face towards the free
end was classified as Face-B. Crack faces A and B are shown opened in Figure 4.
Figure 4 Crack faces A and B showing response locations and crack root/tip.
The impulse response in the x, y and z axes were recorded at all of the above
mentioned response locations on the crack faces A and B. The resultant response at
each location was then calculated. A resultant displacement difference column matrix
was obtained by subtracting the resultant response at each location of crack face-B
from the resultant response at the corresponding location of crack face-A. In this way,
the relative movement of both the crack faces was estimated and plotted against the
time of impulse excitation analysis in Figure 5a. Peaks and troughs of the response
were identified and a continuous line was obtained by curve fitting. Response
locations at the crack tip indicated larger separation among the crack faces as
compared to the locations in the middle of crack face. Up to approximately 0.25
seconds of the impulse response, both the crack faces were moving and all the first
five modes of vibration (shown in Figure 2) were excited. After 0.25 seconds, the
crack face-A becomes stationary and crack face-B exhibits stick-slide motion against
crack face-A and the mode of vibration is primarily bending. This is represented by
the horizontal line for the troughs of the impulse response after 0.25 seconds.
a. Varying crack locations. b. Varying coefficient of friction.
Figure 5 Impulse response comparison for tracking crack faces.

In Figure 5b, a crack depth of 8.0mm was considered with the excitation force of
250N and varying coefficients of friction (µ = 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1.0) were assigned to
the crack faces. The resultant displacement differences between the two faces of the
crack were obtained at location 1 in a similar fashion as described previously. It was
found that increasing the coefficient of friction resulted in more resistance to the
motion of crack faces against each other as compared to the frictionless contact. For µ
= 1, the crack faces could hardly move against each other.
852
FRICTION STRESSES AND CRACK FACE PRESSURE
Figure 6a shows the friction stresses obtained at crack location 1A for varying
crack depths (1.5, 2.5, 5.0 and 8.0mm), constant coefficient of friction ( µ = 0.5) and
constant excitation force (250N). Figure 6b shows the friction stresses obtained at
crack location 1A for varying coefficients of friction (µ = 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, and 1.0),
constant crack depth (8.0mm) and constant excitation force (250N).
a- Varying crack depths. b- Varying coefficient of friction.

Figure 6 Friction stresses at crack interface
Increase in the crack depth resulted in higher magnitudes of friction stresses and
this trend is more prominent for the bending mode (time ≥ 0.25 seconds). Cracks of
larger depths have more tendency to slide against each other with higher friction force
(which contributes towards higher friction stresses) as compared to the cracks of
smaller depths. An increase in the coefficient of friction resulted in higher resistance to
the relative motion of crack faces, resulting in higher levels of friction stresses. No
stresses developed for a frictionless contact.
Pressure exerted by the crack faces on each other depends on the level of friction
stresses developed at the crack interface. Figure 7a shows the crack face pressure
exerted by face-A onto face-B at crack location-1. The coefficient of friction and
excitation force considered for crack face pressure calculations were kept the same as
in the case of the friction stresses case. It is evident that increasing crack depth resulted
in decrease in the crack face pressure, which is an opposite trend as compared with
friction stresses. The dog-bone specimen having a crack of smaller depth is stiffer
compared to the specimen having a crack of larger depth. With a smaller crack, the
crack faces exert more pressure on each other. Figure 7b indicates the effect of varying
the coefficients of friction (µ = 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, and 1.0) on the crack face pressure
for a fixed crack depth (8.0mm) and fixed excitation force (250N). It was found that
the curves for varying µ show almost the same trends. A closer look indicated very
little rise in the trend for µ = 0.0 in comparison to µ = 1.0 due to the fact that crack
faces can hardly move against each other for the highest coefficient of friction (sliding
motion between crack faces is negligible), resulting in comparatively less crack face
pressure. Largely, crack face pressure is independent of the coefficient of friction.
a- Varying crack depths. b- Varying coefficient of friction.

Figure 7 Crack face pressure at crack interface.
853
DAMPING VARIATION WITH TIME
Damping levels varied with the amplitude of vibration for the whole duration of
impulse excitation analysis of the dog-bone specimen. Two scenarios were considered
in order to understand the damping variation. i)- Varying crack depths for a given
coefficient of friction (µ = 0.5) and excitation level (F = 250N), ii)- Varying
coefficient of friction for a given crack depth (8.0mm) and excitation level (F =
250N). Damping ratios obtained for these two cases are listed in Tables 1 and 2.
Time Without 1.5mm 2. 5mm 5.0mm 8. 0m m
(Sec.) Crack Crack Crack Crack Crack
0.15 0.0030 0.0037 0.0038 0.0038 0.0039
0.25 0.0032 0.0032 0.0033 0.0032 0.0034
0.50 0.0034 0.0034 0.0034 0.0033 0.0034
0.75 0.0035 0.0035 0.0036 0.0035 0.0035
1.00 0.0039 0.0040 0.0040 0.0038 0.0040
1.25 0.0033 0.0034 0.0035 0.0035 0.0035
1.50 0.0031 0.0032 0.0032 0.0033 0.0032
1.75 0.0031 0.0032 0.0031 0.0032 0.0032
2.00 0.0030 0.0031 0.0031 0.0031 0.0031
Table 1 Damping levels for varying crack depths.
Tim e(Sec. ) Mu=0 Mu=0.1 Mu=0.2 Mu=0.5 Mu=1. 0
0.15 0.0033 0.0034 0.0035 0.0037 0.0037
0.25 0.0033 0.0033 0.0032 0.0034 0.0034
0.50 0.0032 0.0032 0.0033 0.0034 0.0033
0.75 0.0035 0.0036 0.0034 0.0035 0.0035
1.00 0.0037 0.0039 0.0039 0.0040 0.0039
1.25 0.0036 0.0035 0.0035 0.0035 0.0036
1.50 0.0033 0.0032 0.0032 0.0032 0.0032
1.75 0.0032 0.0031 0.0030 0.0031 0.0031
2.00 0.0032 0.0030 0.0029 0.0031 0.0032
Table 2 Damping levels for varying coefficient of friction.
For both the cases, damping levels were initially (for 0<t<2.5) high followed by a
gradual decrease. As mentioned earlier, exciting the dog-bone specimen with a 250N
impact force resulted in exciting the first five natural frequencies up to 0.25 seconds,
which included torsion also. After that time, it is primarily the bending mode. The
presence of the torsion mode in the first 0.25 seconds caused an increase in damping
levels for 0<t<2.5 followed by a decrease as the torsion mode dies out at t ≥ 0.25
seconds. Damping levels increase at a second time around 1.0 seconds because of
viscous damping. Damping levels indicated a slight increase in their magnitude with
the increase in the crack depth. The possibility of crack face rubbing is higher in the
case of cracks of larger depths as compared to the cracks of smaller depths. Increasing
the coefficient of friction also resulted in a slight increase in the damping levels
because of increased friction force at the crack interface.
DAMAGE DETECTION IN CANTILEVER-TYPE STRUCTURES
Blade tip timing is one of the emerging techniques for damage detection in
turbomachinery bladed systems. This technique utilises a reduced data set, obtained in
the form of the time of arrival of blade tip at a reference location. This arrival time for
854
each blade can be converted into blade deflections by knowing the rotational velocity
and the radius of the location of measurement sensors on the casing, using:
X = Vt = 2πR(t/T)
Where:
X = Blade tip deflection R = Radius of blade tip
V = Rotational velocity T = Time for one revolution of all the blades
t = Time between two consecutive blade measurements
Considering a blade attached to a rotor as a cantilever-type structure, damping

levels obtained from the cracks of various depths at varying excitation levels can be
correlated to the blade deflections and hence, to the blade tip timing data. Any
deviation from the predicted deflection levels (without damage) can lead to the
conclusion for the presence of an abnormality inside the bladed system. Exploring this
aspect of damage detection is beyond the scope of this paper and currently under
investigation by the authors.
CONCLUSIONS
The presence of a crack in the FE model of the dog-bone specimen resulted in

higher damping levels as compared to the specimen without crack. Increasing crack
depth and coefficient of friction resulted in increased friction force and crack face
pressure, which contributed towards the higher friction stresses at the crack interface.
Both of the parameters (increasing crack depth and coefficient of friction) also resulted
in slight increase in damping levels. This damping variability with increasing crack
depth and excitation level can be correlated to the damage detection by obtaining the
tip deflections. Crack face tracking indicated the motion of crack faces against with
respect to each other.
REFERENCES
1. Cam, E., Orhan, S. and Luy, M. 2008. An analysis of cracked beam structure using impact echo method,
NDT&E International 38, 368-373.
2. Chondros, T. G. and Dimarogonas, J. Y. 1998. Longitudinal vibration of a bar with a breathing crack, J. of
Engineering Fractire Mechanics 61, 503-518.
3. Loya, J. A., Rubio, J. and Fernandez-Saez, J. 2006. Natural frequencies for bending vibrations of
Timoshenko cracked beams, J. of Sound and Vibration 290, 640-653.
4. Masoud, S., Jarrah, M. A. and Al-Maamory, M. 1998. Effect of Crack Depth on the Natural Frequency of
Prestressed Fixed-Fixed Beam, J. of Sound and Vibration, 214(2) 201-212.
5. Friswell, M. I. and Sinha, J. K. 2002. Simulation of the dynamic response of a cracked beam, J. of
Computers and Structures 80, 1473-1476.
6. Razaee, M. and Hassannajad, R. 2010. Damped free vibration analysis of a beam with a fatigue crack
using energy balance method, J. of the Physical Sciences Vol. 5(6), pp. 793-803.
7. Friswell, M. I. and Penny, J. E. T. 2002. Crack modeling for structural health monitoring, J. of Structural
Health Monitoring, Vol.1 (2), 139-148.
8. Papatheou, E., Manson, G., Barthorpe, R. J. and Worden, K. 2010. The use of pseudo-faults for novelty
detection in SHM, J. of Sound and Vibration, Volume 329, Issue 12, Pages 2349-2366.
9. Marquina, F. J., Coro, A., Ewins, D. J. and Girni, G. 2008. Friction damping modeling in high stress
contact areas using microslip friction model, Proceedings of ASME Turbo Expo 2008.
10. Popp, K., Panning, L. and Sexto, W. 2003. Vibration damping by friction forces: Theory and applications,
J. of Vibration and Control, 9: 419.
11. Petrov, E.P. and Ewins, D.J. 2002. Analytical formulation of friction interface elements for analysis of
nonlinear multi-harmonic vibrations of bladed discs, Proc. of ASME Turbo Expo.
12. Petrov, E.P. and Ewins, D.J. 2006. Advanced modelling of underplatform friction dampers for analysis of
bladed disc vibration, Proceedings of the ASME Turbo Expo, 5 PART B, pp. 769-778.
855
Residual Life Prediction of Steel I-beams
Using Acoustic Emission and Back
Propagation Neural Networks
Y. ZHANG, F. F. BARSOUM, E. V. K. HILL, Y. KWAN
and A. KORCAK
ABSTRACT
The acoustic emission (AE) nondestructive testing method is a powerful structural

health monitoring tool that has proven promising in monitoring fatigue cracking of
steel structures. Back propagation neural networks (BPNNs), when trained properly,
are able to predict the fatigue or residual life of the structure. This research
demonstrates the use of the AE technique and BPNNs in predicting the residual lives
of steel I-beams that were cyclically loaded in the laboratory. A two-channel
PocketAE system was utilized to collect the acoustic data. The predictions were
performed based on the AE data from the first quarter (0 - 25%), second quarter (25 -
50%) and third quarter (50 - 75%) of experimental life. The prediction results yield
worst case errors of 11.4%, 10.3% and 9% respectively. The prediction based on semi-
random interval of data yields worst case error of 8.9% when the network is trained on
six specimens and predicts on three. This research demonstrated that BPNNs, when
properly trained, are able to accurately predict the residual life of structural steel
members.
ACOUSTIC EMISSION
Acoustic emission is the phenomena in which transient elastic waves are

generated by the rapid release of energy from localized sources within a material as
it undergoes deformation [1]. Acoustic emission sources include plastic
deformation, phase transformations, delamination, crack initiation and growth,
rubbing, etc., and the wave signals can be captured by the piezoelectric transducers
___________
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, 600 S. Clyde Morris Blvd., Daytona Beach, Florida
32114-3977, U.S.A.
mounted on the surface of the material. AE is most powerful in the way that it is
highly sensitive, that even signals as small as micro-structural slipping or cracking
856
can be caught by the transducers. A significant limitation of AE is that the noise
from sources such as hydraulic pumps and rotating parts can overwhelm the sensor
and the acquisition system, such that the signal of interest is lost among the noise or
not even registered [2]. However, since AE captures the dynamic process related to
structural degradation, it is highly desirable for fatigue assessment in isotropic
metals, where plastic deformation and fatigue growth are dominant AE sources.
The AE signals produced are quantified by five basic quantification parameters,
as shown in
Figure 1, which include amplitude, duration, rise-time, counts, and mean area
under the rectified signal envelope (commonly known as energy). Average
frequency (counts/duration) is combination of basic AE parameters.
Cumulative counts and cumulative absolute energy can be used to develop plots
that correlate to the fatigue crack growth process with time. Since different acoustic
sources have different acoustic signatures (for example plastic deformation will be
short in duration and low in amplitude, whereas fatigue cracking is typically longer
in duration and higher in amplitude), these parameters can be used to classify the
AE source and further predict the fatigue life with proper use of neural networks.
Figure 1: Primary acoustic emission parameters [3].
BACK PROPAGATION NEURAL NETWORKS (BPNNS)
Artificial neural networks are mathematical modeling and processing tools that
function similarly to the human brain, which, if trained properly, can conclusively
identify complex patterns in nonlinear data space. Neural networks consist of
artificial neurons, or processing elements (PEs) that are organized into layers.
Structurally, the network consists of an input layer, in which each neuron or PE
represents a specific AE input data parameter. The output layer is linked to the input
layer through weight functions, and the weights are adjusted during the training
phase of the network to provide the appropriate output [2].
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There are several types of neural networks, but only the back-propagation
neural network (BPNN) will be introduced here. A BPNN uses a multi-layered
structure which can solve data with complex relationships. The network usually
consists of an input, hidden and an output layer, each layer consisting of PEs that
have weighted connections with the neurons in the neighboring layers. BPNN
learns the relationship between the given input and the target output by minimizing
the difference between the target and actual values. When properly trained, BPNN
can be used to predict the fatigue or residual life of the structure. The detailed
mathematical functions within the neural networks will not be discussed here.
Former research on fatigue life prediction of steel I-beams using AE and BPNN
technique has yielded worst case prediction error of 18.4% based on the first quarter
of data, 16.8% based on the second, and 5.3% on the third [4]. This research,
however, investigates the prediction of residual life, which is of more practical
significance in management and maintenance of structures.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP & NOISE FILTERING
Nine standard S4x7.7 steel I-beams, with a span of 112 inches, were cyclically
loaded with 3,000 to 3,800 lbf at 1 Hz in the laboratory. The beams were simply
supported on the testing frame, and the transverse load was applied at the midpoint
of the span (three point bending). A 10 kip MTS actuator was used to apply the
sinusoidal load. Each I-beam had a 0.10 inch deep notch on the bottom flange to
initiate fatigue cracking. A two-channel PocketAE1 system (with AEwin2 software
imbedded) was utilized together with two 150 KHz piezoelectric transducers to
record the acoustic signals from the beams while they were being loaded. The
transducers were mounted on either side of the stress concentration notch on the
bottom flange by hot melt glue. The bottom flange of the beam with AE transducers
attached is shown in Figure 2. The total setup is shown in Figure 3.
V-notch AE transducer
Figure 2. Bottom view of the beam.
1,2
Physical Acoustics Corporation
858
Hydraulic
pump
407 MTS
controller
Load cell
cell
1 inch
plastic block
PocketAE
system
Two 150 kHz AE

transducers
Figure 3. Experimental setup.
As mentioned, one major issue of acoustic emission monitoring is the noise.

Prior to the actual experiment, several noise tests were run without loading (the
MTS machine switched on without load applied), and the AE data were recorded
and analyzed. The amplitude histogram and duration vs. counts graph were plotted.
From the analysis, the threshold of the signal was finally set to be 40 dB, the
average frequency filter of the AE transducers set to be 15 KHz and the count filter
less than 5. Other than these settings, AE hits with zero duration or rise time, or
extra long duration (due to continuous rubbing or hydraulics) are also noise or
incomplete data, which were manually removed from each data file recorded from
actual testing.
BPNN RESIDUAL LIFE PREDICTION RESULT
The experimental fatigue lives of the nine tested I-beams are shown in Table I,
where a large variation of life cycles is displayed, ranging from 11808 to 19654
cycles, due to the different loads (varying from 3,000 to 3,800 lb) applied to each
specimen as mentioned earlier.
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TABLE I. EXPERIMENTAL FATIGUE LIVES OF TESTED BEAMS
Specimen Fatigue life
Beam 1 11808
Beam 2 16584
Beam 3 16847
Beam 4 19654
Beam 5 16994
Beam 6 19189
Beam 7 13573
Beam 8 15833
Beam 9 16084
Three BPNN networks were setup to predict the residual life of beam specimens
based on the AE data from the first quarter (0-25%), second quarter (25-50%) and
third quarter (50-75%) of the fatigue life. As an example, when the network is
trained on the AE data of the first quarter of fatigue life, it will predict the number
of cycles of the remaining 75% of life (residual life).
1. BPNN Residual Life Prediction Based on First Quarter (0-25%) of Life
NeuralWorks Professional II/Plus Software was used for prediction. The

network was trained and tested based on the AE data of the first quarter of the
fatigue life. The AE data of beam 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 was used for training, and beams
5, 7, 8 and 9 for testing. The training samples were selected in a way that they can
cover the low, medium and high fatigue lives of the tested beams for best prediction
result. Table II and III show the training and testing files used in the network, which
consist of the amplitude histogram of the AE data. The last value of each line in
bold is the experimental residual life of the corresponding beam.
TABLE II. FIRST QUARTER BPNN TRAINING FILE
860
TABLE III. FIRST QUARTER BPNN TESTING FILE
After several iterations, the values of BPNN parameters for best residual life
prediction were found and shown in Table IV below, with other parameters set as
default.
TABLE IV. FIRST QUARTER BPNN PARAMETERS

Hidden Neurons 15
Hidden Layer Learning Coefficient 0.16
Output Layer Learning Coefficient 0.001
Transition Point 20
Learning Coefficient Ratio 0.5
Learning Rule Norm-Cum-Delta
Transfer Function TanH
The predicted residual lives for the four testing beams are listed in Table V,
where the largest prediction error is 11.4% compared with the experimental results.
TABLE V. FIRST QUARTER PREDICTION RESULTS

Specimen Experimental Residual Life Predicted Residual Life Error
Beam 5 12746 11307 11.3%
Beam 7 10180 11342 -11.4%
Beam 8 11875 10779 9.2%
Beam 9 12063 11954 0.9%
2. BPNN Residual Life Prediction Based on Second Quarter (25-50%) of Life
The network was trained and tested on the same beams as the pervious network,
but was using 25-50% of the fatigue life data instead. The values of BPNN
parameters were optimized and the prediction results from this network are shown
in Table VI, where the worst case error is 10.3%, slightly improved from the
prediction based on the first quarter of AE data.
861
TABLE VI. SECOND QUARTER PREDICTION RESULTS

Beam 5 8497 7627 10.2%
Beam 7 6787 7485 -10.3%
Beam 8 7917 7769 1.9%
Beam 9 8042 8128 -1.1%
3. BPNN Residual Life Prediction Based on Third Quarter (50-75%) of Life
Another network was trained and tested based on 50-75% of the fatigue life
data. As this interval is closer to failure, it is expected that it will yield better
prediction result. The BPNN prediction results are listed in Table VII, where the
largest prediction error is 9.0%. As expected, the prediction becomes more accurate.
This is desirable in actual structural health monitoring, as the monitoring becomes
more critical toward the later part of the fatigue life.
TABLE VII. THIRD QUARTER PREDICTION RESULTS

Beam 5 4249 3868 9.0%
Beam 7 3393 3102 8.6%
Beam 8 3958 3608 8.9%
Beam 9 4021 4374 -8.8%
4. BPNN Residual Life Prediction Based on Semi-Random Time Interval
In order to assess the prediction ability of BPNN in the actual field testing, two
networks were setup to predict the residual lives based on semi-random AE data,
ranging from 40% to 80% of fatigue lives. One network was trained on five beams
and tested on four, while the other is trained on six and tested on three. The interval
of AE data used of each beam was shown in Figure 4.
9
8
7
6
Beam
5
Unused Data
4
Used Data
3
2
1
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000
Fatigue Life (Cycle)
Figure 4. Graphical illustration of semi-random AE data selected
862
The prediction results for the network that is trained on five specimens and
tested on four are shown in Table VIII, which yield a maximum error of 13.5%. The
results for the network that is trained on six specimens and tested on three are
shown in Table IX, where the maximum error is 8.9%. It can be seen that prediction
accuracy can be greatly improved by using more training samples.
TABLE VIII. SEMI-RANDOM PREDICTION RESULTS (TRAIN ON FIVE SPECIMENS)

Beam 5 3931 4461 -13.5%
Beam 7 5098 4455 12.6%
Beam 8 4750 4582 3.5%
Beam 9 3217 2986 7.2%
TABLE IX. SEMI-RANDOM PREDICTION RESULTS (TRAIN ON SIX SPECIMENS)

Beam 7 5098 4644 8.9%
Beam 8 4750 4808 -1.2%
Beam 9 3217 3441 -7.0%
CONCLUSIONS
This research uses acoustic emission and back propagation neural networks to
predict the residual lives of nine cyclically loaded steel I-beams. AE amplitude
histogram was used to train the network. The networks prediction based on the data
of first, second and third quarter of the fatigue lives yield worst case errors of
11.4%, 10.3% and 9% for training on five specimens and test on the other four,
respectively. As the health monitoring becomes crucial toward later life of a
structure, the tendency of more accurate prediction using later interval of data is
favorable in field testing. It is also noticed that more training files improve the
predicting ability of the network. This research demonstrates that BPNNs, when
properly trained, are able to accurately predict the residual life of structural steel
members
REFERENCES
1. Miller, R.K., Hill, E.v.K., and Moore, P.O., 2005. Nondestructive Testing Handbook, 3rd Ed.,
Vol. 6. Acoustic Emission Testing. Columbus, OH: American Society for Nondestructive Testing,
2005, p. 32.
2. Korcak, A., Barsoum, F., and Hill, E.v.K. 2010. Acoustic Emission Monitoring of a Florida Steel
Girder Bridge During a Load Test. NDE/NDT For Highways and Bridges: Structural Materials
Technology (SMT), American Society for Nondestructive Testing, NY, pp. 296-302.
3. Minshiou, H., Jiang, L., Liaw, P.K., Brooks, C.R., Seeley, R., and Klarstrom, D.L., 1988. Using
Acoustic Emission in Fatigue and Fracture Materials Research. JOM, Vol. 50 (1998), p. 349.
4. Korcak, A. 2010. Fatigue Life Prediction in Steel Using Acoustic Emission Amplitude
Histograms and Back Propagation Neural Networks. MSAE Thesis, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University, FL.
863
Design of a Wheeled Climbing Robot for
Automatic Inspection of Hydraulic
Turbine Blade with Curved Surface
Z. WU, Q. CHEN, Z. SUN and W. ZHANG
ABSTRACT
Hydraulic turbine blades are subject to cavitation damage on their curved surfaces
induced by the passage of water through the turbine, and therefore the inspection of
turbine blade surfaces becomes a key maintenance issue for the power generation
industry. To automate the inspection of the blade surface, we developed a novel
wheeled climbing robot with a compact visual measurement system. The robot adopts
a three-wheeled mechanism and a coupled adhesion technology self-adaptive to
complex curved surfaces, so that it can achieve quick motion and stable adhesion on
the surface. The images of the blade surface are captured by a CCD camera and
transmitted to the operation station by a wireless communication module. The wireless
control of the robot, together with wireless inspection, overcomes the umbilical
problem of the robot, thus avoiding additional load and expanding the working range.
In order to reconstruct the 3-D profile of the cavitation, we designed a compact and
low-cost sensor using multi-line structured light. Preliminary experimental results
proved the feasibility of the prototype robot, and an outlook to future work concludes
this article.
INTRODUCTION
Hydraulic turbines play a great role in large hydroelectric power plants. The most
common damage mechanism associated with turbine blades is cavitation
corrosion/erosion (see Figure 1) [1]. The cavitation damage reduces the efficiency of
the hydroelectric units, and even worse seriously breaks down the entire blade,
because the damage once initiated can lead to rapid loss of material. Therefore the
inspection of turbine blade surface becomes an important maintenance issue for the
power generation industry.
_____________
Zheming Wu, Qiang Chen, Zhenguo Sun, and Wenzeng Zhang,
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
[Zheming Wu is currently also a visiting student researcher in Department of Mechanical
Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720]
864
Figure 1. Cavitation damage on hydraulic turbine blade [1].
Currently the inspection is often carried out in-situ manually, by installing

operation platforms right in the turbine pit. This leads to increased inspection time and
significant safety risks for the operators. As a result automated in-situ inspection using
robotic technology has become a preferred solution, whose objective includes
capturing the surface image and measuring the profile of the cavitation for damage
identification.
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new wheeled climbing robot for
detecting and measuring the cavitation area of blade surfaces. The main challenge is
the robot must have the capability of all-position adhesion on complex curved surfaces
(The tangent plane of the surface would range from horizontal to vertical, as shown in
Figure 2), while completing the inspection as fast as possible. Another challenge is the
confined operation space. The distance between two neighboring blades can be as
short as 400mm.
Figure 2. 3D model of turbine blade with robot adhered to it.
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The rest of the paper is structured as follows: In Section 2, we briefly overview the
existing climbing robots in related fields. In Section 3, we describe the details of
proposed robot technique, including the adhesion and locomotion mechanism, robot
structure, and the basic scheme of control and inspection, together with the multiple
structured light measurement method. In Section 4, we provide the prototype robot
and some preliminary test results. Lastly, Section 5 concludes the paper and discusses
the potential for future work.
RELATED WORK
Different applications have been envisioned and widely used for climbing robots,
mainly in the inspection, repairing and cleaning in dangerous environments like power
plants, oil tank, pipes, buildings, etc. [2] [3]. With respect to the locomotive
mechanism, climbing robots can be divided into six categories: legged type, wheel-
driven type, tracked type, translation type, cable-driven type, and combined type. On
the other hand, from the adhesion point of view, climbing robots can be classified into
five categories: suction type, magnetic type, gripping type, rail-guided type, and
biomimetic type [4]. However, previous climbing robots are not suitable for the
inspection of the hydraulic turbine blade due to the restrictions of complex curved
surfaces and confined operation space.
ROBOT DESIGN
Adhesion and Locomotion Mechanism
Adhesion and locomotion are the two major issues in the design of climbing
robots, and both are interrelated with each other. Since the blade is made up of
ferromagnetic material, our robot uses permanent magnetic adhesion. Classical
magnet robots can adopt permanent magnetic wheels with the strong advantage to
minimize the gap between the magnet and the surface. However, very flat and clean
surfaces are needed since the magnets are usually made by hard materials [5]. A non-
contact technique was used in [6] [7] with a gap existing between the surface and the
magnet to decrease the moving resistance of the robot. Since the complexity of the
blade surface requires the robot to adapt to surface changes, these robots use a
mechanism with an extra degree of freedom to achieve surface adaption. We adopted
a permanent-magnet blocks which are coupled and set symmetrically around the
wheel [8] (see Figure 3), achieving a stable adhesive force between the robot and the
curved surface with no extra degree of freedom. The adhesion technology can achieve
a faster inspection while simultaneously stabilizing the magnetic force when the robot
moves on concave and convex curvatures.
866
Figure 3. Principle of the non-contact adhesion applied in the robot.
As the robot is designed to run on mostly smooth surfaces, the wheeled

locomotion mechanism is used for high speed. We adopted a three-wheeled
mechanism, which consists of two independent drive wheels and one omniwheel
(Figure. 4). This design will keep all the wheels in contact with the curved surface.
The outer edges of the drive wheels are made out of polyurethane material to provide
enough friction, and self-locking worm gear is used to connect each drive wheel to the
corresponding motor so that the robot will not slip off blade surface.
Yoke
Magnet Right driving wheel
Ominwheel
Left driving wheel

Yoke
Magnet
Figure.4 Configuration of the wheels, with magnets set symmetrically around them (isometric view)
Robot Structure
The robot has been designed to have three main parts: mobile platform, control
system and inspection system. The mobile platform consists of an aluminum frame
which supports the robot, with the wheels and the magnet units connected to it. The
control system includes an on-board controller, motor drive units, an image capture
unit and wireless communication modules. The controller has multiple interfaces such
as IO, AD, serial and so on, which provide the connection among the controller and
different electronic devices (sensors, motors, etc.). The inspection system contains a
camera, wireless video transmitter, a multi-line structured light sensor, and a laser
867
ranging device. Figure 5 illustrates the scheme of the robot and the connection
relationship among the components.
Figure 5. Schematic illustration of the robot system.
The controller communicates with the control station, sends out motion signals to
motor and processes the images as well as encoder signals to calculate the 3-D
coordinates of the surface points. The control station receives the images directly from
the camera through wireless video transmitter, saves them for further processing and
supervises the inspection procedure. In addition, the robot has a battery attached to
supply operation energy, which allows umbilical-free behavior in order to avoid
additional load and other limitations caused by a hanging umbilical cable. The battery
is able to supply power for 2 hours in normal operating conditions. Figure 6 shows the
detailed design model of the wheeled climbing robot.
Figure 6. Design model of the wheeled climbing robot, top down view.
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3-D Profile Measurement of Cavitation
In order to meet the objective of inspection, measuring the 3-D profile of the
cavitation is needed, in addition obtaining the image of the turbine blade surface. The
reason for that is not only to better evaluate of the level of cavitation damage which
determines whether a further repair should be carried out, but also to assist automation
of the repair process if required.
Machine vision has been widely used for the inspection and visualization of
defects on ground or machined components [9]. 3-D visual inspection using structured
light technique plays an important part in 3-D inspection applications. It avoids the
correspondence problem of passive stereo and has been applied widely in industry
inspections due to its non-contact nature, fast acquisition time, simple optical
arrangement, low cost, and stability despite uncertain illumination environments.
Although the development of a 3-D measuring system applied to the above fields is
compelling, it is not easy to achieve the goal of 3-D profile measuring without costly
equipment and high performance computers. Here we provide a multi-line structured
light (MSL) vision sensor with rotary scanning method, which is able to meet the
demand of high performance through low cost equipment.
(a) (b)
Figure 7. (a) Visual measurement of the blade surface. (b) Multiple-line structured light scanning sensor.
Figure 7(a) illustrates the basic idea of 3-D measurement of the robot using the
MSL sensor with rotary scanning method. The MSL sensor consists of several
semiconductor single-line laser projectors, a mechanical set to install the projectors, a
motor for rotary scanning and an encoder for measuring the rotation angle, as shown
in Figure 7(b).
Each laser stripe emitted by different projectors lies in different light planes. The
mechanical set makes the light planes form a fixed angle with each other, so that each
light plane can scan over its distribution area when the motor rotates the shaft. After
camera projector calibration, we can acquire the 3D coordinate of every arbitrary
points of the surface intersected by the light planes, with the rotation angles (to
869
calculate the equations of the light planes) and the image coordinates of the points,
through triangulation. Once the 3D cloud of points has been obtained, we can create
the reconstructed shape of the surface.
Since the proposed technical uses multiple structured lights to scan the surface, its
measuring speed is several times faster than classic single structured light method. It is
low cost with high resolution compared to laser grating, and, compared to previous
MSL techniques [10][11], it is more compact and could be installed in our climbing
robot which runs in confined space. Moreover, the projectors can be mounted into the
mechanical set in a flexible configuration and the set does not require high precision
machining and adjustment.
IMPLEMENTATION AND TEST RESULT
The design is almost finished. Figure 8 shows the prototype of the inspection
climbing robot. The total mass of the robot is about 4.3kg, and the dimension is
approximately 370mm×240mm×350mm. The magnetic attraction force was measured
to 30N for the omniwheel and 60N per drive wheel, with a total magnetic force of
150N, which allows the robot to withstand the gravity force in all positions. The
driving speed is expected to 6m/min, which should be fast enough for the application.
Particularly, the mass of the MSL sensor is 0.36kg, and the dimension is about 150mm
×50mm×35mm. The measurement strategy for the multi-line structured light rotary
scanning has been proposed. Wireless communication module and wireless video
transmitter have already been tested in the turbine pit and work well.
Figure 8. Prototype of the inspection climbing robot.
CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK
In this paper we proposed a new climbing robot for inspection of the turbine blade
surface with the capability of stable adhesion on curved surface. Based on the non-
contact adhesion technology in which permanent-magnet are coupled and set
symmetrically around the wheel, the robot is able to climb on curved surface with
good maneuverability. The robot has no external umbilical cord and is completely
wireless thus avoiding additional load and other limitations caused by hanging
umbilical cable. Moreover, a compact and low-cost multi-line structured light sensor is
proposed to achieve faster 3-D profile measurement. Preliminary experimental results
proved the feasibility of the most important parts.
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Future work includes placing adequate on the robot to improve its autonomous
capability, like localization and trajectory control. In addition, the measurement
accuracy of multi-line structured light rotary scanning method will be experimentally
verified.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National High
Technology Research and Development Program of China (No. 2007AA04Z258)
REFERENCES
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Engineering, University of Wollongong.
2. Ozgur Unver and Metin Sitti. 2009. “Tankbot: A Miniature, Peeling Based Climber On Rough and
Smooth Surfaces,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation,
pp. 2282–2287.
3. M. F. Silva and J. A. T. Machado. 2008. “A survey of technologies for climbing robots adhesion to
surfaces,” in Proceedings of the ICCC 2008 – IEEE International Conference on Computational
Cybernetics, Stara Lesná, Slovakia, pp. 127–132.
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adhesion”, International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing, ” vol. 11, pp. 633-
647.
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experimental considerations,” in Advances in Mobile Robotics, World Scientific Publishing Co.
Pte. Ltd., pp. 6-30.
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Robot for Inspection of Long Weld Lines,” Industrial Robot: An International Journal, vol.35, No.
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8. Liu, K., Zhang, W., & Zeng, P. 2007. “Symmetrically centralized magnetic-wheel unit for wall-
climbing robots.” In Proceedings of the 13th IASTED International Conference on Robotics and
Applications (RA’07),Wurzburg.
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industrial vision systems, applications, and tools,” Image Vis. Comput., vol. 21, pp. 171–188.
10. Zhang Qican, Su Xianyu, Zou Xiaoping. 2005. “Calibration of 3D measurement system using
multi-sensor with line structure-illuminated laser,” Laser Technology, vol. 29, No. 3,pp.225-228,.
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structured light vision sensor.” Measurement Science and Technology, vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 025204
871
Experimental Investigation of the Excitation
Level in System Identification of Frame
Structures Using Linear Shakers
N. NAKATA and K. COLEMAN
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an investigation of the relationships between excitation level

and estimated dynamic properties in system identification of structures using the
forced vibration technique. Investigation was experimentally performed using a frame
structure and a stepper motor at the Johns Hopkins University. Random excitation
technique and the Eigensystem Realization Algorithm are employed to estimate
dynamic properties of the structure. Excitation level is referenced to the signal-to-
noise ratio of structural response. The confidence level of the estimated properties is
evaluated at each natural frequency based on the coherence function. The
experimental results showed that the accuracy and confidence level of the estimated
properties vary in vibration mode. In the case study of a frame structure, the
confidence level of the first mode is always lower than those in the higher modes. The
results also showed that the accuracy and confidence level can be improved by the
increase in excitation level. In particular, significant increase in the confidence level
can be achieved for the higher vibration modes even by a small increase in excitation
level.
INTRODUCTION
System identification seeks to estimate dynamic properties such as natural

frequencies and mode shapes from vibration measurements. Combined with a
mathematical representation of physical systems, the estimated dynamic properties
play an important role in model-based design, testing, and simulation in many
engineering fields. In civil engineering, estimated properties from system
identification are extensively used in structural identification [1], health monitoring [2-
3], damage detection [4], and structural control [5].
_____________
Narutoshi Nakata, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St.,
Baltimore, Maryland 21286, U.S.A.
Kyle Coleman, Laboratory Assistant, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St.,
Baltimore, Maryland 21286, U.S.A.
872
One of the key influential factors on estimated dynamic properties of civil
structures is a level of excitation applied to the structures. In general, either ambient
excitation assumptions (i.e., no artificial excitation) or forced vibration techniques are
used in the system identification of civil structures. Several studies [6,7, and 8] have
reported that estimated dynamic properties of structures vary depending on the
excitation type; for example, the first natural frequency of a fifteen-story concrete
building was estimated 2.08Hz from ambient excitation and 1.94Hz from harmonic
excitation, respectively [7]. Variations in estimated dynamic properties from different
levels of excitation are highly correlated to the influence of signal-to-noise ratio and
uncertainties in nonlinearity of structural response. While the need of study on the
variability of structural response has been addressed [2], to the best of the author’s
knowledge, variability due to the excitation level has not been thoroughly investigated
to date.
This paper addresses the above need for fundamental study by focusing on the
influence of the excitation level on estimated dynamic properties and their
corresponding confidence levels. The investigation is experimentally performed at
several excitation levels using a scaled five-story frame building and a linear shaker at
the Johns Hopkins University. This paper presents results, observations and
discussions on system identification of the frame building using the forced vibration at
different levels.
SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION USING LINEAR SHAKERS
Vibration-based system identification is based on linear theories, signal processing

techniques, and identification algorithms. This section briefly presents the
fundamentals and formulations of systems theories and identification algorithms
adopted in this study.
Dynamic Relationship between the Linear Shaker and the Structural Response
We have chosen a multi-story frame structure as the type to be identified. Figure 1

shows a schematic of an n-story frame structure with a linear shaker at the i-th floor.
The equations of motion for the structure and the linear shaker can be written as:
  Cx  Kx  f  w
Mx (1)
Ms   xs  =  f +w s
x   (2)
where M , C , and K are the mass, damping, and stiffness matrices of the
structure, respectively; M s is the mass matrix of the shaker; x is the vector for
structural displacement with respect to a fixed reference; xs is the vector for the
shaker displacement relative to the i-th floor displacement; f is the interaction force
vector between the structure and the linear shaker; and w and ws are the noise
vectors for the structures and the shaker, respectively.
873
mn
xn
cn , kn
Linear Shaker
xs
ms
xi mi
ci , ki
Structure
x1 m1
c1 , k1
Figure 1. An n-story frame structure with a linear shaker at the i-th floor.
Summing Eqs (1) and (2) to eliminate the force f and taking the Laplace
transform of the resultant, transfer functions from the linear shaker to the structure can
be obtained in terms of acceleration ratio as:

2 

xxs  s     M  M s  s + Cs + K  s  ms e i   w  s  + ws  s  ei  (3)
1 1
2
H 
 xs  s 
 
where x  s  , w  s  , 
xs  s  , and ws  s  are the Laplace transform of x , w , xs , and
ws , respectively; and s is the Laplace variable. Note that linear shakers are generally
controlled in displacement by means of actuators or motors (controlling relative
displacement xs ), and the force f is not a controlled property in experiments.
If the mass ratio of the shaker to the structure is small (i.e., ms / mi  0 ), the above
transfer function can be approximated as:
 
  w  s  + ws  s  ei 
1 1
xxs  s    Ms + Cs + K  s 2 ms ei 
2
H (4)
 xs  s 
 
Furthermore, if the excitation level is adequately large compared to the noise level
xs  0 ), the transfer function yields:
(i.e., wi 
 
1
xxs  s    M s + Cs + K  ms s 2 e i
2
H  (5)
Thus, the transfer function from the shaker to the structure without influence from the
mass of the shaker and the noise can be obtained from the acceleration response of the
shaker and the structure. In short, two key requirements in system identification of
structures using supplemental masses are:
874
i. A small mass ratio of the shaker to the structure
ii. An acceptably low level of excitation
This study investigates the second condition, focusing on the relationship between the
excitation level and the estimated dynamic properties of structure.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUPS
The relationships between the excitation level and the estimated dynamic
properties in system identification of structures are experimentally evaluated. The
experiment is conducted using a scaled frame building and a linear shaker at the Johns
Hopkins University.
Figure 2 shows a four-story frame structure to be identified. The frame structure
consists of steel plates, columns, angles, and diagonal braces. The mass of each floor
is 18.5 kg (2-4floors), 18 kg (roof), and the total mass is approximately 73.0 kg. A
NEMA23 stepper motor (RS23-300) manufactured by Homeshoppnc is utilized as a
linear shaker and placed at the roof level of the structure. The mass of the motor is 1
kg, and thus, the mass ratio of the motor to the structure is 1.3%. Accelerometers
(Crossbow CXL-GP series) are instrumented on each floor of the structure and on the
stepper motor. A linear variable differential transducer (LVDT) is used to measure the
relative displacement of the stepper motor.
The stepper motor is digitally controlled from the National Instrument (NI)
LabVIEW that is deployed on a real-time operating system. The real-time operating
system consists of an NI 2.3-GHz high-bandwidth dual-core PXI express controller
(PXIe-8130) and associated accessories. All of the measurements including the
accelerometers and the LVDT are sampled through a 16-bit high-speed multifunction
data acquisition board (NI PXI-6251) with an anti-aliasing filter. In the following
experiments, the data sampling rate is 1 kHz. Post-processes including the ERA
method are performed in Matlab.
(c)
(b)
(a)
Figure 2. Experimental setup: (a) a four-story frame structure; (b) a linear shaker
(RS23-300) on the roof; and (c) an accelerometer.
875
System identification procedure described previously was performed for a number

of excitation levels from the linear shaker. This section presents the experimental
results, observations and discussions.
Frequency Response Curves and Coherence Functions
Figure 3 shows frequency response curves from the roof acceleration for selected
excitation levels. The excitation level here is referenced to the average SNR of the
structural response. These plots clearly show that the frequency response curve
becomes smoother and its peaks become more distinct as the excitation level
increases. This observation agrees with the analytical relationship between noise and
excitation in the transfer function (i.e., the larger the excitation is, the smaller the
impact of the noise in estimated transfer functions becomes).
To evaluate the accuracy in structural identification, reference dynamic properties,
usually exact ones, are needed. However, exact dynamic properties are not always
available. Figure 4 shows the frequency response curves and coherence functions from
all of the measurement floors at the SNR of 116. The SNR of 116 is the maximum
structural SNR in this study. All of the frequency response curves have distinct peaks,
and the peak frequencies for each mode in different frequency response curves are
almost the same. The first peak, for example, is 5.5Hz for all of the frequency
response curves. The coherence functions show that a high correlation between the
linear shaker and the structure is obtained in a wide range of frequencies. Based on the
observation here, dynamic properties estimated from the maximum excitation level
(SNR of 116) are expected to be sufficiently accurate, and therefore will be used as the
reference in the following discussion.
SNR = 1 SNR = 2
0 0
10 10
-1 -1
10 10
Amplitude
Amplitude
-2 -2
10 10
-3 -3
10 10
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50
(a) Frequency (Hz) (b) Frequency (Hz)
0
SNR = 41 0
SNR = 116
10 10
-1 -1
10 10
Amplitude
Amplitude
-2 -2
10 10
-3 -3
10 10
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50
(c) Frequency (Hz)
(d) Frequency (Hz)
Figure 5. Frequency response curves from the shaker to the roof response of the
structure: (a) SNR = 1; (b) SNR = 2; (c) SNR = 41; and (d) SNR = 116.
876
0
10
Magnitude
-2
10
0 10 20 30 40 50
(a) Frequency (Hz)
200
Phase (degree)
100
-100
-200
0 10 20 30 40 50
(b) Frequency (Hz)
1
Coherence
0.5 2nd floor

3rd floor
4th floor
Roof
(c) 0
0 10 20 30 40 50
Frequency (Hz)
Figure 4. Frequency response curves and coherence functions (SNR = 116): (a)
amplitude; (b) phase; and (c) coherence.
Estimated Natural Frequencies and Confidence Levels
Using the procedure described in the previous section, natural frequencies are
estimated from each frequency response curve. In order to capture critical natural
frequencies within the range of interest (below 50Hz in this case), a total of twenty-
five singular values are sought in the process of the ERA method. The reason for such
a large number is that the Nyquist frequency of the records (500Hz) is higher than the
target frequency range, and erroneous singular values in the high frequency range may
dominate more than those within 50 Hz. In this paper, estimated natural frequencies
that are below 50 Hz are discussed.
Figure 5 shows the estimated natural frequencies and corresponding coherence for
selected excitation levels. Excitation levels are referenced to the SNR of the structural
response. At the SNR of 1, estimated natural frequencies from each floor are scattered,
and their coherences are very low. However, as the excitation level increases, the
coherences become higher particularly at the high frequency range. Furthermore, the
estimated natural frequencies from different floors converge to the reference natural
frequencies (vertical lines) that are estimated from the maximum excitation level:
those reference frequencies are calculated using Eq 12. It can be seen that all of the
four natural frequencies within the frequency range here are captured in more than two
floors, and thus, those modes are considered to be global vibration modes.
Finally, the relationship between the excitation level and the estimated dynamic
properties are shown in Figure 8. The excitation level and frequency plots in Figure 6
(a) show that estimated natural frequencies at low SNR level may have some
discrepancy with the reference natural frequencies that are estimated from the highest
877
SNR level. However, as the excitation level increases, all of the four natural
frequencies converge to their reference natural frequencies. At the SNR higher than 5,
the estimated natural frequencies are almost identical to the reference, and its
maximum errors are within 5%.
The excitation level and coherence plots in Figure 6 (b) show the confidence level
in each natural frequency as the function of excitation level. While the coherences are
quite low at the low SNR, they all increase as the excitation level increases. At the
SNR higher than 5, the confidence levels for all of the estimated natural frequencies
become greater than 0.4. It is interesting to note that the coherence at the first natural
frequency is always lower than the others. Furthermore, its rate of increase is also
smaller than those in the other natural frequencies, indicating that the confidence level
of the first natural frequency is less sensitive to the excitation level.
SNR = 1 SNR = 2
1 1
0.8 0.8
Coherence
Coherence
0.6 0.6
0.4 0.4
0.2 0.2
0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50
(a) Frequency (Hz) (b) Frequency (Hz)
SNR = 41 SNR = 116
1 1
0.8 0.8
Coherence
Coherence
0.6 0.6
0.4 0.4 2nd floor

3rd floor
0.2 0.2 4th floor
Roof
0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50
(c) Frequency (Hz) (d) Frequency (Hz)
Figure 5. Relationship between estimated natural frequency and coherence: (a) SNR = 1;
(b) SNR = 2; (c) SNR = 41; and (d) SNR = 116.
40 1
30 0.8
Frequency (Hz)
Coherence
0.6
20
0.4 1st mode
10 2nd mode
0.2 3rd mode
4th mode
0 0
0 1 2 0 1 2
10 10 10 10 10 10
SNR SNR
(a) (b)
Figure 6. Relationship between the SNR and estimated dynamic properties: (a) natural
frequencies; and (b) coherence.
878
CONCLUSIONS
This study investigated the relationships between excitation level and estimated
dynamic properties in system identification of a structure using the forced vibration
technique. Investigation was experimentally performed using a frame structure and a
stepper motor at the Johns Hopkins University. Random excitation technique and the
Eigensystem Realization Algorithm are employed to estimate dynamic properties of
the structure. Excitation level is referenced to the signal-to-noise ratio of structural
response. The confidence level of the estimated properties is evaluated at each natural
frequency based on the coherence function.
The experimental results showed that the accuracy and confidence level of the
estimated properties vary in vibration mode. In the case study of a frame structure, the
confidence level of the first mode is always lower than those in the higher modes. The
results also showed that the accuracy and confidence level can be improved by the
increase in excitation level. In particular, significant increase in the confidence level
can be achieved for the higher vibration modes (from second to fourth modes) even by
a small increase in excitation level. For example, with the SNR of 5, the confidence
levels of those modes can go up to 0.7, and the maximum errors in natural frequencies
will fall in 5%.
The relationships between excitation level and estimated properties obtained in
this paper can be viewed as a valuable asset on system identification of structures
using forced vibration techniques, especially for determination of excitation level.
However, their applications are limited to frame structures. To assess the applicability
of active structural identification, the excitation and estimated property relationships
have to be investigated for other types of structures as well.
REFERENCES
1. Doebling SW, Farrar CR. “The state of the art in structural identification of constructed facilities.”
A Report by the ASCE Committee on Structural Identification of Constructed Facilities (ASCE),
1999.
2. Doebling SW, Farrar CR, Prime MB, Shevitz DW. “Damage identification and health monitoring
of structural and mechanical systems from changes in their vibration characteristics: a literature
review.” Los Alamos National Laboratory report LA-13070-MS, 1996.
3. Chang PC, Flatau A, Liu SC. “Review paper: health monitoring of civil infrastructure.” Structural
Health Monitoring (SAGE) 2003; 3(3): 257-267.
4. Salawu OS. “Detection of structural damage through changes in frequency: a review.” Engineering
Structures (Elsevier) 1997; 19(9): 718-723.
5. Housner GW, Bergman LA, Caughey TK, Chassiakos AG, Claus RQ, Masri SF, Skelton RE,
Soong TT, Spencer BF, Yao JTP. “Structural control: past, present and future.” Journal of
Engineering Mechanics (ASCE) 1997; 123(9): 897-971.
6. Trifunac MD. “Comparison between ambient and forced vibration experiments.” Earthquake
Engineering and Structural Dynamics (Wiley InterScience) 1972; 1(2): 133-150.
7. Hans S, Boutin C, Ibraim E, Roussillon R. “In situ experiments and seismic analysis of existing
buildings. Part I: experimental investigations.” Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics
(Wiley InterScience) 2005; 34(12): 1513-1529.
8. Juang JN, Pappa RS. “An eigensystem realization algorithm for modal parameter identification and
model reduction.” Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics (AIAA) 1985; 8(5): 620-627.
9. Silva CW de. “Vibration: fundamentals and practice.” CRC Press, Coca Raton, FL, 2007.
879
Identifying Foundation Impedance Properties
from Seismic Records
A. IRIZARRY, D. BERNAL and L. SUAREZ
ABSTRACT
According to a 1995 article published in Civil Engineering Magazine [1],

more than 100,000 bridges over water in the United States have what is known as
"unknown foundations." The fact that the details of the foundations and surrounding
soil are not known implies that an accurate structural condition assessment of the
bridges cannot be performed. Several approaches have been proposed in order to
determine the needed physical parameters to complete the assessment process,
although traditional methods tend to be work intensive, time consuming and costly.
In this paper an approach under investigation is presented which uses existing
seismic records in conjunction with system identification and model updating
techniques. The goal is to determine the information needed to create a simplified
but calibrated model of the structure. The proposed methodology focuses on the
foundations and surrounding soil and employs the lumped-parameter model
approach to account for them. A numerical example of a simplified soil-structure
system which uses the proposed methodology to identify the model’s free
parameters is presented. Also, a brief theoretical background of the methodology is
included.
INTRODUCTION
Many SSI models have been developed over the last three decades, which
can accurately predict the response of complex systems ([2], [3]). However, the
performance of these models depends greatly in the parameters of the models,
which in general, are not readily available and are difficult to obtain. Various
system identification methods have been developed to correlate analytical models
with experimental data of SSI systems ([4], [5], [6]). The methodologies seem to
work well for simple structures which can be accurately modeled with a very
limited quantity of degrees of freedom. However, for complex structures very
limited work has been completed successfully.
This study presents a methodology to obtain a calibrated SSI model of a
structure through the use of seismic records. The subspace identification technique
is first used to obtain the modal parameters of the system. An SSI model is
constructed using lumped parameter models [7] and initial values for the model
parameters are assumed based on typical soil values or previous information
880
obtained by geotechnical tests. Modal data of the identified system and the model is
paired using the modal assurance criterion (MAC) developed by Allemang and
Brown [8]. The required parameters in the SSI model are updated by minimizing
the difference between the modal paired data through a least squares model
updating approach.
LUMPED PARAMETER MODELS
Lumped parameter models try to simulate the behavior of the individual

foundation with a very simplified model which may not correspond to the physical
meaning of the actual system. This is done by fitting the impedance function of a
simple model that uses frequency independent parameters such as springs, dampers
and masses, to that of the actual system. There are many methodologies available (
[7], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]) that suggest different simple models and fitting
procedures for their corresponding parameters. For a floating pile group, the
impedance, the Lumped Parameter suggested by [7] is shown in Figure 1 and its
corresponding parameters in TABLE I.
2B f
lp
s
Super-
Structure
ch mh / 2 mh / 2
kr cr
kh
leq
Figure 1. Lumped parameter model for floating pile group.
881
TABLE I. Parameters for lumped parameter model.
𝜆𝜆
𝑅𝑅𝑓𝑓 1 𝐿𝐿0 𝜆𝜆 2
𝑥𝑥 = 𝜆𝜆0 � � � � 𝜆𝜆0 𝜆𝜆1 𝜆𝜆2
𝑙𝑙𝑝𝑝 𝑠𝑠
�𝑘𝑘ℎ 6.8 0 0.3
𝑐𝑐̃ℎ 5 0 0.5
𝑚𝑚
�ℎ 0.4 0 1.6
𝑘𝑘�𝑟𝑟 8 -0.6 0.4
𝑐𝑐̃𝑟𝑟 5 -0.5 0.2
2
𝑚𝑚
� 𝑟𝑟 = 𝑚𝑚 � ℎ 𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒 /4 0.7 -1 0.4
The impedance functions are given by:
S h (a0 ) = K 0 h [kh − a0 2 m h + ia0 ch ]

(1)
S (a ) = K [k − a 2 m + ia c ]
r 0 0r r 0 r 0 r
Where:
K 0 h = Gs R f
K 0 r = Gs R f 3
a0 = ω R f / Vs (2)
0.25
 Ep I p 
L0 =  
 Es 
R f = 2B f / π
The variables Gs , Vs and ω are the soil shear modulus, shear wave velocity and
frequency respectively.
SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION
The system identification problem is typically defined with the discrete-time

state-space model shown in equation (3). The objective is to find the constant
system matrices A, B, C , D knowing an interval of y (t ) and u (t ) .
( k +1)
x= Ax ( k ) + Bu ( k )
(3)
=
y ( k ) Cx ( k ) + Du ( k )
The subspace identification method was developed from the premise that
each row of Y1i is contained in a space that is spanned by the row vectors of U1i
and X . [15]
882
 y (1) y (2)  y( j) 
 
 y (2) y (3)  y ( j +1) 
Y1 i ≡  
    
 (i ) 
y y (i +1)  y (i + j −1) 
 u(1) u(2)  u( j ) 
 
u(2) u(3)  u( j +1) 
U1 i ≡   (4)
    
 (i ) 
u u(i +1)  u(i + j −1) 
X i ≡  x (i ) x(i +1)  x(i + j −1) 
 
The steps to determine the constant system matrices A, B, C , D are:

a. Construct the matrices:
U1 i 
Y1 i , U1 i , Yi +1 2i , U i +1 2i , W1 i ≡   (5)
 Y1 i 
 
b. Compute the projection:
*
Oi +1 ≡ Yi +1 2i U i⊥1 2i  W1 i U i⊥1 2i  W1 i (6)
 +  + 
c. Decompose the projection with singular value decomposition and estimate

the system order based on the quantity of non-zero singular values.
Oi +1 = PSV (7)
d. Estimate the state:
Xˆ i +1 ≡ S1/2V (8)
e. With the identified state, estimate the constant matrices A, B, C , D :
=Xˆ i + 2 S1/2 V Yi +1 ≡  y (i +1) y (i + 2)  y ( j +i −1) 

 
(9)
+ + + −
=Xˆ i +1 S1/2 V U i +1 ≡ u ( i 1)
u ( i 2)
 u ( j i 1) 
 
*
 Aˆ Bˆ   Xˆ i + 2   Xˆ 
 =   i +1  (10)
Cˆ Dˆ   Yi +1  U i +1 
 
883
To obtain the modal parameters of the system, the following eigenvalue
problem must be solved:
Aˆ Φ= ΛΦ (11)
Where Λ =diag (λi ) is the eigenvalues matrix and Φ are the eigenvectors. The
eigenvalues are given in complex conjugates in the form 𝜆𝜆𝑖𝑖 = 𝜎𝜎𝑖𝑖 ± 𝑤𝑤𝑑𝑑,𝑖𝑖 𝐢𝐢 where
−𝜎𝜎
𝑤𝑤𝑛𝑛,𝑖𝑖 = �𝜎𝜎𝑖𝑖 2 + 𝑤𝑤𝑑𝑑,𝑖𝑖 2 and 𝜉𝜉𝑖𝑖 = 𝑤𝑤 𝑖𝑖 are the natural frequencies and damping ratios
𝑛𝑛 ,𝑖𝑖
respectively.
MODEL UPDATING
Model updating consists of calibrating a model of a system through the use

of experimental data. Specifically, iterative methods use a penalty function in which
an experimental feature and the corresponding model feature is compared and an
optimization procedure is used to minimize the penalty function by updating the
required parameters. In this study, the modal data (eg. natural frequencies and
damping ratios) of the structure and the model were selected as features for the
updating procedure. In order to determine correspondence between modal data of
the analytical model with that obtained experimentally, the modal assurance
criterion (MAC) was used. The MAC estimates the degree of correlation between
mode shape vectors with a scale from 0 to 1, in which 0 means no correlation and 1
means the same vector times a scalar.
2
φmj T φak
MAC jk = (12)
(φak
T
φak )(φmj T φmj )
The modal data sensibilities towards the parameters to be updated are

obtained to form the Jacobian of the feature vector with respect to the parameters
vector. The penalty function is then given by:
S θ
( zid − za ) =∆ (13)
Where:
 ∂ω1 ∂ω1 
 ∂θ  ∂θ 
 1 k

S=     (Jacobian)
  (14)
 ∂ξ k  ∂ξ k 
 ∂θ1 ∂θ k 
= (ω1 , ω2 , ω3 ,…, ξ k −1 , ξ k )
T
zT
884
RESULTS
The response of an eleven story building to a seismic record was simulated.

Figure 2 displays the geometries and parameters of the building and its foundation.
Also, the free-field acceleration record is displayed in Figure 2. To apply the
proposed methodology a simple shear building model with base rotation was used
in conjunction with the reviewed lumped parameter model. TABLE I1 shows actual,
updated and initial values for the impedance properties and TABLE I11 the modal
data. Figure 3 shows a comparison of the response between actual, initial and
updated models.
E
Epiles= 30GPa Lo
7
= 20GPa 5@am
‘building
k k0
EsoLl= 0 . 0 6 G P ~
GsoLl
= 21 . 4 M p ~
v = 0.4 m E
0
d
vs =100mls 0
7
p, =2.14Mglm3
6 = p = 0.05
columns = 0.0108m4
m, = 917.4Mg
\ /
m2-10= 815.5Mg \
\ /
/
mroof= 61 1.6Mg \ /
\
1,,
-. ._-_/
/
0.02 I I I I I I I I I
m
$ 0
-0 02
I’ I I I I I I I
II
0 2 4 6 3 10 12 14 16
Type equation here.

Figure 2. Simulated structure with soil and material parameters. Also, seismic record used.
TABLE 11. Impedance parameters of LPM.

Parameters Initial Undated -Actual
%h 0.01048 0.40247 0.20962
-
I, = 6, 0.01979 0.52094 0.39586
0.03012 11.2048 6.02410
Eh 0.20428 8.58018 4.08580
Er 0.26635 4.95150 5.32720
Er 0.1901 8 4.79 190 3.76010
885
𝜉𝜉 0.02000 0.05000 0.05000
TABLE III. Actual and updated modal data.
Identified Modal Data Updated Modal Data
𝜔𝜔𝑛𝑛 𝜉𝜉 𝜔𝜔𝑛𝑛 𝜉𝜉
92.349 0.05016 94.757 0.05002
89.723 0.04997 92.059 0.05002
85.343 0.04993 87.557 0.05002
79.238 0.05002 81.297 0.05003
71.537 0.05001 73.396 0.05002
62.424 0.05001 64.045 0.05003
52.143 0.05001 53.498 0.05003
41.006 0.05008 42.069 0.05006
29.341 0.05005 30.102 0.05005
17.533 0.05381 18.035 0.05394
2.1768 0.34697 2.1767 0.34696
5.7273 0.05623 5.8240 0.06516
15.297 0.56469 11.369 0.56247
Conclusions
Based on the results obtained from the numerical simulation, the following
can be concluded:
• Lumped parameter models, in particular those suggested by Taherzadeh et
al. (2009)[7], can be used for the proposed methodology with successful
results.
Figure 3. Comparison between response of initial, updated and actual models for various levels.
886
• The system identification techniques proposed were able to identify the
natural frequencies and damping ratios with no major problems. It is
important to recognize that noise was not present in the measurements.
• The model updating method proposed, although quite simple, obtained
acceptable results. However, this method is very dependent on the quality of
the modal data identified and that an adequate pairing is achieved.
• The updated model matched the response very well even though the
impedance parameters and the model mass did not fully match the original
structure.
REFERENCES
1. Lagasse, P.F., Thompson, P.L. and Sabol, S.A. 1995. "Guarding Against Scour," Civil
Engineering Magazine, 65(6), pp. 56 - 59.
2. Wolf, J.P. 1985. Dynamic Soil Structure Interaction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
3. Rizos, D. 2004. “Soil-Structure Interaction,” ECIV 724A class presentations, University of
South Carolina, Columbia, US.
4. Chen, C.H., Lee, Y.J., Jean, W.Y., Katayama, I., and Penzien, J. 1990. ‘‘Correlation of
predicted seismic response using hybrid modeling with EPRI/TPC Lotung experimental data,’’
Earthquake Eng. Struct. Dyn., 19, 993–1024.
5. Choi, J.S., Lee, J.S. and Yun, C.B. 2004. “Identification of the Soil–Structure Interaction
System Using Earthquake Response Data,” ASCE Journal of Engineering, 130:7(753).
6. Tileylioglu, S. 2008. “Evaluation of Soil-Structure Interaction Effects from Field Performance
Data,” PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, CA.
7. Taherzadeh, R., Clouteau, D., and Cottereau, R. 2009. “Simple formulas for the dynamic
stiffness of pile groups”. Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics, 38, 1665–1685.
8. Allemang, R.J. and Brown, D.L. 1982. “A Correlation Coefficient for Modal Vector Analysis,”
1st International Modal Analysis Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1109-1115.
9. Saitoh, M. 2011. “Lumped parameter models representing impedance functions at the interface
of a rod on a viscoelastic medium,” Journal of Sound and Vibration, 330(9), 2062-2072.
10. Wolf, J. P. (1991). Consistent lumped-parameter models for unbounded soil: frequency-
independent stiffness, damping and mass matrices. Earthquake Engineering and Structural
Dynamics, 20, 33–41.
11. Wolf, J. P. (1991). Consistent lumped-parameter models for unbounded soil: physical
representation. Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, 20, 11–32.
12. Wu, W.H. and Chen, C.Y. 2001. “Simple Lumped-Parameter Models of Foundation using
Mass-Spring-Dashpot Oscillators,” Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers, 24(6), pp.
681-697.
13. Wu, W.H. and Lee, W.H. 2004. “Nested lumped-parameter models for foundation vibrations,”
Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, 33, 1051-1058.
14. Zhao, M. and Du, X. (2009). High-Order Lumped-Parameter Model for Foundation Based on
Continued Fraction. Chinese Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, Issue 11.
15. van Overschee, P. and De Moor, B. 1996. Subspace identification for linear systems: theory,
implementation, applications. Kluwer Academic, The Netherlands.
887
Application of Fuzzy Set Theory in Structural
Health Monitoring to Pattern Different States
of an RC Bridge at Interstate 40
M. AZARBAYEJANI and M. REDA TAHA
ABSTRACT
Identifying unknown states of a structure based on the defined known states is one
of the main objectives of a structural health monitoring (SHM) system to inform
authorities about the current state of the structure. In this paper, we use principles of
fuzzy set theory to pattern unknown states of a reinforced concrete (RC) bridge at
Interstate 40. Our approach aims at establishing fuzzy sets to describe damage states in
the bridge. Since different damage states in the bridge have significant overlap and
vague boundaries, fuzzy sets are suitable to describe these damage states. An inductive
reasoning method based on minimizing information entropy, is used to implement the
above approach.
Vibration signals were obtained from an SHM system installed on the bridge. A
wavelet multi resolution analysis is used to extract features from signals sent
wirelessly from the installed SHM system. The extracted damage features from the
bridge are used to establish the healthy fuzzy set. To establish damaged fuzzy sets, a
3D finite element (FE) model of the bridge is developed. The model is calibrated
based on field vibration data. The efficiency of the fuzzy pattern recognition in
identifying unknown states of the bridge is validated based on the analyzed field data
at different time instances and the data describing different damage severities in the
finite element model. The model is tested and proved to work efficiently.
Keywords: structural health monitoring, fuzzy set theory, inductive reasoning,

finite element (FE) method.
INTRODUCTION
Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an on-going field of study aiming at

detecting damage at its onset on structures with broader impact of improving the
_____________
Mohammad Azarbayejani, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of
Texas-Pan American (UTPA), Edinburg, TX 78539
Mahmoud Reda Taha, Associate Professor & Regents’ Lecturer, Department of Civil
Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131
888
safety of structures. Bridges are one of the main targets of SHM systems, as they are
vital structures to the society. Mufti [1] estimated that there are more than two hundred
thousand deficient bridges currently exist in the US that need proper attention. Wang
et al. [2] showed a similar estimation. The tragic collapse of the I-35 Bridge in
Minneapolis was an awaking alarm for authorities and public to seek new monitoring
systems rather than prescheduled visual inspection of deficient bridges. SHM research
is divided into four major categories: 1) Data acquisition which relates to sensors and
sensor networks, 2) Feature extraction to extract damage metrics that can differentiate
between healthy and damaged signals, 3) Pattern recognition to identify unknown
states of a structure based on known states and 4) Damage prognosis to estimate the
remaining service life of the structure and to decide when the structure needs
comprehensive maintenance. These four components are tied closely with each other
and any successful SHM system should have these components.
In this paper, first the SHM system used to monitor the bridge 7937 in
Tucumcari, New Mexico is introduced and we explain different algorithms used to
extract features from the signals obtained from installed sensors. Then, a three
dimensional FE model that was calibrated based on real data from the bridge is
presented. Having a well calibrated model that represents the real bridge is used to
present different damage severities on the bridge. Finally, using fuzzy set theories,
fuzzy sets representing different states of the bridge are established and the unknown
states of the bridge are identified based on the fuzzy pattern recognition similarity
index. To identify the state of the bridge at any time based on the established states
describing different damage severities can give authorities useful information to
schedule the maintenance for the bridge and in critical situations stop using the bridge.
The bridge of this case study is an RC bridge with five K-Frame girders that
has three spans 42’, 104’ and 42’ on Interstate-40 between Texas and New Mexico.
This bridge was previously strengthened using carbon fibre reinforced polymer
(CFRP) sheets at the location of maximum negative moment. Figure 1 illustrates this
bridge with installed CFRP sheets on it.
Figure 1. Bridge 7937 in Tucumcari, New Mexico with the CFRP sheets installed on it.
889
SHM SYSTEM ON BRIDGE 7937
The SHM system installed on bridge 7937 consists of two main components:
1. Sensors: Twenty accelerometers were installed on five girders of the bridge to
acquire the vibration signals due to traffic and environmental effects. Eight strain
gauges were installed on CFRP sheets to observe if the CFRP sheets took some
stress from the bridge and to monitor for any possible de-bonding. We also used
four thermocouples to observe the temperature on the top and bottom of the bridge
and inside the steel box used for the housing of the system.
2. Data acquisition system: A field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology
data acquisition system was used. FPGA has the ability to be hardware
programmed and integrate both data acquisition and computational logic gates on
the same hardware. This device can establish smart wireless connection where
data transfer can be limited to take place only when needed. To power the data
acquisition device and wireless modem, clean solar panel power technology was
used. The solar system was designed by computing the energy consumption of the
system per day. Since the energy source is not available continuously, backup
batteries were provided to power up the system for three consecutive autonomy
days. Figures 2 and 3 illustrate the installed SHM system on the bridge.
Figure 2. Sensors installed on the bridge and wired to the DAQ system.
Figure 3. Solar panels powered the SHM system with back up batteries and DAQ system.
890
FINITE ELEMENT MODEL OF THE BRIDGE
Checking realistic damage detection of the bridge depends on damaging the bridge with
different severities, which is impossible. Therefore, virtual damage needs to be made and
used to check the ability of the proposed method to detect damage in the bridge upon
occurrence. A three dimensional FE model of the bridge, using SAP 2000®, is made to
simulate the structural behavior of the bridge under traffic loading. This model simulated
the variable cross section of girders and their attachments to the concrete slab accurately.
The model was first calibrated based on the field test done by a truck with known weight.
The calibration process was based on modifying the bridge cross sectional stiffness such
that the strains calculated from the first girder of the three dimensional FE model to meet
the strains measured by strain gauges at the same locations on the bridge with the known
test truck (speed and the weight of the truck were known in the field test). The FE model
consists of five K-frame girders with variable cross section based on as built drawings of
the Tucumcari Bridge. Fifty-seven frame elements were used to model each girder of the
bridge with 1m projectile length on longitudinal axis of the bridge along with shell
elements to model the concrete bridge deck slab as shown in Figure 4. Different cars and
trucks with the speed limit of 75 mph as posted on the bridge are used to simulate the
traffic on the bridge. Because of the random traffic passing across the bridge, each
monitored file relates to one of these unknown traffic loading scenarios. A time history
analysis was performed for several random traffic loadings to identify the acceleration at
each node of the calibrated FE model. Figure 4 also shows the selected damaged
locations which was later used to examine the efficiency of the proposed SHM system.
Figure 4. 3D FE model of the bridge with selected damaged locations.
By calibrating the FE model with the data obtained from static field test, the FE model
can be used to correlate the acceleration data from the accelerometers on the bridge
with the accelerations computed from FE model at the same location of
accelerometers. Since each dataset measured from the bridge is from an unknown
traffic loading, we changed the magnitude and the axles of trucks and cars used to
simulate traffic loadings on the FE model to match the field test. The main hurdle to
match acceleration datasets other than the unknown type of loading is the challenge to
model damping characteristics of the real bridge. This issue can result in irregularities
in prediction but trial and error efforts can be performed to estimate a realistic
891
damping ratio in the model such that the predicted signals correlate well with the
measured acceleration signals. Figure 5 illustrates the signals measured from different
accelerometers on the bridge and the ones computed from the calibrated FE model at
the same locations. As shown in these figures, the calibrated FE model is able to
compute acceleration signals similar to that observed from the bridge using distributed
accelerometers.
Figure 5: Acceleration signals measured from the first accelerometer on the bridge
(top signal) in comparison with the signal calculated at the same locations from the FE
model
INDUCTIVE REASONING TO ESTABLISH FUZZY SETS
In this section different states of the Tucumcari Bridge are identified. Most SHM
research defined damage states using statistical methods such as Bayesian updating for
damage accumulation by Shiao [3], support vector classifiers by Jonker et al. [4] and
non-linear system identification by Adams and Farrar [5] and Yu [6] that considered
uncertainty due to randomness in measurements after Ross [7]. Integrated approaches
to address aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties in structural safety and reliability have
been of interest recently to the research community [8-9]. Damage features are
represented using fuzzy set theory. Different damage states in structures are described
by a group of fuzzy sets that are established by principles of inductive reasoning. The
vagueness and uncertainties associated with damage definition and the significant
892
overlap between different damage states in structures makes damage-state description
amenable to fuzzy definitions and fuzzy pattern recognition. Inductive reasoning or
inductive inference is the process of extracting general rules from limited and specific
sets of information as detailed by Feeney and Heit [10]. Inductive reasoning is
considered a cognitive activity that integrates probabilistic and non-probabilistic
uncertainty for approximate reasoning of observations [10]. The damage definition
process is always based on limited and uncertain information. Our method aims at
classifying damage states in the structure by establishing fuzzy sets. Since different
damage states in the structure have significant overlap and vague boundaries, fuzzy
sets are used to describe these damage states. Using fuzzy set theory, the two kinds of
uncertainties (i.e. aleatoric and epistemic) associated with defining damage states in
structures is considered.
Claude Shannon [11] introduced entropy as a measure of disorder in classifying
data in 1948 to describe uncertainty or to quantify the information content in a dataset.
The uncertainty associated with the value of a discrete random variable (  ) can be
measured by the entropy (S) as
S      p  log p 
 Z
where p(  ) is the probability of the occurrence of  . In order to minimize
uncertainty, the entropy S(  ) should be minimized. The value of (  ) corresponding to
the minimum entropy S(  ) is an induced threshold value that will partition the domain
into two classes (Kim and Russell [12]). This entropy can be used as a reasoning basis
to obtain generalized classes for a specific set of limited observations. Fuzzy
categories are formulated based on the premise of an argument regardless of the fact
that such categories are not certain [13].
By choosing the type of membership function (MF) (triangular, bell shape,
Gaussian, etc.), fuzzy sets are established in the damage feature domain. To consider
the fuzziness in the damage detection process, some degree of overlapping between
two adjacent fuzzy sets needs to be achieved. To establish secondary fuzzy sets
accounting for other damage states of the structure, the secondary threshold values are
obtained based on the primary threshold value. For Tucumcari Bridge, one primary
threshold value and two secondary threshold values were identified to establish three
fuzzy sets describing three damage states in the bridge: healthy, medium damage and
severe damage using bell functions to describe the membership functions.
The process of classifying an unknown fuzzy vector/set based on known fuzzy sets
is called fuzzy pattern recognition. Such classification can be developed using the
degree of similarity approach. The degree of damage similarity (DM) between two
fuzzy damage vectors D i and D j is defined as
~ ~
DM  ( Di  D j )  ( Di  D j )
~ ~ ~ ~
where ( D i  D j ) is the inner product of the two fuzzy vectors D i ,

~ ~ ~
D and ( D  D ) is the complement of the outer product of the two vectors. When
j i j
~ ~ ~
the value of DM approaches 1, the two fuzzy vectors are similar and when DM
approaches 0, the two fuzzy vectors are dissimilar.
Using FE model of the bridge, different damaged states were introduced by
reducing the stiffness of damaged elements shown in Figure 4 from 10% to 50%. Then
893
damage features, the energy of acceleration signals ( in the wavelet domain
acquired from the FE model, were calculated and presented in Table 1. The efficiency
of this damage feature and how to calculate this damage feature is shown in [14]. It is
worth noting that the healthy damaged features were obtained from signals acquired
from the accelerometers on the bridge at the location assumed to have damage.
Table 1. Energy of acceleration signal calculated in wavelet domain for healthy and damaged cases.
Events  Healthy  Damaged  Unknown
1 0.026606 0.194609 0.028751
2 0.602788 0.195518 0.05824
3 0.041646 0.19808 0.031468
4 0.074756 0.199828 0.051837
5 0.059328 0.221345 0.024029
6 0.024501 0.276584 0.063529
Using principles of inductive reasoning, the energy of signals presented in Table 1

were used to establish fuzzy sets indicating healthy ( H ), medium damage ( MD ) and
~ ~
severe damage ( SD ) states of the Tucumcari Bridge. Figure 6 illustrates these fuzzy
~
sets along with an unknown fuzzy set A . The unknown fuzzy set is vector of the
~
damage features based on field observed accelerations near the location of virtual
damage on the FE model. This unknown dataset is presented in Table 1.
Figure 6. Fuzzy sets indicating different states of damage in Tucumcari Bridge with
the unknown fuzzy set A
~
From Figure 6 and the degree of similarity between the fuzzy sets, the unknown fuzzy
set has DM = 0.95, 0.33 and 0 with the healthy, medium damage and sever damage
states of the bridge, respectively. This indicates that the bridge has healthy
performance. The degree of similarity shows promising results since the bridge is in
healthy state and the damage identification seems to work appropriately. Further
research on the process is needed to determine the false positives of the system.
CONCLUSIONS
894
An FPGA-based SHM system utilizing a group of accelerometers and strain gauges
and powered by solar cells was designed and installed on an RC bridge in Tucumcari,
New Mexico. Datasets acquired from the SHM system on the bridge and from a
calibrated FE model were used to establish different fuzzy sets describing the bridge
health state. The fuzzy sets describing the bridge health states were constructed using
principles of inductive reasoning. Fuzzy damage pattern recognition shows unknown
datasets similar to the healthy state which confirms the ability of the SHM system to
recognize the state of the bridge. Further research is underway to test the SHM system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors extend their thanks to US Federal Highway Administration for funding
this project. Many thanks to 3B Builders, Mohammad Jalalpour and Aaron Reinhardt
for their help in modeling and field installation of the SHM system in Tucumcari, NM.
REFERENCES
1. Mufti, A. 2004. Sensing Issues in Civil Structural Health Monitoring, Edited by Farhad Ansari,
Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Springer.
2. Wang, M. L., Satpathi, D., and Heo, G. 1997. Damage Detection of a Model Bridge Using
Modal Testing, Structural Health Monitoring, Current Status and Perspectives, Stanford
University, Palo Alto, California, pp. 589–600.
3. Shiao, M. 2005. Risk forecasting and updating for damage accumulation processes with
inspections and maintenance, Proc. of the Structural Health Monitoring Workshop on Structural
Health Monitoring, Stanford, USA, Chang, FK, Ed., pp. 1190-1197.
4. Jonker, P. P., Duin, R. P. W., de Ridder, D., Ligteringen R. and Tax, D. M. J. 1999. Proc. the
First Sino-European Symposium on Quality Control of High-Grade Steel, China, pp. 38-40.
5. Adams, D. E. and Farrar, C. R. 2002. Classifying linear and non-linear structural damage using
frequency domain ARX Models, Smart Systems and Structures, Vol.1, No.2, pp. 185-201.
6. Yu, W. 2005. State-Space Recurrent Fuzzy Neural Networks for Nonlinear System
Identification, Neural Processing Letters, 22(3), 391-404.
7. Ross, T.J. 2004. Fuzzy Logic with Engineering Applications, John Wiley and Sons.
8. Hung, T.-W, Fang, S.-C., and Nuttle, H. L. W . 2003. A two-phase approach to fuzzy system
identification, Journal of Systems Science and Systems Engineering, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 408-
423.
9. Elms, D. G. 2004. Structural safety issues and progress, Progress in Structural Engineering and
Materials, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 116-126.
10. Feeney A. and Heit, E. 2007. Inductive Reasoning: Experimental, Developmental and
Computational Approach, Cambridge University Press, UK.
11. Shannon, C.E. 1948. A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Bell System Technical
Journal, V. 27, pp. 379–423.
12. Kim, C.J. and Russell, B.D. 1991. A learning method for use in intelligent computer relays for
high impedance faults, IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, V. 6(1), pp. 109–115.
13. Applebaum, D. 2003. Probability and Information: An Integrated Approach, Cambridge
University Press, NY, USA.
14. Azarbayejani, M. 2009. Optimal Sensor Placement in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) With
A Field Application On A RC Bridge, PhD Dissertation, University of New Mexico (UNM).
895
MODELING/SIMULATION
897
Verification of Unified Framework for
Plate Structures Using Kirchhoff’s
Plate Theory
A. DIXIT and S. HANAGUD
ABSTRACT
In this paper the Unified Framework which models structures with damages to
obtain their vibration characteristics, is applied to plates. There are two inputs to the
Unified Framework, the damage model and the modes and natural frequencies of the
undamaged structure. The damage model is presented for a damage of arbitrary shape
and size. Examples of damages for four different types of damages are presented, a
point damage, a line damage, a curve shaped damage and a 2 dimensional rectangu-
lar shaped damage. Although, Unified Framework is applicable to any arbitrary set
of boundary conditions of an overall self adjoint system, for plates, only boundary
conditions which have at least two opposite ends simply supported has been solved
in literature.
INTRODUCTION
The ultimate objective of any Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system, is

its ability to predict the remaining life of the structure. Response of the damaged
structure is an essential component to predict the remaining life. Ability to model
the identified damage is required to ascertain the response of the damaged structure.
Currently, most of the times the damage is modeled using finite element software.
Consider a large aircraft in which a small damage is successfully identified in one
of the wings. Initially, the wings of the air craft may be modeled as beams or large
Akash Dixit, PhD Student, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technol-
ogy. wilkn@yahoo.com
Sathya Hanagud, Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technol-
ogy, 270 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332.
899
plate finite elements. However, when damage is ascertained, the size of the finite
elements must be reduced to now be of the order of the size of the damage. It should
also be noted that since damage effects are much smaller as compared to the overall
beam vibrational effects, there fore higher order beams theories (Timoshenko beam
theory) or plate elements would be required to isolate the effects, and not confuse
it with higher order structural effects like rotational kinetic energy or shear. This
would also mean that plate elements be used on the undamaged second wing to avoid
non-symmetrical effects. As the result of the smaller finite elements, the required
computational time and memory, to obtain even simple quantities like mode shapes
and natural frequencies to even low level of accuracies, would increase manifold.
There are some mathematical models [?], [?], which give analytical theory to
model the damage. Such mathematical models are useful in two ways, firstly, they
allow understanding of the physics behind the problem which allow the explanation of
experimental readings. Secondly, they allow prediction of response of the structure.
These studies are very useful in the development of new experimental techniques.
Several mathematical models have been proposed by researchers for Euler Bernoulli
beams [?], some of them have also been extended to Timoshenko beams [5]. These
models used physical approximations like placement of elastic springs, reduction in
the Young’s modulus or placement of an elastic hinge at the location of the damage.
These physical approximations have not been extended to plates till now. The authors
have presented an analytical approach, which models the geometric discontinuity at
the location of the damage, by representing it as the change in depth at the damage
location, under the ‘Unified Framework’ [5]. The framework has been verified for
Euler Bernoulli beams by Dixit and Hanagud in [4] and for Timoshenko beams in
[5]. In this paper this framework is validated for two dimensional plate like struc-
tures, for arbitrary shaped damages for plates supported on different sets of boundary
conditions. Kirchhoff’s plate theory is used for the validation. The analytical model
proposed will allow computation of mode shapes and natural frequencies much faster
than possible by traditional finite element method.
Modeling of damages in plate structures, is mathematically more challenging than
modeling of beams. The first challenge, which is applicable to all the theories which
have been used to model damages in beam structures is, the mathematical representa-
tion of the damage in two dimensions. The second challenge is particularly applica-
ble to the theory presented in this paper. The theory presented in this paper uses the
modes of the undamaged structure to determine the modes and natural frequencies of
the damaged structure. The modes of the undamaged plate structures for some bound-
ary conditions is a challenging problem in itself, this may restrict the applicability of
the theory presented.
UNIFIED THOERY
The general Unified Theory, correct up till nth order applicable to all elastic struc-
tures is presented in an earlier paper [5]. The theory has two inputs, first the modes
and natural frequencies of the corresponding undamaged structure and a suitable dam-
age model for the damage. The salient points relevant to plates along with the damage
model used to arrive at the modes and natural frequencies for damaged plates is pre-
900
sented.
The general eigenvalue problem to determine the mode shapes and natural fre-
quencies of elastic structures like rods, beams, plates and shells is given in [6]
Lϕ(xi ) − λMϕ(xi ) = 0 (1)
where L is the stiffness operator, M is the inertia matrix and λ is the eigenvalue. The
order of L is an even integer, 2p. The equation is valid for conservative distributed
parameter structures, which represent a very large and important class of systems,
namely self-adjoint systems. λ = ω2 where ω is the natural frequency and ϕ is the
eigenfunction or the mode shape. xi the space dimension, (i represents the direction),
it denotes one-dimensional space in case of beams, two-dimensional space in case of
plates and shells and three-dimensional space in case of three-dimensional structures.
The linear and angular displacements corresponding to the space dimension xi are ui
and θi respectively. In case of plates or shells L is a partial differential operator. For
Kirchhoff’s plate theory the variables of Equation (1) are given by [1]
∂ 2 D ∂2 ∂2 D ∂2 ∂2 D ∂2
L = ∇2 D∇2 − (1 − ν)( − 2 + ) ϕ = u3 (x1 , x2 )
∂x22 ∂x12 ∂x1 ∂x2 ∂x1 ∂x2 ∂x12 ∂x22
E(x1 , x2 )h(x1 , x2 )3
D= M = ρ(x1 , x2 )h(x1 , x2 ) (2)
12(1 − ν2 )
In the above equations, h(x1 , x2 ) is the depth of the plate. u3 (x1 , x2 ) is the transverse
displacement. Also, E, I, are the Young’s modulus and area moment of inertia re-
spectively and ρ is the density. All the quantities are functions of space dimension
xi .
The boundary conditions for equation (1) are given by
Bi ϕ(x j ) = 0 i = 1, 2 . . . , p (3)
where Bi is a differential operator of maximum order of 2p − 1. The boundary condi-
tion for an edge parallel to x1 , for clamped, pinned and free end of the plate, according
to Kirchhoff’s plate theory is given by
{ } { }
1 1
Bi = ∂ @x1 = clamped Bi = EI ∂2 @x1 = pinned
∂x1 ∂x12
 
 ∂2 ∂2
+ ν ∂x 
∂x12 2
Bi = EI 2
∂D(1−ν) @x1 = free (4)
 ∂Dν ∂2 ∂D ∂ ∂2 
2
∂x1 ∂x22 + ∂x1 ∂x12 + 2 ∂x2 ∂x1 ∂x2
Damage Model
The damage model presented in this paper models the change in cross-sectional thick-
ness at the damage location. If the damage depth is hd (xi ) then at the damage location
the depth becomes h − hd (xi ), where h is the constant depth at the undamaged loca-
tion. Further a quantity h̄d is defined which gives the average depth of the damage
given by
∫
h̄d = hd (xi )dxi (5)
Ω
901
c r
y
y´
l x´
p
x
Figure 1: Different types of damages on a plate, p-point damage, l-line damage, c-

curve shaped damage and r-a two dimensional rectangular shaped damage. The prime
denotes the axes oriented in damage (damage axes) and x,y denote axes oriented in
the plate along the sides of the plate.
where Ω gives the domain of damage. Therefore, the depth of the structure is given
by
h̄d
h(xi ) = h − h̄d γ(xi ) = h(1 − εγ(xi )) ε = (6)
h
where γ(xi ) is the damage profile function and ε gives ratio of the depth of damage
to the depth at the undamaged location. Four distinct types of damages commonly
occurring are shown in figure 1. The representation for a rectangular cut and a point
damage on the surface are given by
γ(x1 , y1 ) = (H(x1 − x1d ) − H(x1 − x1d − ∆l1 ))(H(y1 − y1d ) − H(y1 − y1d − ∆l2 ))
γ(x1 , y1 ) = ∆l1 ∆l2 δ(x1 − x1d )δ(y1 − y1d ) (7)
∆li gives the width of the damage in the ith direction. Physically the most common
type of damage is a crack. A straight line crack is mathematically represented by a
pair of delta and Heaviside functions.
γ(x1 , y1 ) = ∆l1 δ(x1 − x1d )(H(y1 − y1d ) − H(y1 − y1d − ∆l2 ) (8)
Alternatively a 2-dimensional crack is given by defining it vectorially as
γ(s)n̂ = f1 (s)î + f2 (s) jˆ γ(s)n̂ = sî + ms + c jˆ (9)
where fk (x1 , x2 ), k = 1, 2 are arbitrary functions along the direction of unit vectors î
and jˆ. n̂ is a unit vector along the curve. The second equation is an example for a
straight line crack where m and c are the slope and y-intercept constants associated
with the straight line.
Based on the above explanation, the stiffness and mass operator are written as
r q
L= ∑ ε jL j M= ∑ ε jM j (10)
j=0 j=0
902
Perturbation
The function ϕ(xi ) and λ are expanded using perturbation theory, with the super-
scripts denoting the order of perturbation, [7] as the following series
ϕ(xi ) = ϕ(xi )0 + εϕ(xi )1 + ε2 ϕ(xi )2 + . . . λ = λ0 + ελ1 + ε2 λ2 + . . . (11)
Perturbed equations and their solution

Substituting equations (10) and (11) into the governing differential equation (1), the
zeroth and nth order equations (where n ≥ 1) are given by
ε0 : Lz0 ϕ0 − λ0z Mz0 ϕ0 = 0 (12a)

min(n||q)
ε : Lz0 ϕ
n n
− λ0z Mz0 ϕn = λnz Mz0 ϕ0 + ∑ (λ0z Mz j )ϕn− j +
j=1
n−1 n−1 min(n−i||q) min(n||r)
∑ λiz Mz0 ϕn−i + ∑ ∑ λiz Mz j ϕn−i− j − ∑ Lz j ϕn− j (12b)
i=1 i=1 j=1 j=1
In the above equations, Mz0 , Mz1 , Lz0 , Lz1 and λzi for plates represent
ρλi 12(1 − ν2 ) u3 (x1 , x2 )

Lz0 = ∇2 ∇2 Mz0 = 1 Mz1 = γz (ζ1 ) λiz = 2
ϕi (x1 , x2 ) =
( 2 Eh 2 ) h ( )
∂ M2
2 ∂ M12 ∂ M1
2 2 ∂ ∂ ∂2
L z1 = −2 − M1 = −3γ +ν 2 M12 = −3γ(1 − ν)
∂x12 ∂x1 ∂x2 ∂x22 ∂x22 ∂x1 ∂x2 ∂x1
( 2 )
∂ ∂ 2
M2 = 3γ + ν (13)
∂x12 ∂x22
It should be noted that there are other representations possible, especially for Lz1 ,
however, the above representation was found to be well suited to represent the equa-
tions in weak form as is required for Unified Framework, since the boundary terms
are easily visible and separated. Also, x1 and x2 are retained and are not non dimen-
sionalized for ease of algebraic manipulation.
The characteristics of the above development which will be used in the solution
procedure are
1. Through the process of perturbation and by using the damage model, the homo-
geneous differential equation with variable coefficients is changed to a series
of non-homogeneous differential equations with constant coefficients.
2. The first differential equation of this series is the same as that representing the
eigen value problem for the undamaged case.
3. The rest of the equation in the series of differential equations have the homo-
geneous part same as that of the first equation and therefore same as that for
undamaged case.
4. The unknowns for the nth order equation are the eigen function ϕn in the LHS
of the equation and the eigen value λnz in the RHS of the equation.
903
5. The layout of the nth order equation is given in a form so that the unknowns are
given separately in individual terms, the second term in the RHS involving λ0z
needs to be written separately to be able to write the unknown terms involving
λ0z in the LHS. The third term in RHS involving Mz0 is written separately to be
able to use the orthogonality condition to simplify the final expression.
Magrab [?] gave a procedure to solve equations of vibrations of plates using Kirch-
hoff’s plate theory. The same procedure is followed to solve the zeroth order equa-
tion which is also constitutes the homogeneous part of the higher order equations.
If the plate is simply supported in the x1 direction and clamped in the x2 direction.
ϕ0 (x1 , x2 ) = X(x1 )Y (x2 ). X(x1 ) = sin (γm x1 ), 0 < x1 < Lx , Lx is the length of the
plate in the x1 direction. γm = mπ Lx , Ym (x2 ) = C1m cosh (δm x2 ) + C2m sinh (δm x2 ) +
C3m cos (εm x2 )+C4m sin (εm x2 ). δm = Ω2m +γ2m , ε2m = Ω2m −γ2m , Ω4m = λ0z . Applying the
2
boundary conditions Y (0) = Y ′ (0) = Y (Ly ) = Y ′ (Ly ) = 0, Y (x2 ) = C1m (cosh (δm x2 ) +
C2m δmC2m δmC2m δm sinh (δm )+εm sin (εm )
C1 sinh (δm x2 )−cos (εm x2 )+ εmC1 sin (εm x2 )) where εmC1 = − δm (cosh (δm )−cos (εm )) =
m m m
− εεmm sinh
(cosh (δm )−cos (εm ))
(δm )+δm sin (εm )
The characteristic equation is given by 2εm δm = (ε2m − δ2m ) sinh (δm ) sin (εm ) +
2εm δm cosh (δm ) cos (εm ). A useful representation of the characteristic equation is
(ε2 −δ2 ) sinh (δm )
εm = nπ+(−1)n ζ2m −ζ1m , where sin (ζ1m ) = 2εm δm cosh (δm )
, cos (ζ1m ) = m m R ,
√ R
sin (ζ2m ) = 2εmRδm and R = 4ε2m δ2m cosh2 (δm ) + (ε2m − δ2m )2 sinh2 (δm )
For the nth order equation the unknowns are ϕn and λnz . ϕn = ϕn |complementary
+ϕn | particular . The particular part of the solution is expanded in terms of the modes
of the undamaged structure using expansion theorem ϕnk | particular = ∑∞p=1 ηnkp ϕ0p . This
implies ϕn |complementary = ϕ0 . From the paper [5] the first order correction to natural
frequencies is given by
α1nn − λ0zn β1nn λ0zk β1n j − α1n j

λ1zn = η1n j = (14)
Cn (λ0z j − λ0zn )C j
where
∫ 1 ∫ 1
(ϕ0m )T Mz0 ϕ0n dζi = δmnCm = δmnCn (ϕ0m )T Lz0 ϕ0n dζi = δmn λmCm = δmn λnCn
0 0
(15)
where δmn is the Kronecker delta. Notice the orthogonality condition does not hold
for Mz j and Lz j where j ≥ 1. For those cases the following notations would be used
to represent the equations compactly
∫ 1 ∫ 1
(ϕ0m )T Lz1 ϕ0n dxi = α1mn (ϕ0m )T Mz1 ϕ0n dxi = β1mn (16)
0 0
Notice as detailed in the solution procedure of undamaged plates, in the above equa-
tions m = rs and n = pq where r, s, p, and q are integers. Computation of the energy
equivalent inertia loss due to damage is straight forward, however energy equivalent
904
Table I: Natural frequencies (Hz) of plates pinned at all boundaries, with damage
along x axis. Lx = 1.5m, Ly = 1.0m, E = 71Gpa, ρ = 2700kg/m3 , ν = 0.3, ε = 0.1,
h = 0.01m
Mode(i,j) FEA (U) Anal(U) FEA (D) Anal (D) % Diff (U) % Diff (D)
1,1 35.093 35.210 34.511 35.070 0.33 1.62
1,2 67.453 67.710 66.430 67.430 0.38 1.51
1,3 121.49 121.88 119.66 121.52 0.32 1.55
1,4 197.13 197.71 194.00 197.33 0.29 1.72
2,1 108.11 108.34 106.42 106.88 0.21 0.43
2,2 140.26 140.84 138.08 136.31 0.41 -1.28
2,3 194.03 195.00 191.09 187.63 0.50 -1.81
2,4 269.42 270.84 265.42 261.42 0.53 -1.51
3,1 229.69 230.21 225.50 229.13 0.23 1.60
3,2 261.70 262.72 257.65 258.89 0.39 0.48
stiffness loss due to damage involves representation of equation (16) using Lz1 from
equation (13) and converting it into weak form to give
∫ Lx
i
α1mn = (ϕ0m,x )T 3γϕn,x1 x1 + ν(ϕ0m,x )T 3γϕn,x2 x2 + 2(1 − ν)(ϕ0m,x )T 3γϕn,x1 x2 +
0 1 x1 1 x1 1 x2
∫ 1
(ϕ0m,x x )T 3γϕn,x2 x2 + ν(ϕ0m,x x )T 3γϕn,x1 x1 dxi β1mn = (ϕ0m )T γϕ0n dζi (17)
2 2 2 2 0
Coordinate axes difference effects

∫
From the above equations, the above integrals may be written as γ(x1′ , x2′ ) f (x1 , x2 ).
As given in the section about damage model, the axes in which the damage is defined
and those in which the plate is defined may be different. There are two options for
calculation of energy equivalent inertia and energy equivalent stiffness loss due to
damage, one, change the damage coordinates in which the function γ is defined to
plate coordinates or vice versa. Both will yield the same results since integrals are
independent of the coordinates. The authors are of the opinion changing the plates
coordinates of the function f will yield simpler computations, since the function γ
consists of discontinuous functions like Heaviside functions or delta function. For
curvilinear thin cracks this problem does not happen as long as the curve is defined as
∫
in equations (9). The integral can then be computed using ssi f f (x1 (s), x2 (s)) | dγ
ds | ds,
si and s f are the start and end points on the damage curve.
RESULTS
Analytical (Anal) and Finite Element (FEA) results using Kirchhoff’s plate theory
in Table I. Lx = 1.5m, Ly = 1.5m, E = 71Gpa, ρ = 2700kg/m3 , ν = 0.3, ε = 0.1,
h = 0.01m. The damage is along x axis, located at 0.25m either side of the center
of plate. The plate was pinned at all boundaries. Two layers of 3 − D tetrahedral
elements were used with in plane size about 0.02m and transverse size 0.005 to keep
the aspect ratio below 1 : 4. For the damaged plate, the depth of damage was kept
905
to be 0.001m so that ε = 0.1. Boundary along the damage was meshed at 0.004m in
plane, to again keep the aspect ratio below 1 : 4. The damage had to be given a breath
too (along y axis). This was kept to be minimum 0.002m.
Conclusions
The results given in the table I show that the frequency values predicted by the
theory are within an accuracy of 2% for the damaged case. The theory shows potential
to be able model arbitrary shaped damages on plates. The theory presented gives an
analytical model to model arbitrary shaped damages. The veracity of the ‘Unified
Theory’ is shown for Kirchhoff’s plate theory.
Acknowlegements
The contribution of Professor Dewey H. Hodges, who suggested for the first time
the possibility of using a transformation matrix to do transformation of coordinates
from axes in which the damage is defined to the one in which the plate is defined is
gratefully acknowledged. The authors would like to thank Georgia Tech Research
Corporation (GTRC) for filing for a patent based on “Unified Framework”.
REFERENCES
[1] O.A. Bauchau and J.I. Craig. Structural Analysis With Applications to Aerospace Struc-
tures. Springer, New York, 2009.
[2] A. Dixit and S. Hanagud. Comparison of Strain Energy Based Damage Measure For
Timoshenko and Euler Bernoulli Beams With Notch Like Damages. In Proceedings of
the International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring 2009, 2009.
[3] A. Dixit and S. Hanagud. Comments on: ‘Curvature Mode Shape-based Damage Assess-
ment of Carbon/Epoxy Composite Beams’. Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and
Structures, 21(6):659–663, 2010.
[4] A. Dixit and S. Hanagud. Single beam analysis of damaged beams verified using a strain
energy based damage measure. International Journal of Solid and Structures, 48:592–
602, 2011.
[5] A. Dixit and D. H. Hodges. General Solution For Unified Framework for Dam-
aged Elastic Elements: Example Timoshenko Beams. In Proceedings of the AIAA In-
fotech@Aerospace 2010, 2010.
[6] L. Meirovitch. Principles And Techniques Of Vibrations. Prentice-Hall International,

New Jersey, 1997.
[7] A.H. Nayfeh. Problems in Perturbation, pages 1–2. Wiley, New York, 1985.
[8] S. A. Sadrnejad, A. S. Daryan, and M. Ziaei. Vibration equations of thick rectangular

plates using mindlin plate theory. Journal of Computer Science, 5(11):838–842, 2009.
906
Finite Element Simulation of Compensation
for Temperature Influence on Lamb
Wave Propagation
Q. WENZHONG and D. J. INMAN
ABSTRACT
Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an emerging research area with multiple

applications. Among SHM techniques, Lamb waves are ultrasonic elastic waves that
travel inside and along thin plates and is frequently used as diagnostic tools to detect
damage in plate-like structures. It has been observed that the use of a single baseline
measurement suffers in the medium to long-term due to the variation of environmental
conditions. A key parameter in the instability is the change in the temperature of the
test structure. In this paper, a transient dynamic finite element simulation of Lamb
wave for damage detection in a stiffened plate under different temperature condition is
carried out on the commercial finite element code ANSYS platform Simulations are
conducted over a temperature range of 25-75°C using 275 kHz as excitation
frequencies. The changes in temperature-dependent material properties are used to
measure the differences in the response signal’s waveform. The baseline selection
method and baseline signal stretch method are used to compensate the temperature
influence on Lamb wave propagation for three different damages. The results of the
numerical simulation demonstrate the effectiveness of the temperature compensation
approach and the simulated damage on the stiffened plate can be defected effectively
under elevated temperatures environment.
INTRODUCTION
Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an emerging technology that can be used to

identify, locate, and quantify damage in a structural member or system before failure
occurs [1]. A promising damage detection method is the active system based on the
propagation of Lamb waves [2]. Active SHM systems using interrogative Lamb waves
are able to cover large areas from a single location making such systems cost effective
and efficient. In recent years, a significant amount of research on the modeling and
analysis has been carried out to further understand the properties of Lamb waves
_____________
W.Z. QU, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, P. R. China,
qwz0803@yahoo.com.cn
D. J. Inman, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,
dinman@vt.edu
907
excited by piezoelectric transducers[3]. These essentially involve exciting the structure
with high frequency guided-waves and processing the difference in structural response
with respect to a baseline signal for the pristine condition to detect damage and
characterize it, if present.
While guided-waves SHM has shown a good deal of promise in various laboratory
demonstrations, several issues remain to be resolved before they can be used in wide
field for the structures. There are some difficulties in distinguishing between minor
differences in the actuation signal/reflections from structural features (e.g., caused by
small temperature changes) and reflections caused by structural damage, and,
compensation for environmental conditions is crucial.
There have been some efforts to address the issue of varying temperature for
guided-wave SHM in the literature. Lu [4], RAGHAVAN [5], Anthony [6], Croxford
[7], and Konstantinidis et al [8, 9] examined GW SHM under thermal variations. They
addressed modeling the varying wave propagation in the temperature range due to
changing substrate elastic modulus and thermal expansion, and good agreement with
experiments in this temperature range was observed. They also suggested using
optimal baseline selection (OBS) and baseline signal stretch (BSS) methods to
compensate temperature influence on the wave propagation for various temperatures.
In this study, we simulate the temperature effect on the wave propagation in the
stiffened plate and compensate elevated temperature influence using baseline selection
and baseline stretch method in the time domain to obtain baseline set signal gap and
baseline stretch temperature limit.
INFLUENCE OF TEMPERATURE AND COMPENSATION METHODS
A kind of active guided wave monitoring is based on the algebraic difference

between the current signal and a baseline signal recorded when the structure was
undamaged. The signal remaining after the subtraction of a baseline signal is referred
to as a residual signal. In the best case, this subtraction allows the wave signals due to
direct transmission and scattering from benign structural features to be eliminated and
any remaining wave signals in the residual signal to be attributed to scattering from
damage. The implication is that even complex structures can potentially be monitored.
However, in the presence of changing temperature, the effectiveness of the
subtraction process is reduced and the residual signal contains noise due to small shifts
in the arrival times of wave packets. Elevated temperature can affect the transducers
and their bonding, but this effect can be minimized via the choice of transducer types,
materials and manufacturer. Even for small temperature variations of a few degrees,
the effect of temperature on wave propagation within the structure is unavoidable.
Temperature change lead to changes in the geometrical and physical properties of the
structure causing significant changes in the measured wave signals. The propagation
velocity decreases to a pronounced degree, reflected by the increased time used to
travel the same distance, so the wave shape is different for different temperature even
if without damage on the structure. The cause of these time-shifts is both thermal
expansion and changes in wave velocities with temperature. But change in wave
velocities with temperature is several orders high than structural thermal expansion.
The effects of temperature changes on ultrasonic waves are considered in [4-8]; it is
shown that the primary effect of a temperature change is to stretch or compress the
signal, and a secondary effect is to distort the shape.
908
So the influence of temperature may not be ignored if the damage to be detected is
small, where change of the signal by the damage may be overwhelmed by influences
associated with changes in ambient temperature. Simply subtracting a monitored
signal from a previously recorded baseline cannot be an effective tool for monitoring
structural changes under realistic operational conditions. To increase the accuracy of
damage identification in an environment with temperature variation, the following two
compensation measures can be employed.
(1) Baseline selection
Baseline selection method uses some baseline signals recorded at different
temperatures referred to as the baseline dataset. The goal of baseline selection is to
identify a single waveform in the baseline set whose temperature is closest to that of
the monitored signal. The presumption is that the baseline waveform whose shape
most closely matches that of the monitored signal is the one whose temperature is also
the closest match. In the following simulation, 51 baseline signals were obtained from
25℃ to 75℃ when the plate is in health. The mean squared error criterion is used to
compare the baseline signals and current signal, and select an optimal baseline.
(2) Baseline signal stretch
Temperature changes cause variation of wave velocity and volumetric expansion of
the structure, leading to a time delay in the arrival of wave propagation.
The temperature-dependent time-shift δt of waves is described by the fundamental
relationship [7] as:
d k ph
δt = (α − )δT (1)
v ph v ph
Where d is the propagation distance, v ph the phase velocity, α the coefficient of
thermal expansion, and k ph the change in phase velocity with temperature. In practice,
the thermal expansion term, α , is typically one-to-two orders of magnitude smaller
than the k ph / v ph term.
This time delay is proportional to the propagation distance, meaning that later parts
of the signal will be more affected than earlier parts; this leads to an effect similar to a
stretch of the signals in time. The time delay is accompanied by a phase shift in the
frequency domain that is also similar to a stretch of the frequency content of the signal;
the aim of all stretch methods is therefore to eliminate the difference between two
signals taken at different temperatures by synthetically stretching or compressing one
of the signals in the time or frequency domain until the best match between the two
signals is found. Hence, in theory, only one baseline would be needed, because current
signals would be stretched or compressed until they matched this universal baseline.
But 5℃ between baseline and current signal maybe the up limit for baseline signal
stretch compensation method.
Several related methods for correcting this time delay have been presented in the
literature based on time domain stretching of either the baseline signal or the current
signal, estimation of delay as a function of time through local coherence and use of
these values as factors for subsequent time-domain stretch, or simple frequency
domain stretch. In the following simulation the temperature compensation correction
was made in the time-domain by stretching the time axis using interpolating and time-
shift for baseline signal.
909
FEM SIMULATION MODEL
To assess the effects of temperature change for guided wave SHM, FEM
simulations are presented. Consider a 2-D aluminum stiffened plate structure (500×1
mm2), modeled using a finite element mesh of 2-D plane strain elements based on
ANSYS platform as shown in Fig. 1.
Fig.1 stiffened plate model
There are surface-bonded piezoelectric actuators (10mm) on each free surface at the
center of the plate. The piezo-actuators are modeled as causing shear traction along
their free edges. The actuators are excited symmetrically with a 2.5-cycle Hanning-
windowed sinusoidal tone burst with center frequency of 275 kHz to get the S0
response. The surface axial strain wave at a distance of 50mm from the right end of
the plate from the FEM analysis is done in a pitch-catch configuration on the plate.
In the simulation model, a stiffener and a notch are present. The stiffener as a
structural feature is 2mm*2mm, at a distance of 350mm from the left end of the plate.
The notch as a damage is 0.5 mm deep and 0.25 mm across (2 elements in the FEA
model), at a distance of 100mm from the right end of the plate, and is simulated by
reduction of Young’s modulus and density for three different extent (mild damage:
reduction 10%; medium damage: reduction 30%; large damage: reduction 99%, as a
crack).
A uniform mesh of 2-D 4-noded plane strain elements was used and the elements
were small enough. The mesh density (and 0.25×0.25 mm2) and the time step (1E-6/6
second) were chosen to be sufficiently small to resolve the smallest wavelength and
capture the highest frequency response, respectively.
Temperature effects are only considered by aluminum plate material properties
changed with temperature (not considering PZT and bonding). The temperature
dependent properties of the Young’s modulus (E) of aluminum are shown in Fig. 2.
These properties are taken from MIL-HDBK-5 [10] and [11].Sensor signals were
simulated at 51 different temperatures from 25°C to 75 °C.
We get 51 baseline data for undamaged structure on different temperature (25 to

75°C), 2 signals for mild damage on 25°C and 60°C, 2 signals for large damage on
30°C and 50°C, and 7 signals for medium damage on 25, 26, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70°C.
Due to the stiffener on the plate, S0 excitation produces S0 and A0 response as Fig.3.
According to experimental results in the literature[12], the amplitude level of the
residual signal (baseline subtraction from current signal) should be above the -40 dB
910
relative to the amplitude of the first arrival S0 in a pitch-catch configuration, thus can
detect the damage effectively.
70
x 10
-7 25oC No damage & 25oC mild damage S0 mode and BC. Reflection
1
25 oC No damage
axis strain
69.5 0.5
0 25 oC mild damage
69 -0.5
Young,s Modulus (GPa)
-1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
68.5 time (second) -5
x 10
x 10
-10 difference between 25oC No damage and 25oC mild damage
68 1.5
axis strain
1
67.5
0.5
67
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
time (second) -5
66.5 x 10
difference between 25oC No damage and 25oC mild damage in dB
axis strain (dB)

0
66
-50
-100
65.5
-150
65 -200
20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
time (second) -5
x 10
Temperature (oC)
Fig.2 the temperature dependent properties of Fig.3 25°C undamaged and mild damage, the
the Young’s modulus (E) of aluminum residual signal is -48.23dB
For mild damage, even no temperature variation, the residual signal is about -
48dB (relative to the first arrival S0 wave), as Fig.3 (25 °C). So the given mild
damage can not be detected for this plate simulation model.
When temperature variation is 50 °C, the difference between two baseline signal
(25°C and 75°C) is about -6.9 dB (relative to the first arrival S0 of 25°C signal), as
Fig.4. For large damage, as Fig.5 (30°C), the residual signal is -6.1dB. The influence
of temperature variation is less than the damaged signal’s, and no temperature
compensation is needed. So the large damage can be easily detected for this plate
model even for large temperature variation.
x 10
-7 25oC & 75oC first arrive S0 mode signal and BC. Reflection without damage x 10
-7 30oC No damage & 30oC large damage S0 signal and BC. Reflection
1 1
30 oC without damage
axis strain
axis strain
25 oC
30 oC large damage
0
75 oC 0
-1 -1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
-5
time (second) x 10 time (second) x 10
-5
x 10
-8 difference between 25oC and 75oC signal without damage x 10
-8 difference between 30oC No damage and 30oC large damage
2 2
axis strain
axis strain
1 1
0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
time (second) x 10
-5
time (second) x 10
-5
o o
difference between 25 C and 75 C signal without damage in dB difference between 30oC No damage and 30oC large damage in dB
axis strain (dB)
axis strain (dB)
0 0
-100 -100
-200 -200
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
-5
-5
Fig.4 25°C and 75°C baseline signal Fig.5 30°C undamaged and large damage
signal, the difference is -6.11dB
When temperature gap is 1°C, the two baseline difference is about -40.82dB, as
Fig.6, is less than the -40 dB target value. So no special temperature compensation
method is needed for 1°C gap for this ideal simulation model. The experimental result
in the literature is 0.1°C temperature change induces -38dB error, this is practical
situation due to noise and shows that the simulation is an ideal one.
When temperature gap is 2°C, the two baseline difference is about -34.3dB, as Fig.7
(40°C vs. 42°C) , is above the -40 dB target value. So temperature compensation is
needed for 2°C gap.
911
x 10
-7 25oC & 26oC S0 signal and BC. Reflection without damage x 10
-7 40oC & 42oC S0 signal and BC. Reflection without damage
1 1
axis strain
axis strain
25 oC 40oC
0 26 oC 0 42oC
-1 -1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
-5 -5
x 10
-10 difference between 25oC and 26oC signal without damage x 10
-9 difference between 40oC and 42oC signal without damage
4 1
axis strain
axis strain
2 0.5
0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
time (second) x 10
-5
time (second) -5
x 10
difference between 25oC and 26oC signal without damage in dB difference between 40oC and 42oC signal without damage in dB
axis strain (dB)
axis strain (dB)

0 0
-100 -100
-200 -200
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
-5 -5
Fig. 6 undamaged 25°C vs. 26°C, the Fig. 7 undamaged 40°C vs. 42°C, the
worst error is -40.82dB worst error is -34.34dB
Using baseline signal stretch (BSS) method when temperature gap is 2°C for 25°C
baseline signal vs. 27°C current signal, the error is -40.76dB, as Fig.8, is less than the -
40 dB target value. The BSS result shows when temperature gap is 2°C, the baseline
stretch method can compensate the temperature influence.
x 10
-7 25oC baeline stretch and 27oC signal without damage x 10
-7 25oC and 45oC signal without damage after stretch
1 1
axis strain
axis strain
25 oC baeline stretch 25 oC after stretch

0 27 oC signal No damage 0 45 oC
-1 -1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
-5 -5
x 10
-10 difference between 25oC baeline stretch and 27oC signal without damage x 10
-9 difference between 25oC and 45oC signal without damage after stretch
4 1.5
axis strain
axis strain
1
2
0.5
0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
time (second) x 10
-5
time (second) x 10
-5
difference between 25oC baeline stretch and 27oC signal without damage in dB difference between 25oC and 45oC signal after stretch without damage in dB
axis strain (dB)
axis strain (dB)
0 0
-100 -100
-200 -200
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
-5 -5
Fig. 8 25°C baseline stretch vs. 27°C current Fig. 9 25°C baseline stretch vs. 45°C current
signal signal, the worst error is -30.89dB
Usually considering, the maximum temperature gap between baseline and current is
5°C using baseline stretch method to compensate the temperature influence. Using
baseline signal stretch method for the 25°C baseline signal vs. 45°C current signal (the
temperature gap is 20°C), the error is -30.89dB, as Fig.9, is above the -40 dB target
value. So, we chose the 2°C temperature gap signal as the baseline stretching signal.
A set of undamaged waveforms with temperatures ranging from 25 °C to 75 °C (1
°C increment, 51 waveforms total) is chosen as the baseline set. Two waveforms
recorded at 40 °C and 60 °C are taken to be the current monitored signals. The mean
squared error (MSE), which is a measure of how closely the shapes of the two
waveforms match, is the criterion for baseline selection. MSE between the two current
signals and the baseline set are calculated. The baseline waveform corresponding to
the minimum error is selected as the best match to the current monitored signal.
Fig. 10 shows the results of comparing two current damaged waveforms (40°C and
60°C) to the baseline set. Also, MSE achieves its minimum value for the baseline
waveform whose temperatures is same as the current signal, although the minimum
value does not drop to zero. These examples indicate that baseline selection method
can be used to select a baseline signal to match the current signal.
We now consider the current signal with medium damaged. As Fig.11, at the same
temperature the largest error between baseline and current damaged signal is about -
37.8dB. It is above the -40 dB target value, but this is no temperature influence on the
current signal.
912
-15
x 10
x 10
-7 30oC S0 signal and BC. Reflection with/without damage
1
40 oC with damage
axis strain
30oC without damage
60 oC with damage
2.5 0 30oC with damage
-1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
-5
2 time (second) x 10
x 10
-10 30oC signal difference between without damage and with damage
6
axis strain
MSE
1.5 4
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1
time (second) x 10
-5
30oC signal difference between without damage and with damage in dB
axis strain (dB)

0
0.5
-100
0 -200
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 -5
time (second) x 10
Baseline Temperature (oC)
Fig.10 Mean squared error between the Fig. 11 30°C baseline and damaged current
baseline set and damaged current signals signal, the worst error is -37.76dB
Considering 1°C gap (39°C baseline vs. 40°C current damaged signal), the largest
error between baseline and current damaged signal is -36.86dB. It is above the -40 dB
target value, no special temperature compensation method is needed for 1°C for this
simple plate structure and under simulation condition.
Considering 2°C gap (38°C baseline vs. 40°C current damaged signal), as Fig.12,
the largest error (direct subtraction) between baseline and current damaged signal is -
32.28dB. It is above the -40 dB target value, and this includes temperature influence
on the current signal. In Fig.13, the largest error between 38°C baseline stretch and
40°C current damaged signal is -37.73dB, this is only difference by damage. It is
above the -40 dB target value, and shows baseline stretch method can compensate
temperature influence on the current signal.
x 10
-7 38oC baseline and 40oC signal with damage x 10
-7 38oC baseline stretch and 40oC signal with damage
1 1
axis strain
axis strain
38oC without damage 38 oC baeline signal after stretch

o o
0 40 C with damage 0 40 C signal with damage
-1 -1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
-5 -5
x 10
-9 difference between 38oC baseline and 40oC signal with damage x 10
-10 difference between 38oC baseline stretch and 40oC signal with damage
1 6
axis strain
axis strain
4
0.5
2
0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
time (second) -5
x 10 time (second) x 10
-5
difference between 38oC baseline and 40oC signal with damage in dB difference between 38oC baseline stretch and 40oC signal with damage in dB
axis strain (dB)
axis strain (dB)
0 0
-100 -100
-200 -200
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
-5 -5
Fig.12 2°C gap 38°C baseline vs. 40°C current Fig.13 38°C baseline stretch vs. 40°C current
damaged signal, the worst error is -32.28dB damaged signal, the worst error is -37.73dB
CONCLUSION
In this research, we carried out finite element simulations of Lamb wave with
piezoelectric transducers for damage detection in a stiffened plate under different
temperature condition. The baseline selection method and baseline signal stretch
method are used to compensate the temperature influence on Lamb wave propagation.
Three extent damages have different influence under evaluated temperature. The
results of the numerical simulation show that 1°C gap baseline signal is needed, no
more than 2°C for simple structure. Baseline signal stretch method can compensate the
temperature influence, but 5°C gap may be the limit for the simple wave shape.
913
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The first author gratefully acknowledges the National Science Foundation of China
under contract number 51078293 and China Scholarship Council fund.
REFERENCES
1. Sohn, H., Farrar, C., Hemez, F., Shunk, et al. A Review of Structural Health Monitoring Literature:
1996-2001. Los Alamos National Laboratory Report No. LA-13976-MS, 2003
2. Giurgiutiu V. Tuned Lamb wave excitation and detection with piezoelectric wafer active sensors for
structural health monitoring. J. Intelligent Material Systems Structure. 2005, 16: 291–306
3. Z. Su and L. Ye. Identification of Damage Using Lamb Waves. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg,
2009
4. Yinghui Lu, Jennifer E. Michaels. A methodology for structural health monitoring with diffuse
ultrasonic waves in the presence of temperature variations. Ultrasonics, 2005, 43: 717-731
5. AJAY RAGHAVAN AND CARLOS E. S. CESNIK. Effects of Elevated Temperature on Guided-
wave Structural Health Monitoring. JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT MATERIAL SYSTEMS AND
STRUCTURES, 2008, 19: 1383-1398
6. Anthony J. Croxford, Jochen Moll, Paul D. Wilcox, et al. Efficient temperature compensation
strategies for guided wave structural health monitoring. Ultrasonics , 2010, 50:517–528
7. A.J. Croxford, P.D. Wilcox, B. Drinkwater, et al. Strategies for guided-wave structural health
monitoring, Proceedings of the Royal Society 463, 2007, 2087: 2961-2981.
8. Georgios Konstantinidis, Paul D. Wilcox, and Bruce W. Drinkwater. An Investigation Into the
Temperature Stability of a Guided Wave Structural Health Monitoring System Using Permanently
Attached Sensors. IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, 2007, 7(5): 905-912
9. G. Konstantinidis, B. W. Drinkwater, and P. D. Wilcox. The temperature stability of guided wave
structural health monitoring systems. Smart Materials and Structures, 2006, 15: 967-976
10. Department of Defense. Metallic materials and elements for aerospace vehicle structures, MIL-
HDBK-5J, Washington, D.C., 2003
11. S. Ha. Modeling Lamb Wave Propagation Induced by Adhesively Bonded PZTs on Thin Plates.
Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 2009
12. T. Clarke, F. Simonetti, P. Cawley. Guided wave health monitoring of complex structures by sparse
array systems: Influence of temperature changes on performance. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 2010,
329: 2306–2322
914
Experimental Validation of Algorithms
for Wave Propagation Modeling in 2D
and 3D Structures Based on the Spectral
Element Method
W. OSTACHOWICZ1,2, P. KUDELA1 and M. RADZIEŃSKI1
ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is an experimental validation of developed 2D and 3D

spectral elements applied for Lamb wave modeling in thin–walled isotropic and
orthotropic structures. Lamb waves are generated in a plate specimen by using a
piezoelectric actuator. Experimental measurements are carried out using 3D laser
vibrometry. Very good agreement between numerical results and experimental
measurements are observed both in terms of signals as well as in the wave field
pattern. Due to the fact that both numerical calculations and laser vibrometry
measurements provide information about the entire wave field. New damage index is
proposed based on energy of propagating waves.
INTRODUCTION
In spite of many algorithms for wave propagation modeling available in the

literature only few are able to capture this phenomenon accurately. Short duration
excitation signal with high frequency components (recommended for SHM purposes)
causes that projection of propagating elastic waves require very dense mesh. Hence,
simulation of wave propagation and wave interaction with damage is computationally
intensive. In order to overcome these problems the time domain Spectral Element
Method (SEM) has been developed and improved over last five years [1–3].
Nowadays, the method is considered among researchers as a helpful tool for SHM
system design.
_____________
1
Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Fluid Flow Machinery, Fiszera 14, 80-952 Gdansk,
Poland
2
Gdynia Maritime University, Faculty of Navigation, Al. Jana Pawla II 3, 81-345 Gdynia,
Poland
915
SEM is computational technique which is blending of spectral methods and finite
element methods. SEM utilizes properties of approximation polynomials used in
spectral methods and the technique of domain discretization characteristic for finite
element methods. As a consequence very fast (spectral) convergence of solution is
obtained without any limitation coming from the geometry of the domain of analysis.
The aim of this paper is experimental validation of developed 2D and 3D spectral
elements applied for Lamb waves modeling in thin–walled isotropic and orthotropic
structures. Lamb waves are generated in a plate specimen by using piezoelectric
actuator. Experimental measurements are carried out using 3D scanning laser Doppler
vibrometer. Laser vibrometer is a non–contact tool. It uses red laser light to measure
the velocity field of vibrating surface. Three scanning laser heads give the possibility
to measure full 3D field of the scanned area. The accuracy of measurements is enough
not only for vibration but also for Lamb wave analysis [4, 5]. Because of this it
outperforms most of the traditional vibration measurement techniques. Laser
vibrometer allows to register elastic wave field in elements of a structure instead of
single point measurements acquired by e.g. piezoelectric sensor. In this way new
possibilities for Structural Health Monitoring arise. One of the techniques based on
energy of propagating waves is proposed in this paper.
Visualisation of propagating waves is very useful for development of damage
localization techniques. Accurate numerical models visualizing interaction of elastic
waves with damage could be used as a starting point for designing SHM system.
NUMERICAL MODELS
Two types of models were developed and analyzed based on the time domain
spectral element method: 2D and 3D. In the case of 2D models 36–node shell element
was developed based on Mindlin’s first order shear deformation theory. In the case of
3D models brick spectral elements were applied with node number 6  6  3 in
directions x, y, z , respectively where z means direction along normal to the surface. It
is at the same time polarization direction. The shell element has 5 degrees of freedom
per node, i.e. three translations and two independent rotations. The 3D brick element
has three translational degrees of freedom per node. In the current approach 3 nodes
are assumed along the thickness of a brick element. Hence the displacement field used
for approximation of Lamb waves can be expressed as follows:
 u ( x , y , z )  u ( x , y )  u ( x, y )  z  u ( x , y )  z 2
 0 1 2

 v( x, y, z )  v0 ( x, y )  v1 ( x, y )  z  v2 ( x, y )  z
2
(1)

 w( x, y, z )  w0 ( x, y )  w1 ( x, y )  z  w2 ( x, y )  z
2

where the terms in boxes correspond to symmetric modes and the rest of terms
correspond to antisymmetric modes. It is clear that such displacement field gives 9–
mode theory but approximation is out of balance giving better approximation of
symmetric modes than antisymmetric. On the other hand displacement field for
Mindlin’s theory of shells is:
916
u ( x, y, z )  u0 ( x, y )   x ( x, y )  z


 v( x, y, z )  v0 ( x, y )   y ( x, y )  z (2)

 w( x, y, z )  w0 ( x, y )
It means that this is 5–mode theory of shells with better approximation of
antisymmetric modes. It should be noted that in both models zero traction conditions:
 zz  x, y, z    yz  x, y, z    zx  x, y, z   0 (3)
are not taken into account. Representing the zero traction conditions on the lateral
boundaries of the shell/brick element allows one to enrich the displacement fields with
some additional higher order terms.
More degrees of freedom mean more wave modes. In practice most important is
approximation of fundamental modes of Lamb waves. However, additional terms in
displacement field not only add possibility of modeling more wave modes but can
also improve accuracy of approximation of fundamental wave modes. On the other
hand calculation cost rises enormously with each additional degree of freedom. For
this reason it is worthy to consider higher order theory of shells instead of brick
elements in application for Lamb wave modeling [6]. It should be also added that
using the brick elements for modeling thin shell–like structures leads to over–stiffened
solution.
ISOTROPIC SHELL
Physical model of a shell manufactured of aluminium alloy under numerical and

experimental investigation is shown in Fig. 1. The thickness of the shell is 1 mm.
For numerical calculation the following material properties have been assumed:
Young modulus 68 GPa, Poisson ratio 0.33, mass density 2660 kg/m3.
Figure 1. The geometry of specimen under investigation showing piezoelectric transducer placement
and arrangement of measurement points as well as artificial damage in the form of a 1.64 g coin bonded
to the surface of the specimen.
917
The mesh of spectral elements reflecting the geometry of the specimen including
circular piezoelectric actuator of 10 mm diameter consists of 10420 elements for 2D
case (shell elements) and 12 elements more for 3D case (brick elements). Those
additional 12 elements have been used for modeling piezoelectric transducer taking
into account electromechanical coupling. In the case of shell elements equivalent
piezoelectric forces were applied (in–plane forces and bending moments at boundaries
of PZT).
Comparison of numerical results for models described in the previous section is
given in Fig. 2. Signals shown are for the case of specimen without coin and for
sinusoidal excitation of carrier frequency 35 kHz modulated by Hanning window (5
cycles). It can be observed that signals are identical in terms of shape but 3D model
leads to transverse waves (A0 mode) propagating slightly faster.
Figure 2. Comparison of signal responses (velocities in direction perpendicular to the shell) at points S5
and S6 for the case of the plate modeled using 3D spectral elements and shell spectral elements.
Experimental measurements were performed using Polytec 3D laser vibrometer.

Measurements of velocities on the surface of specimen were taken in grid of 225 by
227 points only on the quarter of specimen (see shaded region in Fig. 1). The size of
the mesh was suited for visualization of propagating waves. Additionally signals were
registered in points of coordinates: S1 (0, 0), S2(0.106, 0), S3(0.303, 0), S4(0.106,
0.106), S5(0.303, 0.106) and S6 (0.303, 0.303) as shown in Fig. 1. The acquisition
time was 1 ms and was synchronized with excitation. Hundred (100) measurements
have been taken at each point and averaged.
Selected experimental and numerical signals (2D case) are shown in Fig. 3. Only
out of plane component of velocities were used in this comparison. It is clear that the
first dominating incoming wave packet (A0 mode) is perfectly predicted by the
numerical model. The next are reflections of A0 mode from edges of the specimen. In
this case wave packets calculated numerically are shifted in phase in comparison to
918
experimental measurements. It is possible caused by the specimen imperfections and
boundary conditions different than assumed free boundary conditions on all edges.
Figure 3. Comparison of signal responses (velocities in direction perpendicular to the specimen) at

points S2 and S3 for the case of numerical calculations carried out using shell spectral elements and
experimental measurement by using laser scanning vibrometry.
TABLE 1. PROPERTIES OF COMPOSITE SPECIMEN

Property Epoxy Glass fibres
Young modulus [GPa] 3.43 66.5
Poisson ratio 0.35 0.23
Density [kg/m3] 1250 2250
Wave packets for very low amplitude (S0 mode) are also presented in
experimental signals but are not presented in numerical signals. This is consistent with
assumed displacement field of shell elements.
COMPOSITE SHELL
Studies of wave propagation phenomenon in composite specimen have been

investigated in order to validate models in terms of entire wave field approximation.
The specimen in the form of square shell of side dimension 439.5 mm and total
thickness 2.8 mm were used.
The properties of composite laminate assumed for calculation are given in Tab. 1.
The stacking sequence is [0/90/0/90] with volume fraction of reinforcing fibers was
30%. Again, excitation signal of carrier frequency 35 kHz were used but with
modulation giving 3 cycles. The excitation was applied to the piezoelectric transducer
located at the centre of the laminate. The comparison results of laser scanning
vibrometry and numerical simulation are presented in Fig. 4. It can be pointed that
very good agreement is observed. However, experimental signals are more dispersive
919
than numerical. Further investigations performed with 3D model reveals that this is
related to the problem of a bonding layer modeling (not shown here). An adhesive
layer between a piezoelectric transducer and host structure changes the shape of
excited wave packet and this effect also depends on excitation frequency.
Moreover, experimental measurements reveal that in spite of circular PZT disc
used for excitation, resulting wave field is weaker (in terms of wave amplitude) in
certain direction (see Fig. 4 at angle towards lower left corner). This direction changes
as PZT is bonded at different angle so it could be related to electrodes wrapped to the
upper face of PZT disc. Such problem could be easily addressed during modeling but
more research is needed in the field of electromechanical coupling in order to find its
physical explanation.
Experiment – laser scanning vibrometry Simulation – spectral element method
t=0.125 ms t=0.125 ms
t=0.250 ms t=0.250 ms
t=0.375 ms t=0.375 ms
Figure. 4. Comparison of experimental and numerical visualizations of propagating elastic waves
920
DAMAGE LOCALISATION
Visualisation of propagating waves in the entire structure performed based on

laser vibrometry measurements indicates that numerical simulations are valid and
accurate. Hence, developed models could be applied in model–based damage
identification algorithm as a component of inverse method. However, such approach
is very limited by the calculation power of present computers. On the other hand
visualization of interaction of Lamb waves with damage could be directly utilized for
damage identification. Exemplary frames of wave interaction with a coin bonded to
the surface of the plate (recall Fig. 1) are shown in Fig. 5. The coin has diameter 15.5
mm, thickness 1.4 mm and mass 1.64g. The centre of the coin is placed at location of
coordinates (0.2058 m, 0.3616 m). The location of the coin could be easily identified
by analysis of the frames of propagating waves (Fig. 5). Excited A0 mode of Lamb
wave reflects from boundaries of the coin. Next waves reflected from edges of
specimen one more time reach boundaries of the coin and reflects.
The knowledge about the entire wave field in comparison to signals acquired by
the PZT transducers open new possibilities. Conversion from the animation of
propagating elastic waves to useful damage influence map is formulated through
various damage indexes. Most popular damage index is obtained by application of
RMS (Root Mean Square) value directly to the signals at each mesh point on the
scanned area [7]. In order to obtain more contrast between region where anomalies of
propagating waves occur (possible damage) and the rest of scanned area a modified
damage index is proposed which could be calculated as follows:
1 n

2 2
I abcd  ( S a (ti )  S d (ti ))  k    ( S b (ti )  S c (ti ))  k   (4)
n i 1
where upper scripts a, b, c, d denotes corner nodes of a rectangular patch of the mesh
in which signals S are acquired. The term k  is weighting factor. The value of
damage index I abcd is attributed to the centre of rectangle abcd . By repeating this
procedure for each patch in the mesh damage influence map is obtained as it is shown
in Fig. 6.
t=0.25 ms t=0.75 ms
Figure 5. Visualisation based on 1D laser vibrometry: interaction of A0 mode of Lamb wave with
damage.
921
a) b)
Figure 6. Damage indicator showing location of artificial damage in the form of a coin for signals a)
without reference, b) with reference
CONCLUSIONS
Comparison of numerical and experimental signals indicates very good accuracy

of developed models both with applied 2D as well as 3D spectral elements. Damage
localization method based on visualization of propagating waves opens new horizons
in Structural Health Monitoring. Developed novel damage index enables straight
forward interpretation of damage size and its location in the scanned area.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Scientific work financed with means for science via the research and development
project: MONIT - Monitoring of technical state of construction and evaluation of its
lifespan (ref. no. POIG.01.01.02-00-013/08). Dr Pawel Kudela also wishes to thank
Foundation for Polish Sciences for their support in the frame of START fellowship.
REFERENCES
1. Zak A., M. Krawczuk, W. Ostachowicz, P. Kudela and M. Palacz. 2006. “Elastic wave propagation
in a cracked isotropic plate,” in Proceedings of the Third European Workshop Structural Health
Monitoring 2006, A. Güemes, DEStech Publications, Inc., 316–323.
2. Kudela, P., A. Zak, M. Krawczuk, and W. Ostachowicz. 2007. “Modelling of wave propagation in
composite plates using the time domain spectral element method,” J. Sound Vib., 302:728–745.
3. Kim, Y., S. Ha, F.–K. Chang. 2008. “Time–Domain Spectral Element Method for Built–In
Piezoelectric–Actuator–Induced Lamb Wave Propagation Analysis,” AIAA Journal, 46(3).
4. Staszewski, W. J. Mahzan, S. and Traynor, R. 2009. “Health monitoring of aerospace composite
structures – Active and passive approach”. Comp. Scie. Tech. 69: 1678–85
5. Swenson, E., Sohn, H., Olson, S., and M. Desimio, 2010, A Comparison of 1D and 3D Laser
Vibrometry Measurements of Lamb Waves, Proc. of SPIE Vol 7650 765003–1–11.
6. Zak A.2009. “A novel formulation of a spectral plate element for wave propagation in isotropic
structures”. Finite Elem. Anal. Des., 45:650–658.
7. Ruzzene, M., Jeong, S. M., Michaels, T. E., Michaels, J. E. and B. Mi. 2005. “Simulation and
Measurement of Ultrasonic Waves in Elastic Pates Using Laser Vibrometry”. Rev. Quant.
Nondestr. Eval., Vol. 24: 172–179.
8. Ruzzene, M. 2007. “Frequency–wavenumber domain filtering for improved damage visualization”.
Smart Mat. Struct., 16: 2116–2129.
922
Damage Assessment Using Hyperchaotic
Excitation and Nonlinear Prediction Error
S. TORKAMANI, E. A. BUTCHER, M. D. TODD and G. PARK
ABSTRACT123
The idea of damage assessment based on using a steady-state chaotic excitation
and state space embedding, proposed during the recent few years, has led to the
development of a computationally feasible SHM technique based on comparisons
between the geometry of a baseline attractor and a test attractor at some unknown
state of health. This study explores an extension to this concept, namely a
hyperchaotic excitation. The feature that is used to analyze the responses of the
structures to the chaotic/hyperchaotic excitations is called ‘Nonlinear Auto-
Prediction Error’ (NAPE), which is based on attractor geometry. A comparison
between the results from the chaotic excitation with the results from each of the
hyperchaotic excitations, obtained both numerically and experimentally, highlights
the higher sensitivity of hyperchaotic excitations relative to a chaotic excitation.
INTRODUCTION
One aspect of damage assessment that has received less attention is the
excitation. The reason is due to the nature of commonly-used features such as
modal-based features. Since the modal properties are transient dynamic properties,
the excitation is simply chosen to excite a target bandwidth (e.g., broad-band white
noise). In comparison, Todd et al [1- 3] used a method wherein a deterministic
2
dynamic rather than the common stochastic white noise is applied to the structure
for the sake of interrogation and the features based on steady-state dynamics are
extracted to identify the damage. A steady-state chaotic excitation is shown by
Todd et al [4] to satisfy the required conditions and the low-dimensional response
to this type of excitation is proven to have the capability of being a sensitive
indicator of damage. Thus the approach makes use of the intrinsic high sensitivity
of chaotic systems to subtle changes of the parameters and has turned out to a
computationally feasible SHM technique based on comparisons between the
geometry of a baseline attractor and a test attractor at some unknown state of health.
Features utilizing attractor-based techniques include auto-prediction error [5],
1
Shahab Torkamani and Eric A Butcher, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering,
2 New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001, USA
Michael D Todd, Department of Structural Engineering, University of California San Diego, La
Jolla,
3
CA 92093-0085, USA
Gyuhae Park, Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS T001, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM
87545, USA
923
cross-prediction error [4], local attractor variance [1,3], continuity[6], chaotic
amplification of attractor distortion [7], and generalized interdependency [8].
In previous work of the current authors [9], a novel structural excitation, namely
a hyperchaotic excitation, is employed and it is shown that through using a
hyperchaotic attractor that possesses more than one positive Lyapunov exponent
(PLE), the sensitivity of the technique can be enhanced due to stretching of the
phase space in multiple directions. The attractor-based feature that is used in the
previous work is ‘average local attractor variance ration’ (ALAVR) and the
hyperchaotic attractor is shown to make this features more sensitive due to a more
generous stretching of the phase space in multiple directions and thus allowing the
trajectory to more fully explore the entire phase space. In this current study,
nonlinear auto-prediction error (NAPE) is selected to serve as the damage-
sensitive feature and an attractor-based predictive model of a healthy structure’s
dynamics is used to make predictions for the dynamics of a damaged structure and
the severity of the damage is estimated by the accuracy of the prediction. The
NAPE feature is applied with a hyperchaotic excitation to see whether or not this
feature also confirms the higher sensitivity of a hyperchaotic excitation. Moreover,
a hyperchaotic excitation having three positive Lyapunov exponents is also
exploited here for the first time and the sensitivity of this excitation is compared
with a two-positive-Lyapunov-exponent hyperchaotic excitation. Prior to
empirically verifying the results using a portal frame test setup, numerical
simulation using an 8-degree-of-freedom model is performed.
PHASE SPACE PROBLEM FORMULATIO

Hyperchaotic Interrogation
Hyperchaos can be defined as chaotic behavior where at least two Lyapunov
exponents are positive. Having all the advantages that make a chaotic signal
suitable for being used as an excitation, it is hypothesized that a hyperchaotic signal
should be even more sensitive to subtle changes in damage severity as a result of
the trajectory being permitted to more fully explore the entire phase space. Thus,
hyperchaotic interrogation can be an alternative excitation mechanism in damage
detection when extra sensitivity to damage is required.
Tuned Excitation
Consider a simple linear N-degree-of-freedom structure forced with the output
of a separate dynamical process governed by the function ࡲ as
‫ܠ‬ሶ = ࡲሺ‫ܠ‬ሻ
‫ܢ‬ሶ = ‫ܢۯ‬ሺ‫ݐ‬ሻ + ۰‫ܠ‬ሺ‫ݐ‬ሻ
(1)
where the chaotic/hyperchaotic signal ۰‫ܠ‬ሺ‫ݐ‬ሻ is acted on by the filter described by the
matrix ‫ۯ‬. The vector ‫ܠ‬ሺ‫ݐ‬ሻ is assumed to be the state-vector of a chaotic/hyperchaotic
oscillator and the matrix ۰ in this case simply serves to select a component of the
oscillator to be filtered and the degree of freedom of the structure to be excited. For
a linear system, the Lyapunov exponents are the real parts of the eigenvalues of ‫ۯ‬
so the complete spectrum for the filtered chaotic/hyperchaotic signal ࢠሺ‫ݐ‬ሻ is a
combination of the exponents associated with the ‫ܯ‬-dimensional
924
chaotic/hyperchaotic system, ߣ஼௜ , and the exponents of the ܰ-dimensional filter, ߣ௝௅ ,
where ݅ = 1, … , ‫ ܯ‬and ݆ = 1, … , ܰ. The fractal dimension of the entire system is
controlled by Kaplan-York conjecture. Damage to the system will result in changes
to the eigenstructure of ‫ۯ‬. This in turn will alter the structure’s Lyapunov spectrum,
which, for a linear system, consists of the real parts of the eigenvalues of ‫ۯ‬.
However, in order for this technique to have the best performance the excitation
should be tuned for the structure. There are two tuning criteria based on attractor
dimensionality. First, the Lyapunov spectrum of the oscillator must overlap that of
the structure. This ensures that changes to the LE’s of the structure, i.e., by damage,
will alter the dimension of the filtered signal. The degree of overlap, ݀௢ , determines
the extent to which the structure’s dynamics are excited or, alternatively, the
number of dimensions the structure is adding to the phase space. Second, the
dominant exponent associated with the oscillator must be minimized for a given
degree of overlap in order to maintain the lowest possible dimensionality.
onlinear Prediction Error as a Feature
Points on the ‘damaged’ attractors can be forecast trough applying a simple
prediction scheme and by using a baseline attractor as a model. The main idea of all
types of nonlinear prediction error features is that the presence of damage causes
the baseline attractor to lose its prediction ability. The error defined as the
difference between the predicted point and the measured point —prediction error—
has been shown to be a good candidate to serve as a feature for both the detection
and the assessment of structural damages. If the attractor in a baseline structural
condition is compared to itself in a subsequent condition, the feature is called
Nonlinear Auto-prediction Error (NAPE). But if the relationship between attractors
obtained from multiple measurement points of the structure is studied in different
structural conditions, the feature is called Nonlinear Cross-Prediction Error
(NCPE). This study exploits the auto-prediction error as a feature (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Nonlinear auto-prediction error feature.
The algorithm to calculate nonlinear auto-prediction error starts with randomly

selecting a set of fiducial points on a reconstructed comparison attractor and finding
the set of corresponding fiducial points on the baseline reconstructed attractor.
Finally the prediction error for each fiducial point is formed through calculating the
Euclidian distance between the predicted point for the comparison attractor and the
time evolved correlated fiducial point. The detailed algorithm can be found in [10].
925
UMERICAL SIMULATIO
The structure used for numerical simulations is a linear n-degree-of-freedom
spring–mass–damper structure where the first spring is connected to the ground and
the excitation is just exerted to the last (nth) mass of the chain. For ݊ = 8 the
equation of this system can be put into the form of Eq.(1) using the masses, spring
stiffnesses and damping coefficients ݉௜ = 0.01, ݇௜ = 2.0, ܿ௜ = 0.075 where ݅ =
1, 2, … , 8. Damage is introduced as a percentage of stiffness reduction of the first
spring in the chain for this 8-DOF structure.
The main purpose of the current study is to compare the efficiency of chaotic
and hyperchaotic oscillators when used as an excitation. Therefore some chaotic
and hyperchaotic oscillators are used in this numerical simulation to compare their
sensitivities to a small change in the structure’s model. Here the most celebrated
chaotic oscillator, Lorenz, as shown below is used.
‫ݔ‬ሶଵ = ߪሺ‫ݔ‬ଶ − ‫ݔ‬ଵ ሻߜ
‫ݔ‬ሶ ଶ = ሺ‫ݔݎ‬ଵ − ‫ݔ‬ଶ − ‫ݔ‬ଵ ‫ݔ‬ଷ ሻߜ (2)
‫ݔ‬ሶ ଷ = ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵ ‫ݔ‬ଶ − ܾ‫ݔ‬ଷ ሻߜ
where = 10 , ‫ = ݎ‬28 , ܾ = 8/3 and ߜ is a bandwidth control parameter which is used to
tune the Lyapunov exponents of the excitation. Values less than unity for the
parameter ߜ decrease the bandwidth of the input, while values greater than unity
increase the bandwidth. The Lyapunov spectrum of the chaotic Lorenz system for
the case of ߜ = 1 has one positive and one zero LE’s as
ߣ஼௜ୀଵ,ଶ,ଷ = 0.9056, 0.0000, −14.5723. For the case of hyperchaotic excitation, we use the
hyperchaotic version of the classic Lorenz system as the first trial. The hyperchaotic
four-dimensional Lorenz [11] system has the form of
‫ݔ‬ሶଵ = ሺߪሺ‫ݔ‬ଶ − ‫ݔ‬ଵ ሻ + ‫ݔ‬ସ ሻߜ
‫ݔ‬ሶ ଶ = ሺ‫ݔݎ‬ଵ − ‫ݔ‬ଶ − ‫ݔ‬ଵ ‫ݔ‬ଷ ሻߜ
(3)
‫ݔ‬ሶ ଷ = ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵ ‫ݔ‬ଶ − ܾ‫ݔ‬ଷ ሻߜ
‫ݔ‬ሶ ସ = ሺ݀‫ݔ‬ସ − ‫ݔ‬ଵ ‫ݔ‬ଷ ሻߜ
where the coefficients ߪ, ‫ݎ‬, ܾ and ݀ are selected as ߪ = 10, ‫ = ݎ‬28, ܾ = 8/3, ݀ = 1.3. The
Lyapunov spectrum of the hyperchaotic Lorenz system for the base case of ߜ = 1 is
ߣ஼௜ୀଵ,ଶ,ଷ,ସ = 0.39854, 0.24805, 0.0000, −12.913 where there are two PLE’s existing. This
hyperchaotic system is called hyperchaotic Lorenz (2PLE’s) from now on in this
study. In order to have a better insight about a hyperchaotic system with more than
two PLE’s, the following version of the Lorenz oscillator is considered [12]:
‫ݔ‬ሶଵ = ሺߪሺ‫ݔ‬ଶ − ‫ݔ‬ଵ ሻ + ‫ݔ‬ସ ሻߜ
‫ݔ‬ሶ ଶ = ሺ‫ݔݎ‬ଵ − ‫ݔ‬ଶ − ‫ݔ‬ଵ ‫ݔ‬ଷ − ‫ݔ‬ହ ሻߜ
‫ݔ‬ሶ ଷ = ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵ ‫ݔ‬ଶ − ܾ‫ݔ‬ଷ ሻߜ (4)
‫ݔ‬ሶ ସ = ሺ݀‫ݔ‬ସ − ‫ݔ‬ଵ ‫ݔ‬ଷ ሻߜ
‫ݔ‬ሶ ହ = ሺ݇‫ݔ‬ଶ ሻߜ
Here, the coefficients ߪ, ‫ݎ‬, ܾ are selected as ߪ = 10, ‫ = ݎ‬28, ܾ = 8/3 and the two new
parameters d, k as d = 2, k = 10. The Lyapunov spectrum of this oscillator for the
case of ߜ = 1 is λ୧ୀଵ,ଶ,…,ହ = 0.4580, 0.3371, 0.0415, 0.0000 and − 12.5046. As clear from
the Lyapunov spectrum, this oscillator has three PLE’s and it is called Lorenz
hyperchaotic (3PLE’s) in this study.
926
The Lyapunov spectrum of the linear 8-DOF system above, is equal to the real
part of the eigenvalues with a negative sign, which is ߣ௝௅ = −0.127, −1.123, −2.980,
−5.447, −8.192, −10.843, −13.042, −14.493. As mentioned previously, two criteria must
be met in this method. Firstly, the Lyapunov spectrum of the oscillator must overlap
that of the structure. Secondly, the dimension of the oscillator after being filtered
should be kept as low as possible. In order for these two criteria to hold, for each
specific degree of overlap a variety of ߜ can be chosen. The admissible range of
parameter ߜ based on the two tuning criteria for some degrees of overlap, along
with the Kaplan-Yorke dimension of the excitation (input signal) and the structural
response (filtered signal) for the chaotic Lorenz (Eq. (2)) and two hyperchaotic
Lorenz oscillators (Eq.(3) and Eq. (4)) are listed in Table 1.
Table 1. Tuning and dimensionality of the chaotic and hyperchaotic excitations.
Degree of Dimension (‫ܦ‬௅ )
Chaotic/hyperchaotic Oscillators Admissible ߜ
overlap Excitation Response
݀௢ =1 0.008 < ߜ < 0.140 2.06 < ‫ܦ‬௅ < 3
Chaotic Lorenz (1 PLE) 2.06
݀௢ =2 0.140 < ߜ < 1.380 3 < ‫ܦ‬௅ < 4
Hyperchaotic Lorenz (2 ݀௢ =1 0.01 < ߜ < 0.196 3.05 < ‫ܦ‬௅ < 4
3.05
PLE’s) ݀௢ =2 0.196 < ߜ < 1.933 4 < ‫ܦ‬௅ < 5
Hyperchaotic Lorenz (3 ݀௢ =1 0.01 < ߜ < 0.151 4.07 < ‫ܦ‬௅ < 5
4.07
PLE’s) ݀௢ =2 0.151 < ߜ < 1.494 5 < ‫ܦ‬௅ < 6
With the excitation chosen to be each of the tuned Lorenz chaotic/hyperchaotic

oscillators described above and the structure chosen to be the 8-DOF system, the
equations of the structure and that of the oscillator were integrated simultaneously
in the form of Eq. (1). An 8th-order Runge-Kutta algorithm with a fixed time step is
employed for integration. The structure’s response attractor is reconstructed using
delay reconstruction wherein the reconstruction parameters, embedding dimension
and embedding delay, are selected respectively based on ‘False Nearest Neighbors’
(FNN) method and ‘Average Mutual Information’ (AMI) function. As mentioned
before, there is a wide range of parameter ߜ in each degree of freedom that the
oscillator with any of these values of ߜ can be used as a tuned chaotic/hyperchaotic
excitation. Therefore for the purpose of a sensitivity comparison between chaotic
and hyperchaotic excitations using the 8-DOF structure, a parametric analysis is
performed, in that the NAPE feature for 5% of damage to the structure is computed
for a wide range of parameter ߜ covering the first two degrees of overlap. The
values of NAPE obtained for 5 percent of damage at each ߜ is normalized by the
value of NAPE obtained for undamaged case at the same ߜ used with the same
excitation. Then the comparison is made among results obtained from each of three
types of chaotic/hyperchaotic Lorenz oscillators as the excitation. The results of
such comparison are illustrated in Figure 2.
The results show that the hyperchaotic interrogation technique exhibits a
dramatically high sensitivity and the damage sensitive feature, NAPE, for some
values of δ experiences a change of up to 400% for a damage level as small as 5%.
For almost all values of δ except for a narrow range of 0.01 < ߜ < 0.14 at the
beginning, the sensitivity of both hyperchaotic cases is by far higher than the
chaotic case and the values of NAPE obtained from the hyperchaotic Lorenz
(3PLE’s) excitation is for most values of δ larger than that of hyperchaotic Lorenz
(2PLE’s) though not for all values of δ.
927
7
Hyperchaotic Lorenz (3 PLE's), d O=1-2
Hyperchaotic Lorenz (2 PLE's), d O=1-2
6
Chaotic Lorenz (1 PLE), dO=1-2
4
ߝଵ
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
ߜ
Figure 2. Normalized NAPE of chaotic and Hyperchaotic excitations for 5% of damage in the 8-DOF system
for different values of ߜ within the range of first two degrees of overlap.
EXPERIMETAL VALIDATIO
The test setup used for experimental validation consists of a bolted-joint portal
frame (shown in Figure 3) with two vertical and one horizontal element, connected
via steel angle brackets. The vertical elements are also fixed to a base plate using
angle brackets. As shown in the figure the base plate is clamped to the laboratory
table to simulate a fixed boundary condition. The horizontal bolted joint of the
bracket connecting the horizontal and vertical member on the farther side to the
shaker is selected as the damaged joint to apply a joint preload loss damage
scenario according to Table 2. A set of four accelerometers connected to the
structure at different points depicted in Figure 3, are used for measuring the
structural response.
Sensor 2
Sensor 3
Sensor 4
Sensor 1
Figure 3.Portal frame test setup.
Table 2.list of the damage cases used for the portal frame experiment.
Damage case Condition Preload(Lb.in)
1 (baseline) Fully Tight more than 200
2 Tight 200 lb.in
3 Tight 100
4 Tight 50
5 Finger tight less than 30
6 Loose with gap ----
928
An estimate of the largest Lyapunov exponent of the structure by assuming the
structure to be linear and based on the measured modal properties is used for tuning
the excitation. The excitation signals can be tuned to have a minimum degree of
overlapping (based on the two tuning criteria) by knowing the largest Lyapunov
exponent of the structure and choosing an appropriate value for the bandwidth
control parameter ߜ. In order to obtain the chaotic/hyperchaotic excitation signals, a
Matlab script is loaded to integrate the chaotic Lorenz of Eq.(2), the hyperchaotic
Lorenz (2 PLE’s) of Eq.(3) and the hyperchaotic Lorenz (3 PLE’s) of Eq.(4) using
bandwidth control parameters of ߜ = 600, 600 and 500 respectively. The NAPE
computed for the data measured from 4 channels (Figure 3) at each of the 6 damage
levels (Table 2) is normalized using the NAPE obtained from baseline case of fully
tight joint condition (case 1) from the same channel. Therefore the normalized
NAPE obtained for case 1 turns out to be always zero. The results obtained from the
chaotic Lorenz excitation (Eq. (2)) is compared with those of hyperchaotic
excitations (Eq. (3) and (4)) in Figure 4.
2.5 2.5
Chaotic Lorenz (1 PLE), δ= 600, Channel 1 Chaotic Lorenz (1 PLE),δ = 600, Channel 2
Hyperchaotic Lorenz (2 PLE),δ = 600, Channel 1 Hyperchaotic Lorenz (2 PLE),δ= 600, Channel 2
2 Hyperchaotic Lorenz (3 PLE), δ = 500, Channel 1 2 Hyperchaotic Lorenz (3 PLE),δ= 500, Channel 2
1.5 1.5
ߝଵ
ߝଵ
1 1
0.5 0.5
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
Case # Case #
2.5 2.5
Hyperchaotic Lorenz (3 PLE),δ= 500, Channel 3 Chaotic Lorenz(1 PLE), δ = 600, Channel 4
Hyperchaotic Lorenz (2 PLE),δ= 600, Channel 3 Hyperchaotic Lorenz (2 PLE), δ = 600, Channel 4
Chaotic Lorenz (1 PLE),δ= 600, Channel 3 Hyperchaotic Lorenz (3 PLE), δ = 500, Channel 4
2 2
1.5 1.5
ߝଵ
ߝଵ
1 1
0.5 0.5
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
Case # Case #
Figure 4. Comparison of the normalized NAPE versus damage case obtained from different channels when using
chaotic and hyperchaotic Lorenz excitations.
As clear from Figure 4, the values of ߝଵ for the data measured from channels 1,
2, and 4 for all types of excitations are almost flat for different excitations. For
channel 3 measurements, ߝଵ obtained from chaotic Lorenz starts exhibiting a
significant rise not before the damage case 5 (finger tight) is applied. However, in
cases of the hyperchaotic Lorenz excitations the ߝଵ shows a rise (though a slight
one) even with the damage case 3 (still with 100 lb.in preload). Both of the
hyperchaotic Lorenz excitations show a bigger rise in damage case 5 as compared
929
to the chaotic Lorenz excitation. The hyperchaotic Lorenz (3PLE’s) has the biggest
rise among the other, though it is not exhibiting a considerable difference with that
of hyperchaotic Lorenz (2PLE’s). Hence, the results clearly highlight the higher
sensitivity of the hyperchaotic Lorenz excitations compared with the chaotic Lorenz
excitation.
COCLUSIOS
This study extends the idea of chaotic interrogation technique by employing a
hyperchaotic excitation, which is fundamentally new in its use as an excitation. A
comparison between the numerical and experimental results from the chaotic
excitation with similar results from hyperchaotic excitations (2PLE) when using
NAPE feature, highlights the higher sensitivity of a hyperchaotic excitation relative
to a chaotic excitation. Therefore, the NAPE feature also is shown to confirm the
higher sensitivity of a hyperchaotic excitation. Moreover, a hyperchaotic excitation
having three positive Lyapunov exponents is exploited here for the first time and it
is shown that it can be in some cases even more sensitive than a two-positive-
Lyapunov-exponent hyperchaotic excitation. It is demonstrated thus that it is not
just the dimensionality of the excitation or the response attractor that controls the
sensitivity of attractor-based features.
ACKOWLEDGEMET
Financial support from the Los Alamos National Laboratories, through the LANL-
NMSU MOU No. GR0002842 is gratefully appreciated.
REFERECES
[1] Nichols J.M., Trickey S.T., Todd M.D. and Virgin L.N., 2003 “Structural Health Monitoring Through Chaotic
Interrogation”, Meccanica, 38(2): 239–250.
[2] Nichols J. M., Todd M. D., Virgin L. N. and Nichols J. D., 2003 “On the use of attractor dimension as a feature in
structural health monitoring”, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 17(6):1305-1320.
[3] Todd M.D., Nichols J. M., Pecora L. M., Virgin L.N., 2001 “Vibration-based damage assessment utilizing state
space geometry changes: local attractor variance ratio”, Journal of smart materials and structures, 10: 1000–1008.
[4] Todd M. D., Erickson K., Chang L., Lee K. and Nichols J. M., 2004 “Using chaotic interrogation and attractor
nonlinear cross-prediction error to detect fastener preload loss in an aluminum frame”, Chaos, 14(2): 387-399.
[5] Nichols J. M., Todd M. D. and Wait J. R., 2003 “Using state space predictive modeling with chaotic interrogation
in detecting joint preload loss in a frame structure experiment”, Smart Material and Structures, 12: 580-601.
[6] Nichols J. M., Nichols C. J., Todd M. D., Seaver M., Trickey S. T. and Virgin L. N., 2004 “Use of data-driven
phase space models in assessing the strength of a bolted connection in a composite beam”, Smart Materials And
Structures, 13: 241–250.
[7] Moniz L., Nichols J.M., Nichols C.J., Seaver M., Trickey S.T., Todd M.D., Pecora L.M. and Virgin L.N., 2005
“A multivariate, attractor-based approach to structural health monitoring”, Journal Of Sound and Vibration, 283:
295-310.
[8] Overbey, L.A. and Todd M.D., 2008 “Damage Assessment Using Generalized State-Space Correlation Features,”
Structural Health Health Monitoring, 7(4): 1-17.
[9] Torkamani S, Butcher E, Todd M and Park G 2011 “Detection of system changes due to damage using a tuned
hyperchaotic probe”, Smart Material and Structures, 20, 025006 1-16.
[10] Nichols J.M., Todd M.D., Seaver M. and Virgin L. N. 2003 “Use of chaotic excitation and attractor property
analysis in structural health monitoring” physical review E, 67, 016209 1-8.
[11] Qiang Jia 2007 "Hyperchaos generated from the Lorenz chaotic system and its control" Physics Letters A, 366:
217–222.
[12] Guosi Hu 2009 "Generating hyperchaotic attractors with three positive Lyapunov exponents via state feedback
control", Int. J. bifurcation and chaos, 19(2): 651-660.
930
Wave Propagation in Anisotropic Layered 2D
Structures Using Spectral Finite Elements
B. HENNINGS and R. LAMMERING
ABSTRACT
The method of spectral finite elements applied to the numerical calculation of

high-frequency Lamb wave propagation in thin-walled structures is presented. For this
purpose, Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre points are used as interpolation points of the
element shape functions formulated by Lagrangian polynomials as well as integration
points for the numerical evaluation of the integrals for, e.g. stiffness and mass,
matrices. The position of these points leads to a diagonalised mass matrix, which is
advantageous for the time integration if an explicit time integration scheme is used.
Numerical results of an undamaged and damaged anisotropic plate using a plane strain
plate model are shown.1
INTRODUCTION
Integrated actuator-sensor-networks open considerable potential for detection of

hidden defects in lightweight constructions (Figure 1). These networks allow a
selective excitation and analysis of high-frequency, elastic waves in thin-walled fibre
composites, cf. [1]. Hence, the development of methods which enable the handling
and understanding of wave propagation of the so-called Lamb waves is a main topic of
current research work, cf. [2]. Besides experimental investigations, it is very important
to gain detailed insight into the physical phenomena by the analysis of wave
propagation and their characteristic behaviour at damages such as delaminations.
Institute of Mechanics, Helmut-Schmidt-University/ University of the Federal

Armed Forces Hamburg, Holstenhofweg 85, 22043 Hamburg, Germany.
931
Since analytical computation of lightweight shell and plate structures is limited to
simple boundary and loading conditions, cf. [3], it is necessary to improve current
numerical techniques. Many of these methods are currently under investigation: The
finite element method (FEM), cf. [4], [5], the boundary element method (BEM), the
spectral element method in the frequency domain or the finite difference method
(FDM). In this work, the spectral finite element method (SFEM), cf. [6] - [8], is under
investigation which originates from the computational analysis in geophysics. The
basic ideas are illustrated in the following with special regard to plane strain
elements.
Figure 1: Integrated structural health monitoring system and wave propagation in

fibre composite.
SPECTRAL FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
Shape functions for spectral finite elements
The shape functions for SFEM are built by the Lagrangian polynomials which
read in the one-dimensional case with coordinate
(1)
Here, is the degree of the polynomial with interpolation points and is the
node number with non-vanishing function value. As shown in equation (1) the
position of is user-defined. In this case the interpolation points are placed at the
Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre (GLL) points which are obtained by the solution of
(2)
Here, denotes the first derivative of a Legendre polynomial of degree

and the term ensures two fixed interpolation points at the boundaries of the
interval
932
The motivation for selecting the GLL points as interpolation points of the 2D
shape functions is the employed GLL integration scheme. The interpolation points of
the shape functions as well as the integration points of the GLL quadrature are located
at the GLL points.
An example of an 8-th order shape function (Lagrangian polynomial) with
different integration points is shown in Figure 2. The interpolation points are indicated
by circles and the integration points by crosses. Figure 2a shows the distribution of
conventional Gauss integration points. In Figure 2b interpolation and integration
points coincide and are the GLL points in accordance to equation (2).
Figure 2: Shape function of an 8-th order Lagrangian polynomial (interpolation points

marked as circles) with integration points of a) conventional Gauss integration scheme
and integration points of b) GLL quadrature, both marked as crosses.
In the two-dimensional case, the element stiffness matrix and the element mass
matrix are computed by
(3)
(4)
Here, and are weighting factors at the integration points, is the element
thickness and denotes the density. By evaluation of equation (4) the function values
at the integration points are multiplied. With just one non-zero function value the GLL
interpolation points demonstrate their main advantage. Compared to the fully
populated mass matrix which results using conventional Gauss integration points (see
Figure 2a), the GLL integration points (Figure 2b) provide a diagonalised mass matrix.
933
Time integration
The existence of a diagonal mass matrix in SFE analysis may be advantageous

for the time integration. Regardless of the integration scheme under consideration,
the equation of motion reads after discretisation of the time
. (5)
In implicit time integration schemes, e.g. the Newmark method, the effective
stiffness matrix depends on the stiffness, damping and mass matrices , and
:
(6)
However, in explicit time integration schemes, the effective stiffness matrix

solely depends on the mass and damping matrices:
(7)
Under the assumption of Rayleigh damping one obtains .

Thus, gives a diagonal damping matrix and finally becomes diagonal.
This fact enables a more efficient integration in time than using an implicit time
integration scheme. However, in the analysis of wave propagation special care has to
be taken in a proper choice of the time step . In the following, all numerical
calculations are performed without damping ( ).
COMPUTATIONAL MODEL
Figure 3: Derivation of the computational model for the experimental set-up.
934
Figure 3 demonstrates the computational model to gain a better understanding of
this plane strain plate problem. As shown, the experimental set‐up consists of a plate
with an actuator at the top and bottom surfaces. This three-dimensional problem is
reduced to a two‐dimensional plane strain plate (shaded area in the plate).
Additionally, the boundary conditions are introduced in the axis of symmetry and the
excitation of the actuators is replaced by nodal forces.
NUMERICAL RESULTS
In the following, the wave propagation in an undamaged and damaged -layered

laminate is investigated (see Figure 4). The first and last ( th) laminas are 2/2 twill
weaves (woven fabrics). Laminas , , and are unidirectional (UD) fibre-
reinforced layers rotated by and the central layer is a plane weave (seeFigure
5). The material properties are given in Table 1.
Figure 4: Dimensions of the 7-layered composite at an excitation of .
Figure 5: Stacking sequence of the 7-layered laminate.
935
Table 1: Material properties.
At first, the wave propagation in the undamaged composite is under investigation.

The structure is excited by a time harmonic sine signal with frequencies of
and , respectively. The computational model has a length of for the
excitation at ( at ) and is discretised by x elements (
x elements), built up of x nodes by length x height, for each layer. The
calculated phase velocities of the symmetric and anti-symmetric waves by a
transformation angle of and of the composite are shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Phase velocity depending on excitation frequency and propagation angle.
It is noticeable, that the phase velocity of antisymmetric waves seems to be

independent of the propagation angle. However, the phase velocity of the symmetric
waves is significant higher by a propagation angle of than by an angle of .
The excitation frequency exerts influence on the phase velocity of antisymmetric
waves. The phase velocity of the symmetric waves differ marginally.
These results agree well with experimental results and with analytical
approximations which are based on Kirchhoff plate theory. E.g. in the case of an
excitation frequency of and a propagation angle of ( ) the phase
velocity of the antisymmetric wave is obtained as ( )
experimentally.
The same composite is used to investigate the wave behaviour at a delamination.

As shown in Figure 6, the delamination is realised by a small gap between two layers
and is placed near the upper surface of the composite.
936
Figure 6: Dimensions of the delamination between the first and second layer.
A two cycle sine burst at is used as an excitation signal of the symmetric

wave. Because of its small amplitude the symmetric wave, propagating from the
excitation point, is not visible in Figure 7. However, its mode conversion from large
wave lengths with small amplitudes to shorter wave lengths with higher amplitudes
can be recognised within the range of the artificial delamination.
Figure 7: Wave propagation showing mode conversion of a symmetric wave into an

antisymmetric wave (short wave length in shaded area) at the upper surface of a 7-
layered composite.
937
CONCLUSION
In this work the theory of the spectral finite element method is presented and
employed by using for example x node-elements for the numerical calculation of
wave propagation in an anisotropic layered composite. A certain dependency between
phase velocity and propagation angle as well as excitation frequency is shown using
the example of an undamaged composite. Another computation in an anisotropic
layered structure presents the wave behaviour at an artificial delamination. The
spectral finite element method is thus highly suited for the analysis of wave
propagation in carbon fiber reinforced plastics.
REFERENCES
1. Giurgiutiu, V. 2008. Structural health monitoring – with piezoelectric wafer active sensors,
Academic Press, Amsterdam, Boston.
2. Lammering, R., A. Eremin, M. Neumann, U. Gabbert and S. M. H. Hosseini. 2010. “Structural
health monitoring of lightweight structures by use of lamb waves,“ Proceedings 2nd Inter-
national Symposium on NDT in Aerospace, http://www.ndt-aerospace.com/Portals/aerospace
2010/BB/we1b3.pdf.
3. Ende, S. v. and R. Lammering. 2007. “Investigation on piezoelectrally induced lamb wave
generation and propagation,” Smart Mater. Struct., 16: 1802–1809.
4. Hughes, T. J. R. 2000. The Finite Element Method: Linear Static and Dynamic Finite Element
Analysis. Dover Publications, New York.
5. Mackerle, J. 1997-2003. “Finite-element modelling of non-destructive material evaluation, an
addendum: A bibliography,” Modelling Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng., 12: 709–834.
6. Komatitsch, D. and J. Tromp. 1999. “Introduction to the spectral element method for three-
dimensional seismic wave propagation,” Geophys. J. Int., 139: 806–822.
7. Kudela, P., M. Krawczuk and W. Ostachowicz. 2006. “Wave propagation modeling in 1D
structures using spectral finite elements,” J. Sound Vib., 300: 88–100.
8. Kudela, P., A. Zak, M. Krawczuk and W. Ostachowicz. 2007. “Modelling of wave propagation
in composite plates using the time domain spectral element method,” J. Sound Vib., 302: 728–
745.
938
1-D and 2-D Modeling of Power and Energy
1
Transduction of Piezoelectric Wafer Active

Sensors for Structural Health Monitoring
B. LIN and V. GIURGIUTIU
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an investigation of power and energy transduction in

piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) on isotropic structure for structural health
monitoring (SHM). After a literature review of the state of the art, we developed a
power and energy model for PWAS on an isotropic beam. We performed 1-D and 2-D
model of the power and energy transduction for PWAS transducers attached to
structure. This 1-D and 2-D model allows examination of power and energy flow for
linear and circular crested wave pattern.
The power and energy transduction flow chart for a complete pitch-catch setup is
examined. At each stage, the electro-acoustic power and energy transduction of the
PWAS transmitter and receiver are examined. The power flow converts from
electrical source into piezoelectric power at the transmitter, the piezoelectric
transduction converts the electrical power into the mechanical interface power at the
transmitter PWAS and then into acoustic wave power travelling in the structure. The
wave power arrives at the receiver PWAS and is captured at the mechanical interface
between the receiver PWAS at the structure. The mechanical power captured is
converted back into electrical power in the receiver PWAS and captured at the
receivers electric instrument. The parametric study of PWAS size, impedance match
gives the PWAS design guideline for PWAS sensing and power harvesting
applications.
INTRODUCTION
The mounting costs of maintaining our aging infrastructure and the associated
safety issues are a growing national concern. Over 27% of our nation’s bridges are
structurally deficient or functionally obsolete [1]. Deadly accidents are still marring
our everyday life. In response to these growing concerns, structural health monitoring
(SHM) sets forth to determine the health of a structure by monitoring over time a set
of structural sensors and assessing the remaining useful life and the need for structural
actions. Built-in SHM system capable of detecting and quantifying damage would
increase the operational safety and reliability, would conceivably reduce the number
of unscheduled repairs, and would bring down maintenance cost.
Bin Lin, Mechanical Engineering, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208
Victor Giurgiutiu, Mechanical Engineering, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208
939
The type and efficiency of the SHM sensors play a crucial role in the SHM system
success. Ideally, SHM sensors should be able to actively interrogate the structure and
find out its state of health, its remaining life, and the effective margin of safety.
Essential in this determination is to find out the presence and extent of structural
damage. Recent SHM work has shown that piezoelectric wafers adhesively bonded to
the structure successfully emulate the NDE methodology (e.g. pitch-catch, pulse-echo,
Figure 1) while being sufficiently small and inexpensive to allow permanent
attachment to the monitored structure. Piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) are
small, lightweight, unobtrusive, and inexpensive. They achieve direct transduction
between electric and elastic wave energies. Two SHM sensing principles can be
considered: (a) passive SHM sensing, in which the damage of the structure is inferred
from the changes in load and strain distributions measured by the sensors; and (b)
active SHM sensing, in which the damage is sensed by active interrogation of the
structure with elastic waves. The power and energy flow in active and passive sensing
is an important factor and has not been systematically addressed.
Transmitter Receiver
(Wave Exciter) (Wave Detector)
V1 V2
Damaged region
(a) Lamb waves
Transmitter-Receiver PWAS
(b) Crack
Figure 1 (a) pitch-catch method; (b) pulse-echo method
The modeling of power and energy transduction has been addressed to a certain
extent in classical NDE [2-4]. Viktorov [2] mentioned the transmissibility function
between an NDE transducer and the guided waves in the structure. However, Viktorov
did not provide an analytical expression but rather relied on experimental
determination. Auld [3] treated comprehensibly the power and energy of ultrasonic
acoustic fields and developed the complex reciprocity approach to their calculation.
He developed some predictive models for surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices that
relied on the simplifying assumption of single mode nondispersive Rayleigh wave
propagation. Rose [4] developed a model for coupling between an angle-beam
ultrasonic transducer and a system of guided Lamb waves in the structure using the
normal modes expansion approach. However, this model was not specific about how
the shear transfer takes place through the gel coupling between the transducer and the
structure. Ng etc. [7] evaluated the piezoelectric sensor sensing and power generating
abilities and power harvesting performance. Erturk and Inman modeled piezoelectric-
based energy harvesting for cantilever beam harvesters [5,6]. Classical NDE analysis
has not studied in detail the power flow between transducer and structure because (a)
the coupling-gel interface did not have clearly predictable behavior; and (b) power
was not generally an issue, since NDE devices are not meant to operate autonomously
on harvested power.
Although not much addressed by classical NDE analysis, the understanding and
mastering of the power and energy flow is of paramount importance for the design of
940
autonomous SHM systems employing structurally integrated active sensors. A
preliminary analysis of the 1-D and 2-D power and energy transduction process for
SHM applications was performed by considering (a) PWAS transmitter; (b) PWAS
receiver; and (c) PWAS transmitter-receiver pair. Both 1-D linear PWAS and 2-D
circular PWAS analytical models of wave propagation and power and energy
transduction were performed [8-11]. The electrical active power, reactive power, and
power rating for harmonic voltage excitation were examined. The parametric study of
transmitter size and impedance, receiver size and impedance, and external electrical
load gives the PWAS design guideline for PWAS sensing and power harvesting
applications. The analysis was performed in the simplifying case of axial and flexural
waves, which are easier to handle than the full guided-wave model. However, the
principles of this exploratory study can be extended without much difficulty to the full
multi-mode guided-waves.
The purpose of the paper is to review the 1-D and 2-D analytical methods to
understand and master the power and energy flow in PWAS active and passive SHM
sensing. It is important for the design of autonomous SHM systems to employ PWAS
with optimum power and energy flow. The following issues were addressed: (a)
predictive modeling of the frequency response function and the power and energy
transduction at the interface between PWAS and the structure in the presence of axial
and flexural waves; (b) analytical modeling of the power and energy transduction
between PWAS and high-frequency waves with consideration of the tuning
opportunities when PWAS acts as transmitter and receiver of such waves; (c)
identification of maximum energy flow; and (d) knowing that energy flows under
impedance match conditions.
SUMMARY OF PWAS POWER AND ENERGY MODELING
Figure 2 Power and energy flow in a PWAS pitch-catch configuration
The power and energy transduction flow chart for a complete pitch-catch setup is
shown in Figure 2. There are three parts in the power flow: transmitter PWAS power
and energy, wave propagation power and energy in structure, and receiver PWAS
power and energy. In pitch-catch mode, the power flow converts from electrical
source into piezoelectric power at the transmitter, the piezoelectric transduction
941
converts the electrical power into the mechanical interface power at the transmitter
PWAS and then into acoustic wave power travelling in the structure. The wave power
arrives at the receiver PWAS and is captured at the mechanical interface between the
receiver PWAS at the structure. The mechanical power captured is converted back
into electrical power in the receiver PWAS and captured at the receivers electric
instrument. The analytical modeling of frequency response functions (FRF) was
developed for PWAS voltage, current, complex power, active power, etc in each part.
Under harmonic excitation, the FRF is the measure of any system's output spectrum in
response to an input signal. In PWAS embedded SHM setup, the input is the
excitation voltage, and the output could be voltage, current, complex power etc. The
analytical model of FRF and power and energy transduction is based on the following
assumptions: (a) ideal bonding connection between PWAS and structure; (b) ideal
excitation source at the transmitter PWAS and fully-resistive external load at the
receiver PWAS; and (c) 1-D axial and flexural wave propagation. Frequency response
functions are developed for voltage, current, complex power, active power, etc. The
time-averaged electrical power, mechanical power at the transmitter and wave power
can be calculated from the frequency response function.
1-D and 2-D Transmitter Power and Energy
For transmitter PWAS, the electrical energy of the input voltage applied at the
PWAS terminals is converted through piezoelectric transduction into mechanical
energy that activates the expansion-contraction motion of the PWAS transducer. This
motion is transmitted to the underlying structure through the shear stress in the
adhesive layer at the PWAS-structure interface. As a result, ultrasonic guided waves
are excited into the underlying structure. The mechanical power at the interface
becomes the acoustic wave power and the generated axial and flexural waves
propagate in the structure. Questions that need to be answered through predictive
modeling are:
1. How much of the applied electrical energy is converted in the wave energy?
2. How much energy is lost through the shear transfer at the interface?
3. How much of the electrical energy gets rejected back to the electrical source?
4. What are the optimal combinations of PWAS geometry, excitation frequency,
and wave mode for transmitting the maximum energy as ultrasonic waves into
the structure?
To perform this analysis, Lin and Giurgiutiu [8-11] developed 1-D and 2-D closed
form analytical expressions for the active and reactive electrical power, mechanical
power in the PWAS, and ultrasonic acoustic power of the waves traveling in the
structure. The simulation considered two PWAS (a transmitter and a receiver) attached
on a simple aluminum structure.
It was found (Figure 3) that the reactive electrical power required for 7-mm PWAS
excitation is orders of magnitude larger than the active electrical power (compare
Figure 3a with Figure 3b). Hence, the power rating of the PWAS transmitter is
dominated by the reactive power, i.e., by the capacitive behavior of the PWAS. We
note that the transmitter reactive power is directly proportional to the transmitter
admittance ( Y  iC ), whereas the transmitter active power is the power converted
into the ultrasonic acoustic waves generated into the structure from the transmitter
under perfect bonding assumption.
942
The analysis indicated that the forward wave power in 1-D model is about half the
electrical active power (Figure 3b). If we combine the wave power travelling in both
directions (forward and backward), we get exactly the electrical active power input
applied to the PWAS. In 2-D circular model, the active power converts to the
mechanical power at the interface, and then converts to the wave power into the
structure. Perfect electrical source and loss-less adhesive layer was assumed in this
model and there is no loss during the electrical-mechanical-wave power transduction.
The analytical analysis indicated that the excitation of axial and flexural wave with a
2a length PWAS in 1-D model generates in-plane strain in terms of the axial and
flexural wave as

 (t )  i 0eit sin 0 a  ei0  x x0 a   3sin  F a  eiF  x x0 a 
(1)

These results has been extended to the case of a circular PWAS with radius a coupled
with circular-crested axial and flexural waves, that is
  t   i a 0eit J1 0a  J1 0r   3J1  F a  J1  F r 
(2)
Electrical Reactive Power 1-D Power Tuning

1000 14
Active Power
12 Wave Power
800
10
Power (mW)
Power (mW)
600 8
400 6
4
200
2
0 0
0 200 400 600 800 0 200 400 600 800
(a) frequency (kHz) (b) frequency (kHz)
Figure 3 Electrical power required at the terminals of a 7-mm length PWAS terminals: (a)
reactive power; (b) active power and wave power
It indicated that PWAS generated optimal axial and flexural wave excitation when
the PWAS length is an odd multiple of the half wavelength of particle wave modes.
The geometric tuning can be obtained through matching between their characteristic
direction and the half wavelength of the excited axial or flexural wave mode. The
PWAS size and axial and flexural wave number determined the peak and valley in the
axial and flexural wave power. Due to the tuning effects, a remarkable variation of
active power with frequency is shown in Figure 3b: we notice that the active power
(i.e., the power converted into the ultrasonic waves) is not monotonic with frequency.
As a result, that ratio between the reactive and active powers is not constant, but
presents the peaks and valleys pattern. The increase and decrease of active power with
frequency corresponds to the PWAS tuning in and out of various ultrasonic waves
traveling into the structure. The maximum active power seems to be ~ 13 mW under
10V excitation.
Figure 4 presents the results of a parameter study for various radius circular
PWAS sizes and frequencies. The resulting parameter plots are presented as 3D mesh
plots. Figure 4a presents a 3D mesh plot of the power rating vs. frequency and
transmitter radius: for a certain transmitter radius, the power rating increases when the
frequency increases. For a given frequency, the power rating increases when the
943
transmitter radius increases. These results are clarifying: to drive a 15-mm length
PWAS at 1000 kHz with a 10 V constant voltage input, one needs a power source
providing 10 W of power. Figure 4b shows the wave power that PWAS generates into
the structure; tuning effect of transmitter size and excitation frequency are apparent; a
larger PWAS does not necessarily produce more wave power at a given frequency.
The maximum wave power output in this simulation is ~ 20 mW .
Power requirement Excited total wave power
15000
20
Power Rating (mW)
Wave Power(mW)
15
10000
10
5000
5
0
0 0
0
500 15
(a) 500 15 (b) 10
10
5 5
1000 0 1000 0
frequency (kHz) Transmitter size (mm) frequency (kHz) Transmitter size (mm)
Axial wave power Flexural wave power

Flexural Wave Power(mW)
Axial Wave Power(mW)
20
6
15
4
10
5 2
0 0
0 0
15
500 500
(c) 15 (d) 10
10 5
5
1000 0 1000 0
frequency (kHz) Transmitter size (mm) frequency (kHz) Transmitter size (mm)
Figure 4 PWAS transmitter under constant voltage excitation (a) power rating; (b) wave
power; (c) axial wave power; (d) flexural power
The powers contained in the axial waves and flexural waves are given separately
in Figure 4c and Figure 4d. In some PWAS SHM applications, a single mode is often
desired to reduce signal complexity and simplify signal interpretation and damage
detection. Figure 4c shows the frequency-size combinations at which the axial waves
are maximized, whereas Figure 4d indicates the combinations that would maximize
the flexural waves. These figures give useful guidelines for the choosing PWAS size
and frequency values that are optimum for selecting a certain excitation wave mode.
This study gives guidelines for the design of transmitter size and excitation frequency
in order to obtain maximum wave power into the SHM structure.
Wave power and energy transfer in structure
The power and energy of forward and backward axial and flexural waves remain
constant in 1-D situation. However, the axial and flexural wave excited by circular
PWAS transmitter spreads out. Kinematic analysis gives the displacement generated
944
by a circular PWAS in terms of the axial and flexural displacement as with Bessel
function. Bessel function can be approximated using the fact that it exhibits an
asymptotic behavior after four or five cycles of the wavelength of the mode
considered. The total axial and flexural wave is independent with the wave
propagation distance r . The displacement exhibits an asymptotic behavior with 1/ r .
1-D and 2-D Receiver Power and Energy
A similar analysis was conducted at the receiver PWAS. Receiver PWAS has a
similar size tuning effect as transmitter PWAS. When propagating waves reach the
receiver PWAS, receiver PWAS converts the wave energy to electrical energy and
outputs a voltage signal. For sensing application, a high value of the output voltage is
desired. The external electrical load such as oscilloscope resistance is set to high
impedance. In this case, only a small amount of power and energy is picked up by
PWAS. In power harvesting application, receiver PWAS with a matching external
electrical load impedance can output the maximum power.
center frequency(200kHz), rs (100-500mm)
0.8
100mm
-4
150mm x 10
0.6 2
200mm
Receiver RMS power
250mm
0.4 300mm
350mm
1
400mm
0.2 450mm
500mm
0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 100 200 300 400 500
(a) Time (microsecond) (b) Distance (mm)
Figure 5 Pitch-catch signal with a receiver PWAS (a) at different distance from a
transmitter PWAS, (b) RMS power of a receiver at different distance.
In a 2-D pitch-catch sensing simulation, we used an Aluminum alloy 2024 infinite

plate with 1 mm thickness. PWAS transmitter and receiver were 7-mm diameter and
0.2-mm thickness. A 20-Vpp 100-kHz central frequency 3-count Hanning window
tone-burst signal was applied to the transmitter. The receiver instantaneous voltage
response was shown in Figure 5a. The fast axial wave was separated from the low
speed flexural wave. The axial wave was non-dispersive and kept the shape of
excitation signal. The flexural wave spread out due to the dispersive nature. The
receiver root mean square (RMS) power was calculated (Figure 5b). It is clear that the
receiver RMS power is proportional with 1/ r .
CONCLUSION AND FURTHER WORK
Development of a predictive model to optimize the sensor-structure configuration

for effective damage detection with minimum weight and power requirement on the
SHM system should be pursued. A systematic investigation of 1-D and 2-D power and
energy transduction in linear and circular PWAS attached on structure was considered
using the wave propagation methods. With wave propagation, ideal bonding and ideal
945
excitation source assumption, frequency response function and power and energy
transduction of PWAS transmitter and receiver were developed. For a PWAS
transmitter, the active power, reactive power, power rating of electrical requirement
were determined under harmonic voltage excitation. It indicates that the reactive
power is dominant and gives the power requirement for power supply / amplifier for
PWAS application. The electrical and mechanical power analysis at the PWAS
structure interface indicates all the active electrical power provides the mechanical
power at the interface. This provides the power and energy for the axial and flexural
wave’s power and energy travelling in the structure. The parametric study of PWAS
transmitter size shows the proper size and excitation frequency selection based on the
tuning effects. For a PWAS receiver under a PWAS excitation, the frequency response
function and power and energy were also developed. The parametric study of the
distance of the PWAS transmitter and receiver indicated the power flow in the
structure. The future work is the power and energy analysis with multi-mode Lamb
waves and composite structures.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation
under Grant# CMS- 0925466, Shih-Chi Liu, Program Director and by the US
Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology,
Technology Innovation Program, Cooperative Agreement Number 70NANB9H9007.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
National Science Foundation or the US Department of Commerce, National Institute
of Standards and Technology.
REFERENCES
1. ASCE, “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” , American Socienty of Civil Engineers,
website http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/index.cfm
2. Viktorov, I. A. (1967) Rayleigh and Lamb Waves – Physical Theory and Applications, Plenum
Press, NY,1967
3. Auld, B. A. (1990) Acoustic Fields and Waves in Solids, Wiley Interscience, John Wiley &
Sons, vol. 1 and 2, 1973
4. Rose, J. L. (1999) Ultrasonic Waves in Solid Media, Cambridge University Press, New York,
1999
5. Erturk, A.; Inman, D.J. (2008) "On mechanical modeling of cantilevered piezoelectric vibration
energy harvesters" Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, vol. 19, n 11, p
1311-1325, November 2008
6. Erturk, A.; Inman, D.J. (2008) "Issues in mathematical modeling of piezoelectric energy
harvesters" Smart Materials and Structures, vol. 17, n 6, December 1, 2008
7. NG, T. H.; Liao, W. H. (2005) "Sensitivity analysis and energy harvesting for a self-powered
piezoelectric sensors", Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures. vol. 16, pp.785-
797, Oct 2005
8. Giurgiutiu, V. (2008) Structural Health Monitoring with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors,
Elsevier Academic Press, 760 pages, 2008, ISBN 978-0120887606
9. Lin, B.; Giurgiutiu, V. (2006) “Modeling and Testing of PZT and PVDF Piezoelectric Wafer
Active Sensors”, Smart Materials and Structures, Vol. 15, No. 4, August 2006, pp. 1085-1093
10. Lin, B. (2010) "Power and Energy Transduction in Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors for
Structural Health Monitoring: Modeling and Applications" Theses and Dissertations. Paper 212.
http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/212
11. Lin, B.; Giurgiutiu, V.; (2011) “Simplifi ed 2D modeling of power and energy transduction of
piezoelectric wafer active sensors for structural health monitoring”, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7981
946
A Time Domain Spectral Element for Coupled
Piezoelectric Actuator/Sensor with Complex
Thin-walled Assembly Structures
R. MOHAMED and P. MASSON
ABSTRACT
Characterised by geometrical flexibility, and robustness with respect to realistic
conditions modelling such as non-uniform damping, the finite element method (FEM)
has dominated the field of numerical simulation of wave propagation phenomena.
The main challenge in wide adoption of FEM in numerical simulation of SHM sys-
tems based on GW propagation is the prohibitive computational requirements. This
paper presents a structured mesh approach with nonequal number of nodes along the
element edges, in order to optimize the use of an efficient variant of FEM, spectral
element method (SEM) to model relatively complex thin-walled assembly structures.
As low as three nodes per thickness can be used, while using a larger number of
nodes in the length direction of a two dimensional structure. The presented approach
does not require a modification in the element integration, thus preserving the spec-
tral convergence rate of the method. For the modelling of the coupling between the
piezoceramic element and the structure, the proposed approach implements mixed
implicit/explicit time integration. The propagation of GW has been simulated using
ANSYS as a representative of the FEM, compared with experimental measurements
and with the results of an in-house developed code implementing the proposed opti-
mized spectral element. The results presented as a comparison of the computational
requirements and accuracy for both FEM and SEM, show a higher efficiency for the
SEM for the same accuracy.
1. INTRODUCTION
An important requirement to enable the optimum tailoring of Structural Health
Monitoring (SHM) systems based on guided waves (GW) propagation for complex
structures is the availability of reliable design tools that could be used in the itera-
tive design cycle. There are few commercially available numerical modelling tools,
such as ATILA, PZflex, ABAQUS, ANSYS, COMSOL and Siemens NX that could
be used to provide accurate information about the behaviour of the system, thus pro-
viding a numerical prototyping substitute. These tools are dominated by the finite
element method (FEM), due to its mathematically well understood foundations, ge-
ometrical versatility, robustness in representing complex boundary conditions, and
easy coupling of multiple physical phenomena.
Ramy Mohamed and Patrice Masson
GAUS, Mech. Eng. Dept., Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, J1K 2R1, Canada
947
Despite these numerous advantages, still there is some inherent limitations of the
classical FEM with respect to the numerical modelling of SHM systems based on GW
propagation. These limitations could be categorized into two main categories: com-
putational efficiency limitations, and accuracy limitations. Computational efficiency
limitations are attributable to the huge computational load required for the minimiza-
tion of the numerical dispersion (i.e. a minimum of 20 grid points per minimum
wavelength are needed for 0.1 % numerical dispersion error [1]). Moreover, the high
frequencies typically used in SHM applications based on GW propagation limit the
stable time step for explicit time integration to very small values. Such limitations
have been addressed in several variants of the FEM, such as using nonconforming
elements [2], or modifying the time integration scheme [3]. The other category of
limitations is related to the accuracy of solution in the vicinity of materials interfaces,
especially with the presence of material non-linearities. This could become an issue
in modelling composite structures that exhibit frequency dependent attenuation, and
large number of material interfaces. This issue is normally addressed by applying a
high order continuity conditions at the interfaces, adaptive refining at the regions of
low accuracy, which in turn increases the required computational effort.
These limitations could be overcome by relying on specialized algorithms rather
than the general purpose ones used in commercial FEM code. This paper adopts this
approach, by using an optimized version of the spectral element method (SEM) in
the time domain. SEM, a variant of the p/FEM, combines the spectral convergence
rates associated with the spectral methods with the geometric flexibility of the finite
element method [4]. It reduces the strict constraint on the minimum number of nodes
per minimum wavelength to five nodes. Thus leading to some increase also in the
maximum stable time step. Adding to these advantages that the mass matrix is diago-
nal by construction for Legendre elements, thus eliminating the need for inversion of
the mass matrix, at least for a purely elastic simulation (i.e. with no damping matrix)
such as the ones presented here. Recently such advantages have drawn the attention
of different researchers in the field of SHM [5–9].
2. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
Figure 1 shows the experimental setup, consisting of relatively complex thin walled
structure, with an L shaped horizontal stiffener, adhesively bonded to the plate by
epoxy, the structure was made of aluminum (6066-T6) plate, and instrumented with
two circular PZT elements, with flipped electrodes, placed symmetrically on the two
sides of the L shape stiffener. A damping tape was bonded along the boundaries of
the region of interest to minimize the reflection from the boundaries. Figure 2 shows
the two dimensional idealization of the cross section passing through the line con-
nection between the two PZT elements. The measurements, as well as the numerical
simulations were done at three frequencies, 100 kHz, 200 kHz, and 450 kHz.
A HP 33120A generator with a sampling frequency of 4 MHz and amplified by
a voltage amplifier (Musilab UA-8400) is used to send 5.5 cycles modulated sinu-
soidal bursts to the left piezoceramic. Signal acquisition at the other piezoceramic is
performed using a LabVIEW interface with a high-impedance National Instruments
PCI-5105 12 bits acquisition board. The recorded signal length is 1 ms and the sam-
pling frequency is fixed at 6 MHz. All measurements are averaged 100 times. The
actuators and sensors are made from PIC 255 piezoceramic from Physik Instrumente.
948
Table 1. Properties of the aluminium plate and piezoceramics.
Component Property Value

Plate (Al 6066-T6) Length 0.894 m
Width 0.894 m
Thickness 0.001 m
Young’s modulus 68.94 GPa
Density 2712.59 kg/m3
Stiffner (Al 2024) Length 0.35 m
Dimensions 0.01265 × 0.01265 m
Thickness 0.0016 m
Young’s modulus 37.10 GPa
Density 2767.90 kg/m3
PZT Element Diameter 0.0051 m
Thickness 0.0005 m
Spacing between elements (center to center) 0.21 m
Density 7800 kg/m3
Piezoelectric type PIC255 (Physik Intsrumente, Inc.)
d31 = -180 ×10−12 (C/N) d33 = 400 ×10−12 (C/N)
d15 = 550 ×10−12 (C/N) 11 = 1650 ×o (F/m)
22 = 1650 ×o (F/m) 33 = 1750 ×o (F/m)
C11 = 6.2112 ×1010 (N/m2 ) C12 = 1.576 ×1010 (N/m2 )
C13 = 2.562 ×1010 (N/m2 ) C33 = 4.8309 ×1010 (N/m2 )
C55 2.5641 ×1010 (N/m2 )
The material properties used in the simulation and dimensions of the setup are listed
in Table 1.
Figure 1. Experimental setup
3. MODELLING CONSIDERATIONS
3.1 SEM pre-processing
The pre-processing step, including mesh generation, and the boundary conditions
specification, as well as the initial conditions, and solution control parameters were
done using the FEMAP commercial software, with a special plug-in developed to im-
plement the definition of the piezoceramic elements as well as the electric boundary
conditions.
949
The excitation signal was assumed to be uniformly distributed on the electrode
surface of the piezoceramic actuator. The mesh consisted solely of (quadrilateral)
elements, in order to be converted later to spectral elements. Although several efforts
has been done to extend the SEM approximation to triangular elements based on the
concept of degenerated quadrilateral elements the accuracy is deteriorated in wave
propagation problems [10]. The actuator and sensor were assumed perfectly bonded
to the structure. A traction continuity is assumed at the bonding interface between the
piezoceramic actuator and the structure. This assumption enables the formulation of
the condensed matrix formulation that was developed earlier in [8]. The simulation
was purely elastic, no attempt was made to include the material damping in the sim-
ulation. The sensor response is solved through strong coupling, by carrying a strain
integration over the thickness of the piezoceramic sensor, then solving the algebraic
sensor equations separately at each time step for the voltage.
Figure 2. The two dimensional model both for the FEM, and the SEM, the mesh size were determined
based on the resolution criteria for 200 kHz excitation frequency.
∆ymin
∆xmin
(a) (b)
Figure 3. Reference Element for (a) proposed SEM (6 × 3) and (b) FEM (ANSYS).
After the mesh is generated it is exported to the SEM solver through ASCII file.
The SEM solver regenerates the spectral element mesh based on mapping each ele-
950
ment to the reference element as the one shown in Fig.3.a with variable number of
nodes in the y and x directions and then removing the redundant node references
and renumbering the mesh. The details of the mathematical modelling and the cou-
pling conditions, as well as the boundary conditions can be found in [8]. All SEM
meshes used in the present study were based on element (6 × 3) (i.e. N gllx = 6, and
N glly = 3).
We adopt two criteria to render the comparison of computational efficiency inde-
pendent of the meshing practice. The mesh sizing is based on a resolution criterion,
based on the theoretical results of numerical dispersion analysis for both FEM and
SEM, so we can compare two mesh sizing based on a predetermined threshold of
numerical dispersion (0.1 % numerical dispersion). The other criterion that affects
the computational effort is the time step selection, which corresponds to the Courant-
Friedrichs-Lewy (CF L) condition. Both criteria will be explained in the upcoming
sections.
3.2 Spatial resolution

For a 0.1 % numerical dispersion error, the number of nodes per shortest wave-
length λmin should be larger than or equal to 5 [5], for SEM, and 20 nodes per shortest
wavelength for FEM [1]. The minimum wavelength defined as:
λmin = min(cp )/fmax (1)
where fmax is the highest frequency that need to be resolved, e.g. the maximum
frequency at which the source frequency spectrum has significant power. For an
element of size h and polynomial order in the x direction px = N gllx − 1, and in y
direction py = N glly − 1 the number of nodes per wavelength G is
min(px , py )λmin
G= (2)
h
For the quadratic order quadrilateral element used in the FEM simulations px = py
= 2. Poor resolution results in resonance and high dispersion at higher frequencies,
which in the case of heterogeneous structures is very hard to distinguish from real
signals. The maximum average element size is then defined as
3λmin
haverage = for SEM (3)
5
2λmin
haverage = for FEM (4)
20
3.3 Time stability
To ensure a stable time step for explicit time integration, the CF L stability number
should be smaller than 0.55 for second order time schemes, and much smaller for
highly deformed meshes [11]. This number is defined at each computational node as
CF L = max(cp )∆t/min(∆xmin , ∆ymin ) (5)
where ∆t is the time step, max(cp ) is the maximum material dependent phase velocity
of the propagating modes and ∆x is the local grid spacing in the x direction while
∆y is the local grid spacing in the y direction. ∆xmin and ∆ymin are smaller than the
951
Table 2. The values of the simulations parameters used in the present study
Method Frequency (kHz) λmin (mm) haverage (mm) ∆t (s)
SEM 200 4.583 4.5 12 E-8
FEM 2.7 15 E-9
SEM 450 2.67 1.5 17 E-9
FEM 0.25 9 E-10
element size h, and because the proposed version of SEM internally subdivides each
element into a non-regular grid of N gllx × N glly nodes clustered near the element
edges (Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre nodes), the value of the ∆t is determined by the
minimum value of either. The time stability of each element is quantified by the
stability index:
S = min(∆xmin , ∆ymin )/max(cp ) (6)
which correspond to a unity CF L number. The unity value is used to make the com-
parison between FEM and SEM on the unified basis, since the proper value of CFL
is dependent on the mesh quality. For relatively complex structure, the determination
of the max(cp ) is not straightforward, since it is limited by the minimum thickness in
the structure, and the length of the thin plate-like part, this could lead to unduly small
estimation of the time step. So, Eq.5 could be considered as lower bound on the value
of the maximum time step. The upper bound is the normal CFL condition
CF L = max(cL )∆t/min(∆xmin , ∆ymin ) (7)
where cL is the longitudinal wave velocity, and in that case the max(cL ), is the maxi-
mum value over the range of materials in the structure.
Figure 4.a shows the time stability index S distribution over the elements, for
SEM model. The similar analysis results for FEM is shown in Fig. 4.b, The reduc-
tion in maximum stable time step independent of CF L which could vary according
the mesh quality is evident, where the minimum time stability index for the FEM is
2.86 × 10−8 , while for SEM 9.36 × 10−8 , which have a major economical impact
on the computational effort. Table 2 summarizes the values used for the different
simulations.
(a) SEM Model (b) FEM Model

Figure 4. Time stability index distribution over the elements for excitation frequency 450 kHz, 5.5
modulated cycles, for both SEM and FEM.
4. NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The results of the experimental measurements, and the numerical simulation of the
sensor signal for the two frequencies used in the present study are depicted in Fig. 5.
The SEM and ANSYS results are in prefect agreement. The differences between
952
Table 3. A comparison of the computational cost between FEM (ANSYS) and SEM code.
Method Frequency (kHz) Number of elements computation time (min)
SEM 200 845 14
FEM 9123 32
SEM 450 1520 32
FEM 45132 54
the experimental and numerical results may be due to the geometrical simplification
(the radius of curvature of the stiffener was not modelled) and to the presence of the
bonding layer at the PZT element and the plate interface as well as at the interface
between the stiffener and the plate.
1 1
Experiment
Experiment
SEM SEM
ANSYS ANSYS
0.5 0.5
Normalized Amplitude (V)

Normalized Amplitude (V)
0 0
-0.5 -0.5
-1 -1
0 1 2 3 0 1 2
Time (s) -4
x 10 Time (s) -4
x 10
(a) (b)
Middle (Sensor-Stiffener) Middle (Sensor-Stiffener)
Center of Stiffener Center of Stiffener
Middle (actuator-Stiffener) Middle (Actuator-Stiffener)
0 1 2 3 0 1 2
Time (s) -4
x 10 Time (s) x 10
-4
(c) (d)
Figure 5. Time trace of the sensor signal, the simulated sensor signal using ANSYS, and the SEM
code at (a) 200 kHz, and (b) 450 kHz, and The simulation results of the Y component of the particle
velocity, at three different locations surrounding the stiffener, at (c) 200 kHz and (d) 450 kHz.
In order to illustrate the interaction with the stiffener, the vertical component of
the numerical simulation of the particle velocity is plotted at three locations in Fig. 5
(c, d), the middle point between the actuator and L stiffener, the center of the stiffener,
and the middle point between the stiffener and the sensor.
The trend of interaction at the two frequencies are similar, with a noticeable am-
plification of the signal at 450 kHz excitation frequency, which could be attributed
to the small wave interaction with the stiffener as a rigid body vibration at 200 kHz,
since the wavelength is much larger than the width of the stiffener. While at 450 kHz,
a higher energy level is imparted into the stiffener.
The SEM solver was written in Fortran 2003. The solver were built using Intel
Fortran compiler, on a windows machine with a 2.26 dou core processor, and 4 GB
RAM. Both cores were used in both ANSYS, and SEM solver. The CPU time, and
the used resources in terms of the mesh size for both ANSYS and the SEM code is
shown in table 3 for the two different frequencies that were used in the present study.
A reduction in time in the order of 50 % was achieved, without loss of accuracy.
953
5. CONCLUSIONS
In the present study an optimized version of the spectral element method was
presented in order to reduce the computational cost of the numerical simulation of
guided waves propagation in relatively complex thin walled structure. The numerical
simulation results were in fair agreement with the preliminary experimental results.
The results of FEM simulation using a commercial software (ANSYS) was performed
as a verification of the correctness of the proposed method, and as a demonstration of
the computational efficiency achievable by the SEM. This work has been supported
by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada(NSERC).The
authors wish to thank P-C Ostiguy, and N. Quaegebeur for there help.
REFERENCES
[1] Mullen, R. and Belytschko, T. 1982. “Dispersion analysis of finite element
semidiscretizations of the two-dimensional wave equation,” International Jour-
nal for Numerical Methods in Engineering 18(1), 11–29.
[2] Zyserman, F. I., Gauzellino, P. M., and Santos, J. E. 2003. “Dispersion analysis
of a non-conforming finite element method for the helmholtz and elastodynamic
equations,” International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering 58(9),
1381–1395.
[3] Idesman, A. V., Schmidt, M., and Foley, J. R. 2011. “Accurate finite element
modeling of linear elastodynamics problems with the reduced dispersion error,”
Computational Mechanics 47(5), 1–18.
[4] Patera, A. T. 1984. “A spectral element method for fluid dynamics: laminar flow
in a channel expansion,” J Comput Phys 54, 468–88.
[5] Kudela, P., Zak, A., Krawczuka, M., and Ostachowicz, W. 2007. “Modelling of
wave propagation in composite plates using the time domain spectral element
method,” J Sound Vibr 302, 728–45.
[6] Kim, Y., Ha, S., and Chang, F. K. 2008. “Time-domain spectral element method
for built-in piezoelectric actuator induced Lamb wave propagation analysis,”
AIAA Journal 46(3), 591–600.
[7] Ha, S. and Chang, F. K. 2010. “Optimizing a spectral element for modeling
PZT-induced lamb wave propagation in thin plates,” smart materials and struc-
tures 19, 1–11.
[8] Mohamed, R. and Masson, P. 2010. “A time domain spectral element model
for piezoelectric excitation of lamb waves in isotropic plates,” in Proc. of SPIE ,
7650, 76502G.
[9] Mohamed, R., Demers, D. L., and Masson, P. 2011. “A parametric study of
piezoceramic thickness effect on the generation of fundamental Lamb modes,”
in Proc. of SPIE, 7984, 79841Y.
[10] Komatitsch, D., Martin, R., Tromp, J., Taylor, M. A., and Wingate, B. A. 2001.
“Wave propagation in 2-D elastic media using a spectral element method with
triangles and quadrangles,” Journal of Computational Acoustics 9(2), 703–718.
[11] Komatitsch, D. and Vilotte, J. P. 1998. “The spectral element method: An effi-
cient tool to simulate the seismic response of 2D and 3D geological structures,”
Bull Seismol Soc Am 88(2), 368–92.
954
Simulation Platform for UWB Impulse Radio
Wireless Sensor Networks Dedicated to
Aeronautic Applications
D. DRAGOMIRESCU, A. THAIN, F. CAMPS, F. PERGET,
A. LECOINTRE, A. BERTHE and R. PLANA
ABSTRACT
Impulse Radio Ultra Wide Band (IR-UWB) is a promising technology to address

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) constraints such as low power consumption.
Existing network simulation tools do not provide a complete WSN simulation
architecture, with the IR-UWB specificities at the PHYsical (PHY) and the Medium
Access Control (MAC) layers. In this paper, we propose a WSN simulator based on
the IR-UWB technique and taking into account the application specificities
depending on the channel propagation characteristics. The main application
addressed in this paper is the Structure Health Monitoring for aircrafts.
Electromagnetic simulations of the real channel propagation inside the aircraft are
done and the obtained channel propagation model is introduced in the WSN
simulator for a very good accuracy. This WSN simulator allows to establish the best
network topology, under the constraints of an application, even for very high
number of wireless sensor nodes.
INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT OF THE WORK
This paper presents the research done in the context of French National Research
Agency Project “NANOCOMM”[1]. This project aims to demonstrate the potential of
reconfigurable, ultra-sensitive, low consumption, and easy installation sensor networks
with high performance in terms of reliability in line with the requirements of
aeronautics and space. The main application is the Structure Health Monitoring for the
aircrafts. Structure Health Monitoring (SHM) is a very important issue nowadays
limited by the facility of sensor deployment. The deployment of the sensors is limited
by wired connections which lead to excess weight and carburant consumption. The
wired sensor put also a huge problem of installation. The wireless solution is imposed
by these major constraints. In this context, be able to predict the wireless sensor
network behavior with a high number of wireless communicating nodes in a small,
closed area, like the aircraft cabin becomes very important. Moreover, establishing the
best network topology allowing to minimize the interferences between nodes is also
very important. To answer these two important issues, we propose in this paper a new
WSN simulator dedicated to aeronautic applications. This WSN simulator is able to
take into account all the network layers starting from the physical layer and channel
propagation model (inside and outside the aircraft) up to application layer.
D.Dragomirescu,F.Camps, F.Perget,A.Lecointre, A.Berthe and R.Plana, CNRS; LAAS; 7,

avenue du Colonel Roche, F-31077 Toulouse, FRANCE; University of Toulouse; UPS, INSA,
INP, ISAE, LAAS; F-31077 Toulouse, FRANCE.
A.Thain.EADS Innovation Work; 18, rue Maurice Terce, F-31025 Toulouse, FRANCE
955
The paper is structured as follows. The second chapter presents the proposed
simulation platform structure. The third chapter exposes the channel propagation for a
generic single aisle aircraft. The forth chapter is dedicated to the IR-UWB Physical
layer and MAC layer coded in our simulator. In the conclusion a complete simulation
of a WSN based on IR-UWB inside an aircraft is presented.
SIMULATION PLATFORM STRUCTURE
Simulation and modeling is the commonly used way to predict system

performances. The major objective for the wireless sensor network simulator is to
allow the study of the network architecture and topology in a complex environment
like the cabin of an aircraft, inside a nuclear plant or a military local area protection[2].
This simulation platform will allow also testing the interaction between the wireless
sensor network and other wireless networks deployed in the same area (WiFi system
for example). The best network topology and architecture will be established for each
application upon the constraints of that application (channel propagation,
interferences, other wireless systems).Several simulation platforms have been
proposed to simulate wireless network with a recent extension to WSNs [3]. These
platforms can be characterized by the main following criteria [3]:
 Fidelity: refers to the level of accuracy at which the model represents the
targeted system. In the context of this paper, the fidelity is considered at the
PHY and MAC layers.
 Scalability: refers to the capability of the simulation platform to support a large
number of nodes. Note that this characteristic is closely linked to the execution
speed.
 Extensibility: refers to customs models implementation used by the simulator
Simulators like NS-2, OMNET++, GloMoSim and Qualnet, on one hand and
SensorSim, J-Sim,Sense on other hand were tested regarding their capabilities to
simulate wireless sensor network. After earlier developments in GloMoSim (free
version of Qualnet, but having limited facilities) [4][2], our choice is Qualnet
simulator because is the one which give the best response to the precedent three
criteria:
 Extensibility and Fidelity: it is possible to introduce (code) new physical and
MAC layer in the simulator. This criterion is very important, as our wireless
sensor network use Impulse Radio Ultra Wide Band (IR-UWB)
communication to minimize the interferences and the power consumption. IR-
UWB physical layer is not coded in the actual network simulators.
 Scalability: Qualnet is able to simulate more than hundreds of nodes of a
wireless sensor network. Moreover Qualnet simulation can be deployed on the
computational grid and can simulate thousands of nodes.
Each node of the wireless sensor network has application, transport, network,
MAC and physical layers. The structure of the IR-UWB WSN simulator is
represented in figure 1.
The physical layer is IR-UWB and the MAC layer is ALOHA like. The
detailed description of the implementation of these two layers is done in chapter 4. To
be able to take into account the application environment, channel propagation
956
simulation from electromagnetic point of view are done and then included in the
Qualnet simulator at the physical layer. The path-loss and the delay spread are
introduced in the WSN simulator. The next chapter presents the aircraft channel
model.
IR-UWB WSN Simulator
Node
Node
Application
Node
Transport
Node Node
SENSOR
Network
module
MAC Node
Physical
Node
Node Node
Node
Node
Node
Node
Node
Figure 1. IR IUWB WSN simulator structure
AIRCRAFT CHANNEL MODELLING
The channel model employed by the simulator can come from measurements or
numerical simulations. As an example, simulations were performed of channels in an
aircraft environment using the Multi-Level Fast Multipole Method (MLFMM). This
method has been extensively validated against scale model measurements for the case
of antennas mounted on the aircraft exterior and is currently used by EADS-IW for
validating Aibus antenna installations. Currently perform simulations using MLFMM
for antenna certification for Airbus are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. a) Comparisons of scaled model radiation patterns and MLFMM simulated radiation
patterns. b) Currents induced on the surface of a super-jumbo at 1.5 GHz.
Two scenarios were considered:
 External propagation along the wing of an aircraft for ice detection sensors
 Internal propagation inside a cabin for structure health monitoring using
sensors like strain gauges
957
External Propagation along the Wing of the Aircraft
The propagation between a receiver close to the aircraft cockpit and multiple
positions along the leading edge of the wing is of interest for applications such as ice
detection. We choose as our aircraft model a generic single aisle passenger jet.
An initial technical challenge is to produce simulations up to 5GHz on such a large
structure. Only half of the aircraft structure is modelled (the other half is known from
previous studies to contribute very little to the coupling at these frequencies). To
perform the coupling calculations we place a magnetic monopole on the aircraft skin
close to the cockpit and characterise the z-component of the field at positions along the
leading edge of the wing (surface currents displayed in Figure 3).
Figure 3. Electric surface currents excited on the aircraft due to a unit magnetic monopole.
This procedure is repeated for 51 frequencies between 3-5GHz (intervals of
40 MHz). A Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is then performed to produce a time
domain response. The time/distance response is displayed in Figure 4. The
interpretation of different contributions is shown on the figure.
Figure 4. Time/distance plot of the propagation channel

Vertical slices in this figure provide us with the power delay profile. We can also
generate fading models for a given frequency. In Figure 5 we show the large scale
fading and the cumulative probability distribution for the small scale fading. As
958
expected, this very open environment is dominated by the LOS and large scale
fading due to reflections for the jet engine.
Figure 5. Large scale fading curve and CDF of small scale fading
Internal Propagation inside a Cabin
The second model represents a single aisle aircraft cabin as required for structural
and internal sensor applications. As a starting point we model a furnished cabin,
without passengers. We create a homogenous dielectric model of the seats so that they
possess the same total absorption cross section as obtained by measurement [5][6]. A
simplified model of an aircraft cabin is then filled with 728 of these seats. We estimate
that the Q for this configuration is ~900 which is comparable with the value measured
in an empty aircraft [7]. An electric dipole antenna is placed 5 m from the cabin wall
on the axis of the cabin at a height of 2m. We fix the dipole current at 1A, which,
although entirely unphysical, allows easy rescaling of the field results. In Figure 6 we
display the total field in the z-plane at a height of 1 m, which is lower than the 1.5 m
of the seats.
The final objective of the simulation campaign is to provide a full time-domain and
spatial domain description of the channel as demonstrated for the wing section. For
the cabin scenario we are impeded by the fact that the environment is resonant and
therefore the MLFMM method displays a slow convergence.
Figure 6. Total electric field due to a dipole in fuselage with seats (horizontal plane).
In order to study the statistical variation of the field, we sample along paths parallel
to the axis of the aircraft. Positions in the aisle of the aircraft (A) as well as along the
rows of seats (B,C and D) are considered. Three different heights are studied (Fig. 7).
Note that the sample points actually penetrate the seating. For the purposes of this
study we only consider fields further than 5 m from the source.
959
Figure 7. The sample points employed for the statistical analysis
We perform a statistical analysis by cumulating all the field points together and by
generating the Probability Density Function using MatLab routines. After extracting a
mean path loss we observe that the fading follows a Rayleigh distribution (Figure 8).
Figure 8. Probability density function for the small scale fading in a simplified cabin environment
IR-UWB PHY LAYER and WSN MAC LAYER
The PHY layer which is in charge of coding and modulation and the MAC layer
which controls the medium access will be coded in Qualnet. An ALOHA like MAC
layer will be coded taking into account the IR-UWB specificities. At application level
a Constant Bit Rate (CBR) traffic will be considered.
We model the Time Hoping IR-UWB technique [8] at physical layer in order to
analyze its impact on the whole network architecture, in the WSN context. For this
purpose, four main key factors have to be considered: the transceiver performance,
the error rate, the energy consumption problematic, the pulse collision and the channel
access scheme. For each of them, the TH-IR-UWB specificities must be considered,
especially the discontinuous aspect.
The PHY layer of each node is emitter and receiver [9][10]. The PHY layer
receives the packet data from the MAC layer (see Figure 9) and has to send the data
bit by bit (split the data packet) into the antenna on the channel. As each PHY layer is
emitter and receiver, it is necessary to implement a data structure to stock (emitter
960
side) the data packet or to reassembly the data packet (receiver side). This structure
has to be optimize otherwise the calculus server will be rapidly overloaded.
Node2
MAC
PHY
Stack1 Stack3 Stack4
Node1 Node3 Node4
Figure 9. The PHY and MAC layer organization at each node
For each node a bit error model is introduced characterized by the bit error rate. The
error case take into account are:
 Loss of one or some bits in a packet due to a collision with another data
packet (bits); interferences or noise
 All the data packet is loss (radio vanishing)
The Time Hopping allows minimizing the collision between nodes. To implement
the Time Hoping, each node will generate a vector with the emission slots randomly
generated.
The energy consumption can be calculated at the PHY layer by associating at each
emitter and receiver a power consumption models obtained from measurements on our
hardware prototypes [9][10].
At the main parameters of IR-UWB [5][6] physical layer can be configured for
each node, such as:
 the pulse duration Tp
 the pulse echo Td
 the slot duration Tc
 the slot number (related to Time Hoping)
 the data rate
 the transmission power in dBm
 the receiver sensitivity in dBm
 the estimated directional gain in dB
 power consumption model
We also introduce the possibility to visualize the PHY layer statistics for each
transmission. The other layers in Qualnet have already the possibility to visualize the
transmission statistics. The statistics introduced at PHY layer are: signal transmitted,
signal locked by PHY, packets received and forward to MAC layer, signals received
with error, packet received with lost fragments. This facility allows to monitories the
state of the WSN and to establish the best topology of the network.
The simulation platform results are shown in Figure 10 where each “phone”
represents a communicating node in IR-UWB. The data flow, packet error rate and bit
error rate can be visualized for each node.
961
a) b)
Figure 10. a) Data flow exchanged between the IR-UWB nodes in WSN for aircraft SHM
b) Exemple of WSN topology for SHM inside the aircraft cabin
CONCLUSION
In this paper we presented a Wireless Sensor Network simulator based on IR-UWB

PHY layer dedicated to aeronautic application. The major application treated by this
simulator is the Structure Health Monitoring at the cabin of an aircraft. The real
channel propagation model inside the cabin was take into account and introduced in
the simulator. This simulation platform allows us to obtain the best WSN topology for
Structure Health Monitoring inside the aircraft cabin.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) in the frame of its
program” Recherche Technologique Nano-INNOV/RT”(NANOCOMM project n°ANR-09-NIRT-004).
REFERENCES
1. http://www.nanocomm.fr
2. A.Lecointre, A.Berthe, D.Dragomirescu,
J.Turbert, R.Plana, 2009, “PERFORMANCE
EVALUATION OF IMPULSE RADIO ULTRA WIDE BAND WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS”,
Proc. of 2009 IEEE MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE, Pages: 1191-1197
3. W T. Kasch, J R. Ward, and J. Andrusenko, 2009 “Wireless Network Modelling and
Simulation Tools for Designer and Developer” IEEE Commun. Mag, Vol 47, pp 120-127.
4. A.Berthe, A.Lecointre, D.Dragomirescu, R.Plana, 2009, “Simulation Platform for Wireless
Sensor Networks Based on Impulse Radio Ultra Wide Band”, Proc. of 8th International
Confefence on Networks (ICN), pp.61-66
5. A.Thain, G.Peres, D. Naveiras-Ferreiro, 2011, “Simulated UWB channel modelling for
aircraft”, Proceedings of Eucap 2011
6. T. X. Nguyen, S. V. Koppen, J. J. Ely, 2000, “RF loading effects of aircraft seats in an
electromagnetic reverberating environment”, NASA/TM-2000-210626, December 2000.
7. KW.Hurst and SW. Ellingson, , 2008, “Path-loss from a transmitter inside an aircraft cabin to an
exterior fuselage-mounted antenna”, IEEE Int. Ant. And Prop. Symp.
8. A.Lecointre, D.Dragomirescu, R.Plana, 2007, “System Architecture Modelling of an UWB
receiver for wireless sensor network”, Proc. of Embedded Computer Systems: Architectures,
Modeling, and Simulation; Lecture Notes in Computer Sciences, Vol: 4599 pp: 408-420
9. A.Lecointre, D.Dragomirescu, R.Plana, 2008, “Design and Hardware Implementation of a
Reconfigurable Mostly Digital IR-UWB Radio”, ROMJIST, Vol: 11 Iss: 4 Pp: 295-318
10. A.Lecointre, D.Dragomirescu, R.Plana, 2010, “Largely reconfigurable Impulse Radio UWB
Transceiver”, Electronics Letters, Volume: 46 Issue: 6 Pages: 453-455
962
Finite Element Driven Damage Detection of a
Skewed Highway Bridge with Pin and
Hanger Assemblies
A. A. MOSAVI, H. SEDARAT, A. EMAMI-NAEINI, V. JACOB,
A. KRIMOTAT and J. LYNCH
ABSTRACT
Pin and hanger assemblies are among the traditional structural components that
have been widely used in many conventional suspended plate girder bridge systems
around the U.S. The failure of pin and hanger assemblies has been reported as the
main reason for collapse of all or part of several bridges. This paper investigates the
vulnerability of a skewed highway bridge using the pin and hanger assemblies, and
evaluates the application of five different modally-based damage detection techniques
in identifying the failure of a pin and hanger assembly in this specific type of bridge.
A detailed high-fidelity nonlinear finite element (FE) model of a typical suspended
bridge using pin and hanger system is developed to investigate the possible failure of
pin and hanger assemblies. Different types of loadings were applied to identify a
critical stress state in the hangers. The results show that the hangers could reach to a
critical bending-torsion stress state when a combination of unsymmetrical truck
loadings is added to the temperature-induced stresses. In the second part of the paper,
five different vibration-based damage detection techniques were used to identify
failure of pin and hanger assemblies on one of the exterior steel girders. The results of
the investigation showed that the local failure of pin and hanger assemblies can
partially change the global modal response of the bridge. Finally, the change in
flexibility method and the change in uniform load surface method yield better damage
identification results compared to the other methods.
INTRODUCTION
Pin and hanger assemblies are among the traditional structural components that
have been widely used in the U.S. These assemblies are considered fracture critical
bridge components, meaning that the assemblies are non-redundant and their failure
couldresult in collapse of all or part of the bridge. Collapse of the Mianus River
Bridge on Interstate 95 in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1983 is attributed to the failure
of these structural components. Although the structural problems is frequently
reported for the pin and hanger assemblies [1], [2], most of extensive field testing have
Amir A. Mosavi, SC Solutions, Inc. 1261 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA 94085. Email:
amosavi@scsolutions.com
Hassan Sedarat, SC Solutions, Inc. 1261 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA 94085.
Abbas Emami-Naeini, SC Solutions, Inc. 1261 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA 94085.
Vince Jacob, SC Solutions, Inc. 1261 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA 94085.
Alex Krimotat, SC Solutions, Inc. 1261 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA 94085.
Jerome Lynch, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, MI 48109-2125.
963
failed to identify the cause for the observed problem in pin and hanger assemblies [4],
[1]. Several researchers have reported high stress spikes in the hangers from field
testing [1], [3], [4], [5]. Mehta [1] and Clarck et al. [6] concluded from their
investigations that the observed stress spikes in hangers are due to the lock-up of pin
rotation which can be caused by misalignment at the construction time or by
corrosion. Hag-Elsafi and Lund [5] performed an investigation on a cracked hanger on
Route 213 over Rondout Creek Bridge, Eddyville, NY, and they concluded that the
observed cracking was caused by a misalignment in the assembly and that the
contribution of thermal stresses was significant. Bellenoit et al. [3] investigated the
stress state in the hanger plates and observed a bending stress can also develop in these
plates. Although promising, most of these investigations are focused on local
modeling of the pin and hanger components and lack a comprehensive understanding
of the phenomenon which yields to the observed failure of these components. Detailed
FE model of the entire bridge including pin and hanger assemblies can provide better
insight into the performance of this type of systems.
This paper evaluates the vulnerability of the pin and hanger assemblies in a
skewed highway bridge, and investigates the possible phenomenon which leads to a
critical stress state in the hanger components. The study is performed using a high-
fidelity global model of the bridge. Material and geometrical nonlinearities are also
included in the model. The pin and hangers are explicitly simulated in the FE model
using constraint equations and 8-noded nonlinear shell elements, respectively.
Performance of the pin and hangers are evaluated by considering different types of
loading such as uniform and gradient temperature, AASHTO uniform design vehicle
load and truck loadings. The results show that the hangers in the skewed bridge
undergo a bending-torsion stress state even under a symmetrical loading on the bridge.
It was found that this stress state reaches a critical limit when a combination of
unsymmetrical truck loadings in the middle span of the bridge is added to the ultimate
temperature-induced stresses. Also, application of five different modally-based
damage detection techniques [7], [8], [9] is investigated to identify a possible failure of
a pin and hanger assembly in this specific type of bridge. Damage scenarios were used
to simulate the failure of the pin and hanger assemblies on one of the exterior steel
girders. Finally, the results from different damage detection techniques are compared.
BRIDGE DESCRIPTION
The bridge under investigation is the North Bound I-275 crossing over Telegraph
Road in Wayne County, Michigan. The crossing is a skewed three span steel concrete
composite bridge as shown in Figure 1. The bridge is supported on top of two
abutments at two ends and two concrete piers in the middle. Total length of the bridge
is 223 ft. The middle span of the bridge is the longest span which is about 140 ft long.
The bridge superstructure system is composed of seven steel plate girders, which
support an 8 inch concrete slab. The plate girders at the end spans are simply
supported at top of the pier and abutments. Each plate girder is suspended by two
pairs of pin and hanger assemblies at both ends in the middle span. An enlarged detail
of the pin and hanger assemblies is also shown in Figure 1. There are an expansion
joint and a construction joint in the middle span of the concrete slab on top of pin and
hanger assemblies.
964
Figure 1. North Bound I-275 crossing over Telegraph Road in Wayne County, Michigan
FINITE ELEMENT MODEL OF THE BRIDGE
A high-fidelity nonlinear 3D FE model of the as-built bridge was developed to

investigate the possible failure of the pin and hanger assemblies. The developed FE
model was also used to detect the simulated failure of the pin and hanger assemblies
using modally-based damage detection techniques. Since this study focuses on service
loadings (seismic load was not studied), the details of abutment and piers are not
included in the developed FE model, but rather the FE investigation was focused on
the behavior of the bridge superstructure. The boundary conditions are modeled using
roller supports on top of the pier and pinned supports on top of the abutments. An
isometric view of the FE model of the bridge is shown in Figure 2. The concrete slab
and the steel girders are simulated using 8 noded shell elements. A compressive
strength of 4000 psi was used for the concrete slab, and the properties of steel grade
A588 was used for all structural components of the bridge. A full composite action is
simulated between the concrete slab and steel girders using rigid link elements. The
cross bracings between the steel girders are modeled using nonlinear moment-
curvature beam elements beam elements. These nonlinear beam elements provide the
ability to simulate their buckling under excessive loadings. Nonlinear compression-
only springs are also used to simulate the possible closure of the expansion joint and
discontinuities at the pin and hanger assemblies under different types of loading.
Special attention has been paid to simulate the details of the connections at the pin and
hanger assemblies. The hanger links were modeled using nonlinear shell elements as
shown in Figure 3 to simulate their possible twist and bending behavior under
different loadings. The pins were assumed to be rigid, and were simulated using the
translational constraint equations between the nodes of the shell elements of the
hanger and the nodes of the shell elements of the web of the steel girders. The
geometrical nonlinearities have been also been considered in the model to account for
the large displacement effects.
Figure 2. Isometric view of the Telegraph Rd. Bridge FE model from (a) top and (b) bottom
965
z
y
x
Figure 3. Details of the suspender links in the FE model of the Telegraph Bridge
Simulated loading scenarios
An investigation was performed to simulate the possible service loading

conditions which result in excessive stress states in the hanger links of the bridge. The
initial investigation was carried out by performing a static analysis under the dead load
of the bridge. Figure 4 shows a top view of the scaled deformation of the bridge under
its own dead load. As it can be seen in Figure 4(a), a twist was observed in the steel
girders in the middle span of the bridge. This twist is mainly due to the large skew
angle of the bridge, and the fact that the steel girders in the middle span are merely
supported by the hanger links at their two ends. The twist in the middle span induced a
bending/torsion type of deformation in the hanger links as can be seen in Figure 4(b).
The hanger links are supposed to only carry the axial tension loads, and excessive
bending/torsion deformations could potentially result in their failure. After the
observations from the dead load analysis, four different loading scenarios which
augment the bending/torsion deformation in the hanger links were selected for further
analysis.
TEMPERATURE GRADIENT LOADING
A temperature gradient loading was applied across the depth of the steel-concrete
super-structure according to the provisions in AASHTO design guide. The gradient
temperature values were chosen for the state of Michigan according to AASHTO
recommendations for different geographical location across the U.S.
UNIFORM TEMPERATURE LOADING
A uniform temperature loading of 110°F was applied to the entire superstructure.

This uniform temperature was selected for the analysis after finding TmaxDesign and
TminDesign values of 105°F and -20°F for the state of Michigan according to AASHTO
design guide. The selected temperature value represents a viable difference between
the temperature at the construction time and the maximum conceivable temperature.
(a) Observed twist in the steel girders (b)

y
Observed twist in the steel girders

Observed twist in the steel girder
Figure 4. Magnified deformation of (a) the bridge and (b) hanger assemblies under the dead load
966
AASHTO DESIGN LANE LOAD
AASHTO specifies that a combination of the “design lane load” and “design truck
or tandem loading” shall be considered for the design of the bridge. Therefore, a
specified uniform loading of 0.064 ksf was asymmetrically applied on the middle span
of the bridge as shown in Figure 5 (a). The asymmetrical application of the design lane
load on the middle span of the bridge was chosen after different configurations of the
design lane load was applied to maximize the twist of the steel girders in the middle
span of the bridge.
AASHTO TRUCK LOADING
An asymmetrical truck loading was also applied on the middle span of the bridge
as shown in Figure 5(b) in order to induce the maximum twist in the steel girders in
the middle span of the bridge. Two AASHTO design truck loads spaced 50 ft apart
between the lead axle of one truck and the rear axle of the other truck were
asymmetrically applied in the middle span. The two design truck loads were
multiplied by 1.75 and 0.9 factors as suggested by AASHTO to consider the effect of
impact loads and simultaneous loading of two trucks, respectively.
DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
All of the loading scenarios mentioned in the previous section were superimposed
in order to simulate a critical stress state in the hanger links. Investigated were carried
out based on the amount of the bending/torsion deformation as well as excessive
strains in the hangers. We found that among all the suspender links, two of them,
located at the expansion joint end of one of the exterior steel girders, are the most
vulnerable hangers under the applied loadings. Figure 6 shows their locations. TABLE
I and TABLE II show the color contours of the transversal deformations and the first
principal strain in these two hanger links, respectively. The contour plots in TABLE I
and TABLE II are shown for the five different loading cases discussed earlier.
Results presented in TABLE I show a double curvature deformation of the
suspender links under all types of loadings. The deformation values showed a major
increase under the uniform temperature loading. This observation is in line with Hag-
Elsafi and Lund’s findings [5]. The reason for this effect is mainly attributed to the
boundary condition of the steel girders at the two sides of the hanger links in the
middle and end spans of the girder. The transversal movement of the steel girder in the
end spans is restrained because of the support on top of the pier while the steel girder
in the middle span of the bridge can freely move in the transversal direction due to the
(a) (b)
z z
y y
x x
Figure 5. (a) Design lane load and (b) truck loadings applied on the middle span of the bridge
967
Expansion joint
Construction joint
Figure 6. Location of the critical hangers
uniform temperature loading. The strain contour plots in TABLE II also confirm the
bending/torsion type of deformation in the hanger links. Although the suspender link
elements did not completely yield under the superimposed loadings, it was observed
that a large area (marked with yellow) in the hangers has a relatively high strain value
(above 0.0015) under the superimposed design truck loading. This strain was more
than 80% of the yield strain of ASTM A588 structural steel.
TABLE I. DEFORMATION OF THE TWO CRITICAL HANGERS IN THE DIRECTION
PERPENDICULAR TO THEIR PLANE
Load type
Color plot
Temperature Uniform Design Lane
contour Dead Design truck load
Gradient Temperature load
TABLE II. FIRST PRINCIPAL STRAIN IN THE TWO HANGERS UNDER INVESTIGATION
Load type
Color plot
Temperature Uniform Design Lane Design truck
contour Dead
Gradient Temperature load load
VIBRATION-BASED DAMAGE DETECTION
After identifying the hanger links as components with a potential risk of failure,
two damage scenarios were considered in the FE model of the bridge. The objective
was to investigate the possibility of identifying the failed hangers in the bridge using
the modally-based damage detection techniques. A full description of the modally-
based damage detection techniques used in this study can be found in [7], [8], [9]. The
two considered damage scenarios, D1 and D2, were simulated by removing one and
two of the hangers in the highlighted location in Figure 6, respectively. Modal
analyses were performed for the healthy and the two damage conditions of the bridge
in order to calculate the damage indices. The damage index contours for the two
simulated damage scenarios are plotted in TABLE III based on five different methods.
968
The damage index contours in TABLE III are calculated by indirect comparison of
the modal shapes and frequencies obtained from damage conditions with respect to
those obtained from healthy condition of the bridge. The z direction in these plots
corresponds to the magnitude of the calculated damage indexes at different locations
along the bridge deck. The key concept in these methods is based on the fact that the
damage will change modally-calculated flexibility, stiffness, mode shape curvature
and strain energy of the damaged structure. As can be seen in TABLE III, the damage
location was identified using all five damage detection methods even when only one
of the hangers had been removed. The damage indexes developed using the change in
flexibility method and the change in uniform load surface method were the most
reliable methods in identifying the damage region. The results from change in modal
shape curvatures and damage index methods showed large localized damage index
values close to the damage location. This could lead to false-negative damage
detection results if the sensors are not installed close to the actual damage location. At
the end, the modally-based damage detection techniques are generally used for global
health monitoring of structures; however, it was shown in this study that these
methods can also detect local failure of the pin and hanger assemblies in the
investigated bridge. The reason is that local failure of pin and hangers in this specific
type of bridge can partially change the global modal response of the bridge. This is
mainly attributed to the few degrees of redundancy in this specific type of bridge.
TABLE III. CALCULATED DAMAGE INDEX PLOTS BASED ON FIVE MODALLY-BASED
DAMAGE DETECTION TECHNIQUES FOR THE TWO DAMAGE CONDITIONS
Method D1 D2
z
x
1. Change in flexibility
method y
2. Change in uniform
load surface
3. Change in Modal
shape curvatures
4. Change in stiffness
method
5. Damage index
method
969
CONCLUSIONS
A study was performed to investigate the reported structural deficiency of pin and
hanger assemblies in a skewed highway bridge. The investigation included
development of a detailed 3D FE model of the bridge and simulating possible loading
scenarios which can lead to a critical stress state in the hangers. The results showed
that the hangers could reach a critical bending-torsion stress state when a combination
of unsymmetrical truck loadings is added to the temperature-induced stresses. It is
noteworthy that higher strain values can be potentially reached in the hangers if a
larger impact loading occurs on the bridge as a result of the truck/structure interaction.
The finding from this study can be useful for retrofit design and repair of highway
bridges with pin and hanger assemblies. In the second part of the paper, five different
modally-based damage detection techniques have been employed to investigate the
possibility of damage detection after the failure of the critical pin and hanger
assemblies. It was shown that change in flexibility and unit load surface methods can
be reliably used to identify the failure of the hangers in the bridge. The global collapse
of bridges usually occurs due to successive local failures of several bridge
components. Therefore, there is a good chance for preventing the global collapse of
this specific type of bridges if the initial failure of hangers can be detected in time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the generous support offered by
the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) Technology Innovation Program (TIP) under Cooperative Agreement Number
70NANB9H9008. The authors would also like to thank the Michigan DOT for
providing the engineering drawings and the access to the Telegraph Rd. Bridge.
REFERENCES
1. Mehta, S. 2001. Stress spikes in pin and hanger system of truss bridges. ASCE J. of Bridge
Engineering, 6(2): 103-109.
2. Lai, L. L.-Y. 1997. Seismic vulnerability of bridges containing pin-hanger connections.
Proceedings of the 1997 4th Congress on Computing in Civil Engineering, Philadelphia, 672-679.
3. Bellenoit, J. R., Yen, B. T.; Fisher, J. W. 1984. Stresses in hanger plates of suspended bridge
girders. Transportation Research Board, 2: 20-23.
4. Shenton III, H. W., Chajes, M. J.; Sivakumar, B., Finch, W. W. 2003. Field Tests and In-Service
Monitoring of Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, New York. Transportation Research Record, 1845: 163-
170.
5. Hag-Elsafi, O., Lund, R. 2004. Investigation of a cracked hanger plate. Proceedings of the 2004
Structures Congress - Building on the Past: Securing the Future: 1267-1274.
6. Clark, A.V., Hehman, C.S., Gallagher, D., Lozev, M.G., Fuchs, P.A. 1998. Ultrasonic measurement
of stress in pin and hanger connections. Journal of nondestructive evaluation, 18 (3): 103-111.
7. Doebling, S. W, Farrar, Ch. R., Prime, M. B., 1998. Summary review of vibration-based
damage identification methods. Shock and Vibration Digest, 30(2): 91-105.
8. Farrar, C. R., Jauregui, D. A. 1998. Comparative study of damage identification algorithms
applied to a bridge: II. Numerical study, Smart Materials and Structures, 7(5): 720-731.
9. Siddique, A.B., Sparling, S.F., Wagner, L.D. 2007. Assessment of vibration-based damage
detection for an integral abutment bridge, Canadian J. of Civil Engineering, 34(3): 438-452.
970
Analysis of Bearing Damage Using a
Multibody Model and a Test Rig for
Validation Purposes
W. JACOBS, M. MALAGÓ, R. BOONEN, D. MOENS and P. SAS
ABSTRACT
Intensive research, performed over the last five decades, focuses on fault diagnosis
of bearings. To investigate the generation of these fault symptoms, this paper
discusses the development of a multibody model of a bearing. Localized faults are
introduced in the model, aiming to analyse vibration signals of damaged bearings. The
paper compares different possibilities to implement these defects. Simultaneously, a
test rig is built to validate the model. The rig allows applying a fully controlled multi-
axial static and dynamic load on different types of bearings. Therefore, it is a powerful
tool to load a bearing as built into a real machine, and measure its response.
INTRODUCTION
Bearings are one of the most used components in mechanical machines. However,
they are also one of the most critical components, and bearing failure can have serious
economical consequences. Therefore, intensive research, performed over the last five
decades, focuses on fault diagnosis of bearings and bearing modelling [1]. A study
conducted at the K.U.Leuven investigates the effects of typical mechanical bearing
faults based on a multibody model of a bearing. In a first step, a multibody model of a
bearing is built, and a multi-purpose test rig is developed to validate the models of
healthy and damaged bearings. In this way, the study aims to gain insight into
diagnostic signals of faulty bearings, leading to improved condition monitoring
techniques.
The first part of this paper presents the development of a multibody model of a
bearing, and the introduction of faults into this model. The implementation of faults in
a bearing model will give a better understanding of the generation of fault symptoms,
in particular where non-linear interactions are involved [2]. Fault simulation can also
be very valuable to produce signals with well-defined characteristics, for example to
train neural networks for diagnostics and prognostics of a range of different fault types
and locations in machines [3].
William Jacobs, Department of Mechanical Engineering, K.U.Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 300B,

B-3001 Heverlee, Belgium, e-mail: William.Jacobs@mech.kuleuven.be
Marco Malagó, Universitá degli studi di Ferrara, Via Saragat 1, I-44100 Ferrara, Italy, e-mail:
Marco.Malago@unife.it
971
After a brief overview of the work done in the bearing modelling domain, the
paper describes how the model is built and how the contact between the different
bodies, based on the Hertz theory, is implemented. Furthermore, the possibility to add
localized spalls on the surface of the raceways is being investigated. To define the
contact between spalled surfaces, it was concluded that a different contact algorithm
should be used.
The second part of the paper focuses on the design of a test rig, to apply a fully
controlled load on a bearing and measure its response. The rig is not only an effective
tool to validate multibody models. It can also be used to test condition monitoring
techniques for bearings, free from disturbances occurring from other components
existing in a real machine. The test rig innovates in two ways. Firstly, different types
of bearings, such as deep groove ball bearings and tapered roller bearings, and
different sizes of bearings can be mounted. In this way, the rig can be used to validate
models of different bearings. The design allows easy adjustment of the test rig to
mount bearings with different inner diameter, outer diameter and width, without
compromising on performance. Secondly, the applied load on the bearing is multi-
axial, with a component in the radial and axial direction of the bearing, and is both
static and a dynamic in each direction. Thereby, it is possible to load the bearing as if
it were built into a real machine, for example a gearbox.
The aim to apply a dynamic force on the bearing complicates the design
considerable. High requirements are imposed on the dynamic behaviour of the
vibrating parts of the set-up. In the last part of the paper, this is discussed in detail.
BEARING MODELLING
The first bearing simulation models aimed to describe the influence of the physical
characteristics and operational conditions through an analytical approach. The first
rolling element bearing models were built by Lundberg and Palmgren [4], assuming
non-linear stiffness and time-invariance. Akturk [5] and Gupta [6] investigated the
complete field of the non-linear and time-varying characteristics, relating the main
causes of non-linearity to the Hertzian force and deformation factors, the compliance
effect, the clearance between the rolling elements and the rings and the effect of the
lubrication. Tiwari [7] analysed the effect of ball bearing clearance on the dynamic
response of a rigid rotor. Elasto-hydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) was added to the
models by Wijnat [8], discovering that the effect of the EHL is moderate for medium
loads and low rotational speeds. Most recently, Sopanen and Mikkola [9] developed
different models taking into account the non-linear and time-varying characteristics,
the EHL and the effect of localized defects on the surface of the inner and outer ring of
the bearing.
Multibody model description and assumptions
A deep groove single row ball bearing 6302 is modelled as a multibody system
using the commercial software LMS Virtual.Lab Motion. The bearing model is
composed of different bodies with a well known geometry, namely the inner and outer
ring, seven rolling elements and the shaft, as shown in Fig. 1.
972
Figure 1. Multibody model of a bearing
The different bodies are considered rigid, in order to obtain detailed information
about their dynamic behaviour at low and medium frequencies. This assumption
however limits the correctness of the observations at high frequencies. Therefore, in
the future the model will be improved by considering these bodies flexible.
Furthermore, the following assumptions are made:
- the contact stiffness between the rings and rolling elements is fully determined
using the non-linear Hertzian contact deformation theory;
- the outer and inner ring, the rolling elements and the shaft are rigid. Only local
deformation in the contact area occurs;
- the cage is assumed to be ideal, maintaining a fixed relative distance between
the rolling elements;
- the centrifugal force acting on the rolling elements is negligible;
- the damping caused by the EHL is negligible for the simulations at relatively
low speed.
The non-linear Hertzian contact deformation algorithm, elliptical contact
conjunction (ECC) [10], is adopted in the model to define the contact between each
rolling element and the inner and outer ring. This contact tool allows representing the
contact and friction forces of the elements rolling around the raceways. It uses the
following inputs: the geometry, the friction coefficient, the material properties and the
damping coefficient. It then gives the following outputs: the displacements, velocities
and accelerations of the different components and the resulting forces and torque.
Introduction of damage
To investigate the influence of damage on the behaviour of a bearing, a local spall

is introduced on the outer ring of the model. However, due to the presence of localized
discontinuities, the model no longer meets the main Hertzian assumptions. The ECC
algorithm is therefore unable to represent the real force between the rolling element
and the raceway in case of localized defects. In particular, when the centre of the
rolling element enters the defect, the force between the two bodies becomes zero and
returns to the original values only when the rolling element centre leaves the defect.
Fig. 2 compares the real and the simulated trajectory of the rolling element.
973
Figure 2. Simulated (left) and real (right) trajectory of a rolling element through a spall
To overcome this limitation, a different algorithm, the polygonal contact model

(PCM), is used to define the contact [11, 12]. This technique is based on the
representation of the body surfaces by polygon meshes. The contact is examined after
discretizing the contact patch. This can be regarded as a compromise between the
simple ECC contact approach and the costly FEA. It is better suited to represent
localized physical phenomena then ECC, with lower computation time compared to
FEA. The PCM task consists of three steps. First, a collision detection algorithm
determines if the contact pair is in touch. If no collision is detected, the program
returns zero force and torque and the analysis is finished. Otherwise, PCM constructs
the intersecting areas of the surfaces and discretizes the corresponding contact patches
in the second step. Finally, for each element the contact force is determined, and the
resulting total contact force and torque is calculated.
Due to the low computation efficiency of the PCM, the algorithm was tested using
a simplified model. Three rolling elements, separated using two distance constraints,
are guided by a faulty lower surface and an upper healthy surface, as shown in Fig. 3.
A macro-defect of 1.3 mm and a rolling element radius of 6 mm are considered. The
simplified model is used to analyse the advantages and disadvantages of both
techniques. The PCM algorithm is characterized by the following properties:
- the contact is examined using a discretization of the contact patch;
- the algorithm provides the possibility to measure the contact between the
rolling elements and localized raceway faults;
- the computation time of the algorithm is high.
On the contrary, in the ECC algorithm:
- the rigid contact bodies are not discretized;
- the contact force is based on the non-linear Hertzian theory;
- the computation time is small.
Despite the fact the ECC algorithm is unable to accurately simulate vibration
signals of spalled structures, it can be considered as a powerful and efficient tool to
model healthy and damaged bearings. Fault signals can be analysed in frequency
domain, as the characteristic defect frequencies only depend on the impulse
periodicity of the impacts, not the rolling element trajectory.
Figure 3. Simplified model of a rolling element passing a spall
974
BEARING TEST RIG
In literature, many different designs of bearing test rigs have been proposed. Most
of these set-ups are able to apply a static load on a bearing, using for example
hydraulics or springs. Some excite the bearing in its radial direction, some in its axial
direction and some in both directions. Bearing manufactures even offer these types of
test rigs, allowing the costumers to test the quality of the grease they are using. Other
types of test rigs load the bearing using an unbalance weight on a shaft, or through a
set of gears using a gearbox [3]. The latter rigs can be used to validate techniques
developed to detect bearing damage in signals dominated by gear meshing noise. For
the sake of completeness, the four-ball [13] and five-ball [14] rolling contact fatigue
test rigs are mentioned here as well. These rigs are commonly used to investigate
friction and surface wear in the contact area. Only one rolling element of the bearing is
being examined. The results are afterwards extended to the system level of an entire
bearing.
Although many research projects conducted in the past use bearing test rigs, none
of the rigs are able to apply a fully controlled multi-axial static and dynamic load on
the bearing. Therefore, a new type of test rig was developed in the framework of the
study.
Test rig design
The main principle of this test rig is fairly simple. A radial and axial load is
applied on a test bearing, which is mounted on a shaft and driven by an electric motor.
To counteract the load, two other bearings support the shaft. The load is directly
applied on the stationary outer ring of the test bearing. Fig. 4 shows the concept and an
overview of the test rig.
The rig should make it possible to test bearings of different types, such as deep
groove ball bearings, angular contact ball bearings and tapered roller bearings, and
bearings of different sizes, with an inner bore diameter varying from 10 to 19 mm, an
outer diameter varying from 20 to 52 mm and a width varying from 5 to 15 mm.
Therefore, it should be possible to adjust the shaft to different inner bore diameters of
the test bearing. This is realised using a clamping mechanism called collet chuck. In
milling machines, a collet chuck is used to clamp the tool into the main spindle. The
test bearing is mounted on a small auxiliary shaft, adapted to its bore diameter.
Fr Actuators Support bearings Shaft
Fa
Motor
Frame
Test bearing
Figure 4. Concept (left) and overview (right) of the test rig

KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT
DEPARTEMENT WERKTUIGKUNDE
SOLID EDGE
UGS - The PLM Company
975
After inserting this auxiliary shaft, the locknut is tightened forming a stiff
connection between the main shaft and the auxiliary shaft. Furthermore, both shafts
are perfectly aligned, due to the tapered shape of the mating parts. On the other hand,
the housing of the test bearing should be adjusted to a different width and different
outer diameter. This is possible by mounting the bearing in an intermediate adaptor
sleeve, between the bearing and the housing. The bore diameter of this sleeve is
adapted to the outer diameter of the test bearing.
The load imposed on the bearing should be controlled in the radial and axial
direction, independent of each other. No coupling between the radial and axial force is
therefore allowed. Furthermore, the load should have a static and dynamic component
in both directions. No coupling between the static and dynamic force is allowed. In
this way, it will be possible to simulate different real-life situations, where i.e. gear
meshing forces are acting on the bearing. Both static and dynamic components are
provided by a different type of actuator. Air springs are used to apply a static force up
to 10 kN in each direction. The air springs consist of two parallel plastic disks,
connected through a rubber sleeve. Pressurized air in this sleeve provides the static
force. The force will be controlled by pressure regulators in the air circuit. The
dynamic actuators should provide a broadband dynamic force from 10 to 500 Hz.
Electrodynamic shakers are used to generate this force. After defining the different
actuators, they are positioned around the test bearing. Fig. 5 gives an overview of the
actuator configuration. In the right part, the actuators are replaced by force vectors,
providing a clear view on the design of the bearing housing. The static load is
generated by four air springs, transferring their force to the bearing using an arm on
the housing. Two air springs control the axial force (Fa,st) and two air springs control
the radial force (Fr,st). The dynamic load is directly introduced on the bearing housing
through the stingers of the shakers: one stinger for the axial direction (Fa,d) and one
stinger for the radial direction (Fr,d).
The test bearing is instrumented with sensors commonly used for condition
monitoring of bearings. Four accelerometers are mounted on the housing, as close as
possible to the bearing itself. Three capacitive proximity probes measure the relative
displacement between the inner and outer ring of the bearing. Two of these probes
measure the full radial motion of the inner ring, as they are positioned perpendicular to
each other. One probe measures the axial motion of the inner ring. One thermocouple
is mounted in the seat of the bearing and measures the outer ring temperature.
Fr, st
Fr, d
Fr,s t
Fa, st
Fa, d
Fa, st
Figure 5. Actuators (left) and their corresponding force vectors (right)

976
Dynamic analysis of the test rig
Applying a dynamic force on the bearing complicates the design of the test rig
considerable. To evaluate the ability of the housing to transfer the dynamic forces to
the bearing, a dynamic FEM analysis is performed. The ability to transfer the forces
depends on the resonances in the structure. If a resonance occurs in the frequency
range of excitation, the structure acts as a filter blocking the excitations above this
resonance. Therefore, the first resonance of the housing should occur sufficiently
above the maximum excitation frequency. More precisely, the first resonance should
be located above 500√2 Hz. In the final design, the first mode of the housing occurs at
a resonance frequency of 1143 Hz.
When analysing a bearing using the test rig, the measurements should not be
influenced by the dynamics of the rig. Recalling that the test bearing is excited in a
range from 10 to 500 Hz, the structure should be resonance free up to 500√2 Hz. The
design of the frame is adapted to satisfy this condition. The entire test rig is analysed
using FEM software. Here, the housing of the test bearing is modelled as a simple
point mass. Also, the test bearing is modelled as a spring. This simplification is
allowed, as the dynamic behaviour of these parts was already investigated in the
previously described analysis. The FEM analysis of the test rig showed a first bending
resonance of the frame at 1266 Hz and a first bending of the shaft at 805 Hz. It can
consequently be concluded that the system is resonance free in the full excitation
range of the shakers.
In Fig. 6, the first bending mode of the housing and the frame is visualised.
CONCLUSIONS
The multibody bearing model presented in this paper is an interesting tool to

investigate fault symptoms of damaged bearings. Localized spalls can be introduced
on the surface of the raceways, and the response signals of the bearing can be
analysed. To validate this model, an innovative and versatile bearing test rig was
developed, as discussed in the second part of the paper. The test rig allows easy
adjustment to mount different types and sizes of bearings. The bearings can be
preloaded up to 10 kN, and excited up to 500 Hz. In this way, a wide range of bearings
can be tested in real-life conditions. The aim to apply a dynamic force on the bearing
complicates the design considerable. The entire set-up is optimised to keep the
components free from resonances in a wide excitation range.
Figure 6. First mode of the housing (left) and the frame (right)
977
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research is funded by a Ph.D. grant of the Agency for Innovation by Science
and Technology (IWT). Part of this work was performed through the support of the
IWT SBO-project no.090045 Prognostics for Optimal Maintenance.
REFERENCES
1. Williams, T., Ribadeneria, X., Billington, S., and Kurfess, T. 2001. “Rolling element bearing
diagnostics in run-to-failure lifetime testing,” J. of Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing,
15(5): 979–993.
2. Sawalhi, N., and Randall, R. 2010. “Improved simulations for fault size estimation in rolling
element bearings,” presented at the Seventh International Conference on Condition Monitoring and
Machinery Failure Prevention Technologies, June 22-24, 2010.
3. Sawalhi, N., and Randall, R. 2008. “Simulating gear and bearing interactions in the presence of
faults - Part I. The combined gear bearing dynamic model and the simulation of localised bearing
faults,” J. of Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 22(8): 1952–1966.
4. Lundberg, G., and Palmgren, G. 1947. “Dynamic capacity of rolling bearings,” Acta Polytechnic
Mechanical Engineering Series, 1(3): 5–50.
5. Akturk, M., Gupta, K., and Gohar, R. 1997. “The effects of number of balls and preload on
vibrations associated with ball bearings,” J. of Tribology, 119: 747–753.
6. Gupta, K. 1988. “On the geometrical imperfections in ball bearings,” J. of Tribology, 110: 19–25.
7. Tiwari, M., Gupta, K., and Prakash, O. 2000. “Effect of radial internal clearance of ball bearing on
the dynamics of a balanced horizontal rotor,” J. of Sound and Vibration, 238: 723–756.
8. Wijnat, Y., Wensing, J., and Van Nijen, G. 1999. “The influence of lubrication on the dynamic
behaviour of ball bearings,” J. of Sound and Vibration, 222(4): 579–596.
9. Sopanen, J. an Mikkola, A. 2003. “Dynamic model of a deep-groove ball bearing including
localized and distributed defects. Part 1: theory,” J. of Multibody-Dynamics, 217(3): 201–211.
10. Young, W., and Budynas, R. 2002. Roark’s Formula for Stress and Strain. McGraw Hill.
11. SKF. 2008. SKF General Catalogue. SKF Group.
12. Hippmann, G. 2004. “An algorithm for compliant contact between complexly shaped bodies,” J. of
Multibody System Dynamics, 12: 345–362.
13. Rico, J., Battez, A., and Cuervo, D. 2003. “Rolling contact fatigue in lubricated contacts,” J. of
Tribology International, 36(1): 35–40.
14. Zaretsky, E., Parker, R., and Anderson, W. 1982. “NASA five-ball fatigue tester: Over 20 years of
research,” ASTM special technical publication, (771): 5–45.
15. Brändlein J., Eschmann P., H. L., and K., W. 1999. Ball and Roller Bearings: Theory, Design and
Application. Wiley.
16. Harris, T. A., and Kotzalas, M. N. 2007. Rolling Bearing Analysis - Essential Concepts of Bearing
Technology. Taylor and Francis Group, Boca Raton.
978
NOVEL SIGNAL PROCESSING TECHNIQUES
979
(FIRST PAGE OF ARTICLE)*
Real-Time Characterization of Aerospace

Structures Using Onboard Strain
Measurement Technologies and
Inverse Finite Element Method
A. TESSLER, J. L. SPANGLER, M. MATTONE, M. GHERLONE
and M. DI SCIUVA
ABSTRACT
The inverse problem of real-time reconstruction of full-field structural

displacements, strains, and stresses is addressed using an inverse finite element
method based on shear deformable shell finite element technology. Utilizing surface
strain measurements from strain sensors mounted on load-carrying structural
components, the methodology enables accurate computations of the three-dimensional
displacement field for a general built-up shell structure undergoing multi-axial
deformations. The strain and stress computations are then carried out at the element
level using strain-displacement and constitutive relations. This high fidelity
computational technology is essential for providing feedback to the actuation and
control systems of the next generation of aerospace vehicles, and for assessing real-
time internal loads and structural integrity.
INTRODUCTION
Structural health management systems, which by way of real-time monitoring help

mitigate accidents due to structural failures, will become integral technologies of the
next-generation aerospace vehicles. Advanced sensor arrays and signal processing
technologies are utilized to provide optimally distributed in-situ sensor information
related to the states of strain, temperature, and aerodynamic pressure. To process the
massive quantities of measured data and to infer physically admissible structural
behavior requires robust and computationally efficient physics-based algorithms.
The inverse Finite Element Method (iFEM) introduced by Tessler and co-workers
[1-7] is a computational methodology that integrates sensor strain data across the
entire structural domain and produces a continuous displacement field of the
discretized structure, i.e., the algorithm solves an inverse problem. The method’s
mathematical foundation is a weighted least-squares variational principle which relies
Alexander Tessler: NASA Langley Research Center, Structural Mechanics and Concepts
Branch, Mail Stop 190, Hampton, VA 23681-2199, U.S.A.
Jan L. Spangler: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Mail Stop 190, Hampton, Virginia,
23681-2199, U.S.A.
Marco Gherlone, Massimiliano Mattone, Marco Di Sciuva: Politecnico di Torino, Department of
Aeronautics and Space Engineering, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, ITALY.
981
on the discretization of structural geometry by any type of structural element including
beam, frame, plate, shell, and solid. Displacement boundary conditions and in situ
strain measurements are used as prescribed input quantities imposed on a model. The
discretized model results in a system of linear algebraic equations that has a
nonsingular square matrix dependent on the strain-sensor positions. For a given model
and fixed strain-sensor locations, the matrix is decomposed (inverted) only once. The
right-hand-side vector is a function of the strain values that change as the structure
deforms under loading. Thus, the computational algorithm involves multiplication of a
matrix, that stays unchanged, and a right-hand-side vector that is recomputed in real
time, reflecting changes in strain-sensor readings during deformation. The algorithm is
capable of producing reliable and accurate displacement predictions of structural
deformations in real time. The reconstructed displacements are then used to compute
strains, stresses, and failure criteria, thus providing the requisite information for an
onboard structural-integrity analysis tool.
This paper discusses the latest advances in the iFEM formulation for built-up plate
and shell structures aimed at constructing the full-field displacements, strains, and
stresses from strain data provided by in-situ strain sensors. The application focus is on
the stain data obtained from FBG (Fiber Bragg Grating) sensor arrays that provide
either single-core (axial) or rosette (tri-axial) strain measurements. The new
formulation is based upon the minimization of a weighted-least-squares functional that
uses the complete set of strain measures corresponding to the first-order shear
deformation theory. The error functional uses the least-squares-difference terms
comprised of the strain measures which are expressed in terms of the assumed element
displacements and the corresponding strains that are measured experimentally. All
strain-displacement relations are enforced explicitly whereas the analytical and
measured strains are matched in the least-squares sense. By virtue of these
assumptions, all strain compatibility relations are explicitly satisfied. The
methodology does not require elastic or inertial material properties. The inverse shell
element used is a three-node triangle which has six conventional degrees-of-freedom
at each node, i.e., three displacements and three rotations. The kinematic variables are
interpolated using the lowest-order anisoparametric C 0 -continuous functions, i.e.,
linear in-plane displacements and bending rotations, and a constrained-type quadratic
deflection. These functions were adopted from an earlier plate-element formulation
[8]. The formulation is implemented as a user-element routine in the ABAQUS code
[9]; the latter is used as an engine for solving the algebraic equations resulting from
iFEM models, as well as a pre- and post-processing tool.
A computational example is presented for a statically loaded cantilevered plate for
which experimentally measured strains are represented (or simulated) by strain results
obtained by a high-fidelity solution using the ABAQUS finite element code. The input
surface strains are only provided along sparsely distributed lines to simulate strain data
from FBG (Fiber Bragg Grating) arrays that provide either single-core (axial) or
rosette (tri-axial) strain measurements. Several types of discretization strategies are
examined and comparisons of the reconstructed iFEM and direct FEM displacement
solutions are provided. It is demonstrated that in the absence of available sensor-strain
data and under conditions of relatively sparse sensor-strain data, it is possible to
reconstruct a relatively accurate deformed structural shape even on high-fidelity
meshes by exploiting judiciously the weighting function capability of the
methodology.
982
FORMULATION OF INVERSE SHELL ELEMENT
Using Mindlin-theory kinematic assumptions, the three components of the

displacement vector u  (ux , u y , uz ) in the local Cartesian reference frame of a three-
node inverse shell element, iMIN3, are defined as (refer to Figure 1):
ux ( x, y, z)  u  z  y , u y ( x, y, z)  v  z  x , uz ( x, y, z)  w (1)
where u  u ( x, y ) and v  v ( x, y ) are the mid-plane displacements in the x and y

directions, respectively;  x   x ( x, y) and  y   y ( x, y) are the rotations of the normal
about the negative x and positive y axes, respectively; and w  w( x, y) is the
deflection variable which is constant across the thickness coordinate z  [t,t], with
2t denoting the total shell thickness.
y 
z
v
w z y u v w x   y  z dof
u
x x
Figure 1. iMIN3: a three-node inverse shell element.
The strain-displacement relations, taking into account Eqs. (1), have the form
 xx    x 0    x 0 
     
 yy     y 0   z   y 0   e  u   z k  u  (2)
     
 xy   xy 0   xy 0 
where the membrane strain measures associated with the stretching of the middle
surface are given as
u 
  x 0   x 0 0 0 0  v 
    
e u    y0    0 
y 0 0 0  w   Lm u (3)
    
0 0 0  x 
 xy 0    y x
 
 y 
and the bending curvatures are
983
u
  x 0  0 0 0 v
x

0
     
k  u     y 0   0 0 0 
y 0   w   Lb u (4)
  0 0 0     
 xy 0   x y
 x
 y 
The transverse shear strains can also be expressed in terms of the same five kinematic
variables as
u
v
 xz 0  0 0 
0 1   
g u  
x
 w  L u
s
1 0  
(5)
 yz 0  0 0

y

 x
 y 
Assuming the structure is instrumented with strain sensors (e.g., conventional strain
rosettes or fiber-optic Bragg-grating sensors), strains are measured at the locations
xi  ( xi , yi , t ) representing the top and bottom shell surfaces. Evaluating Eqs. (2) at
these discrete locations, the relationships between the measured surface strains and the
reference plane strains and curvatures can be readily established as
                  

 xx  xx  xx  xx
1        1       
x0 x0
       
ei  y0   yy   yy  , ki   y0   yy   yy   (6, 7)
   2             2t         
 xy0 i  xy i  xy i   xy0 i  xy i  xy i 
where  signifies the existence of experimental error in the strain measurements and,
hence, in ei and k i .
 
VARIATIONAL FRAMEWORK AND THREE-NODE INVERSE SHELL
ELEMENT
Using the aforementioned kinematic assumptions, a simple and versatile inverse

shell element is developed consisting of three nodes and six engineering degrees-of-
freedom (dof’s) at each node, as illustrated in Figure 1. To avoid singular solutions in
the modeling of built-up shell structures, a drilling rotation, z , degree-of-freedom can
be readily added.
The element matrices are derived using a weighted-least-squares smoothing
functional, for which a stationary value is sought by minimization with respect to the
unknown displacement degrees-of-freedom. For an inverse shell finite element of area
Ae, this functional can be expressed as
984
e(u)  we e  u   e  wk k  u   k   wg g  u   g
2 2 2
(8)
where the squared norms are given as
n
1
e  u   e  
2 2
 e (u)i  ei  dx dy,
n e i 1
A
(2t ) 2 n
k u   k   k (u)
 2 2
 i  k i  dx dy, (9.1)
n Ae
i 1
n
1
g  u   g 
n Ae i 1 
2  2
  g (u ) i  g 
i  dx dy
in which n 1 is the number of strain sensor locations that fall within the element
domain, and  we , wk , wg  are the weighting coefficients. The procedure, leading up to
Eqs. (6) and (7), gives rise to ei and k i that are computed from the in-situ strains that

are measured by strain sensors; however, the experimental transverse shear measures,
g i , cannot be directly obtained from the surface strains. To determine g i , the analytic
plate equilibrium equations that relate the transverse-shear forces to the bending
moments can be used [4].
The key advantage of this revised variational formulation rests on the introduction
of the weighting coefficients  we , wk , wg  in Eq. (8). This seemingly small change in
the element functional  e(u) , compared to the original form, permits the use of high-
fidelity discretizations even when the measured strain data are sparse, as it is often the
case when FBG sensors are used. For an inverse element without strain-sensor data,
the squared norms are given as
e  u   e   e (u) 2 dx dy,
2
Ae
k u   k  (2t ) 2  k (u) 2 dx dy,

2
(9.2)
Ae
g  u   g   g (u) 2 dx dy
2
Ae
For such elements, the weighting coefficients are required to be small; for example,
they can be set in the range of (10-3 – 10-6)  ( we , wk , wg ) , compared to the values used
in the elements that possess strain data. These ‘strainless’ elements, with very small
weighting coefficients, provide the requisite interpolation connectivity to the elements
that have strain-sensor data. Importantly, they ensure the sufficient regularization of
the iFEM models that have very sparse measured strain data. In a more general case,
the weighting coefficients are defined per strain measure, i.e., each of the eight
squared differences, between interpolated and measured strains, has its own weighting
coefficient. This allows for a robust, regularized solution even when a particular
measured strain component is not available or has a sufficiently unreliable value.
985
The remainder of the formulation follows standard finite element procedures; for
brevity, this discussion is herein omitted.
NUMERICAL EXAMPLE
In this example, an aluminum rectangular plate (2 in 10 in, 2t =0.1 in) is

clamped along the left edge and is subjected to a uniform transverse shear traction
Fz  4.5 lbf / in applied in the positive z direction along the right edge; the material
elastic constants are ( E, )  (107 psi, 0.3).
Initially, a linear static analysis is performed using a high-fidelity mesh consisting
of 1,280 S3R (three-node) shear-deformable shell elements in ABAQUS [9]. Figure 2
depicts the resulting deflection solution and the underlying FEM mesh. This reference
analysis is used as a source for the simulated sensor-strain data ( e i , k i and g i ), with
their values mapped onto discrete ‘strain-rosette’ locations within the iFEM meshes.
The FEM displacements are used to assess the predictive capability of the iFEM
analyses.
Figure 2. Deflection of a cantilevered aluminum plate subjected to a uniform transverse shear traction at
FEM
the free edge ( wmax  0.1766 in).
It is noted that when the iFEM discretization is the same as that of the reference FEM,
and if there is a one-to-one mapping of the sensor strain data from FEM onto iFEM,
the iFEM-reconstructed displacement field matches the reference displacements either
identically or almost identically. The practical challenge, however, is when the strain
sensor data are sparse and are not available everywhere in the iFEM discretization
domain; the models in Figures 3-5 explore such possibilities.
In Figure 3, a moderately fine mesh of iMIN3 elements is shown where the red
dots denote positions of 26 strain rosettes distributed on the top surface of the plate.
Thus, only 26 elements in the discretization have sensor strains; for these elements,
( we , wk , wg )  1 . For an element that does not have any sensor strains, its weighting
coefficients are set to 10-5. Figures 4 and 5 depict similar models and their predictions.
In these examples, keeping the same iMIN3 mesh, there are fewer strain rosettes used,
namely 22 and 18.

986
(a) Strain rosettes at center of iMIN 3 elements
(b) wiMIN 3deflection
Figure 3. (a) iMIN3 discretization using strain data from 26 strain rosettes (three strain components
measured on the top surface) distributed close to plate edges; (b) iMIN3-reconstructed plate deflection
distribution ( wmax
iMIN 3 FEM
/ wmax  0.982).
iMIN 3
distribution ( wmax FEM
/ wmax  0.979).
iMIN 3
distribution ( wmax FEM
/ wmax  0.948).
987
CONCLUSIONS
A revised formulation of the inverse Finite Element Method (iFEM) has been
presented and formulated as a user routine in the ABAQUS commercial code. The
method uses arbitrarily distributed strain measurements to perform shape-sensing
analyses (reconstruction of a deformed structural shape) of plate and built-up shell
structures. The numerical studies included densely and sparsely distributed FBG
(Fiber Bragg Grating) arrays that provide either single-core (axial) or rosette (tri-axial)
strain measurements (only the rosette results have been highlighted in the paper).
Various types of low- and high-fidelity discretization strategies have been explored.
The numerical results have confirmed that in the absence of available strain-sensor
data and under conditions of relatively sparse strain data, it is still possible to use high-
fidelity discretizations to reconstruct sufficiently accurate deformed structural shapes.
REFERENCES
1. Tessler, A. and Spangler, J. L. 2003. A variational principle for reconstruction of elastic

deformations in shear deformable plates and shells. NASA/TM-2003-212445.
2. Tessler, A. and Spangler, J. L. 2004. Inverse FEM for full-field reconstruction of elastic
deformations in shear deformable plates and shells. SHM Conference, Munich.
3. Tessler, A. and Spangler, J. L. 2005. A least-squares variational method for full-field
reconstruction of elastic deformations in shear-deformable plates and shells. Computer
Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 194, 327-339.
4. Tessler, A. 2007. Structural analysis methods for structural health management of future
aerospace vehicles. NASA/TM-2007-214871.
5. Gherlone, M. 2008. Beam inverse finite element formulation. Report LAQ-AERMEC,
Politecnico di Torino.
6. Cerracchio, P., Gherlone, M., Mattone, M., Di Sciuva, M., and Tessler, A. 2010. Shape sensing
of three-dimensional frame structures using the inverse finite element method. Proceedings of
5th European Workshop on SHM, Sorrento, Italy.
7. Gherlone, M., Cerracchio, P., Mattone, M., Di Sciuva, M., and Tessler, A. 2011. Dynamic
shape reconstruction of three-dimensional frame structures using the inverse finite element
method. Proceedings of 3rd ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Computational Methods in
Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, Corfù, Greece.
8. Tessler, A., and Hughes, T. J. R. 1985. A three-node Mindlin plate element with improved
transverse shear. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 50: 71-101.
9. ABAQUS, Dassault Systemes Simulia Corp. (SIMULIA), Version 6.10, Providence, RI, 2010.
988
Impact Echo Signal Interpretation Using
Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition
Z. XIE, X. WEI and Y. ZHANG
ABSTRACT
One of the biggest obstacles for impact-echo application is data interpretation.

Fourier transform is limited by its cumulative feature; Short Time Fourier Transform
(STFT) and wavelet transform give a time-frequency analysis but at a sacrifice of
resolution. Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is an adaptive time-frequency
analysis method that has been applied to interpret impact-echo data recently, but it has
the mode mixing problem when surface wave intermits the signal. In this paper, an
improved empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method, ensemble empirical mode
decomposition (EEMD), which can effectively solve the previous problem by simply
adding white noise, is applied to analyze the impact-echo data. EMD, EEMD as well
as wavelet transform are applied to the numerical data of concrete deck defected by a
delamination and results have shown EEMD is more promising at certain points.
INTRODUCTION
Impact Echo (IE) has been widely adopted as a non-destructive evaluation method
for concrete defect detection. It has been approved to be useful in detecting various
concrete deck defects such as voids, cracks, delaminations, and debonding [1], and it
has been also applied to gout void detection in post–tensioned bridge ducts [2], bond
quality evaluation at steel interfaces [3], corrosion damage detection of rebar in
concrete [4] and thin walled concrete pipes evaluation [5].
To conduct impact-echo testing, an impact source is applied to generate
mechanical waves into the concrete deck and the surface vibration is collected by
nearby transducers. In early days, the collected signal is observed in the frequency
domain obtained by FFT and the peak frequency is tracked. Theoretically, the
relationship between the peak frequency f , defect depth D and p-wave velocityV p is
Zhenhua Xie, Xiangmin Wei, Ying Zhang: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0250 U.S.A.
989
βVp
D= (1)
2f
Where β is approximately 0.96 for plate-like structures [6, 7].

However, Fourier analysis is limited by its cumulative feature. Impact-echo signal
is mixed with compression wave, surface wave, fluctuation mode and noise and most
of its components vary with the time. Since only compression wave is used here to
detect the delamination, other components will all be considered as noise. In order to
better interpret the impact-echo signal, several time-frequency methods have been
applied to eliminate the defect of FFT. Song and Cho [8] applied the short-time
frequency transform (STFT) for tunnel shotcrete evaluation. Shokouhi et al [9]
compared the STFT and the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and showed that
CWT can more efficiently display the time-frequency information from the impact
echo data. However, both STFT and wavelet transform, which offer a better time
resolution, reduce frequency resolution compared to Fourier transform. This makes it
difficult to precisely determine the echo peak frequency that is used to determine the
depth of the reflector. Yeh and Liu [10] combined the wavelet marginal spectrum and
the Fourier spectrum to enhance the spectral resolution and suppress the interference
in the Fourier spectrum.
Another time-frequency method is the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT), which
combines empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and Hilbert transform [11]. Algernon
[12] compared the performances of STFT, CWT and HHT and concluded that HHT
provided better frequency resolution than other methods and the HHT marginal
spectrum in a short integration range can be used to extract the impact echo signal and
obtain clear thickness frequencies. To investigate the spectral composition of the
impact signal, Lin et al [13] applied EMD to decompose the impact echo signal into
several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) and used the Fourier transform to analyze
each IMF. The idea is to use EMD to separate different signals into different IMFs
since noise, echo wave, surface wave and modal vibrations usually occupies separate
frequency bands. As a result, the spectrum of each echo IMF has little influence from
other signal components and the echo peak can be easily identified. However, EMD
may have mode mixing problem [14,15] due to the intermittency of surface wave,
which makes the physical meaning of the related IMF obscure.
Wu and Huang [15] proposed a noise-assisted data analysis method, called the
ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD), to overcome the mode mixing
drawback of the original EMD. For the signal extraction application using EEMD
method, Zhang et al showed its utility for machine health monitoring and defect
diagnosis [14]. Chen et al. evaluated its application in pipeline flaw MFL (magnetic
flux leakage) signal extraction [16]. All these applications focus on the extraction of
the intermittent signal. No performance analysis was made on the continuous
component extraction under intermittent noise. In the impact-echo signal, the echo
wave of interest is a continuous component with mono frequency and the surface
wave often behaves as an intermittent component. This paper will apply EEMD to
decompose the impact echo signal into different spectral composition and discuss the
extraction of echo wave. Performance will be compared with EMD and CWT in the
impact echo simulation data.
990
ENSEMBLE EMPIRICAL MODE DECOMPOSITON
Hilbert-Huang transform is a data-driven approach dealing with non-stationary

and/or nonlinear signals. It combines empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and
Hilbert transform [11]. The process of EMD is to decompose the signal into different
intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) and non-zero residue. To guarantee meaningful
Hilbert transform, each IMF should satisfy two criteria:
1) The number of extrema and the number of zeros crossings must either equal
or differ at most by one and
2) The mean value of the upper and lower envelopes of the signal is nearly
zero
EMD
The procedure for IMF decomposition of a signal x(t ) is as follows [11, 16]:
a) Identify all the local maxima and minima of the signal x(t ) . Then use cubic
spine interpolation of the maxima and minima to generate the upper
envelope u and lower envelope l . Calculate the mean m1 and the first
component h1
u+l
m1 = (2)
2
h1 = x(t ) − m1 (3)
b) If h1 satisfies the criteria of an IMF, then iteration stop and c1 = h1 is and

IMF. Otherwise, go to step a) and replace x(t ) with h1
c) Calculate the residue signal
r1 = x(t ) − c1 (4)
d) The procedure is repeated for r1 and all subsequent rj
r2 = r1 − c2 ;...rn = rn−1 − cn (5)
After decomposition, original signal represents as n IMF and a residue r (t ) :
n
x(t ) = ∑ ci (t ) + r (t ) (6)
i =1
About the iteration for sifting process, Wu and Huang [15] proposed to fix the
sifting number of the decomposition and mentioned that a number about 10 would
lead EMD to be an almost perfect dyadic filter for noise.
991
EEMD
One major drawback of EMD is mode mixing. ‘Mode mixing’ is defined as any
IMF consisting signals of disparate scales, or a signal of a similar scale occurring in
different IMF, mostly caused by signal intermittency. EEMD is proposed to solve
such problem. Its principle is to add white noise to populate the whole time-frequency
space uniformly with the constituting components of different scales [14]. The white
noise will make the EMD sifting process find all possible scales. Then different scale
signals will collate in the proper IMF dictated by the dyadic filter banks.
The EEMD method is as follows [15]:
a) Generate a white noise series and add it to the raw signal
b) Apply EMD to decompose the new data with added white noise into IMFs
c) Repeat a) and b) in certain ensemble number
d) Calculate the ensemble mean of all trials for each IMF and get the final
IMFs
e) Final IMFs may not satisfy the definitions of IMF. Further post-processed
procedure is needed before applying the Hilbert spectral analysis.
A general method of post processing is to apply EMD to a combination of
consecutive components (e.g. ci and ci +1 , c represent a component of direct EEMD
results), extract one IMF as ci′ and add the remainder ri ,i +1 to the next component
ci +2 [15].
NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS
As shown in Figure 1, the slab is 1*1m with a thickness of 0.26 m. The

delamination is 0.3*0.3m at a depth of 0.17m. The absorbent condition is imposed at
the four edges of the concrete slab to avoid reflection from these boundaries in
numerical simulation. The p-wave velocity is 4472m/s and the corresponding echo
frequencies from the delamination and the bottom of the slab are 12.6 kHz and 8.6
kHz respectively.
Figure 1. Impact echo source and receiver location
992
The impact source is applied at the center of the deck, shown as the red dot in
Figure 1, and the two receivers, R1 and R5 are placed at 1cm and 5cm away from the
source respectively are shown as the blue dots. The sampling frequency is 2MHz.
Signal Extraction in Weak Surface Wave Influence
The first 2048 data points of the received signal from R5 s and its FFT are shown
in Figure 2(a). In the signal figure, the surface wave exists at the beginning with
amplitude near other signal. Surface wave influence in the FFT plot is not strong and a
clear peak frequency appears around 13kHz.
-7
x 10 Sginal (R5)
-7
x 10 Sginal (R1)
Data Am plitude
2
10
Data Am plitude
1
5
0
200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 0
Data Number 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
-8 Data Number
x 10 FFT Spectrum (R5) -7
5 x 10 FFT Spectrum (R1)
1.5
4
Am plitude
3 1
Am plitude
2
0.5
1
0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Frequency (Hz) 4
Frequency (Hz) 4
x 10 x 10
(a) (b)
Figure 2. Received signal and related FFT result ((a):R5, (b): R1)
-3
Wavelet Transform (R5) x 10 Wavelet Transform (R1)
9 0.014
48 48
45.5 8 45.5
43 43 0.012
40.5 40.5
38 7 38
35.5 35.5 0.01
Frequency (kHz)
Frequency (kHz)
33 6 33
30.5 30.5
28 5 28 0.008
25.5 25.5
23 4 23
20.5 20.5 0.006
18 3 18
15.5 15.5
13 0.004
13
10.5 2 10.5
8 8 0.002
5.5 1 5.5
3 3
0.5 0.5 0
500 1000 1500 2000 500 1000 1500 2000
Data Number Data Number
(a) (b)
Figure 3. Wavelet transform ((a): R5, (b): R1)
WT energy-time-frequency figure is shown in Figure 3(a). The wavelet function

used here is Morlet function. In the figure, there are clear frequency components
around 13kHz along the data point series. Such frequency is larger than the slab
993
bottom frequency 8.6kHz. It should be related to the delamination. No frequency
component around 8kHz along the data points could be observed. WT figure could not
identify the weak bottom echo wave. EMD performance is shown in Figure 4(a).
Since the frequency of IMF4 already approaches 0, and the IMF extracted by further
sifting process will have lower frequency and is not of interest, EMD performance
only demonstrate the first 4 IMFs. Only IMF1 shows continuous echo wave with
gradual decreasing amplitude. Its FFT plot shows a clear peak around 13kHz larger
than the bottom frequency. Though IMF1 still has some mode mixing, such echo
wave should relate to delamination. So, EMD could identify the delamination echo
wave under weak surface wave influence.
-7 -8
x 10 IMF 1 x 10 FFT (IMF 1)
1 4 -7 -8
IMF 1 FFT (IMF 1)
Amplitude
x 10 x 10
Amplitude
2 4
0
Amplitude
2
Amplitude
0
2
-1 0 -2
500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5
Freq (Hz) 0
Data Number 4 500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5
-7 -8 x 10
x 10 IMF 2 x 10 FFT (IMF 2) Data Number Freq (Hz) 4
4 -7 -7 x 10
x 10 x 10
Amplitude
Amplitude
1 IMF 2 FFT (IMF 2)

1
5
Amplitude
Amplitude
0 2
-1 0 0.5
0 -5
500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5 0
Data Number Freq (Hz) 4 500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5
-7 -8 x 10
x 10 IMF 3 x 10 FFT (IMF 3) Data Number Freq (Hz) 4
4 -8 -8 x 10
1 x 10 IMF 3 x 10 FFT (IMF 3)
Amplitude
Amplitude
4
Amplitude
Amplitude
0 2 5
0 2
-1
0 -5
500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5 0
Freq (Hz)
500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5
-8
Data Number -8
4 Data Number Freq (Hz)
x 10 x 10 x 10 -7 -7 4
IMF 4 FFT (IMF 4) x 10 IMF 4 x 10 x 10
2 FFT (IMF 4)
1
Amplitude
2
Amplitude
Amplitude
Amplitude
1
0 1 0 0.5
-2 -1
0 0
500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5 500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5
Data Number Freq (Hz) 4 Data Number Freq (Hz) 4
(a) R5 x 10 x 10
(b) R1
Figure 4. First 4 IMF and related FFT by EMD ((a): R5, (b): R1)
-7 -8
x 10 IMF 5 x 10 FFT (IMF 5) -7 -8
4 x 10 IMF 6 x 10 FFT (IMF 6)
1
Amplitude
5
Amplitude
A mplitude
A mplitude
0 2
2
-1 0
0
500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5 -2 0
Data Number Freq (Hz) 4 500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5
-8 -8 x 10 Data Number Freq (Hz)
x 10 IMF 6 x 10 FFT (IMF 6) -8 -8 4
1 x 10 IMF 7 x 10 FFT (IMF 7) x 10
Amplitude
Amplitude
4 2
Amplitude
Amplitude
2 5
0.5
0 0 1
-2 0
500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 -5
4 5 0
Data Number Freq (Hz) 4
500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5
-8 -8 x 10 -7 Data Number -7 Freq (Hz)
IMF 7 4
x 10 x 10 FFT (IMF 7) x 10 IMF 8 x 10 FFT (IMF 8) x 10
4 1
Amplitude
A mplitude
A mplitude
Amplitude
2 1
0 2 0.5
0
-2
-1
-4 0 0
500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5 500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5
Freq (Hz) 4 Freq (Hz)
Data Number -8 x 10 -7 Data Number -7 4
-9
x 10 x 10 IMF 9 x 10 FFT (IMF 9) x 10
x 10 IMF 8 FFT (IMF 8) 2
1 2
A mplitude
Amplitude
4
Amplitude
Amplitude
2 1
0 1
-2 0.5 0
-4 -1
-6 0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5
500 1000 1500 2000 0 1 2 3 4 5 Data Number Freq (Hz) 4
Data Number Freq (Hz) x 10
(a) R5 x 10
4 (b) R1
Figure 5. Four IMFs and related FFT by EEMD ((a): R5, (b): R1)
EEMD performance after post processing [15] is shown in Figure 5(a). The added
white noise to the raw signal was set to 0.2, and the ensemble number was set to 400.
IMF1 and IMF2 look like noise and are verified by their low correlation with raw
994
signal as -0.0028 and 0.0232. IMF3 to IMF4 which only have signal in the beginning
200 points seems to be the extracted surface wave. The extracted echo wave of
interest appears from IMF5. So Figure 5(a) only demonstrates the IMFs from IMF5 to
IMF8. IMF5 is continuous echo wave with gradual decreasing amplitude and its FFT
has clear peak frequency around 13kHz larger than the slab bottom frequency. So such
echo wave may relate to delamination. IMF6 is another continuous echo wave
extracted with some mode mixing at the beginning. But the peak frequency of such
echo wave could still be identified in FFT around 9kHz. Such echo wave may relate to
slab bottom. IMF7 and IMF8 have much lower peak frequency than the bottom
frequency. They could not be delamination echo wave. So, EEMD could identify the
delamination and bottom echo wave. It seems the bottom echo wave still has some
mode mixing in the beginning. It may be caused by the low energy of such signal.
Signal Extraction in Strong Surface Wave Influence
The first 2048 data points of the received signal from R1 and its FFT are shown in
Figure 2(b). In the signal figure, there is a strong surface wave at the first 100 data
points with amplitude almost 10 times larger than the other part of the signal.
Influence of the surface wave could also be observed in the FFT signal. The frequency
period from 0 to 30kHz has been increased.
WT energy-time-frequency figure is shown in Figure 3(b). The wavelet function
used here is still Morlet function. Influenced by the strong surface wave, the energy
only concentrated around the first 300 data points and frequency from 0 to 30kHz. No
stable frequency component along the time series is observed. In such case, WT is
impossible to identify the frequency of delamination or bottom echo wave. EMD
performance is shown in Figure 4(b). Since the frequency of IMF4 already approaches
0, EMD performance only demonstrates the first 4 IMF. In the 4 IMFs, only IMF1
seems successful to extract the echo wave. But it has serious mode mixing with
surface wave at the beginning which makes the FFT hard to identify the frequency of
extracted echo wave. From the outcomes shown above, EMD does not have a good
performance under strong surface wave influence.
EEMD performance after post processing [15] is shown in Figure 5(b). The added
white noise to the raw signal was set to 1, and the ensemble number was set to 400.
IMF1 and IMF2 look like noise and are verified by their low correlation with raw
signal as 0.0057 and 0.0087. IMF3 to IMF5 which only have signal in the beginning
200 points seems to be the extracted surface wave. The extracted echo wave of
interest appears from IMF6. So Figure 5(b) only demonstrates the IMFs from IMF6 to
IMF9. IMF6 is continuous echo wave with gradual decreasing amplitude and its FFT
has clear peak frequency at 12.7kHz larger than the slab bottom frequency. So such
echo wave may relate to delamination. IMF7 is another continuous echo wave
extracted and has frequency peak at 7.7kHz near the slab bottom freqeuncy. So such
echo wave may relate to slab bottom. IMF8 and IMF9 have much lower peak
frequency than the bottom frequency. They could not be delamination echo wave. So,
EEMD could extract delamination and bottom echo wave in strong surface wave
influence.
CONCLUSION
995
This paper applies EEMD method to extract delamination and bottom echo wave
from numerical impact-echo data and its performance is compared with WT and EMD
methods. The echo wave related to delamination could help to identify its position and
size. But the existing surface wave may cause difficulty to the identification of such
signal. Both EMD and WT can identify the delamination echo waves under weak
surface wave contamination, but failed in strong surface wave and can hardly extract
weak bottom echo waves no matter how strong the surface wave is. EEMD works
well for both delamination and bottom echo waves under strong surface waves.
Although the extracted bottom echo waves have mode mixing at the beginning, it does
not jeopardize the frequency peak identification. The biggest problem with EEMD is
the optimal setting of the parameters and is still open to investigation.
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Data Analysis and Interpretation”, presented at 9th European Conference on Non-destructive
Testing (ECNDT 2006), September 25-29, 2006
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15. Wu, Z., and N. E. Huang. 2008. “Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition: A Noise Assisted
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996
Mode Conversion Estimation of Filleted T-Joint
Using FEM and 3D Laser Vibrometry
J. AYERS, E. SWENSON, M. RUZZENE and A. GHOSHAL
ABSTRACT
T-joint configurations, commonly found in aerospace applications, provide a

challenge for structural health monitoring (SHM) strategies that employ wave
propagation based interrogation techniques. The challenge arises from the
complexity of wave propagation through the T-joint interface, and the consequent
mode conversion and reflections. This work presents a numerical characterization
of undamaged T-joint using simplified two-dimensional (2D) plane strain finite
element (FE) models, where excitation from a piezoelectric actuator is simulated on
one side of the T-joint. The incident and consequent reflected waveforms are
separated in the frequency-wavenumber domain, and spatially-integrated multiple
component mode coefficients are formulated in the frequency-spatial domain with
the intent to characterize wave reflections and mode conversions. Mode coefficients
from the undamaged configuration are compared to T-joints with blind side notch
damage located in the fillet radius. Trends from the 2D FE numerical studies are
verified by a three dimensional (3D) Scanning Laser Vibrometer test setup for the
undamaged case, which consists of an aluminum T-joint for selected fillet radius
(0.6 cm) and stiffener thickness (0.3 cm). The setup enables 3D full wavefield
surface measurements of the front and back sides of the plate, plate-stiffener radius,
and stiffener. Recommendations of how to use the mode coefficient formulation as
a damage quantification tool for the T-joint are given.
INTRODUCTION
The stiffener-plate configuration, or so-called T-joint, is ubiquitous in aerospace

_____________
James Ayers , US Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen, MD, james.t.ayers@us.army.mil
Eric Swenson, AFIT/ENY, WPAFB, OH, Eric.Swenson@afit.edu
Massimo Ruzzene, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, ruzzene@gatech.edu
Anindya Ghoshal, US Army Research Lab, Aberdeen, MD, anindya.ghoshal@us.army.mil

997
components, and most commonly represented in the wing airfoil-spar and
bulkhead-stiffener interfaces. A nominal fillet is generally designed at the interface
to alleviate potential stress concentrations, which can produce initiatory cracks
under high cycle loading conditions. However, these T-joint configurations provide
a challenge for structural health monitoring (SHM) strategies that employ wave
propagation-based interrogation techniques, such that partial transmission,
reflection, and mode conversion are modified by the degree of the fillet radius,
excitation frequency, material constituency, and stiffener cross-sectional
thickness[4]. Since the success of this proposed SHM strategy to assess damage
severity largely depends on the quantification of the mode conversion, a
fundamental understanding of the wave interaction due to the T-joint presence is
necessary.
Previous work has been conducted on understanding T-joint configurations
of various material constituencies and a range of damage quantification techniques.
Modal techniques employed by Ooijevaar et al. [1] and Ghoshal et al. [2] used
scanning laser vibrometry to detect damage produced in composite plate with two
T–shaped stiffener sections and induced long saw cuts on an aluminum wing panel,
respectively. In terms of wave propagation techniques, Greve et al. [3] analyzed
Lamb wave interactions of a cracked welded joint, and rolled and plate girders
using 2D and 3D FEM. Simulations and experiments showed cracks that are
oriented perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation, cause strong
reflections. Oppenheim et al. [4] modeled a 2D simulation of Lamb wave
transmission/reflection at a T joint with no fillet radius using Abaqus and 3D model
of plate girder. Experimental measurements using PZT sensors located on the web
in pulse-echo mode, and strong S0 mode reflections. Similarly, Morvan et al. [5]
measured Lamb waves by a laser vibrometer in a T-joint generated by a contact
piezo-composite transducer, and normal component of the surface wave
displacement of the plate and stiffener. Sohn et al. [6] analyzed mode conversion of
T-joint with collocated PZT before and after the stiffener using a 2D simulation
under plane strain assumptions. Other studies concluded, with experimental
evidence, that damage-sensitive features are successfully extracted as damage-
induced Lamb wave modes have unique characteristics compared to those modes
produced by the stiffener or varying thickness [7, 8].
The objective of this paper is to further understand the mode conversion
mechanism at the T-joint interface using frequency-wavenumber filtering
techniques per Ruzzene [9], both as a function of the fillet radius, with and without
blind side damage, and with experimental validation that provides high fidelity
spatial resolution using 3D laser vibrometry.
MODE COEFFICIENT FORMULATION
This analysis is restricted to the frequency range of the fundamental symmetric and
antisymmetric Lamb waves, S0 and A0, respectively. As illustrated in Figure 1, it is
assumed that a pure S0 or A0 mode is generated to interrogate the structure. The
interaction of an incident S0 mode with a stiffener located causes a partial S0
reflection and partial mode conversion into the A0 mode, while simultaneously
producing a partial S0 and A0 mode transmission into the stiffener and the plate. As
previously described by Ayers et al. [10], upon filtering the data in the frequency-
998
wavenumber domain and windowing the data in the time-space domain, (x, ω) is
the filtered response in the spatial-frequency domain of a single extracted mode at
frequency .
Figure 1. Schematic of T-joint and mode conversion identification
Laser vibrometry techniques allow for various points to be scanned over the
distance, L. From the measured responses, the value of the mode coefficients
may be estimated over a spatial domain. This allows the estimation of its spatial-
independence, and more importantly of a spatially averaged value, which is less
affected by amplitude fluctuations due to noise, or by general trends associated
with geometrical spreading. In compact matrix notation, the mode coefficients
may be expressed by the following for an interrogating S0 mode, but is likewise
easily applied for an interrogating A0 mode:
2 j

1 j
ij ( x,  ) dx
 ij ( w)  (1)
x2
  ( x,  ) dx
x1
i
where,
 RSu0 TSu0 C Au0 
 
 ij ( w)   RSw0 TSw0 C Aw0  (2)
 RSuw TSuw CSuw 
 0 0 0 
 u~S(0r ) u~S(0t ) u~A(0r ) 

 ~ (r ) ~ (t ) ~(r )  (3)
ij ( w)   w S0 w S0 w A0 
 ~(r ) 2 ~(r ) 2 (r ) 2 
 (u S0 )  ( wS0 ) (u~S(0t ) ) 2  ( w
~ (t ) ) 2
S0
~ (r) 2 ~
(u A0 )  ( wA0 ) 
and,

i ( w)  u~S(0i ) ~ (i )
wS0 (u~S(0i ) )2  ( w
~ (i ) )2
S0  (4)
x x3 x1 
ij ( x)   1 (5)
 x2 x4 x2 
999
where R, T, and C parameters represent the reflection, transmission, and
converted coefficients, u and w are the in-plane and out-of-plane displacement
components, respectively, and xi are the integration spatial coordinates. It is
important to note that this spatial integration method departs from existing
literature, where the mode amplitudes are taken at a fixed location [11].
APPLICATION TO SIMULATED DATA
The mode coefficient formulation is applied to numerical parameterization for the

undamaged and damaged configurations using simplified 2D plane strain, where
mode conversion estimation is shown as a function of the fillet radius, excitation
frequency, and stiffener cross-sectional thickness (Table I and Figure 2).
Table I. Test Matrix of 2D FEM Parameterization
Signal Plate-Stiffener Geometry Notch Damage Geometry
Set Stiffener
Frequency Fillet Radius Depth Orientation
Thickness
[kHz] [mm] [mm] [mm] [deg]
1 200.0 [0.0:3.0:12.0] 3.0 - -
2 200.0 [0.0:3.0:12.0] 3.0 3.0 0.0
3 200.0 6.0 3.0 [0.0:2.0:8.0] 0.0
4 200.0 6.0 3.0 3.0 [0.0:15.0:75.0]
a) (b)
Figure 2: Schematic of 2D FEM T-joint: (a) Profile with identified boundary
conditions, (b) Magnified view of FEM parameters at fillet with notch damage
From Figures 3(a-b), the mode coefficients from a no-damage configuration vary
parabolically as a function of the fillet radius. With a constant damage depth in
Figure 4(a), the mode coefficients varies linearly as a function of the fillet
radius. As the fillet radius increases (greater than 6 mm), the mode coefficients
from undamaged to damaged are approximately equivalent (Figures 4(b)). The
thickness of the fillet radius (greater than 6 mm) requires that the damage depth
does not penetrate the plate thickness, and sensitivity is negligible. The mode
1000
coefficient is sensitive to the increasing damage depth, whereas the mode
coefficient shows perturbation (greater than 4 mm) once the damage depth
penetrates the plate thickness (Figures 5(a-b)). The and mode coefficients
demonstrate a sinusoidal profile with the notch orientation (Figures 6(a-b)).
(a) (b)
Figure 3: Variation of fillet radius without blind damage: (a) Mode Coefficient
(b) Mode Coefficient
(a) (b)
Figure 4: Variation of fillet radius with blind damage of constant depth and
orientation: (a) Mode Coefficient (b) Mode Coefficient
(a) (b)
Figure 5: Variation of blind damage depth with constant fillet radius: (a) Mode
Coefficient (b) Mode Coefficient
1001
(a) (b)
Figure 6: Variation of blind damage orientation with constant fillet radius: (a)
Mode Coefficient (b) Mode Coefficient
The trends from the FE parameterization are investigated by using a 3D Scanning

Laser Vibrometry test setup (Figure 7(a)), which consists of an aluminum T-joint
for selected fillet radius (0.6 cm), excitation frequency (100 kHz) and stiffener
thickness (0.3 cm). The setup enables 3D surface measurement of the front and
back sides of the plate, plate-stiffener radius, and stiffener (Figure (b)).
(a) (b)
Figure 7: Experimental validation using Polytec 3D Vibrometer: (a) Test setup (b)
Aluminum T-joint specimen
To ensure Lamb wave phenomena, Figure 8(a) illustrates the frequency peaks of the
incident A0 mode of the front face, which aligns with the analytical A0 mode, while
Figure 8(b) shows the back face frequency content, where mode conversion occurs
and the S0 mode is introduced. Figure 9(a) demonstrates the full wavefield of the
filtered out-of-plane A0 mode along the front face, and Figure 9(b) depicts the in-
1002
plane converted S0 mode. The magnitude of the fillet radius in Figure 9(b) is 3
orders below that of the front and stiffener surfaces. Using data whose spatial
points originate at Y-axis 0.14 m in Figure 9(a) and runs along the front, back and
stiffener faces, Table II contains the reflection, transmission, and conversion
coefficients. Particular attention is given to the difference in order of magnitude
between the stiffener and front and back faces, indicating that a significant amount
of energy is propagating into the stiffener. The relative order of magnitude,
approximately 0.02 to 0.06 along the front face for the reflection and conversion
mode coefficients corroborate with the results from the undamaged FE trade studies
shown in Figure 3.
(a) (b)
Figure 8. Incident in-plane frequency content: (a) Front face, and (b) Back face.
Excitation frequency of modulated tone burst is 100 kHz.
(a) (b)
Figure 9. Time history snapshot at 87.8 sec along front face-stiffener surfaces: (a)
Filtered incident out-of-plane A0 mode, (b) Filtered converted in-plane S0 mode
1003
Table II. Integrated mode coefficients along center line of three surfaces
Reflection Transmission Conversion
Section Coefficients Coefficients Coefficients
RA0u RA0w RA0uw TA0 u
TA0w TA0uw CS0u CS0w CS0uw
Front Face 0.054 0.059 0.058 - - - 0.053 0.024 0.039
Back Face - - - 0.012 0.019 0.017 0.014 0.002 0.009
Stiffener - - - 0.193 0.203 0.199 0.118 0.019 0.074
CONCLUSIONS
As the fillet radius increases, the mode coefficients from undamaged to damaged
are approximately equivalent. The thickness of the fillet radius (greater than 6 mm)
does not allow the damage depth to penetrate the plate thickness, and sensitivity to
the relative damage is therefore negligible. In addition, the and mode
coefficients demonstrate a sinusoidal profile with the notch orientation, such that
the determining the orientation based on the magnitude of the mode coeffiicient is
limited. Experimentally, the 3D Laser vibrometry results indicate that the
transmission coefficients are an order of magnitude greater within the stiffener
section than the front and back faces. Further work is ongoing in varying the
damage to the aluminum T-joint, and results will be presented in future papers.
REFERENCES
1. Ooijevaar T. H., Warnet,L.L., Loendersloot, R., Akkerman, R., and de Boer, A. 2010. Vibration
based Structural Health Monitoring of a Composite Plate Structure with Multiple Stiffeners,
Fifth European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, Sorrento, Naples, Italy.
2. Sundaresan, M.J., Pai, P.F., Ghoshal, A., Schulz, M., Ferguson, F. and Chung, J.F. 2001.
Methods of distributed sensing for health monitoring of composite material structures,
Composites: Part A, 32: 1357-1374.
3. Greve, D.W., Tyson, N., and Oppenheim, I.J. 2005. Interaction of defects with Lamb waves in
complex geometries, 2005 IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium, 297-300.
4. Oppenheim, J., Greve, D.W., and Tyson, N.L. 2006. Lamb Wave Behavior in Bridge Girder
Geometries, Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering, Smart
structures and materials, San Diego, CA.
5. Morvan, B., Tine, A., and Duclos, J. 1999. Coupling of Lamb waves at a tee junction. IEEE
Ultrasonics Symposium, 1: 565 - 568.
6. Kim, S., Lee, C., Hong, J., Park, H., Sohn, H. 2010. Applications of an Instantaneous Damage
Detection Technique to Plates with Additional Complexities. J. Nondestructive Evaluation, 29:
189–205.
7. Lanza di Scalea, F., Matt, H., Bartoli, I., Coccia, S., Park, S., and Farrar, C. 2007. Health
Monitoring of UAV Wing Skin-to-spar Joints using Guided Waves and Macro Fiber Composite
Transducers, J. of Intellignet Material Systems and Structures, 18: 373-388.
8. Kesavan, A. , Deivasigamani, M., John, S., and Herszberg , I. 2006. Damage detection in T-
joint composite structures. Composite Structures, 75: 313–320
9. Ruzzene, M. 2007. Frequency/wavenumber filtering for improved damage visualization. Smart
Materials and Structures, 16:2116-2129.
10. Ayers, J., Apetre, N., and Ruzzene, M. 2011. Phase Gradient and Mode Conversion Estimation
in 1D Damaged Structures. Structural Health Monitoring, 1: 65–82.
11. Lowe, M., and Diligent, O. 2002. Low-frequency reflection characteristics of the s(0) Lamb
wave from a rectangular notch in a plate. J. of the Acoustical Society of America, 111:64-74.
1004
Detection of Impact Strain Waves in
Composites by High-Speed FBG
Sensor System with AWG Filter
Y. OKABE, N. WATANABE, M. SHIMAZAKI, H. SOEJIMA
and T. OGISU
ABSTRACT
In our previous study, an active ultrasonic propagation system has been developed
using fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors as ultrasonic receivers for delamination
detection in composite structures. This system uses an arrayed waveguide gratings
(AWG) filter as a Bragg wavelength filter to detect really small strain change of
ultrasonic waves. In this research, the authors extended the function of this system to
detection of large strain waves caused by impact loads. The main issue in the large-
strain case is that the relation between the Bragg wavelength and outputs of AWG
filter is nonlinear. First, therefore, tensile tests were conducted to obtain the relations
between the strain and the outputs from multiple ports of the AWG that the reflection
spectra of FBG sensors passed through. From the results, the relational equations
between Bragg wavelength and output ratios of the AWG were obtained. Then, an
impact test was carried out to a carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) quasi-isotropic
laminate on which an FBG was bonded. After that, inverse analysis was applied to the
measured output ratios of multiple ports of the AWG using the relational equations
obtained from the tensile tests. As a result, the impact strain wave was able to be
detected with a high degree of accuracy. Furthermore, in order to confirm the
applicability of this method to simultaneous multipoint measurement, three
multiplexed FBGs were bonded on an acrylic plate. Since the stiffness of this plate
was smaller than that of the CFRP plate, much larger strains occurred under an impact
load. Hence Bragg wavelengths shifted over multiple ports of the AWG filter.
However, the strain waves received in the three FBG sensors could be reconstructed
precisely through the same automatic inverse analysis. The merits of this method to
detect impact strain waves are as follows. First, since the ratio of multiple port outputs
are used, the Bragg wavelength can be estimated independent of the variation of
optical power caused by some disturbances. Secondly, this method can detect impact
behaviour at really high sampling rate, because the measurement speed depends on the
performance of the data recorder. Thirdly, this system can detect not only really small
strain of ultrasonic waves but also large strain waves caused by impact loads.
_____________
Y. Okabe, N. Watanabe, and M. Shimazaki, Institute of Industrial Sciences, Univ. of Tokyo,
4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8505, JAPAN.
H. Soejima and T. Ogisu, Aerospace Company, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., 1-1-11 Yonan,
Utsunomiya, Tochigi, 320-8564, JAPAN
1005
INTRODUCTION
As one of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems, in our previous study, an

active ultrasonic propagation system has been developed using fiber Bragg grating
(FBG) sensors as ultrasonic receivers 1, 2). This system uses an arrayed waveguide
gratings (AWG) filter as an optical wavelength filter to detect the small high-speed
shift of Bragg wavelength of FBG caused by the strain variation of ultrasonic waves 3).
Using this system, the authors succeeded in detecting delamination damage in carbon
fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) quasi-isotropic laminates by investigating the mode
conversions of broadband Lamb waves 4).
In this research, the authors attempt to extend the function of this system to
detection of large strain wave caused by an impact load. If we enable such real-time
passive impact monitoring in addition to the active acousto-ultrasonic monitoring
using the same system configuration, we can increase the reliability of damage
diagnosis with this SHM system. However, the main issue of the large-strain detection
is that the relation between the Bragg wavelength and outputs of AWG filter is
nonlinear, although that in the case of really small ultrasonic strain is assumed to be
linear. For the construction of the impact detection method, hence, tensile tests are
conducted to obtain the relations between the strain and the normalized outputs from
multiple ports of the AWG filter that the reflection spectra of FBG sensors pass
through. Then, an impact test is carried out to a CFRP quasi-isotropic laminate on
which an AWG outputs obtained during the impact behaviour by using the relational
equations derived from the tensile tests, in order to reconstruct the strain wave caused
by the impact load precisely. After that, the availability of this method is confirmed for
simultaneous multipoint measurement through an experiment with three multiplexed
FBG sensors bonded on a surface of an acrylic plate.
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
Figure 1 shows the schematic of our high-speed FBG sensor system. A broadband
light emitted from an amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) light source is
propagated into an FBG sensor. The reflected light from the FBG sensor is then
divided into two optical powers by a coupler. One-half of it is input into an AWG
filter, and the outputs from the multiple ports are converted into voltage signals by
photo detectors and recorded in a data recorder. The AWG filter is an optical circuit
which divides a broadband light into multiple narrowband lights corresponding to the
wavelength of each port of the filter. The spectrum of the AWG filter that the
broadband light from the ASE light source passes through directly is shown in Figure
2. The optical powers of all the ports are different depending on the spectrum shape of
the ASE light. Since this system does not have mechanical moving parts, the
measurement speed depends on the performance of the photo detectors and the
sampling rate of the data recorder.
On the other hand, the other half of the optical power is measured with a
commercial FBG interrogation monitor (I-MON 80D, Ibsen Photonics 5)) for
measurement of the Bragg wavelength of the reflected light from the FBG. The I-
MON is employed in our experiment just for reference measurement since its
1006
maximum sampling rate is approximately 2.6 kHz, which is rather low frequency to
detect strain wave caused by an impact load to CFRP laminates.
Circulator
FBG sensor
ASE light source
Interrogation
monitor for FBG PC
(I-MON)
Optical power [W]

Coupler
AWG Photo
Data recorder
filter detector
Reflection
spectrum
of FBG
Optical Power
1530 1540 1550 1560

Wavelength [nm]
Wavelength
Figure 1 Measurement system using FBG sensor and Figure 2 Spectrum of AWG filter that
AWG filter for impact detection. broadband light from ASE passed through.
In this research, a tensile test is firstly carried out as a preliminary test. The
specimen is an acrylic plate on which an FBG sensor and a strain gage are bonded.
Then the outputs from the strain gage and each port of the AWG are recorded while
the FBG is under quasi-static tensile strain in order to determine the relational
equations between the strain and the normalized output of each AWG port. After that,
an impact test is conducted to a CFRP laminate on which the FBG sensor is bonded,
and inverse analysis is applied to the AWG outputs measured during the impact test by
using the equations acquired from the tensile test. Through this process, strain wave
caused by the impact load is obtained.
PRELIMINARY TENSILE TEST FOR INVERSE ANALYSIS
In order to obtain relational equations for inverse analysis, an FBG sensor

(Fujikura Ltd; sensor length: 1.5 mm; outside diameter: 150 μm; bandwidth: 0.5 nm;
Bragg wavelength: 1542 nm) and a strain gage (Kyowa; KFG-2-120-C1-11L2M3R;
gage length: 2 mm) were bonded to an acrylic plate of 3 mm in thickness with
cyanoacrylate adhesive as shown in Figure 3. Then a tensile load was applied to the
plate at the head speed of 1 mm/min until the maximum load of 500 N, and the
outputs of the strain gage and AWG filter were recorded. The Bragg wavelength of the
FBG sensor was also measured by the FBG interrogation monitor (I-MON 80D) at the
same time. The AWG outputs measured against strain are shown in Figure 4. As the
strain increased, the port number and its output value gradually changed.
From the results obtained by the tensile test, relational equations between the
Bragg wavelength and the normalized output of each port of the AWG were derived
by the following process. First of all, the proportionality coefficient between the strain
and the Bragg wavelength was calculated from the time history of Bragg wavelength
measured with I-MON 80D and that of strain measured by the strain gage. Secondly,
the proportionality coefficient was multiplied by the strain and the initial Bragg
wavelength with no tension was added to it. As a result, the strain as relative value
1007
could be converted into the Bragg ASE
wavelength as absolute value. Thirdly, light source
each port output was normalized so that FBG interrogation Acrylic plate
(180×20×3 mm3）
the maximum output among all the port monitor
(I-MON 80D)
outputs at each Bragg wavelength
becomes 1.0. Figure 5 shows the AWG FBG sensor
PC
normalized AWG output as a function of filter
the Bragg wavelength. Finally, curve Strain gage

fitting was conducted to the normalized Photodetector
port output by a least-square method.

Through these processes, especially the Data
Recorder
normalization process, relational
equations between the Bragg 1 mm/min
wavelength and the AWG port output 0 ~ 500 N
were obtained precisely and easily by
Figure 3 Experimental setup for tensile test.
simple cubic equations.
1
Port 20
2 Port 21 Port 20 Port 21 Port 22 Port 23
Port 22
Port 23 0.8
Normalized port output
1.5
Port output [V]
Fitted
0.6
curve
1
0.4
0.5
0.2
0 0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 1542.5 1543 1543.5 1544 1544.5 1545 1545.5
Strain [με] Bragg wavelength [nm]
Figure 4 Output of each AWG port against Figure 5 Normalized AWG port outputs and an
strain measured under tensile loading. example of fitted curve to obtain relational
equation.
INVERSE ANALYSIS OF STRAIN WAVE IN IMPACT TEST
Since relational equations were obtained from the preliminary tensile test, an
impact test was conducted to investigate the response of this system to the impact
behavior and obtain the precise strain wave using the relational equations. The test
specimen was a CFRP quasi-isotropic laminate with a thickness of 3.4 mm (Toray
Industries, Inc.; T700S/2500; laminate configuration: [45/0/-45/0]3s). The same FBG
sensor as the one used in the tensile test was bonded on the surface of the laminate
with the same adhesive. The laminate was sandwiched with stainless steel plates to be
constrained at its four sides. Then using a weight-drop impact tester (Intesco), an
impact load was applied to the laminate by dropping a weight of 10 N with a ball-
shaped head with the diameter of 12.7 mm from the height of 100 mm. The locations
of the FBG sensor and the impact point, and the constraint conditions are illustrated in
Figure 6.
During the impact test, the outputs from multiple ports of the AWG were recorded
at the sampling rate of 100 kHz, which was determined from the performance of the
1008
data recorder. The Bragg wavelength of FBG sensor was also measured by I-MON
80D as reference data at the sampling rate of 2.6 kHz.
100 mm 270 mm
60 mm Stainless
200 mm
Steel Plates
40 mm (t = 8 mm)
20 mm
FBG sensor
Bolts
Impact point
CFRP
laminate
200 mm
(a) (b)
Figure 6 Configuration of the impact test: (a) Locations on CFRP laminate

and (b) Constraint conditions.
The time histories of the AWG outputs are plotted in Figure 7. Then, in order to
convert the changes in the AWG outputs induced by the impact into Bragg wavelength,
that is, the strain wave, an inverse analysis was applied as follows. First of all, AWG
outputs shown in Figure 7 were normalized by the maximum output at each time in
the same way as the tensile test. The normalized results are shown in Figure 8. By
substituting these normalized AWG outputs into the relational equations obtained
from the tensile test (See Figure 5), the Bragg wavelength change during the impact
behaviour could be calculated inversely.
The obtained result from the above process is shown in Figure 9. For comparison,
the Bragg wavelength measured by the commercial system I-MON 80D is also plotted
on the same graph. Through the comparison of these results, it is found that the latter
half of the waves (after 1.340 sec.) agrees well between the result obtained by the
inverse analysis and that measured by the commercial system. On the other hand, in
the first half of the waves (before 1.340 sec.), our system detected the strain wave
more precisely because the sampling rate of our system is much higher. However, the
data measured by the I-MON 80D agrees well with that of our system. These results
indicate that the strain wave caused by impact load can be detected precisely through
the inverse analysis on the AWG outputs by our proposed method.
2 Port 18
Port 19
Port 20
1
Port 21
Normalized port output
1.5 Port 22
0.8
Port output [v]
Port 23
1 0.6
0.4
0.5
0.2
0 0
1.335 1.34 1.345 1.35 1.335 1.34 1.345 1.35
Time [sec] Time [sec]
Figure 7 Outputs of AWG multiple ports Figure 8 AWG outputs normalized from
during the impact test. Figure 7.
1009
Inverse analysis
1543.3
I-MON
(Commercial system
Bragg wavelength [nm]

1543.2
1543.1
1543
1542.9
1.334 1.336 1.338 1.34 1.342 1.344 1.346 1.348 1.35 1.352
Time [sec]
Figure 9 Comparison between Bragg wavelength obtained by inverse analysis to AWG outputs and that
measured by the commercial FBG interrogation monitor.
IMPACT TEST FOR MULTIPLEPOINT MEASUREMENT
For identification of impact locations, it is needed to detect strain waves caused by

an impact load at multiple points simultaneously. Hence, the authors attempted to
detect the impact strain waves at three different locations by using multiplexed FBG
sensors.
The Bragg wavelength λB of the three FBGs are 1534 nm, 1542 nm, and 1550 nm,
and they are fusion-spliced to be one optical fiber. The reflection spectra of the three
FBGs are plotted in Figure 10 with the spectrum of the AWG filter (Figure 2). In this
experiment, in order to induce large strain in the specimen, an acrylic plate with the
thickness of 2 mm was used instead of the CFRP laminate. Then the three FBGs
connected in series were bonded on the acrylic plate at different three points as shown
in Figure 11. After that, an impact load was applied at the center of the plate by the
weight drop of 10 N from the height of 10 mm.
100
30 30
Optical power
FBG sensor
A B C A: λB = 1534 nm
45
200
B: λB = 1542 nm
C: λB = 1550 nm
Impact point
1530 1540 1550 1560 Unit: mm

Wavelength [nm] 200
Figure 10 Reflection spectra of multiplexed Figure 11 Configuration of impact test for
three FBG sensors and the spectrum simultaneous multipoint measurement.
of AWG filter.
The time histories of the obtained AWG outputs are shown in Figure 12.
Depending on the Bragg wavelength of each FBG sensor, different ports of AWG
responded during the impact loading.
1010
Similarly, the inverse analysis was applied to these outputs of AWG ports and the
reconstructed strain waves are shown in Figure 13. The Bragg wavelengths measured
by the commercial system I-MON 80D are also plotted in the same graphs. Compared
with the result for CFRP laminates shown in Figure 9, the frequency of the waves was
lower, since the stiffness of this thin acrylic plate was smaller. Hence the I-MON 80D
could detect the waves, and it was found that the results obtained by our system agreed
well with that measured by the commercial system. In all the three results, the strain
waves are seamless even when the relational equation used for the inverse analysis is
switched to the other equation of the adjacent port output.
Thus, it was confirmed that the strain waves at different locations can also be
detected at the same time by our measurement system and proposed analysis method.
Inverse analysis Commercial system

1536.2
1.5
(a) Bragg wavelength [nm]
1536 (a)
Port 11
Port output [V]
1 1535.8
1535.6
0.5
1535.4
Port 10
Port 10
1535.2
0 Port 11
0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18
Time [sec] 1535
0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18
Time [sec]
1544.4
1.5 1544.2
(b)
Port 21
Port 21
Port output [V]
1544
1
1543.8
(b) Port 22
0.5 Port 20 1543.6
Port 22 1543.4
Port 20
0
0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18 1543.2
Time [sec] 0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18
Time [sec]
1552.6
1.5
(c)
Port 31 1552.4
Port output [V]
1552.2
1
(c) Port 32 1552
0.5 1551.8
Port 32
Port 30 1551.6
0
0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18 0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18
Time [sec] Time [sec]
Figure 12 Outputs of AWG ports for three Figure 13 Bragg wavelength obtained by inverse
FBG sensors under impact loading: analysis to AWG outputs (Figure 12) and
(a) λB = 1534 nm, (b) λB = 1542 nm those measured by the commercial system for
and (c) λB = 1550 nm. multiplexed three FBG sensors:
(a) λB = 1534 nm, (b) λB = 1542 nm,
and (c) λB = 1550 nm.
CONCLUSIONS
In this research, the authors attempted to detect the strain wave with large
amplitude caused by an impact load by using our high-speed FBG measurement
system with AWG filter developed for ultrasonic sensing. As a result, it was
confirmed that the Bragg wavelength change corresponding to the strain wave was
able to be reconstructed inversely with a high degree of accuracy from the outputs of
multiple ports of AWG, by using the relational equations determined through tensile
1011
test in advance in order to compensate the nonlinear response of this system.
Furthermore, strain waves could be detected at three different points simultaneously
by using multiplexed three FBG sensors.
The merits of this method to detect impact strain waves are as follows. First, since
the ratio of multiple port outputs are used, the Bragg wavelength can be estimated
independent of the variation of optical power caused by some disturbances. Secondly,
this method can detect impact behaviour at really high sampling rate, because the
measurement speed depends on the performance of the data recorder. Thirdly, this
system can detect not only really small strain of ultrasonic waves but also large strain
waves caused by impact loads.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was conducted as a part of the project, “Aerospace Industry Innovation
Program – Advanced Materials & Process Development for Next-Generation Aircraft
Structures” under the contract with The Materials Process Technology Center,
founded by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) of Japan.
REFERENCES
1. Takeda, N., Okabe, Y., Kuwahara, J., Kojima, S., and Ogisu, T. 2005. Development of smart
composite structures with small-diameter fiber Bragg grating sensors for damage detection:
quantitative evaluation of delamination length in CFRP laminates using Lamb wave sensing.
Compos. Sci. Technol., 65: 2575-2587.
2. Okabe, Y., Kuwahara, J., Natori, K., Takeda, N., Ogisu, T., Kojima, S., and Komatsuzaki, S. 2007.
Evaluation of debonding progress in composite bonded structures using ultrasonic waves received
in fiber Bragg grating sensors. Smart Mater. Struct., 16,: 1370-1378.
3. Komatsuzaki, S., Kojima, S., Hongo, A., Takeda, N., and Sakurai, T. 2005. Development of high-
speed optical wavelength interrogation system for damage detection in composite materials. Proc.
SPIE, 5758: 54-61.
4. Okabe, Y., Fujibayashi, K., Shimazaki, M., Soejima, H., and Ogisu, T. 2010. Delamination
detection in composite laminates using dispersion change based on mode conversion of Lamb
waves. Smart Mater. Struct., 19:115013.
5. http://www.ibsen.dk/productoverview/im
1012
The Application of Compressed Sensing to
Detecting Damage in Structures
D. MASCARENAS, D. HUSH, J. THEILER and C. FARRAR
ABSTRACT
One of the principal challenges facing the structural health monitoring (SHM)
community is taking large, heterogeneous sets of data collected from sensors, and
extracting information that allows the estimation of the remaining service life of a
structure. Another important challenge is to collect relevant data from a structure in a
manner that is cost effective, and respects the size, weight, cost, energy consumption,
and bandwidth limitations placed on the system. In this work we explore the
suitability of compressed sensing to address both challenges.
In this work a digital version of a compressed sensor is implemented on-board
a microcontroller similar to those used in embedded SHM sensor nodes. The sensor
node is tested in a surrogate SHM application requiring acceleration measurements.
Currently the prototype compressed sensor is capable of collecting compressed
coefficients from measurements and sending them to an off-board processor for
reconstruction using L1 norm minimization. A compressed version of the matched
filter known as the smashed filter, has also been implemented on-board the sensor
node, and its suitability for detecting structural damage will be discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Data for structural health monitoring applications is generally collected using a

distributed sensor network. Distributed sensor networks made up of nodes with hard-
wired data and communication lines are generally have high installation costs. The
goal is to transition to low-power, wireless sensor networks featuring minimal
installation costs [1]. Two of the major problems with these types of sensor networks
are the conservation of energy and bandwidth. Compressed sensing techniques hold
promise to help address both of these problems. By collecting compressed
coefficients, the signal of interest can be represented using a fraction of the
measurements required by traditional Nyquist sampling. The result is reduced energy
consumption for data collection, storage and transmission. In addition, the bandwidth
required to transmit the data from a signal is also significantly reduced. The focus of
this work is to evaluate the applicability of compressed sensing techniques to expand
Mascarenas, D., Hush, D., Theiler, J., Farrar, C., Los Alamos National Laboratory, PO Box 1663 MS
T001, Los Alamos, NM 87544
1013
the capabilities of wireless sensor networks for structural health monitoring
applications.
BACKGROUND OF COMPRESSED SENSING
Compressed sensing has been a prolific research topic over the last few years.
Excellent tutorials covering the basics of compressed sensing can be found in [2] and
[3]. To summarize, a signal of interest x can be represented as:
N
x   si i or in matrix form as X  s (1)
i 1
Where Ψ is an orthonormal basis and “s” is the representation of the signal in the Ψ
domain. In the case of compressed sensing we are interested in the case where x is
compressible in some domain. That is, the number of significant non-zero elements of
s is equal to k and k << N. A measurement matrix “Φ” is then introduced to produce
compressed sensing coefficients y.
y  x   s  s (2)
Where Φ has M<N rows. At this point it is important to note that this equation
represents an underdetermined system of linear equations. One of the major
breakthroughs of the compressed sensing community was the finding that assuming
k<<M it is possible to recover x from y assuming the matrix Φ possesses certain
properties. The direct formulation of this problem is finding the vector s with minimal
l0 norm. Unfortunately l0 norm minimization is numerically unstable and NP-
complete. It has been shown though that the associated l1 norm regularization problem
[5] can be solved to recover compressible signals from the compressed coefficients y.
In this work, the l1 norm regularization approach will be explored for recovering the
signal x from compressed coefficients y.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
In order to evaluate the applicability of compressed sensing for embedded

structural health monitoring sensor nodes, a digital prototype of a compressed sensor
node was built. The prototype consisted of an ATmega1281 microcontroller, an ICP
accelerometer, and the associated amplification and ICP circuitry required to interface
the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) of the microcontroller to the ICP accelerometer.
The accelerometer was then attached to the second floor of a representative 3 story
structure as shown in Figure 1. The accelerometer was oriented to measure the
transverse vibration of the 3-story structure. An electro-magnetic shaker was then
attached to the base of the three story structure to provide a source of excitation. The
excitation to the structure was a sine wave with a frequency of 30.7 Hz which
corresponds to the first resonant frequency of this structure. In order to introduce
damage into the structure, a rubber bumper was used to induce a nonlinear response
when the relative transverse displacement between the second floor and the base
would exceed a threshold value. The signal from the accelerometer was sampled by
the ATmega1281 with a 10 bit ADC at a sampling rate of about 3000 Hz. In this
work, 256 point time series were collected by the Atmega1281 and subsequently
converted into compressed measurements by the microcontroller. The elements of the
measurement matrix Φ were chosen to be either ±1. The generation of the
1014
measurement matrix Φ was accomplished using a linear feedback shift register
(LFSR) similar to that mentioned in [4]. The ±1 measurement matrix was selected in
order to allow the generation of the compressed coefficients on-board the
microcontroller using integer arithmetic. The ATmega1281 was placed onboard an
STK500 evaluation board. A base station laptop was then connected to the STK500 in
order to facilitate the debugging of the compressed sensing algorithms, and to expedite
the collection of compressed coefficients from the embedded sensor node. For the
purpose of this experiment, the ATmega1281 would transmit both the compressed
measurements as well as the original signal when it was queried for a measurement.
By collecting both pieces of data the reconstructed signal derived from the compressed
coefficients could be compared to the original signal in order to evaluate the
performance of compressed sensing techniques.
Figure 1- Representative 3 story structure used to evaluate the compressed sensor node.
RESULTS FROM l1 NORM REGULARIZATION EXPERIMENTS
The Structure described in the previous section was placed in a configuration so that it
could assume either a damaged state or an undamaged state. In the undamaged state,
the output from the accelerometer should assume a sine wave with a frequency of 30.7
Hz that corresponds to the shaker excitation frequency. In the damaged state, the
rubber bumper interacts with the structure and the frequency content of the resulting
output from the structure is more widely distributed across the spectrum. For this
work we assume that the resulting signals from the structure should be sparse in the
Fourier basis. Data was collected from the structure in both the damaged and
undamaged states, and was subjected to the compressed sensing measurement process.
The resulting compressed measurements were then cast into the l1 norm regularization
1015
framework to attempt recovery of the original signal. The l1 norm regularization
problem can be written as:

Minimize y   s 2   s 1
s
 (3)
The l1 norm regularization problem trades off between the size of the residual and the
sparsity of s. The l1 norm regularization was implemented using the CVXMOD
software [6]. 256 pt time series data was collected from the structure using the
ATmega1281 and was transmitted to the base station laptop. The compressed
coefficients were calculated using the measurement matrix generated by the LFSR.
The resulting compressed coefficients were subjected to the l1 norm regularization
with γ = 0.01. The value of γ was selected heuristically. The l1 norm regularization
problem was solved using 64, 128, 160, and 200 compressed coefficients for both the
damaged and undamaged cases. These correspond to compression factors of 25%,
50%, 63%, and 78% respectively. The resulting reconstructions can be found in
Figure 2 and Figure 3. The values of the Fourier basis coefficients for the undamaged
and damaged cases are found in Figure 4 and Figure 5 respectively. It should be noted
that the sine wave measured in the undamaged case has a slight non-linearity caused
by clipping in the signal conditioning electronics at low-voltages. This situation was
unavoidable in order to excite with an appropriate amplitude to induce nonlinearities
in the damage case.
From the reconstructed signals in Figure 2 and Figure 3 we can see that the
nature of the output signal does not begin to become apparent until about 160
compressed measurements are taken. The reconstructed signals generated from a
lower number of compressed coefficients also tend to exhibit significant high-
frequency components that do not show up in the original signal. As the number of
compressed coefficients increases the magnitude of the non-existent high-frequency
components tends to decrease and the accuracy of the reconstruction improves.
Figure 2 - Undamaged case compressed sensing reconstruction

1016
Figure 3 - Damaged case compressed sensing reconstruction
Figure 4 - Fourier coefficients from undamaged structure, original and reconstructed signals.
Next consider the plots of the Fourier basis coefficients displayed in Figure 4
and Figure 5. In both the damaged and undamaged cases the l1 norm regularization
1017
problem finds at least either the sine or cosine component of the original signal. From
these plots it is easy to see the inclusion of false, high-frequency components as
evidenced by the non-zero components present in the middle of the Fourier basis plots.
As the number of compressed sensing coefficients included in the plots is increased,
the magnitude of the false high-frequency components decreases, and the accuracy of
the reconstructed signal also improves. At this time it is not entirely clear why the
reconstructed signals tend to exhibit significant contributions from high frequency
components. One possibility is that the reconstructions are amplifying noise present
in the signal. Future work is going to consider methods for improving the accuracy of
the reconstructed signals.
Figure 5 - Fourier coefficients from damaged structure, original and reconstructed signals.
SMASHED FILTER
The initial l1 norm regularization results showed that a fairly significant number of
compressed coefficients were needed to begin to accurately reconstruct the signal of
interest. In structural health monitoring, the main concern is generally the detection of
damage and not necessarily the collection of accurate time series. With this in mind it
was decided to investigate alternate techniques to try and detect the presence of
damage while using a relatively small number of compressed coefficients. An
extension of the matched filter to the compressed domain known as the “smashed
filter” seemed an appropriate technique to evaluate. [7]. To summarize, the smashed
filter is implemented in basically the same manner as the conventional matched filter.
The main difference is that the smashed filters are generated by taking phase shifted
1018
versions of the signals of interest, and then subjecting them to the measurement
process Φ. The matched filters hm are generated from the signals of interest h as:
hm  h (4)
For this work, training signals from both the damaged and undamaged states were
collected. The damage case training signal was collected in such a manner that it
featured a small mismatch with the operational damage case signals used to evaluate
the performance of the smashed filter. By allowing a small mismatch between the
training damage case, and the operational damage case we can get an initial sense of
the robustness of the smashed filter to small perturbations. This mismatch was
achieved by perturbing the location of the rubber bumper. Once the smashed filters
were generated, 100 experiments resulting in 128 compressed coefficients per
experiment were collected from the structure in both the damaged and undamaged
cases. Subsets of the 128 compressed coefficients were then used to evaluate the
performance of the smashed filter for various numbers of compressed coefficients. To
implement the smashed filter, the inner product of the compressed coefficients and the
smashed filter vectors was calculated for each experiment. The smashed filter with
the largest inner product was then selected and the experiment was classified as
damaged or undamaged based on whether or not the corresponding smashed filter
came from the damaged or undamaged case. Table 1 and Table 2 illustrate the results
of applying the smashed filter to the experiments for the undamaged and damaged
cases respectively. From this data we see that once at least 32 compressed coefficients
are used to calculate smashed filters, the probability of misclassifications become very
low. It is noteworthy that the number of compressed coefficients needed to achieve
accurate classification with the smashed filter is only 1/8 the number of data points in
the original time series measurement. Based on these results, the smashed filter has
the potential to significantly reduce the number of measurements needed to classify
whether or not a structure is damaged.
TABLE 1. SMASHED FILTER RESULTS FOR UNDAMEGED CASE
TABLE 2. SMASHED FILTER RESULTS FOR UNDAMEGED CASE

1019
TABLE 2. SMASHED FILTER RESULTS FOR DAMEGED CASE
CONCLUSIONS
In this work the performance of compressed sensing techniques for embedded

structural health monitoring sensor nodes have been investigated. A preliminary look
at the ability of l1 norm regularization to reconstruct time series measurements of
acceleration collected from structures has been presented. The suitability of the
smashed filter for damage classification in structures has also been presented. It was
found that the smashed filter has potential to significantly reduce the number of
measurements required to classify the state of health of a structure. Although not
discussed in detail, results obtained in this work suggest that compressed sensing has
the potential to conserve energy and bandwidth in embedded wireless sensor nodes for
structural health monitoring applications. Future work will focus on better quantifying
these savings.
REFERENCES
1. Mascarenas, D., E. Flynn, C. Farrar, G. Park, M. Todd., 2009. “A Mobile Host Approach for
Wireless Powering and Interrogation of Structural Health Monitoring Sensor Networks,” IEEE
Sensors Journal, 9(12), pp 1719-1726.
2. Candès, E., 2006. “Compressive sampling,” Int. Congress of Mathematics, 3, pp. 1433-1452,
August 22-30, 2006.
3. Baraniuk, R. 2007. “Compressive sensing,” IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 24(4), pp. 118-121.
4. Laska, J., S. Kirolos, Y. Massoud, R. Baraniuk, A. Gilbert, M. Iwen, and M. Strauss, 2006
“Random sampling for analog-to-information conversion of wideband signals,” IEEE Dallas
Circuits and Systems Workshop, October 29-30, 2006
5. Candès, E., J. Romberg, and T. Tao, 2006. “Robust uncertainty principles: exact signal
reconstruction from highly incomplete frequency information,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory 52, 489–
509.
6. Mattingley, J., and S. Boyd, (2008) “CVXMOD-Convex optimization software in python,”
http://cvxmod.net/.
7. Davenport, M., M. Duarte, M. Wakin, J. Laska, D. Takhar, K. Kelly, and R. Baraniuk, “The
smashed filter for compressive classification and target recognition,” Computational Imaging V at
SPIE Electronic Imaging, January 2007.
1020
Measuring the Average Thickness of a Plate
Using a Bayesian Method and Free
Vibration Data
E. Z. MOORE, K. D. MURPHY and J. M. NICHOLS
Abstract
In this paper a model-based approach is taken to identify certain geometric

and/or material parameters for a structure. Specifically, the focus is on determin-
ing the average thickness of a thin, fully-clamped plate undergoing free vibra-
tion. The methodology is described and then implemented in an experimental
setting using the measured free response of a plate. The practical SHM scenario
driving this investigation is corrosion, since the extent of corrosion damage is
often described in terms of the effective thickness of the plate, i.e. how much
of the plate’s thickness is still structurally intact. Data are gathered from three
resistive strain gages, placed at arbitrary locations and orientations. Using the
experimental response and a finite element model, a Bayesian approach is taken
to estimate the plate thickness, h. This thickness could then be used to infer the
extent of the damage, had corrosion been present. The results show that even
with limited, noisy vibration data valuable information regarding the geometry
and material characteristics of a plate can be successfully estimated.
1 INTRODUCTION
Research into the effects of corrosion on the structural integrity of a component
has been an active field for many years. Such work has been motivated by a vari-
ety of applications, including ocean going vessels, civil engineering structures (e.g.,
bridges), etc. The extent of the corrosion damage is dependent on the material used in
the structure and on environmental factors. For maximum accuracy, the description of
the damage should be treated as spatially stochastic [1]. This unfortunately requires
significant knowledge of the plate and how the environment factors into the system.
For example, the extent to which a bridge structure is submerged in sea water might
1
Edward Moore and Kevin Murphy, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Connecti-
cut, Storrs, CT 06269
2
Jonathan Nichols, Naval Research Laboratory, 4555 Overlook Ave. Washington, D.C. 20375
1021
vary with the tides, making the exposure time-varying. Requiring this level of knowl-
edge of a real-world system is, to say the least, impractical. Others have predicted
(i.e., not measured) an effective thickness using service time and tabulated constants
that account for environmental conditions [2]. This effective thickness is then used to
predict remaining life. An alternate approach compares the strength of a uniformly
and stochastically corroded plates under different loading conditions [3, 4, 5]. It has
been shown that the uniform effective thickness approximation produces conserva-
tive estimate for plate strength in both bending and compression. While the effective
thickness approach is useful/conservative in estimating remaining life, it is not overly
practical. Why? Because there is not a simple and reliable technique for obtaining
the effective thickness in-situ; direct measurements are either difficult or impossible.
One is left to the guesswork and legwork described in Reference [2].
The present paper does not focus on corrosion, per se. Instead, it lays out a con-
sistent (and simple) procedure for determining from experimental data the effective
thickness of a plate, regardless of its condition or accessibility. But the approach
is more flexible and broadly applicable than this. It can actually be used to iden-
tify any arbitrary geometric parameter or material property that can be incorporated
into a mathematical/numerical (usually physics-based) model for use in the Bayesian
methodology. See, for example, the crack and delamination detection examples pro-
vided in References [6, 7, 7]. But the Bayesian approach does not stop at giving esti-
mates of the desired parameter(s). It also gives an actual probability distribution for
the parameter, such that you can obtain meaningful credible intervals (the Bayesian
version of a confidence interval); one finds an estimate of the parameter and obtains
a measure of how certain that answer is. And this has been expanded to a incorporate
global searches, using what is called a population-based Bayesian approach [8]. The
“pop” approach opens the door to a more thorough search of the space of possible
solutions and may lead to multi-modal parameter distributions.
In the following section, a brief description of the methodology is described, in-
cluding a summary of the finite element model used. This is followed by a description
of the experimental setup, the sensors, the excitation, and the data itself. This is fol-
lowed by a few results and some general conclusions and future work. It is found that
this approach provides a straight forward and reliable means to determine effectively
the predicted thickness of the plate and its probability distribution.
2 THE BAYESIAN APPROACH

The following is a brief discussion of the Bayesian and population-based Bayesian
approaches for determining the unknown parameters and their probability distribu-
tions. For a thorough discussion of these techniques, see Reference [7].
The parameter identification process requires three things. First, the free response
of the structure under consideration must be measured. Second, a dynamic model of
the structure, containing the unknown parameter (here the thickness, h), must be de-
veloped; this model should be capable of predicting the free response, such that a
direct comparison to the experimental response can be made. Third, the Bayesian
methodology has to be implemented; this take the two signals and produces the pa-
rameter estimate and its distribution.
1022
2.1 The Standard Bayesian/MCMC Procedure
The experimental and model predicted responses are recorded in the vectors y and
x(θ), respectively. θ is a vector containing the unknown (to be determined) param-
eters. In this case, θ is simply the scalar h. The objective is to use the observations
y to estimate the probability distribution for the thickness. In Bayesian terms, this is
referred to as the posterior: pθi (θi |y). This is read as the probability of θ given y or,
alternatively, the probability of h conditioned on y.
Another key concept used in the Bayesian approach is the prior distribution:
pπ (θ, σ2 ). This probability incorporates any a-priori knowledge one might have about
the system. For example, if one hundred similar structures had been examined and
their thicknesses were all approximately the same (have ), this constitutes valuable prior
knowledge. The initial parameter search could then be directed toward that value by
choosing a prior distribution with a single peak at have . If no information is known
a-priori, then a uniform prior distribution could be assumed.
Relating these two distributions (prior to posterior) is the likelihood. It represents
the probability of the data being recorded from a test given a presumed plate thick-
ness. Using the same notational form, the likelihood is expressed as: pL (y|θ). The
likelihood is formed by considering the uncertainty in our observations. Consider,
for example, describing the measured response at sensor “r” at discrete time “n” as
y ≡ yrn . Similarly, the model response is denoted x ≡ xrn . These two differ by some
amount of error - both modeling error and experimental noise. Thus, one may write:
yrn = xrn (θ) + ηrn , n = 1, 2, 3....N, r = 1, · · · , M (1)
where N is number of recorded instances in the time series, M is the number of
sensors, and ηrn is the error. Both sources of error are assumed to be Gaussian. With
this assumption, the probability that the data y was produced by the model, under the
assumed parameters (θ) and the (unknown) noise variance σ2 , is:
[ ]
1 1 M N
pL (y|θ, σ ) =
2
MN exp −
(2πσ2 ) 2
∑ ∑ (yrn − xrn(θ)) .
2σ2 r=1
2
(2)
n=1
This is the likelihood function. Equation (2) is clearly governed by the sum of
the squared error between the experimental data and the predicted model response:
∑ ∑(yrn − xrn (θ))2 .
Relating these three distributions (the posterior [our objective], the prior, and the
likelihood) is accomplished via Bayes’ theorem:
pJ (θ, σ2 , y) pL (y|θ, σ2 )pπ (θ, σ2 )
pΘ (θ, σ2 |y) = = . (3)
pD (y) pD (y)
The term on the left is, in fact, the desired posterior. The prior and the likelihood are
in the numerator of the right side. And the denominator is a normalizing quantity,
which is very difficult to evaluate. So instead of directly calculating the posterior
from Equation (3), the Markov-chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach is taken to
evaluate the posterior [9], [10].
In short, the MCMC process is as follows. Using the prior, an initial guess for the
plate thickness h is generated. This parameter is used in the model to generate the
1023
response xrn (θ). This, along with the experimental signal yrn , are used to generate the
likelihood, Equation (2). The parameter (h) is perturbed and the process is carried out
again. A Bernoulli trial (with an approximately 40% acceptance rate) is used to either
keep the new value or discard it. Either way, the parameter is perturbed again and the
process repeated. This creates the MCMC chain, whose distribution is (exactly) the
desired posterior.
2.2 Population-Based MCMC

The MCMC method provides a good description of the posterior if there is a
single minima. However, for more complex problems with multiple minima, this
approach may just explore one local minima. In the process, the generated posterior
does not provide a good estimate of the desired parameter (h) nor does it reflect the
complexity of the problem. In the frequentist framework, methods such as genetic
algorithms and simulated annealing are commonly used to find global minima. To
explore more complex spaces multiple chains may be run simultaneously [11, 12].
Without going into the mathematical details, the pop-based MCMC involves cre-
ating k chains, each with different initial guesses (of h) spread throughout the space.
The first chain is of the actual posterior. Subsequent chains are raised to successively
higher powers, smoothing the distributions. These chains all move forward with each
iteration and, with a 50% probability, the chains are randomly swapped. This way, all
of the chains are informing one another as to the presence of multiple peaks within the
distribution. For a more detailed discussion of population based Bayesian methods
see Reference [12].
3 MECHANICS MODEL
Regardless of the type of model used, many estimation methods require repeat-
edly evaluating the model with different parameter combinations. So while accuracy
and computational speed both matter, speed is the dominant factor. The finite element
method is used to model the plate, with the number of degrees of freedom being kept
to a minimum. A 20 by 16 element quadrilateral mesh is used. Despite the coarse-
ness of the mesh, the model still matches the theoretical predictions of the first and
second natural frequencies for a cracked plate to within 0.5%. The model is classi-
cally damped, with all modes sharing the same damping ratio of 0.003. For a detailed
discussion of this model see Reference [7].
The unknown model parameter of interest is the thickness of the plate, though
in theory any geometric or material property could be placed in the vector θ. There
is an additional “nuisance” structural parameter, whose use is necessitated by the
differences between perfect theoretical models and physical reality. This additional
parameter is a lumped rotational stiffness added to the nodes on the perimeter of the
plate, which allows the finite element model to represent the rigid-seeming, yet im-
perfect, boundary condition used in the experiment. While the plate is well clamped,
as described in section 4, it is not perfectly clamped. Instead of a fully clamped con-
dition, and eliminating rows and columns from the global stiffness matrix, the plate is
considered simply supported with a large lumped rotational stiffness applied around
1024
Normalized Dim. Value
Width (Lx /Ly ) 1.25
Length (Ly /Ly ) 1
Thickness (h/Ly ) 0.0026
Figure 1 & Table 1: The experimental test setup and nondimensional plate geometry
the perimeter of the plate. A constant is added to the edge rotational degrees of free-
dom elements of the global stiffness matrix. For each node, the constant is scaled by
the edge length of each finite element so as to produce a comparable result between
meshes of different element density. The output of this model is the rotational deflec-
tion of the plate at the sensor locations of the experimental plate. Strain is calculated
from these rotations using central differences.
The actual time response is determined via modal analysis. The FEM model
is used to determine the natural frequencies and mode shapes. The analytic modal
solution is then generated from these numerical eigen-results.
In its current form, the model is constructed with the implicit assumption that the
corrosion is uniform. A more detailed model that included details of the pitting would
require too many variables. A large number of variables would greatly increase the
solution time, and it is likely that different pitting patterns could have very similar
impacts on the vibration response, making it difficult to distinguish between them
without many more sensors.
4 EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
The test specimen was a 0.76m by 0.60m (30” by 24”, 5:4 aspect ratio), 1.55mm
(1/16”) thick 6061-T6 aluminum plate. The density was calculated using a digital
scale and a vernier caliper. Normalized dimensions are given in Table 1.
The plate was clamped in a bolted fixture shown in Figure 1. The values of
Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio used by the model were determined via tension
tests following the ASTM E8 standard.
4.1 EXCITATION
The plate was excited from rest by the impact of a simple rubber-tipped mallet.
The impact point was selected to be an arbitrary point along the diagonal of the plate.
There are two phenomena not captured by the model that are dominant immediately
after impact. The first is nonlinearity of the response due to the large transverse de-
flection experienced. For deflections larger than about one plate thickness membrane
stresses are significant, whereas the finite element model includes only the effects of
1025
Figure 2: The arbitrarily selected locations and orientations of the three strain gages
(short red lines) and the impact location (circle)
bending. The second unmodeled phenomenon is the power in non-modal frequencies

transmitted by impact. This “ringing” in the response dissipated quickly, but must
not be compared to the model prediction by the MCMC process, as the behavior can
not be captured by the simple model. A more complex model may be used, but at the
cost of computational speed. Once these two effect subside, free bending vibration
dominates the response. Hence, the first part of the response (t < to ) must be omitted.
The initial conditions of the plate are needed to compute the amplitudes and
phases of the various terms in the solution. Unfortunately, at to - the beginning of
the signal that was retained - the initial conditions are unknown. Using the strain and
the strain rate (found via central difference) at to , the unknown amplitudes and phases
were determined numerically.
4.2 SENSORS
Three single-axis Vishay MicroMeasurements model EA-13-125AD-120 strain
gages were located in arbitrary positions and orientations as shown in Figure 2. The
signals were sampled at a frequency of 25kHz. In the case of a heavily corroded plate,
accelerometers may be a better choice because they are easier to apply to uneven
surfaces, but the type of data produced is similar, and so the method used here would
be unaffected by the change.
The signals were filtered with a passband filter between the frequencies of 13Hz
and 66Hz. These frequencies were chosen based on the FFT of the unfiltered signal,
showing that the first three frequencies would be well inside the band, and higher
frequencies would be well outside it.
The length of time modeled is selected to maximize the quantity of data used,
while avoiding using data with a low signal to noise ratio (SNR). Because the mag-
nitude of the response decays, the SNR decreases over approximately 0.75 seconds
from about 25 to about 15. By utilizing data in the time domain all available infor-
mation, including frequency, magnitude, and phase of the response, is used.
1026
Figure 3: The probability density function of the non-dimensionalized plate thickness
based on the recorded data. True value is shown as a solid vertical line.
5 RESULTS
The probability density function calculated for the plate thickness parameter is
shown in Figure 3. The most likely value of thickness is 0.002645, which is 1.7%
larger than the directly measured thickness. This is likely sufficiently accurate for
industrial purposes. It is clear that there are two distinct peaks in the result. This
is likely due to the fact that a change in thickness has a similar effect on the free
response to a change in the edge spring constant parameter. It is important to note
that the peak near the correct value about twice as tall as that at the spurious value,
and is thus shown to be the more likely answer. Had a genetic algorithm been applied
to this problem, only the location of the taller peak would have been found, and the
user would remain ignorant of the possibility of a thinner plate/higher edge stiffness
combination. In generating this result, a non-informative uniform prior was used
for all parameters. It is likely that using information about length of service and
environmental conditions, a more descriptive prior could be selected. Such a change
would likely increase the certainty in the correct answer, and this ability is one of the
main benefits of Bayesian methods.
6 CONCLUSIONS
This work demonstrates the potential that a Bayesian parameter identification
methodology has for identifying key geometric features from an experimental sys-
tem. In this case, determining the effective thickness of a plate provides a means for
assessing the degree of corrosion damage that has occurred in a plate structure. The
results show that the methodology was able to identify the correct plate thickness
with a reasonable degree of certainty.
It is expected that this work will be expanded to consider a plate that has under-
gone actual corrosion damage. Using this pop-based Bayesian method, an effective
thickness estimate (confirmed by alternative tests) will be used to assess the remain-
1027
ing life of the plate.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author’s gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Office of Naval
Research under contracts N00014-10-WX-2-0147 and N00014-09-1-0616.
References
[1] A. P. Teixeira and C. G. Soares, 2008. “Ultimate strength of plates with random
fields of corrosion.” Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, 4(5):363 – 370.
[2] J. Guo, G. Wang, L. Ivanov, and A. N. Perakis, 2008. “Time-varying ultimate
strength of aging tanker deck plate considering corrosion effect.” Marine Struc-
tures, 21(4):402 – 419.
[3] T. Nakai, H. Matsushita, N. Yamamoto, and H. Arai, 2004. “Effect of pitting
corrosion on local strength of hold frames of bulk carriers (1st report).” Marine
Structures, 17(5):403 – 432.
[4] T. Nakai, H. Matsushita, and N. Yamamoto, 2004. “Effect of pitting corrosion
on local strength of hold frames of bulk carriers (2nd report)–lateral-distortional
buckling and local face buckling.” Marine Structures, 17(8):612 – 641.
[5] T. Nakai, H. Matsushita, and N. Yamamoto, 2006. “Effect of pitting corro-
sion on the ultimate strength of steel plates subjected to in-plane compres-
sion and bending.” Journal of Marine Science and Technology, 11:52–64.
10.1007/s00773-005-0203-4.
[6] J. M. Nichols, W. A. Link, K. D. Murphy, and C. C. Olson, 2010. “A Bayesian
approach to identifying structural nonlinearity using free-decay response: Ap-
plication to damage detection in composites.” Journal of Sound and Vibration,
329(15):2995–3007.
[7] E. Z. Moore, K. D. Murphy, and J. M. Nichols, 2011. “Crack identification
in a freely vibrating plate using Bayesian parameter estimation.” Mechanical
Systems and Signal Processing, 25(6):2125 – 2134.
[8] E. Moore, J. Nichols, and K. Murphy, 2011. “Model-based SHM: Demon-
stration of identification of a crack in a thin plate using free vibration data.”
Submitted to Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, March 2011.
[9] N. Metropolis, A. W. Rosenbluth, M. N. Rosenbluth, A. H. Teller, and E. Teller,
1953. “Equation of state calculations by fast computing machines.” The Journal
of Chemical Physics, 21(6):1087–1092.
[10] W. K. Hastings, 1970. “Monte Carlo sampling methods using Markov chain
and their applications.” Biometrika, 57(1):97–109.
[11] A. Jasra, D. A. Stephens, and C. C. Holmes, 2007. “On population-based sim-
ulation for static inference.” Statistics and Computing, 17:263–279.
[12] J. Nichols, E. Moore, and K. Murphy, 2011. “Bayesian identification of a
cracked plate using a population-based Markov chain Monte Carlo method.”
Computers and Structures, 89(13-14):1323 – 1332.
1028
Morphological Filtering of SHM Datasets
D. K. MCNEILL and M. SOIFERMAN
ABSTRACT
This article reports on our success in applying a mathematical morphology

approach, normally used in image processing, to SHM data collected from the Red
River North Perimeter Bridge in Winnipeg, Canada. This data is modeled as the
sum of the true structural response, together with an undesirable temperature
dependent strain and a strain offset. A single reference gauge was installed on the
structure with the intent of tracking and removing the latter two effects. In practice,
however, that approach failed to yield satisfactorily corrected datasets. Further
attempts were made to use basic envelope detection or simply high pass filtering to
remove the slowly varying components of the data. Both of these methods show
some promise but did not perform sufficiently well to be of practical use.
In place of the previous approaches, a modified form of envelope detection was
implemented that applies morphological operators to the recorded strain signal. In
this study the operators opening and closing were used, which are based on the
more fundamental operations of erosion and dilation. When processing SHM data,
the opening and closing operations were applied in pairs: opening-closing, and
closing-opening. Doing so removes the important strain event activity from the
original signal leaving only the background response. It is then possible to subtract
this background response from the original signal to produce a cleaned signal.
This approach can be applied equally well to signals with significant
background trends and to signals with no discernible trend, without the risk of
corrupting the key features of the data in either case. This means that the technique
can be applied indiscriminately as a general pre-processing step to clean SHM
measurements before further analysis is carried out. Having such a generally
applicable method is important as it simplifies the data processing by avoiding the
need to perform separate, case-based, procedures on the data streams.
Dean K. McNeill, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of

Manitoba, 75 Chancellor's Circle, Winnipeg, MB, R3T 5V6, Canada.
Marc Soiferman, YRT Ltd., Room 442, 435 Ellice Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R3B 1Y6, Canada.
1029
INTRODUCTION
When SHM data acquisition systems are installed on a bridge or similar

structure for long-term periodic or continuous monitoring, it is common for the
measurement equipment to be subjected to many of the same variations in
environmental conditions that also affect the structure being observed. As a
consequence, the information contained within the measurements collected by the
data acquisition system (DAQ) is not simply the response of the structure, but a
combined response that includes other undesirable temperature and offset effects
[1,2].
When evaluating the behaviour of a structure in response to external excitations,
such as traffic loads, or when comparing responses that are separated in time, it is
important to remove the unwanted background response from the signals before
further analysis is performed. One method of achieving this is to include reference
or compensation gauges that are paired with the active gauges, but which are
bonded to the structure in an orientation that minimizes their response to applied
loads. In the ideal case, the response of the reference gauge will be fully
independent of applied load, and thus be solely due to the background effects. In
practice this process doubles the cost of the gauges used in a project, and requires
an increased cabling and installation cost.
In an effort to eliminate the cost of using paired reference gauges, the sensing
system for the Red River North Perimeter Bridge in Winnipeg, Canada was
designed to use a single independent reference gauge that was connected to the
DAQ system in the same manner as the other active gauges. It was anticipated that
by observing the behaviour of the reference input channel, it would be possible to
infer the necessary correction that would need to be applied to all other gauges so as
to compensate for the background effects [1,3,4]. In practice, however, this
approach did not yield useable results as there was no consistent correlation
between the activity observed on the reference input when compared to any given
active channel.
STRAIN MODEL
In the absence of direct temperature compensation by the data acquisition

system itself, alternate methods were sought to process the data collected from the
bridge prior to performing analysis of the structure’s response. In order to
accomplish this, it was necessary to formulate a model that relates the true strain,
resulting from active excitation of the structure, to the strain value recorded by the
DAQ system. Two factors were considered to be important terms within the model.
The first is a temperature induced strain that results from a change in either the
temperature environment of the gauge and the structural member to which it is
bonded, or a change in the temperature of the DAQ instrument. The second factor is
a simple zero offset resulting from either poor initial calibration of the input signal,
and/or a loss of calibration over time resulting from aging of components with the
1030
ï220
ï225
ï230
ï235
0 5000 10000 15000
Sample
Figure 1. Recorded strain data showing temperature and non-zero offset effects.
measurement system. Each of these two effects were taken to be additive to the
active strain.
Equation 1 provides an expression combining each of these terms with the true
strain signal. Here, SO(t) is the strain recorded by the DAQ system, SS(t) is the true
strain from the structure, f(T(t)) is a time-varying function of the current
temperature, and Zoff is the calibration offset (zero-offset) term.
SO (t) = SS (t) + f (T(t)) + Zoff (1)
The effect and presence of each term can be observed in the sample strain data
shown in Figure 1. This plot represent 2.5 minutes of data from a single strain
channel on the bridge collected at a sampling rate of 100Hz. The figure shows a
clear Zoff of approximately –222µε and a linearly decreasing base strain value, upon
which is superimposed a series of five significant strain events resulting from
vehicular traffic over the bridge. The first of these events can be seen to occur near
sample 9000.
Given the nature of the sample signal, initial attempts to remove the background
effects included envelop detection [5], however this method was computationally
expensive and had a tendency to affect the important event information. An
alternative, and more straightforward approach was simply to high-pass filter the
signal. While this had success when tuned properly, it was difficult to determine a
suitable cut-off frequency for the filter to give reliable results for automated
processing of multiple strain channels. In addition, the need to compute an FFT and
its inverse was computationally significant.
1031
MORPHOLOGICAL SIGNAL FILTERING
The single filter method ultimately used in this study is based on mathematical
morphology. It is a technique normally applied to the processing of images [6], but
has been used successfully to filter other signals, such as those from an EEG [7]. In
the later case, the method was employed to remove spiky transients from the
desirable EEG baseline signal. For SHM signals it is precisely the transients that
are of primary interest, so the method must be applied here in the opposite manner
to that of [7].
Mathematical Morphology
Fundamentally, mathematical morphology involves operations on sets of data.

In the image processing case, these are sets of pixel values, while in the SHM case
they are windows of strain data. Morphological operators are applied to the source
set in order to produce a transformed result set. For the results reported in this
paper, the operators are opening and closing, which are composed of the more
fundamental operations of erosion and dilation. Equations 2–5 describe each of
these operations using set notation [6].
Erosion: A ⊖ B = { z | ((B)z ⊆ A) } (2)
Dilation: A ⊕ B = { z | ((B)z ∩ A ≠ ∅) } (3)
Opening: A ○ B = ( A ⊖ B ) ⊕ B (4)
Closing: A ● B = ( A ⊕ B ) ⊖ B (5)
The set A in these equations corresponds to the source set, to which a second
smaller probing set B is applied. This second set is referred to as a structuring
element. The term z corresponds to a specific point in the metric space of the source
set (i.e. the Euclidean space Z), and (B)z indicates that the structuring element B is
positioned with its centre at point z in this space.
Considering erosion, a point z, which is a member of the set A, will also be a
member of the result set C = A ⊖ B if all member points of B, when B is centred at
z, are also member points of A. The effect of this operation is more clearly
illustrated by considering the visual example of Figure 2, in which a structuring
element corresponding to a circle of radius 3 is applied to a source image (Figure 2
(a)) to yield the resulting eroded image in Figure 2(b).
In the case of dilation, for the result set C = A ⊕ B, a point z will be a member
of C if the set of points for the structuring element, when centred at z, contains at
least one point which is also a member of set A. An example of this operation, can
be seen in the resulting image of Figure 2(c) when the same circular structuring
element is applied to the source image of Figure 2(a).
1032
(a)
(b) (c) (d) (e)
Figure 2. Example of morphological operations (b) erosion, (c) dilation, (d) opening, and (e) closing,
applied to a sample source image (a). The structuring element is a circle of radius 3 for (b–d) and
radius10 for (e). [10]
The operations of opening and closing involve the successive application of

erosion-dilation and dilation-erosion, respectively. These operations are also
illustrated using the example image of Figure 2. Figure 2(d) is the result of applying
dilation to the eroded image of Figure 2(b), using the same circular structuring
element of radius 3. Similarly, Figure 2(d) demonstrates the result of applying
dilation using a circular structuring element of radius 10 to the source image of
Figure 2(a), followed by erosion using that same element.
Morphological Filtering of Strain Signals
For one-dimensional signals, the erosion and dilation operations correspond to

the following equations [7,8], where the structuring element b(n) of length M is
applied to the source signal f of length N.
(f ⊖ b)(x) = min (f (x + n) – b(n)) n = –M/2, … , M/2; 0 < (x + n) ≤ N (6)
(f ⊕ b)(x) = max (f (x + n) + b(n)) n = –M/2, … , M/2; 0 < (x + n) ≤ N (7)
In situations where b(n) is constant, it may be removed from equations (6) and
(7), resulting in expressions that compute either the min or max of the function f for
points that overlap with the structuring element b(n). This is the situation that
applies in the case of streams of SHM strain data.
1033
65
60
55
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500
Sample
65
60
55
50
45
40
35
30
25
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500
Sample
65
60
55
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500
Sample
Figure 3. The result (bottom) of applying the closing operation (middle) followed by the opening
operation to the original source signal (top).
1034
For erosion, the result is a series of strain values that describe a lower envelope
for the data, while for dilation the result is an upper envelope. By extension, the
opening operation computes an upper envelope of the lower envelope, while closing
computes a lower envelope of the upper envelope.
If the structuring element b(n) is of sufficient length that it spans a strain event,
then that strain event will be preserved in the output stream, since it is contained
within the resulting envelope. Events longer than the structuring element will not be
preserved. When applying this technique to data from the Red River North
Perimeter Bridge, a structuring element of size 300 was employed.
The actual processing of strain data involved performing opening followed by
closing on the original strain signal to remove positive event peaks [7,9]. Figure 3
shows the result of this operation when applied to 45 seconds of strain
measurements that include two event peaks. The process is then repeated, but in the
reverse sequence, performing closing followed by opening on the same original
strain signal to remove negative (noise) peaks. The average of the two opening-
closing and closing-opening values at each point along the signal is taken as the
combination of all unwanted background activity on the strain channel.
f (T(t)) + Zoff = [ CO(t) + OC(t) ] / 2 (8)
Subtracting this value from the original signal removed the background trend.
SC(t) = SO(t) – [ CO(t) + OC(t) ] / 2 (9)
The median of SC(t) is subtracted from this signal to remove any residual zero-
offset effect, producing the cleaned strain signal SS(t). Figure 4 shows the result of
applying the process to the recorded strain signal shown previously in Figure 1.
10
6
ï2
0 5000 10000 15000
Sample
Figure 4. Recorded data after cleaning using morphological operators.
1035
CONCLUSIONS
It has been shown in this article that signal filtering techniques based on the
mathematical morphology operations of erosion, dilation, opening and closing can
be applied to SHM data streams to successfully remove unwanted background
trends in recorded strain measurements. This method has been successfully applied
to data obtained from the Red River North Perimeter Bridge in Winnipeg, Canada.
This method has the highly desirable property of being suitable for indiscriminate
application to a data stream without concern for whether a significant background
trend is present, and without concern for corruption of the desired components of
the source signal. As a result it is both an effective and generally applicable method
for filtering SHM signals.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada

Research Chairs Program, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and ISIS
Canada. The authors also wish to express their thanks to Aftab Mufti for helpful
discussions.
REFERENCES
1. Vishay Micro-Measurements,. 2007. “Strain gage thermal output and gage factor variation with
temperature,” Technical Report TN-504-1, Vishay Micro-Measurements, August 2007.
2. Rutherford, G. 2008. “Model-free bridge-based vehicle classification," Master's thesis,
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2008.
3. Filchikov, V. 1995. “Normalizing transducers of strain-gauge sensors with correction of
temperature sensors,” Telecommunications and Radio Engineering, 49(11):92-97.
4. Huang, J. 2007. “System engineering and data management for structural health monitoring,”
Master's thesis, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 2007.
5. Haykin, S. and M. Moher. 2007. Introduction to Analog and Digital Communications. New
York: John Wiley & Sons, Second Edition.
6. Gonzalez, R. C. and R. E. Woods. 2008. Digital Image Processing. New Jersey: Prentice Hall,
Third edition, pp.627–639.
7. Luo, X., C. Peng, and X. Guo. 2005. “Using morphological filters to extract spiky transients in
EEG,” in Proceedings of the First International Conference on Neural Interface and Control,
May 2005, pp. 72-74.
8. Tadejko, P. and W. Rakowski. 2007. “Mathematical morphology based ECG feature extraction
for the purpose of heartbeat classification,” in Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference
on Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management Applications, June 2007, pp.
322–327.
9. Sedaaghi, M. 1997. “Direct implementation of open-closing in morphological filtering,”
Electronics Letters, 33:198-199.
10. Soiferman, M. 2009. Data Fusion for Detection of Faults in Slab-on-Girder Bridges, Master’s
Thesis, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2009.
1036
Examination of Wear Phenomena by Using
Filtering Techniques for FDI Purposes
K.-U. DETTMANN, D. BACCAR and D. SOEFFKER
ABSTRACT
Fault detection and isolation (FDI) methods applied to technical systems and
especially to highly complex safety-relevant or invest intensive components,
machines, and plants are becoming of increasing importance. Especially wear-
related phenomena are difficulty to describe. Additionally it is also very difficult
to measure related phenomena directly during the operation of components and
systems. The idea detailed in this contribution deals with the development of a
new methodology for online examination of wear phenomena using acoustic
emission (AE) filtered and evaluated using field programmable gate array
(FPGA)-based hardware.
INTRODUCTION
Acoustic emissions are defined as transient elastic waves generated from a

rapid release of strain energy caused by a deformation or damage within or on the
surface of a material [1]. Therefore, AE techniques have been considered for many
years as the prime approach for the detection, microstructural characterization, and
monitoring of damage processes. Specific properties of AE signals can be used as
an indicator for different effects affected by material changes due to aging, wear,
etc. [2], [3], and [4]. Those signals obviously occur due to different wear sources
(twinning, slip, deformation glide, etc.), which seems to be the main sources for
failure caused by tribological effects.
Tribological effects (e.g., friction) are often influencing but also realizing
the functionality of typical mechanical elements and mechanical engineering
structures. If friction processes does not work well due to nonoptimal
tribological conditions, sliding surfaces may be destroyed and in consequence
the components functionality may be reduced up to a complete loss of
functionality. The definition of this damage level depends on the particular
application and the related tolerable level of deterioration as well as to the
load history of the system. Hence, this is an individual characteristic that can
be quantized and quantified beforehand, so that the related knowledge can be
also used for automated supervision, for example in the context of condition-
based maintenance concepts etc. Within the mentioned tribological context,
the surface of the considered individual component is usually evaluated
by visual inspection, which is time-consuming and a subjective measure
Kai-Uwe Dettmann, Dorra Baccar, Dirk Soeffker, Chair of Dynamics and

Control, University of Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg, Engineering Faculty,
Lotharstr.1-21, 47057 Duisburg, Germany.
1037
of the inspection personal. Furthermore, material displacements, inner cracks..,
might not be detected by visual inspection. Therefore, an automated and
continuous monitoring of safety relevant structures affected by wear effects may
be useful to improve SHM or CM-related goals. Non-destructive methods such AE
methods, observing/measuring those signals allow the evaluation of the fatigue
progression. The non-destructive testing allows bridging the gap between the
discrete information obtained from time-discrete inspection and the desired wish of
continuously monitoring of damage progression.
The purpose of this paper is to detail the developed concept with respect to the
hardware realization, the applied new sensor system, as well as the implementation
of the diagnostic approaches for detecting and monitoring signals indicating
tribological effects with AE analysis, mainly by online realization based on
spectrum analysis utilizing Xilinx FPGA board. Therefore a new sensor
technology is applied and hardware co-simulation (HW co-simulation) of FPGA
implementation of signal processing technique is used. Several filtering techniques
among FFT and STFT in the last years have been become very important in high
speed signal processing. Using this transformations, signals can be considered in
frequency domain, where filtering for FDI purposes can be applied with fewer
operations.
SOURCES OF ACOUSTIC EMISSIONS
The tribological system used for first experiments using this technique is
based on an oscillating sliding tribo-system. Two contact partners, each consisting
of a “wear resistant” plate, are sliding against each other (driven by a hydraulic
cylinder) with an adjustable applied normal load. By analyzing several material
samples using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM; see Figure 1) the occurred
wear mechanisms (here: surface fatigue which initiates and propagates cracks after
a certain number of cyclic events) are identified, which lead to the failure of the
system. The crack propagates through the wear plate and deteriorates it.
Due to the heat development during the shaping process a thin coating can be
found on the surface of the wear plates. Even before a load is induced, some tensile
cracks can be seen in the coating. During the first hours with applied load this
coating is eroded, particles scratch the surface and lead to abrasive wear. After
loading the system with a constant normal force, fatigue cracks appear and may
grow into the ground material. So the main wear mechanism is surface fatigue
which initiates and propagates cracks after a certain number of cyclic events [5].
These cracks can be induced through some gliding dislocations change into hollow
dislocations, which become cracks and propagate in the metal usually in the
direction of applied stress. According to [6], pressures, force, and acceleration
signals generated from the tribo-system can be related to changes of the surfaces
conditions such as changes of lubrification and temperature, etc. indicating friction
and wear processes which has to be determined and analyzed. As known e. g.,
from [7] the source of ultrasonic waves (structure borne sound) lies within the
material and results from local inner micro displacements. Those displacements
emit a displacement specific wave that travels through the material [8].
1038
Figure 1: SEM exposure of plate surface with micro crack;
left: overview; right: zoomed in.
As shown in [9], as soon as the system is stressed by external mechanical loads,

material activities will take place and emit acoustic waves with characteristic
properties, which strongly depend on the used material and measuring equipment.
For supervision purpose it is necessary to classify the measured signals and
correlate them with the causing effects (material change etc.). During the
deformation of material usually several effects occur in parallel. Up to now this
makes it impossible to clearly connect these signals and related sources. Therefore
it is necessary to excite each important material changing effect separately and to
sense its characteristic elastic wave.
MEASUREMENT AND SIGNAL PROCESSING
The process of in situ crack growing is hardly measurable by classical

measuring techniques. As known from literature [10], [11] material deformations
emit elastic waves with small amplitudes and high frequencies which lie beyond
the audible frequency range that propagate through the material. Those emissions
can be detected by special measurement techniques. The sensors used for acoustic
emission analysis are generally piezoelectric transducers and may be broadband or
resonant. Operating frequency range, sensitivity, and physical characteristics are
the main properties in the selection of sensors. Therefore sensors with high
sensitivity and wide bandwidth have to be chosen for fault detection, diagnostics as
well as for supervision. In the context of evaluation of the proposed new approach,
several piezoelectric materials are chosen and used as flat response transducer as
sensors, realizing a continuous measurement of relevant signals during the wear
process. It can be shown in [9] that this kind of measurement is principally able to
sense material changes of relative small dimensions.
As proposed in [9] the sensors are glued to the surface. The coupling between
the surface and the material is permanent and can be assumed as very stiff. The
sensors used are discs with a diameter of 10 mm and a thickness of 0.55 mm. The
measured voltage is fed to an impedance converter and the high-speed AD-
converter of the FPGA board. Hence, special care (shielding, grounding, etc.) has
to be taken for the transducer, cable, and other hardware. The measured signal is
subsequently analyzed by various signal processing methods. The signals detected
by the piezoelectric material have to be measured with appropriate sample size and
measurement duration to raise the probability of detecting related emissions.
1039
Figure 2: The sampled sensor data are filtered and
analyzed to extract damage inherent information.
For identifying AE properties specific filtering among FFT, STFT are

implemented using HW co-simulation onto a Xilinx FPGA. The signal processing
chain is shown schematically in Figure 2.
This paper uses a design of a filter module combining relevant software
(Matlab, Simulink, and the System Generator from Xilinx) and hardware (FPGA
board) to analyze the digitized piezoelectric signals. The use of FPGA allows the
implementation of complex algorithms. This is especially effective for data-
intensive applications such as spectral analysis. Here, the Short Time Fourier
Transform (STFT) is realized. The STFT is a known method of time frequency
analysis. It provides information about the specific characteristics of signal events
occurring and allowing a signal representation in the time-frequency plane. Indeed,
this information can be obtained with limited precision. The precision is
determined mainly by the width of the window. In this contribution the STFT is
computed using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of a section of the signal as a
sliding window. The core of the developed module is the FFT block. It computes a
4096-points Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) using the radix-4 Cooley-Tukey
algorithm. The windowing of the signal is realized by a FIFO block.
SIMULATIONS
The novelty proposed in this paper is related to the hardware-based simulation

[12] in order to verify the application of the FPGA board for the realization of
online wear detection. Three simulation methods had been used. The first
simulation is performed completely in software by developing a STFT-code in
Matlab. The second method is executed in Simulink, where the Xilinx System
Generator (XSG) blocks are simulated. The third method represents the FPGA
implementation of STFT modules using HW co-simulation. Finally the results
obtained from the several simulations are compared. Those results reveal
information about time and frequency component of the transient event. The
Hardware in the loop co-simulation capability of XSG provides the ability to
incorporate a design running in an FPGA directly into a Simulink simulation. HW
co-simulation compilation targets automatically create a bitstream and associate it
to a block. The bitstream contains the hardware associated with the STFT module
and also contains additional interfacing logic that allows XSG to communicate
with the module using a physical interface between the FPGA and the PC. During
simulation, this block interacts with the FPGA, automated tasks such as device
configuration, data transfers, and clocking. This allows a faster simulation, saves
computing time, and realizes easier hardware verification.
1040
As introduced, the main wear effects are related to abrasive wear and wear
surface fatigue. According to the results presented in [10] the first goal is to detect
characteristic frequencies for these stochastically appearing effects and to identify
a relation between the obtained transient occurring emissions (measured as
piezoelectric voltage) and the typical effects (material changes) to reveal a unique
connection between both. As illustrated in [9], the FFT of the unfiltered signal,
measured by the equipment in the idle mode appear three signals over 0.5 seconds
at different points in time. Those result from electro- or electro-magnetic
environmental interferences and have to be suppressed by enhanced measurement
equipment.
During operation, process, position, and wearspecific frequencies appear in
the measured signal. For reasons of consistency and comparability the analysis of
the AE signal is always performed at the same position, identical duration, and
direction of movement of the cylinder. The points in time of AE measurement are
at the beginning of the cylinder movement. Accordingly changes in the AE signals
indicate a change in the process and surface condition respectively. The severity of
the change (wear process) can be indicated by typical transient frequencies,
amplitudes, etc, which appear in the STFT spectrum (see Figure 3). For those
reasons the same section in time is compared in the following in detail to extract
the characteristic information from the signal. The information resulting from
frequency content, duration, position of occurrence of the transient event can be
seen in the STFT results. By monitoring those events/patterns over the whole
experiments, features like the emitted energy per cycle (minute/speed/...), count
rate of emission, etc. information about the level of deterioration can be achieved
for the determination of wear related properties in upcoming considerations.
In Figure 4 the results of the simulations are shown. The simulation results
obtained from the HW co-simulation are identical to those performed in Simulink
and those completely executed in Matlab. These results prove the efficiency of the
FPGA-implementation for online damage state and wear detection and will allow
advanced wear diagnostic maintenance applications. According to [13], based on
the knowledge obtained from the experiments and information related to damage
effects, the actual state-of-damage, and the prospective load, applications can be
used to estimate and calculate the damage accumulation of the supervised system.
CONCLUSION
The goal of the contribution is the online examination of wear phenomena on

the basis on a tribological system using acoustic emission by means of a sensor
system and suitable FPGA-based signal processing techniques. For this reason a
measurement chain for ultrasonic emissions has been developed and tested. It
could be shown that the waves generated by material changes were initiated by the
wear test-rig runs and can be detected by the proposed sensor technology
(piezoelectric transducer) and the measurement chain. In this context an STFT
module has been developed using the platform design Matlab/Simulink and
System Generator to reveal the point in time and the frequency components of
transient event of deterioration.
1041
Figure 3: Superposition of cylinder position and
recorded acoustic emission signals with an STFT examination.
The next step following the introduced concept of detection and quantification
of the state of-damage of the system is the development of simulations of wear
effects as well as the FPGA implementation of the STFT module using HW co-
simulation. The calculated results of the HW co-simulation were compared with
the results obtained from the Simulink simulation and the Matlab simulation. The
similarity of these results has proved the ability of the introduced system to
examine wear phenomena. According to the experimental results, characteristic
frequencies, signal energies, and fault specific properties can be determined and
1042
Acoustic emission signals
Am plit ude [V ]
A m plit ude [ V]
1 5
0 0
-1 -5
35. 62 35. 64 35. 66 35. 68 35. 7 35. 62 35. 64 35. 66 35. 68 35. 7
Tim e [ s ] Tim e [ s ]
Matlab simulation
5 5
x 10 x 10
Frequenc y [ Hz]
Frequenc y [ Hz]
2 2
4 4
6 6
8 8
35. 62 35. 64 35. 66 35. 68 35. 7 35. 62 35. 64 35. 66 35. 68 35. 7
HW co-simulation
5 5
x 10 x 10
F requency [Hz ]
Frequency [Hz]
2 2
4 4
6 6
8 8
35. 62 35. 64 35. 66 35. 68 35. 7 35. 62 35. 64 35. 66 35. 68 35. 7
Figure 4: Simulation results

Left side: wear plate at beginning of experiment,
Right side: wear plate shortly before failure.
information about the level of the deterioration can be achieved. This information
can be used for diagnostic and prognostic purposes.
REFERENCES
1. Mathews, J. R. 1983. Acoustic emission. Gordon and Science Publishers Inc., New York.
ISSN 0730-7152.
2. Friesel, M. and Carpenter, S. H. 1984. Determination of the sources of acoustic emission
generated during the deformation of titanium. Metallurgical Transactions A, Physical
Metallurgy and Materials Science, 15A (10): 1849-1853.
3. Heiple, C. R. and Carpenter, S. H. 1987. Acoustic emission produced by deformation of metals
and alloys. Part 2. Journal of Acoustic Emission, 6(4): 215-237.
4. Kaiser, J. 1950. Untersuchungen über das Auftreten von Geräuschen beim Zugversuch. Ph.D
thesis, Technische Hochschule München.
5. Sly C. 2002. Tribologist attacks wear and friction from the inside. Journal of Failure Analysis
and Prevention 2(2): 9-10.
6. Aljoumaa, H. and Soeffker, D. 2011. Multi-Class Approach based on Fuzzy-Filtering for
Condition Monitoring. IAENG International Journal of Computer Science, 38(1): 66-73.
7. Rogers, L. M. 1985. EWGAE codes for acoustic-emission examination - code-v –
recommended practice for specification, coupling and verification of the piezoelectric
transducers used in acoustic-emission. NDT International, 18(4): 185-194.
8. Van Bohemen, S. M. C., J. Sietsma, M. J. M. Hermans, and I. M. Richardson. 2005. Analysis
of acoustic emission signals originating from bainite and martensite formation. Philosophical
Magazine, 85(16): 1791-1804.
9. Dettmann, K.U. and Soeffker, D. 2009. Classification of wear phenomena by specific
ultrasonic emission detection for prognostics purposes. Proc. Int. Conf. Prognostics and Health
Monitoring. San Diego, California, USA.
1043
10. Woodward B. and Harris R. W. 1977. Use of signal analysis to identify sources of acoustic
emission. Acustica, 37(3): 190-197.
11. Ryles, M., Ngau, F. H., McDonald, I., and Staszewski, W. J. 2008. Comparative study of
nonlinear acoustic and Lamb waves techniques for fatigue crack detection in metallic
structures, Fatigue & fracture of engineering materials &structures, 31(6): 674-683.
12. Shirazi, N. and Ballagh, J. 2003. Put Hardware in the Loop with Xilinx System Generator for
DSP. Xcell Journal online.
13. Dettmann, K.U. and Soeffker, D. 2011. Adaptive modeling of reliability properties for control
and supervision purposes. International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science
(AMCS), 21(3), in press.
1044
Automated Data Interpretation for Modal
Identification of a Truss Bridge
J. ZHANG, F. L. MOON and E. A. AKTAN
ABSTRACT
Various kinds of uncertainty involved in bridge field test data leads to a number of
extraneous modes which are difficult to be separated from real structural modes, thus
making automatic data interpretation be a challenge in structural identification (St-Id)
area. A practical St-Id procedure consisting of multi-level data pre-processing
techniques and a vector backward auto-regressive (VBAR) method is proposed in this
article for automatic data interpretation. In contrast to the difficulty to manually
separate structure modes from extraneous modes in most traditional modal
identification methods, the VBAR method provides a determinative way to
automatically distinguish them. The proposed data pre-processing strategies play a key
role to mitigate uncertainty and improve data quality. Without them, the subsequent
data post-processing may meet problems. Ambient test data of a cantilever beam is
studied to show how the proposed St-Id procedure automatically interprets test data.
St-Id of a long-span truss bridge using field test data is performed to illustrate that the
proposed method is effective for real bridge identification.
INTRODUCTION
Structural identification (St-Id) by vibration testing provides a starting point for

quantitatively characterizing the in-service mechanical behaviors of civil
infrastructures, such as long span bridges. The resulting characterization can serve as
an effective baseline for monitoring structural safety, designing more reliable and cost-
effective structural retrofits, or developing more timely and efficient maintenance
ways. St-Id of a number of bridges through ambient or controlled vibration tests have
been investigated in the literature [1-6]. These case studies significantly improve the
St-Id technology for bridge safety monitoring. However, uncertainty involved in field
test data still poses major challenges to accurate St-Id, and hinder a more routine
adoption of St-Id approaches in support of infrastructure maintenance and
management.
Jian Zhang, International Institute for Urban Systems Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing
210096, China
F.L. Moon, E.M. Aktan, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
1045
Various unavoidable uncertainties are from every aspect of ambient or controlled
vibration tests. For instance, environmental conditions (humidity and temperature)
affect the sensitivity of deployed experimental hardware (sensors, cables, and data
acquisition system). Structural components like bearing may enter into nonlinear
range and bring uncertainty into the St-Id process. These uncertainties with epistemic
and aleatory mechanism not only affect the accuracy of St-Id results, but produce a
number of extraneous modes [7-9]. A number of modes are generally produced in the
data interpretation stage, associating with structural property, noise or errors in test
data, peaks in excitation spectra, nonlinearity of structural components, or interactions
between the oscillations of different bridge components. Only a few of them
contribute to structural modes, and they have to be manually separated from
extraneous modes in most traditional modal identification methods, such as the peak
picking, autoregressive with moving average (ARMA), complex mode indicator
function (CMIF), eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA), and stochastic subspace
identification (SSI) methods. A few methods have been developed in the literature for
structure mode selection. Three indicators: extended modal amplitude coherence,
modal phase collinearity, and consistent mode indicator (CMI), were proposed to
select structure modes specifically for use with ERA [10]. Pappa et al. [10] proposed a
recursive procedure using a threshold concept to filter out unfeasible modal
identification results, in which the threshold was CMI < 50%, damping ratio >10%, or
the frequency within 1% of edges of analysis bandwidth. Pakzad and Fenves [5] used
the ARMA method to perform statistical analysis of the vibration modes of the Golden
Gate Bridge, and the threshold similar to that of Pappa et al. [11] was employed to
delete extra, nonphysical modes. Heylen et al. [12] used the stabilization diagram to
eliminate spurious numerical poles from the ARMA model. Peeters et al. [6] applied
the stabilization diagram of data driven or covariance driven SSI methods to find the
stable poles in experiment modal analysis. Brownjohn et al. [13] also used the
stabilization diagram of SSI method for the automatic interpretation the ambient data
from dynamic testing of the Humber suspension bridge. Magalhaes et al. [9] proposed
a hierarchical clustering algorithm used together with the SSI method for automatic
mode identification.
This article will focus on the following questions to cope with uncertainty from the
data interpretation aspect for practical structural identification: (a) how to mitigate the
uncertainty and improve the data quality for accurate St-Id; (b) how to automatically
identify structure modes with little or no human intervention for efficient St-Id. To
answer the first problem, a multi-level data pre-processing procedure will be
developed for mitigating uncertainty and provide cleaned data with some degree of
quality for subsequent data post-processing. Visual inspection, time window selection,
digital filtering, data averaging, cross-correlation function or random decrement
signature construction, exponential windowing, and data reliability evaluation are
effectively integrated into the data pre-processing procedure for first stage data
interpretation. To answer the second problem, a vector backward autoregressive
(VBAR) method will be applied for automatic structural mode identification. Its
uniqueness is that it provides a determined way to automatically separate the good
structural models from spurious ones. It should be noted that a few articles have
reported the potential of applying the VBAR method for automatic data interpretation
[14-15], but it has not been seen for real life large-scale structure or bridge
identification. Theoretic analysis and a laboratory cantilever beam study will be
1046
presented to explain why the VBAR method is able to automatically separate
structural modes from extraneous ones. Especially, system identification of a long
span truss bridge using the proposed data pre-processing techniques and VBAR
method will be presented to illustrate its effectiveness for accurate and automatic
bridge identification.
AUTOMATED DATA INTERPRETATION METHOD

Data Pre-Processing Strategy for Uncertainty Mitigation
Ambient vibration testing provides a convenient way for structural dynamic
characterizing because it utilizes service live loads (wind, traffic, etc.) already acting
on the structure as excitations. However, special attentions are required to reduce the
noise level and improve the data quality for structural identification. A suit of data pre-
processing techniques are first developed to clean the data for subsequent structural
modal parameter estimation. Acceleration records are first inspected to identify any
malfunctioning sensors or spikes. Subsequently, a time window selection algorithm is
executed to remove time windows with pronounced noise within selected acceleration
records. This involves segmenting the entire data record into a series of time windows,
and computing the mean and standard deviation of the acceleration amplitude for each
time window. After the time window selection analysis is completed for the entire data
record, a digital Butterworth band pass filter with certain cut-off frequencies is
designed to reduce the low and high frequency components. Following that, data
averaging is performed to reduce random noise. Data averaging in the time domain is
executed by dividing the total data time history into a number of windows having the
same length and averaging these segments. It is a simple but very effective way to
improve the accuracy of the St-Id results. Data averaging can also be performed in the
frequency domain, which is frequently used in the frequency domain-based modal
identification methods.
After the initial data cleaning presented above, the Random Decrement (RD)
technique or the Cross-Correlation analysis is employed to transform ambient
vibration data into a free decay response of the structure that is measured. In this
study, positive point triggering is selected to average out random time domain signals
because it is simple to implement and versatile. The Cross-Correlation analysis is an
alternative approach to construct the free decay structural response of a structure
system. James et al. [17] proved that the cross-correlation function between two
responses made on an ambient-excited structure is indeed a sum of decaying sinusoids
with the same characteristics as the impulse response functions (or the free vibration
response) of the original system, thus the cross-correlation function can be used as a
uncertainty mitigation way for time-domain modal parameter estimation.
After free-decay data are generated from the RD technique or Cross-Correlation
analysis, exponential window is used to artificially force the response data to decay to
zero at the end of measurement thus minimizing leakage. Utilization of the
exponential window adds artificial damping to the system, and the identified damping
results need rectify. As the last step of the data pre-processing, a data relevance and
reliability evaluation procedure is necessary to guarantee the cleaned data have
adequate quality for subsequent data post-processing. For instance, two acceleration
time histories from the same location but at different time window from the ambient
1047
test of a long span bridge were pre-processed respectively by using the techniques
presented above
Vector Backward AR Model for Automatic Data Interpretation
Equations below illustrate the theoretical basis why the vector backward AR
(VBAR) method provides an automatic data interpretation way for structural
identification. Structural responses of an degrees of freedom system with random
excitations can be presented by
(1)
where , and .
The identification results using high order AR model as shown in Eq. (9) will be
more accurate, but the arising problem is how to distinguish the extraneous roots due
to the uncertainty from all numerical roots of the Prony character polynomial. To
solve this problem, the forward predictor can be modified into a backward predictor
by rearranging the sequence in a backward manner.
(2)
where , and .
It is seen that Eqs. (9) and (10) are the forward and backward AR models with
high orders. The characteristic polynomials , and
with coefficient matrix and have polynomial roots.
of the roots consisting of structural modal information are called system roots. The
other roots arising due to the uncertainties involved in the experiment and St-
Id processes are called extraneous roots. Then the question arises that how to separate
the system roots from the extraneous roots for structural identification. The location of
the polynomial roots for both the forward and backward linear predictors are
summarized below in order to find a way for system and extraneous root separation:
(a). System roots of the forward predictor, Eq. (1). It is proved [18] that if the
coefficient matrix vector satisfies , and if satisfies the inequality
, then with polynomial matrix has of its roots at
. Chu [19] proved that these n system roots from the
forward predictor fall inside the unit circle of the z-plane.
1048
(b). System roots of the backward predictor, Eq. (2). If the coefficient matrix
vector satisfies , and if satisfies the inequality , then
with polynomial matrix has of its roots at
, where symbol denotes complex conjugate. It
is obvious that . Therefore, the n system roots
from the backward predictor fall outside the unit circle.
(c). Extraneous roots of both the forward and backward predictors. Kumaresan
[18] proved that the order ( ) polynomials and , have
the same extraneous roots, because the statistics of a stationary random
process do not change whether process is time reversed. These extraneous roots locate
inside of the unit circle.
MODAL IDENTIFICAITON OF A TRUSS BRIDGE

Structural identification using field test data of real life bridges faces much more
challenges than that using numerical or laboratory experiment data. Ambient vibration
data from a long span truss bridge was studied to validate the proposed method for real
life bridge identification. This truss bridge has a total length from abutment to
abutment of 2301 feet (Fig. 1a). It is 20 feet wide and carries two lanes of vehicular
traffic across the river. Other than load rating, live load monitoring, local impact
testing, and truck load test, ambient vibration test was performed on this aged bridge
as a part of safety monitoring strategies. Test data of the south tower span with
instrument setup as shown in Fig. 1b are used as an example, in which a total of 24
channels of the measured data consisting of the vertical response of the span and the
longitudinal response of the tower (Fig. 1b) were included.
The developed data pre-processing techniques was first performed to clean the raw
data. A digital Butterworth band pass filter with cut-off frequencies at 0.1 and 20 Hz
was designed to reduce the low and high frequency components embedded in the data.
Both the RD technique and the cross-correlation analysis were performed to transform
the ambient vibration response to the free-decay time series, respectively. The free
decay data from the RD technique and the cross correlation analysis were post-
processed by the backward AR model, respectively (referenced as backward AR (RD)
and backward AR (CORR) methods in the following part). The backward
model, with 24 measurement channels and the order of 20, was used to simulate
structure responses, thereby a total of numerical roots were calculated. In the
backward AR(RD) process, 36 system roots were outside the unit circle, while 184
extraneous ones fell inside the unit circle (Fig. 2a). Similarly, 44 system roots and
176 extraneous roots located outside and inside of the unit circle respectively in the
backward AR(CORR) process (Fig. 2b). Even though the selected structural roots
from the backward AR (RD) and backward AR (CORR) methods are not exactly
same, a number of extraneous modes have been automatically deleted in both methods
by using the backward AR model. Following this automatic data interpretation
procedure, structure frequencies, damping ratios, and mode shapes were easily
calculated from the separated system roots. To verify the reliability of the St-Id results,
correlation analysis was performed by comparing the identified parameters from the
backward AR (CORR) and backward AR (RD) methods. Identified frequencies and
1049
Vertical Accelerometer
Longitudinal Accelerometer
Fig. 1 The investigated bridge (a) Photo; (b) Sensor layout on the tower span
1.0 1.0
0.5 0.5
Imaginary values
Imaginary values
System
0.0 0.0 Extraneous
Unit Circle
-0.5 -0.5
-1.0 -1.0
0 0.4 0.8 1.2 0 0.4 0.8 1.2
Real values Real values
Fig. 2 Modes from the backward AR (RD) and the backward AR (CORR) methods
Fig. 12 Mode shape comparison between (a) backward AR (RD) and backward AR (CORR)
method, (b) backward AR (RD) and CMIF method
1050
damping ratio from the Complex Mode Indicator Function (CMIF) method are also
provided in Table 1 for comparison. The modal assurance criterion (MAC) plot
comparing the identified mode shapes from the backward AR (RD) and backward AR
(CORR) methods is shown in Fig. 3a. Similarly Fig. 3b illustrates the MAC values
from the backward AR (RD) and the CMIF identification. It is seen that frequency,
damping ratio and modal shapes from the backward AR (CORR) and backward AR
(RD) methods are comparable, and both of them identified more structural modes than
the CMIF method. This real life bridge identification example illustrates the proposed
method is able to automatically interpret the ambient data.
CONCLUSION
An automatic data interpretation procedure was proposed for practical bridge
identification. Based on the results of this study the following conclusions were
drawn:
• A multi-level data preprocessing procedure was proposed for data quality
improvement. It included visual inspection, window selection, digital filtering,
data averaging, the RD technique or cross correlation analysis, and exponential
window. The quality of the cleaned data from the pre-processing procedure
greatly influenced the efficiency of the proposed data post-processing method
for automatic modal identification.
• A vector backward AR (VBAR) model was applied for automatic bridge
identification. Its uniqueness was that it provides a determinate way to separate
structure modes from extraneous modes arising from uncertainty.
• Ambient vibration data from a cantilever beam test was used to demonstrate
how the proposed method automatically separate structure modes from
extraneous modes. Both full measurement and incomplete measurement cases
were investigated.
• The proposed method was applied for modal identification of a long span truss
bridge through ambient vibration test. The identified results show that the
proposed method was able to make accurate and automatic identification for
real life structures. A total of 14 modes of the tower span of the studied bridge
were identified from the developed method, and they were compared with the
modal identification from the traditional CMIF method.
REFERENCE
1. American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Structural Identification of Constructed

Facilities: Approaches, Methods and Technologies for Effective Practice of St-Id, A
State-of-the-Art Report, ASCE SEI Committee on Structural Identification of
Constructed Systems, 2009.
2. Siringoringo D.M., Fujino Y., System identification of suspension bridge from
ambient vibration response, Engineering Structures 30 (2008) 462-477.
3. Ko J.M., Sun Z.G., Ni Y.Q., Multi-stage identification scheme for detecting damage in
cable stayed Kap Shui Mun Bridge, Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 857–868.
4. Weng J.H., Loh C.H., Lynch J.P., Lu K.C., Lin P.Y., Wang Y., Output-only modal
identification of a cable-stayed bridge using wireless monitoring systems, Engineering
Structures 30(2008) 1820–1830.
1051
5. Pakzad S.N., Fenves G.L., Statistical analysis of vibration modes of a suspension
bridge using spatially dense wireless sensor network, Journal of Structural
Engineering, In press.
6. Peeters B., Roeck G.D., One-year monitoring of the Z24-Bridge: environmental
effects versus damage events, Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics 30
(2001) 149-171.
7. Moon F.L., Aktan E., Impacts of epistemic (bias) uncertainty on structural
identification of constructed (civil) systems, The Shock and Vibration Digest 38(2006)
399–420.
8. Zhang J., Prader J., Grimmelsman K.A., Moon F.L., Aktan E., Shama A., Challenges
in Experimental Vibration Analysis for Structural Identification and Corresponding
Engineering Strategies, International Conference of Experimental Vibration Analysis
for Civil Engineering Structures, Wroclaw, Poland, 2009, pp. 13-33.
9. Magalhães H., Cunha A., Caetano E., Online automatic identification of the modal
parameters of a long span arch bridge, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 23
(2009) 316– 329.
10. Pappa R.R., Elliott K.B., Schenk A., Consistent-mode indicator for the eigensystem
realization algorithm, Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics 16 (1993) 852-858.
11. Pappa R.R., James G., Zimmerman D., Autonomous modal identification of the space
shuttle tail rudder, Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets 35(1998) 163–169.
12. Heylen W., Lammens S., Sas P., Modal Analysis Theory and Testing, KUL Press,
Leuven, Belgium, 1997.
13. Brownjohn J.M.W., Magalhães F., Caetano E., Cunha A., Au I., Lam P., Dynamic
testing of the Humber Suspension Bridge, International Conference of Experimental
Vibration Analysis for Civil Engineering Structures, Wroclaw, Poland, 2009, pp. 93-
102.
14. Hollkamp J.J., Batill S.M., Automated parameter identification and order reduction for
discrete time series models, AIAA Journal 29(1991) 96–103.
15. Hung C.F., Ko W.J., Identification of modal parameters from measured output data
using vector backward autoregressive model, Journal of Sound and Vibration
256(2002) 249-270.
16. Cole H.A., On-the-line analysis of random vibrations, AIAA/ASME 9th Structures,
Structural and Materials Conference, Palm Springs, California, 1968.
17. James G.H., Carne T.G., Lauffer J.P., The natural excitation technique (NExT) for
modal parameter extraction from operating structures, Modal Analysis: the
international journal of analytical and experimental modal analysis 10(1995) 260-277.
18. Kumaresan R., On the zeros of the linear prediction-error filter for deterministic
signals, IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing 31(1983) 217-
220.
19. Chu W.C., Speech Coding Algorithms: Foundation and Evolution of Standardized
Coders. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003.
1052
Structural Health Monitoring of an
Advanced Composite Aircraft Structure
Using a Modal Approach
T. H. OOIJEVAAR, R. LOENDERSLOOT, L. L. WARNET,
R. AKKERMAN and A. DE BOER
ABSTRACT
The experimental feasibility of a vibration based approach to identify damage in

an advanced composite aircraft structure is presented. Analysis showed that the Modal
Strain Energy Damage Index (MSE-DI) algorithm can be used to detect and localize
single and multiple damage scenarios by using modal data. However, this method is
less suitable to quantify the severity in terms of mechanical properties. Based on the
concept of dimensional reduction it is suggested to move to a higher dimensional subset
of parameters. A combination of damage sensitive features is required to enclose all
levels of damage identification.
1 INTRODUCTION
The number of successful practical applications of Structural Health Monitoring

(SHM) on (composite) aircraft structures is minor [1, 2] compared to applications in
civil and offshore industry. This is mainly due to the complexity of the components and
the high demands on safety and reliability of the SHM-system. A robust SHM-system
requires the unique characterization of the presence, location and severity of the damage.
A wide range of technologies, comprising global vibration and local wave propa-
gation methods, is employed for health monitoring purposes [3]. No method solves all
problems in all structures [1]. Defining damage sensitive parameters that are able to
uniquely identify damage based on realistic measured data of large application-specific
structures is one of the key challenges for these technologies. The trade-off between the
damage parameters in time, time-frequency, frequency and modal domain is often far
from clear-cut.
Earlier studies [4–6] revealed that structural vibration based technologies combined
with the Modal Strain Energy Damage Index (MSE-DI) algorithm (introduced by Stubbs
[7]) has a great potential. Delamination damage at the skin-stiffener intersection of
T.H. Ooijevaar∗ , R. Loendersloot, L.L. Warnet, R. Akkerman and A. de Boer, Faculty of Engi-
neering Technology, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500AE, Enschede, The Netherlands
∗
E-mail: t.h.ooijevaar@utwente.nl
1053
relatively simple and small structures was detected and localised.
This paper will focus on an experimental investigation of the feasibility of this struc-
tural vibration based approach to detect and localise damage in a larger and more ad-
vanced composite structure, representing a typical aircraft structure. Only modal domain
data is used in the analysis. The performance of a 1D and 2D formulation of the MSE-
DI algorithm is compared for several damage scenarios. Special attention is paid to the
perspectives of damage severity estimation based on modal domain data. This work is
also considered as the validation of the numerical work presented in [8].
2 COMPOSITE SKIN-STIFFENER STRUCTURE
This research concentrates on carbon AS4D fibre reinforced thermoplastic (PEKK)

skin-stiffener structures. This typical aerospace structure is vulnerable for delamination
damage at the skin-stiffener interfaces. A large plate (figure 1) with three stiffeners and
a non-uniform thickness distribution was manufactured by Fokker Aerostructures. The
plate consists of a 16-layer quasi-isotropic midsection and 44-layer and 30-layer end-
sections. The stiffeners are made of a 15-layer quasi-isotropic stack. A PEKK injection
moulded filler containing short fibres is used for the connection.
t = 4.14 mm t = 2.21 mm t = 6.08 mm
1304 mm
(P175) 275 mm A 242 mm Section A-A
92 mm
148 mm (P203)
228 mm
M2
456 mm
153 mm M1 Impact location I1 150 mm
Excitation
point (P1) y
19 mm x 148 mm 25 mm
27 mm A (P29) 27 mm 35 mm
Figure 1: Bottom and cross-sectional view of the panel, indicating the locations of the measuring points
(dots) and the locations of the added mass (M1 and M2) and impact location (I1). The dotted vertical lines
indicate the edges of the transition zones between the sections with different thicknesses.
Two damage scenarios are considered. Firstly, a structural change was obtained
by adding a small mass (42 grams, ∼1.1% of total weight) to the structure (point M1
and M2 in figure 1). An added mass provides a controlled and reversible change of
the structure. This is important for the validation of numerical models [8]. Secondly,
actual damage was analysed. Naturally originated barely visible defects are obtained by
applying a 50J impact with the help of a Dynatup 8250 Falling Weight Impact Machine.
The impact was applied at a stiffener run-out (point I1 in figure 1), since this part of the
skin-stiffener connection belongs to the location with the highest risk of failure. Visual
and ultrasonic inspection revealed that the damage consists of interface failure, indicated
by cracks, between the skin and the stiffener (figure 2) and delamination between the
titanium insert and skin.
1054
Titanium insert
Crack A-A A
B Crack B-B B
A
Figure 2: Visible part of the damage, consisting of a cracked skin-stiffener interface, caused by 50J impact
at the stiffener run-out. The surface at the damaged area is painted to enhance the visibility of the damage.
3 DAMAGE FEATURES FOR DAMAGE IDENTIFICATION
3.1 Damage Feature Space and Dimensional Reduction
Damage sensitive parameters, referred as features, are used to uniquely characterize

damage. The internal parameters ψd (t), such as crack length and loss of stiffness, pro-
vide the most direct description of damage, but are in general not directly measurable.
They are related to measurable output variables r(t) like strains and velocities. Devia-
tions ∆r(t) of these outputs can be used for diagnosis by solving the inverse problem [3]:
ψd = F −1 (∆r, ψe ) (1)
where ψe (t) represents the environmental and operational conditions. The goal is to
maximize the damage information gathered from the measurement data and minimize
the uncertainty of the damage parameter. Practically, it is desired to condense the in-
formation to a lower dimensional parameter space (figure 3). The deviation in the mea-
sured time domain variables are therefore regularly replaced by damage features from
the time-frequency, frequency and (direct or extended) modal domain space.
Damage parameter ψd, Output variables, Time-Frequency r(ω,t) and Modal domain r(ωn)
internal state variables time domain r(t) frequency domain r(ω)
Direct Extended
• Crack length • Correlation functions • Frequency Response Function • Natural frequency • Mode shape derivatives
• Loss of stiffness/mass • Statistical time series • Transmissibility • Mode shape • Modal strain energy
• Play analysis • Short-time Fourier transform • Modal damping • Modal flexibility
• ... • ... • Wavelet Analysis • ... • ...
Figure 3: An overview of damage feature sub-spaces with a gradually condensation of information.
This reduction behaviour can be illustrated by considering Frequency Response Func-

tions (FRFs). FRFs are typically obtained after a windowed averaging process of the
time domain signal. Depending on the time scale of the evolving damage, the system is
assumed to be invariant. Modal analysis will further condense the damage information
to the modal frequencies only. Information between the modal frequencies is not taken
into account. Subsequently, slightly complex modal vectors are generally considered to
be real normal, by neglecting non-proportional damping effects. Moreover, the modal
vectors are scaled vectors without a physical quantity. Finally, in case of extended modal
1055
damage features typically a selection of the most sensitive modes is incorporated to ob-
tain an indicator. The reduced subset of parameters must be able to describe the damage
scenario and is selected according to the intended level of damage identification [1, 3].
3.2 Extended Modal based Identification Method
A number of direct and extended modal domain damage features (see figure 3) are
applied to the measured data of the composite aircraft structure. The most promising de-
tection and localisation (level 2) results were obtained by the MSE-DI algorithm, which
are presented in this paper.
A 1D formulation of the MSE-DI was introduced by Stubbs [7], while Cornwell [9]
extended this approach for the 2D case. Here, the basics of the 2D formulation are
explained. The derivation and assumptions are analogous to the one used for the 1D for-
mulation [4, 10]. Consider a plate-like structure to be discretised in Nx × Ny elements in
respectively x- and y-direction. The strain energy U , based on bending deformation, of
each of the individual modes n and element ij of a vibrating structure is represented by:
Z yj Z x i 2 (n) !2 2 (n)
!2
(n) 1 ∂ u z ∂ u z
Uij = Dij +
2 yj−1 xi−1 ∂x2 ∂y 2
(n) 2
! ! !
(n) (n)
∂ 2 uz ∂ 2 uz ∂ 2 uz
+ 2ν + 2 (1 − ν) dxdy (2)
∂x2 ∂y 2 ∂x∂y
(n)
with uz (x, y) the displacement amplitude of the nth participating mode shapes, D the
flexural rigidity of the plate, ν the Poisson’s ratio, xi and yj the limits of element ij of
the plate structure in x and y direction respectively. The total modal strain energy is
approximated by the sum of equation 2 over a limited set of Nf req modes. Following
the definition proposed in [9], the ratio of fractional element stiffnesses of the damaged
structure over the reference structure provides the base of the damage index:
. R yj R x i .R R
(n) b a
γ̃ij γ̃ (n)
yj−1 xi−1
w̃ dxdy 0 0 w̃(n) dxdy
(n)
. = Ry Rx .R R (3)
(n) b a (n)
γij γ (n) j i
yj−1 xi−1
dxdy 0 0
w dxdy
where w(n) (x, y) represents the second term between the square brackets in the inte-
(n)
grand of equation 2, γij the integral of w(n) (x, y) over element ij and γ (n) the integral
w(n) (x, y) over the entire dimensions a and b. The damaged case is represented by the
tilde sign on top of the variable. The information in each of the mode shapes is combined
in a damage index β, according to the definition proposed by Cornwell et al. [9]:
Nfreq h .
,Nfreq
i X h . i
(n) (n)
X
βij = γ̃ij γ̃ (n) γij γ (n) (4)
n=1 n=1
An overview of most common alternative formulations is presented in [8]. The damage
index βij is generally normalised using the standard deviation σ and the mean µ of the
damage index over all elements. This results in the value Z, defined in each element ij:
βij − µ
Zij = (5)
σ
1056
4 EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS AND DAMAGE SCENARIOS
Vibration measurements are performed on the skin-stiffener structure before and af-
ter the structural changes were applied. The complete dynamic set-up and data acquisi-
tion scheme used for the experiments are similar to the one presented in [4]. However,
the structure is freely suspended in vertical direction by two elastic wires. A random
excitation force was applied by a shaker connected to driving point P1 (figure 1). A
laser vibrometer measured the velocities along a measurement grid containing 7×29
points (figure 1). The Frequency Response Functions (FRFs) between the fixed point
of excitation and the measurement points are recorded by a Siglab system. A frequency
range of 50-1050 Hz (resolution: 0.3125 Hz) was selected. A measurement at each
grid point consists of 20 windowed averages, with 50% overlap. The modal parameters
(natural frequency, mode shapes and damping values) are obtained from the FRFs by
using Experimental Modal Analysis [11] (see [4] for a description of the method used).
Successive measurements showed a sufficient repeatability of the experimental set-up
and testing approach (natural frequencies: σ = 0.05%, σmax = 0.53%, mode shapes:
average M AC > 0.98, minimum M AC = 0.88, with M AC standing for the Modal
Assurance Criteria [12]). The mode shapes are spline interpolated and are the input for
damage diagnosis by the MSE-DI algorithm.
5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The 2D and the 1D formulation in x- and y-direction of the MSE-DI algorithm are
applied for three damage scenarios: an added mass, impact damage and a combination
of an added mass and impact damage. All measured modes within a frequency range of
200Hz-800Hz are considered in the analysis. Clear peaks in the damage index distribu-
tions Zij indicate the presence and location of damage. The ratio between the damage
indices of the damaged and intact area showed to be a measure for the sensitivity to
identify damage [4].
5.1 Single Damage Scenarios
The damage index Zij distributions for the mass and impact damage are respectively
shown in figures 4 and 5. The 2D MSE-DI algorithm, figures 4a and 5a, shows the
highest indices at respectively the location of the added mass (point M1) and the im-
pact damaged area (near point I1), indicating the presence and location of both damage
types. It must be noticed that the effect of the mass is also clearly shown in the nat-
ural frequencies and mode shapes (maximum change: δFN = 2.91%, M AC = 0.53,
average: δFN = 0.54%, M AC = 0.84). However, these properties are hardly affected
by the impact damage (maximum change: δFN = 0.68%, M AC = 0.84, average:
δFN = 0.19%, M AC = 0.98).
The presence and location of the mass is also predicted correctly by the 1D formu-
lation in x-direction (figure 4b). The y-direction presents slightly higher peaks at the
location of the mass, but also comes up with a false positive (indication of damage, but
no actual change in the structure) at the top-right boundary. The difference between x-
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(7.6)
(13.2)
Damage Index Zij [-]

a) 2D a) 2D
y coordinate [m] y coordinate [m]

(13.5)

b) 1D-x b) 1D-x
(5.9)
(7.7)

(4.3)
c) 1D-y c) 1D-y
x coordinate [m] x coordinate [m]

Figure 4: Normalized damage indices Zij for a Figure 5: Normalized damage indices Zij for the
mass (42g) at point M1. All modes within 200- 50J impact at point I1. All modes within 200-
800Hz and 20×60 MSE-DI elements are used. 800Hz and 20×60 MSE-DI elements are used.
and y-direction originates from the way the mode shape curvatures are affected. This
effect is defined by the location of the mass with respect to the local mode shape. The
structural design forces the mode shapes to show their highest amplitudes between the
stiffeners. The y-coordinate of the mass almost coincides with the location of these
maxima, resulting in a minor effect on the curvature. Since the stiffeners force the mode
shapes in y-direction to be relatively similar for nearly all modes, the effect is less pro-
nounced in the damage index compared to the x-direction. For this situation, the results
in x-direction outperforms the y-direction.
Earlier obtained results [5] for interface damage between skin and stiffeners showed
that the best results were obtained by considering the 1D MSE-DI in the direction of
the stiffeners, the x-direction. This is due to the fact that mainly the bending stiffness
in this direction was affected. An opposite behaviour is shown for the impact damage
considered here (figures 5b and 5c). Several false positives appear for the x-direction,
while the y-direction clearly predicts the presence and the location of the impact damage.
The most likely explanations for the reduced effect in x-direction are: Firstly, the
fact that the damage is located at the end of the stiffened section. This transition in x-
direction causes a discontinuity in the curvature, which will disturb the effects caused
by the damage. Secondly, the fact that the damage is located at the thickest part of the
skin (figure 2). Generally, the thickest skin section showed a relatively large wavelength
of the mode shape in x-direction, representing lower vibration modes, compared to the
wavelength in x-direction at the mid-section and the wavelength in y-direction (figure 6).
The reduced sensitivity for the x-direction is understandable, since the lower vibration
1058
modes are in generall hardly affected compared the higher vibration modes [4]. Thirdly,
the fact that the interface damage is located close to the local shear centre, in case the
plate problem is reduced to a local bending and torsion problem around the middle stiff-
ener. The mode shape in x-direction will be hardly affected in case the deformation
around the damage represents local torsion in the yz-plane, similar to the observations
presented in [4].
Displacement [-]
t = 4.14 mm t = 2.21 mm I1 t = 6.08 mm t = 4.14 mm t = 2.21 mm t = 6.08 mm
y coordinate [m]
0.4 1 A B C
A 0.5
0.2 B 0
C
-0.5
0 -1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
x coordinate [m] x coordinate [m]
Figure 6: Experimental mode shape, interpolated by a cubic spline function, of the intact structure (FN =
544.8 Hz) showing larger wavelengths in x-direction at the thicker sections
The more pronounced effect in y-direction can be explained by the widening of the
stiffener towards its end. The delamination underneath the stiffener and the titanium
insert locally reduces the bending stiffness in y-direction. Moreover, the delamination is
often located at a region (near inflection point) with a high shear stress in y-direction, in
case it is considered as a local bending problem in y-direction. According to [13] this
results in a larger effect on the flexural rigidity and therefore the mode shapes.
5.2 Multiple Damage Scenario
An added mass (point M2) and impact damage (near point I1) were considered for
a multiple damage scenario. The 2D MSE-DI results are presented in figure 7. Two
clear peaks are shown at the coordinates corresponding to the locations of the mass and
damage. However, the effect of the mass is more pronounced. The latter implies a larger
influence of the mass at this location on the entire dynamic behaviour. The changes in
the natural frequencies and mode shapes for the single damage cases already endorsed
this behaviour (section 5.1).
(4.1)
(11.5)
x coordinate [m]
y coordinate [m]
Figure 7: Normalized 2D damage indices Zij for an added mass (42g) at point M1 and 50J impact at point
I1. All modes within 200-800Hz and 20×60 MSE-DI elements are used.
In some cases the MSE-DI algorithm can provide an estimation of the geometrical
properties of the damage [4]. However, comparing the maximum damage index values
of the single (figures 4a and 5a) and multiple damage scenarios indicate the incapabilities
1059
for damage severity estimation in terms of stiffness loss. The single damage scenarios
show almost equal damage index levels, while the multiple damage case shows signif-
icant lower values for the same impact damage. This difference is originated by the
fact that the MSE-DI algorithm is based on the ratio of fractional element stiffnesses
(equation 3) without considering the participation of a mode in the actual vibration. The
damage index is merely a mathematical rather than an absolute physical quantity. A
larger influence on the dynamics, indicated by higher damage indices, does not neces-
sarily imply a higher damage severity.
Multiple damage features are therefore required to be able to obtain a level 3 dam-
age identification system that is capable of estimating the severity in terms of mechanical
properties. As described in section 3.1, damage information is generally condensed to
parameters with a lower dimensional space. However, the neglected part of this informa-
tion could be valuable for a quantitative estimation of the damage. Hence, it is suggested
to move to a higher dimensional subset of parameters, like the direct modal or frequency
domain. The location information, obtained by for example an extended modal domain
feature, is inserted to this subset. A direct modal approach for severity estimation is
presented in [8].
6 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The feasibility of an extended modal based damage identification methodology ap-

plied to an advanced composite aircraft structure has been investigated experimentally in
this work. Results showed that the MSE-DI algorithm can be used to detect and localize
an added mass and impact damage, also in case of a multiple damage scenario. Each of
the individual formulations (2D, 1D x- and y- direction) can be beneficial depending on
the damage case and damage location with respect to the structural design. One of the
main drawbacks is the number of required measurement points to accurately describe
the mode shapes.
It can be concluded that higher damage indices do not necessarily imply a higher
damage severity. The MSE-DI does not allow for a quantitative estimation of the dam-
age severity in terms of mechanical properties. A robust SHM-system will therefore
consists of a combination of damage features to enclose all levels of damage identifi-
cation. The extended modal domain features are powerful in the detection and locali-
sation of damage. They can also roughly estimate the damage geometry. To estimate
the mechanical damage severity it is suggested to utilize a higher dimensional subset of
parameters, since a more direct relation between the internal damage properties and the
damage feature is required.
The key challenge for SHM is the practical application of these technologies to re-
alistic measured data sets of application specific structures under real operational condi-
tions. It must be mentioned that the selection and development of damage identification
algorithms is made-to-measure work. Therefore, the development has to be an integral
part of the structural design process. A scenario based design approach could be utilized
to make the application of SHM-systems more effective.
1060
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors kindly acknowledge Fokker Aerostructures for manufacturing the com-
posite panels used in this research. This work is carried out in the framework of the
European project Clean-Sky Eco Design (grant number CSJU-GAM-ED-2008-001).
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1061
On the Application of Bayesian Analysis and
Advanced Signal Processing Techniques for
the Impact Monitoring of Smart Structures
M. A. TORRES-ARREDONDO, C. YANG and C.-P. FRITZEN
ABSTRACT
Impact is a common source of in-service damage that compromises the safety and
performance of engineering structures. Impact monitoring has been extensively
studied by several researchers and it has been shown that damage extent can be
correlated with the impact magnitude. For this reason, online impact detection
systems are essential and require automatic and intelligent techniques providing a
probabilistic interpretation of their diagnostics. On that account, the present study
proposes an automatic approach based on Bayesian regression with Gaussian
processes for impact magnitude estimation and localization. Firstly, structural
dynamic responses captured by PZT transducers due to impact events are recorded
from simple impact experiments. In a second step, the discrete wavelet transform
and nonlinear principal component analysis are evaluated for signal filtration,
feature extraction and data compression of the time histories respectively. In order
to improve the impact localization, a chirplet atomic decomposition is developed
and used in conjunction with a time-frequency energy distribution in order to
accurately separate wave packets and extract frequency information. Additionally,
the signals power spectral density and time difference of arrivals are estimated and
used in conjunction with the extracted features to provide the training inputs to the
Gaussian Processes. At the end, the effectiveness of proposed methodology is
demonstrated experimentally.
INTRODUCTION
Damage due to external impact plays a critical role in the fields of aeronautic
and astronautic engineering in order to assure a safe operation of the structures and
anticipate for potential catastrophes. A very well known example of such
catastrophes is the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia as a result of impact damage
from foam debris during ascent leading to the development of on-board impact
detection technologies. Impact monitoring has been extensively studied by several
Miguel Angel Torres-Arredondo, Claus-Peter Fritzen, Cheng Yang, University of

Siegen, Institute of Mechanics and Control Engineering-Mechatronics, Paul-Bonatz-
Strasse 9-11, D-57076, Siegen, Germany
1062
researchers and a considerable amount of literature has been published on this topic.
Choi and Chang [1] proposed an impact load identification method using
distributed built-in sensors for detecting foreign object impact. Jones et al. [2] used
a neural network-based approach for determining the location and magnitude of
transverse impacts on an isotropic plate. Maseras et al. and Sung et al. addressed the
detection of impacts in composite materials using piezo-ceramic sensors and neural
networks [3-4]. More recent investigations allows the localization of the related
stress-wave emissions by learning the relation between arrival times to the sensors
and source location such as the work presented by Baxter et al. [5]. An alternative
way of reaching similar results to the previous methods is to use a Gaussian process
(GP). Few applications of GP exist in the structural health monitoring (SHM)
scientific literature: for example Hensman et al. [6] proposed the use of single target
Gaussian processes in complex structures for locating stress waves using
thermoelastic expansion by means of a high power laser. The drawback faced with
these methods is that the calculation of the arrival times, needed for the creation of
the so-called ∆T maps or training the Bayesian estimator, was done irrespective of
the detected mode and its frequency content. This fact can lead to potential errors in
localization and do not provide an insight of the present propagation modes. The
present work involves the passive monitoring of stress waves induced by impacts
and studies an automatic approach for impact magnitude estimation and localization
in a plate-like isotropic structure based on Bayesian analysis with single target and
multi-target Gaussian processes. A matching pursuit algorithm (MAP) is proposed
for an optimized signal decomposition of the stress waveforms based on chirplet
atoms. A statistical onset-picker is applied to estimate the wave arrival and
dispersion analysis is then conducted on the decomposed signal in conjunction with
quadratic time-frequency analysis for frequency extraction and mode identification.
The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and hierarchical nonlinear principal
component analysis (h-NLPCA) are used and evaluated for signal filtration, feature
extraction and data compression. The basic concepts behind the proposed
algorithms and an experimental study of the effectiveness of the approach are
presented in the following sections.
PRINCIPAL COMPONENTS EXTRACTION
The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) on the basis of the two-channel subband
coding scheme as proposed by Mallat [7] was applied to the recorded stress
waveforms in order to produce an approximation to the level in which the signal
could be properly reconstructed from these approximation coefficients with the
minimum loss of information. The optimum number of level decompositions was
determined based on a minimum-entropy decomposition algorithm [8]. The family
of Daubechies wavelets (‘db6’) was carefully chosen for this study. Once the
optimal decomposition has been executed and the approximation coefficients are
calculated, these are further reduced by h-NLPCA in order to decompose the data in
a PCA related way [9]. This technique is based on a multilayered perceptron (MLP)
architecture with an auto-associative topology performing an identity mapping
where the output x̂ is forced to equal the input x with high accuracy. This is
achieved by minimizing the squared reconstruction error. In order to compress the
data, there is a bottleneck layer in the middle with fewer units than the input and
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output layers that forces the data to be projected into a lower dimensional
representation. In order that the calculated nonlinear components have the same
hierarchical order as the linear components in standard PCA, the reconstruction
error is controlled by searching subspaces of minimal mean square error (MSE).
This procedure is repeated for any k-dimensional subspace where all subspaces
must be of minimal MSE.
CHIRPLET ATOMIC DECOMPOSITION AND SIGNAL ANALYSIS
The MAP was introduced by Mallat and Zhang [10] and has been successfully
applied in structural health monitoring by different researchers. It is an iterative
algorithm that decomposes a signal into a linear combination of waveforms, so-
called atoms, which are selected from a redundant database of atoms, named
dictionary, having similar time and frequency characteristics to the original signal.
The atom from the dictionary that locally better defines the signal is then selected
for reconstruction. The first step of the algorithm is to create a redundant dictionary
D of atoms g which are well localized in time and frequency, and posses unit
energy. The second step is to find the best match from the database where the
residuum r0(t) equals the sensor signal s(t) for the first iteration according to
g i = arg max ri −1 , g . (1)

g∈D
The third step is to compute the residual after subtracting the component along
the best atom in Eq. (1)
ri = ri −1 − ri −1 , gi gi . (2)
Finally, the second and third steps are repeated until a predefined energy
threshold of the original signal is reached. The signal can be finally reconstructed
according to
n −1
s= ∑
k =0
rk , g k g k + rn . (3)
The proposed dictionary is composed of chirplet atoms which are well suited for
the analysis of dispersive signals with no stationary time-frequency behaviour. The
chirplet atom is given by
1  1 ( t − tk ) 2  β 2 
g k (t ) = 0.25 exp  − + i  ωk ( t − t k ) + k ( t − t k )   (4)
π sk  2 sk 2
 2  
 
where the parameters sk, tk, ωk, and βk indicate the time extent, time centre, angular
frequency centre, and the linear frequency modulation rate respectively. Once the
decomposition has been accomplished, an energy distribution can be defined in the
time-frequency plane without the interference terms obtained with conventional
time-frequency representations. For the onset time detection, a statistical picker
based on the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) was used since it provides picks
1064
with higher accuracy in comparison to traditional methods. The AIC picker
definition is given by Maeda [11]
AIC (t ) = t log10 (var( x[1, t ])) + (T − t − 1) log10 (var( x[t + 1, T ])) (5)
where var denotes the sample variance, T is the last sample of x where the onset is
contained, and t ranges through all the samples of x. The AIC picker models the
noise and signal as two different stationary time series and its minimum indicates
the point of separation of the two series (onset point). The onset time of the
recorded signals is then estimated and the atom with same time arrival
characteristics is extracted and analyzed for frequency extraction and mode
identification. Mode identification is accomplished based on dispersive
characteristics as shown by the authors in [12].
BAYESIAN REGRESSION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESSES
Given a data set D of D-dimensional training input vectors xi with corresponding

training vector t composed of training targets ti related by ti = f (xi) + ε for i =1,...,
N, where f (•) is a non-linear smooth mapping function and ε is additive Gaussian
noise, one should be interested in making predictions of the noise-free output
targets f (xN+1) for a new input vector xN+1. The mapping function is modelled by a
Gaussian Process (GP) with zero mean and covariance matrix K so that
p ( f D ) ∼ N ( 0, K ) (6)
where K is computed from the covariance function Kij = k (xi , xj). The covariance
in our case is squared exponential with automatic relevance determination (ARD)
distance measure defined by [13]
 1 
k (xi , x j ) = σ 2f exp  − ( xi − x j ) M ( xi − x j ) 
T
(7)
 2 
with M = diag (λ1,...λD)-2 and where each λ is a characteristic length scale for each
input dimension, and σf 2 is the signal variance. The impact of these two parameters
on the covariance matrix that affects the process realisations is presented below.
(a) (b)
Figure 1. Covariance Matrix for different parameters: (a) σf 2=1 and λ=2 and (b) σf 2=1 and λ=1.
1065
As it can seen from Figure 1, as the distance between inputs increases, the
covariances between the points for Figure 1(a) decreases less rapidly than that of
Figure 1(b) because of the higher value of λ. It can be also inferred that the
magnitudes of the diagonal terms for both figures are controlled by σf 2. In the
Gaussian Process framework, one can define a joint distribution over the observed
training targets at the test location as
  K + σ n2 I k   C N k 
p ( t N +1 ) ∼ N  0,  2 = N  0,  T  (8)

  k
T
k +σn   k c  
where tN+1 denotes the vector (t1,...,tN,tN+1)T, σn2 the noise variance, K is a N×N
matrix containing the covariances between pairs of training targets, k is a N×1
vector giving the covariances between the test target and the training targets, k is the
variance of the training target, and I the identity matrix. The unknown parameters in
the covariance functions are calculated by minimizing the negative logarithmic
marginal likelihood as proposed by Girard [14]. The predictive posterior
distribution is obtained by conditioning the previous joint distribution on the
observed data D and the new inputs. The GP formulae for the mean and variance of
the predictive distribution with the covariance function in Eq. (7) is given by [15]
µ ( x n+1 ) = k T C-N1t
(9)
σ 2 ( x n +1 ) = k − k T C-N1k
For multiple outputs GPs a convolution process (CP) was employed in order to
account for non-trivial correlations. Due to lack of space, no more details are given
here. Please refer to [16] for a detailed description of multiple output GP modelling.
EXPERIMENT AND DISCUSSION
In order to check the performance of the proposed methodology, a specimen

was made from a 2mm aluminium sheet of dimensions 800 x 800mm. For the
present experiment, six broadband piezoceramics PIC-255 from PI Ceramics were
installed on the plate. Figure 2 displays the evaluated structure.
0.8
0.25
0.15
y[m]
0.2
0
0 x[m] 0.8
Figure 2. Structure used for the measurement of the stress waves generated by impact forces.
1066
The experimental setup consisted of two HS4 handy-scopes from TiePie
Engineering, an impulse force hammer from Kistler and a PC. For the impact
magnitude estimation, the GP has a single output target whose inputs were the area
under the curve of the power spectral density from each sensor, the difference in
time of arrivals between the sensors, and the non-linear principal components
extracted from the calculated approximation coefficients obtained by the DWT.
Standard PCA was used in order to define the number of principal components used
in the h-NLPCA. Principal components contributing less than 2% to the total
variation of the data set were eliminated for this task. To test the proposed method,
more than 800 impacts of different magnitudes were exerted on the surface of the
plate with a grid density of 50mm in order to create the database. The data were
then divided into training and test sets.
Figure 3 shows the results of impact magnitude estimation for 30 selected
testing events. The grey bars represent the means provided by the Gaussian process
predictive distribution, and the error bars corresponds to plus and minus two
standard deviations. For the test set, the GP was able to estimate the impact
magnitude force with an average percentage error of 3.3%. This result reflects an
improvement in comparison with traditional methods based on neural networks and
traditional descriptors. It is worth noting that since the input force spectrum exerted
in the structure is a combination of the stiffness of the hammer tip and the stiffness
of the structure, the GP ability to provide accurate estimates between different types
of impacts is highly dependent on the provided training data covering all the
possible ways an impact may occur. To generate the database experimentally under
these conditions can be a very expensive and almost impractical task, and the use of
computer modelling tools is suggested for this purpose. Here, only hard tip impacts
were studied.
For the impact localization, a full covariance function was used for the GP. A
GP with two outputs corresponding to x and y coordinates of the impact was
implemented. The inputs were the differences in time of flight between the sensors
and the frequency content of the first arrival in every sensor of the network.
Wigner-Ville time-frequency analysis was evaluated for the analysis of the MAP
decomposed stress waveforms. Four latent functions were used for this case based
on trial and error tests in order to get the best performance.
Measured
5 Estimated
4
Impact Force [N]
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Test Number
Figure 3. Estimated and Measured Impact Forces at the Plate.
1067
800 Measured
Estimated
700
x Coordinate of Impact [mm]

600
500
400
300
200
100
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
(a) Test Number
800 Measured
Estimated
700
y Coordinate of Impact [mm]
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
(b)
Test Number
Figure 4. Estimated and Real Impact Locations: (a) x coordinate and (b) y coordinate.
Figure 4(a) and (b) depict the impact positions estimated by the algorithm and
the known positions in every test. The root mean squared errors (RMSE) on the test
set were found to be 2mm and 3.2mm for the x and y coordinates respectively. The
obtained results are very accurate. It can be noticed from the previous figures how
the uncertainty increases in the regions where the estimates deviate from the true
values. However, this is not always true and sometimes the algorithm provides poor
results with high confidence. This is a common case and criticism in Bayesian
methods where poor choices of priors lead to these results. Another general
shortcoming of the proposed methodology is that it depends on the quality of
inputs, i.e. onset-time estimation, principal components, etc. These inputs must be
determined precisely and with a high degree of automation. Additionally, the
computational complexity of training a GP can be reduced by using approximations
for the convolutional process.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper has described a simple impact experiment performed in order to

study the effectiveness of GPs for impact magnitude estimation and localization.
Analysis of the experimental data reflects that selection of training data able to
1068
reflect the physics of the system under study is a decisive factor in order to obtain
an accurate and reliable GP regression model. Additionally, the application of
advanced signal processing techniques has allowed the extraction of nonlinear
components from signals of interest to structural health monitoring providing a
noise reduced model of the investigated process and improving the performance of
the GP regressor. It has been demonstrated the success of the adopted scheme to
provide accurate estimates of position and impact magnitude in a simple structure.
Further research will extend this approach to more complicated structures and to
analyze the GP prediction capabilities for impacts exerted by different hammer tips.
Additionally, the influence of different covariance functions, i.e. dynamic functions,
will be studied.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to express their gratitude to Centre for Sensor Systems
(ZESS) for sponsoring the research presented herein. Furthermore, the authors
thank Professor C. K. I. Williams from the University of Edinburgh and Dr. M.
Álvarez from the University of Manchester for fruitful discussions.
REFERENCES
1. Choi, K. and F.-K. Chang, Identification of Foreign Object Impact in Structures Using Distributed Sensors.
Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, 1994. 5(6).
2. Jones, R.T., J.S. Sirkis, and E.J. Friebele, Detection of Impact Location and Magnitude for Isotropic Plates
Using Neural Networks. JIMSS, 1997. 8(1): pp. 90-99.
3. Maseras-Gutierrez, M.A., W.J. Staszewski, M.S. Found, and K. Worden, Detection of impacts in composite
materials using piezoceramic sensors and neural networks, in Conference on Smart Structures and
Integrated Systems, M. Regelbrugge, Editor. 1998: San Diego, California. pp. 491-497.
4. Sung, D.-U., J.-H. Oh, C.-G. Kim, and C.-S. Hong, Impact Monitoring of Smart Composite Laminates
Using Neural Network and Wavelet Analysis. Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, 2000.
11(3): pp. 180-190.
5. Baxter, M.G., R. Pullin, K.M. Holford, and S.L. Evans, Delta T source location for acoustic emission.
Mech Syst Signal Pr, 2007. 21(3): pp. 1512-1520.
6. Hensman, J., R. Mills, S.G. Pierce, K.Worden, and M. Eaton, Locating acoustic emission sources in
complex structures using Gaussian processes. MSSP, 2008. 24(1): pp. 211-223.
7. Mallat, S.G., A theory for multiresolution signal decomposition: the wavelet representation. IEEE
Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 1989. 11(7): pp. 674-693.
8. Coifman, R.R. and M.V. Wickerhauser, Entropy-based algorithms for best basis selection. IEEE Trans. on
Inf. Theory, 1992. 38(2): pp. 713-718.
9. Scholz, M., M. Fraunholz, and J. Selbig, Nonlinear Principal Component Analysis: Neural Network Models
and Applications, in Principal Manifolds for Data Visualization and Dimension Reduction, A.N. Gorban, et
al., Editors: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2008. pp. 44-67.
10. Mallat, S.G. and Z. Zhang, Matching pursuits with time-frequency dictionaries. Signal Processing, IEEE
Transactions on, 1993. 41(12): pp. 3397-3415.
11. Maeda, N., A method for reading and checking phase times in auto-processing system of seismic wave data.
J. Seismol. Soc. Jpn, 1985. 38: pp. 365–379.
12. Torres Arredondo, M.A. and C.P. Fritzen. Characterization and classification of modes in acoustic
emission based on dispersion features and energy distribution analysis. In Proc. of ICEDyn, Tavira,
Portugal (on CD-ROM), 2011.
13. Rasmussen, C.E. and C.K.I. Williams, Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning: The MIT Press, 2006.
14. Girard, A., Approximate methods for propagation of uncertainty with gaussian process models. PhD Thesis.
Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, 2004.
15. Bishop, C.M., Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. 1st ed. Information Science and Statistics.
Singapore: Springer, 2007.
16. Alvarez, M. and N.D. Lawrence, Sparse Convolved Gaussian Processes for Multi-output Regression, in
NIPS. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. pp. 57-64.
1069
Comparison of Damage Localization Based
on Modal Filters Using Strain Measurements
and Acceleration Measurements
A. DERAEMAEKER and G. TONDREAU
ABSTRACT
This paper deals with the comparison of two techniques recently developed for
non-model based automated damage localization using vibration measurements. The
two techniques are based on modal filtering methods but differ in the sensing tech-
nologies used, i.e., acceleration or strain sensors. The advantages and drawbacks of
the two techniques are illustrated with simulated data of a simply supported beam.
INTRODUCTION
As an alternative to the local inspection techniques to assess the health of struc-

tures, global techniques based on vibration measurements have been developed for
more than twenty years [1]. Recently, a non-model based method using modal fil-
ters has been developed for damage localization. Applying this method with strain
sensors succeeded in very small damages localization in different structures, under
varying environmental conditions [2, 3] thanks to the local sensitivity of strains to
damages, as explained in [4, 5]. Recent advances in sensors and instrumentation
make it possible to put large sensor networks on structures and to measure directly
dynamic strains, in particular by using fiber optic sensors [6]. At the same time, Men-
drok et al. have applied in [7] the modal filtering method with acceleration sensors
for damage localization. Indeed, despite the fact that accelerations are less sensitive
to damage than strains, accelerations are much easier and cheaper to measure than
strains.
This paper proposes a comparison of damage localization using local modal filters
from strain or acceleration sensors. The structure investigated is a simply supported
beam entirely covered with strain/acceleration sensors. A small level of noise is di-
rectly added on the sensor responses in both cases and changes of the input force are
also considered. Several damage levels are introduced and the damage localization is
automated thanks to the Hotelling T 2 control chart [8]. The results confirm that the
Arnaud Deraemaeker Service BATir - CP 194/2, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 50 Avenue
F.D. Roosevelt, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
1070
use of strain sensors is the best solution for accurate early damage localization. The
acceleration sensors are only able to locate approximately strong levels of damage.
DAMAGE LOCALIZATION USING LOCAL MODAL FILTERS
Consider a structure equipped with a large network of sensors. In order to pro-

ceed to a data reduction, one can combine sensors responses to form a single output
response with a linear combiner as shown in Figure 1 and Equation (1):
sensor array
linear combiner
y1 ë1
y2 + y
structure ë2 +
+ sensor
...
yn ën
f
Figure 1: Principle of spatial filtering on a network of n sensors.
n
X
y(t) = αl,k yk (t) (1)
k=1
The idea behind modal filtering is to choose coefficients αl,k in Equation (1) in such
a way that they are orthogonal to all the modes of the structure in a frequency band
of interest, except mode l.
These coefficients are the solutions of Equation (2)
[C]T {αl } = {el }, (2)

where {el }T = (00...1...0)T is a vector with all entries equal to 0 except entry l
(corresponding to the eigen frequency on which the modal filter is tuned), which is
equal to 1 and [C] is the rectangular matrix of modal output gain. The pseudo-inverse
of [C] is computed using a singular value decomposition (SVD).
When damage occurs, the orthogonality condition (2) is not satisfied anymore.
When looking at the Fourier transform of y(t), or at its power spectral density (PSD),
this results in spurious peaks near other natural frequencies than l. This principle has
already been studied in [9] and [10] for damage detection, using accelerations mea-
surements. It also has the advantage to distinguish global effects from local effects
(see Figure 2):
1071
Effect of a local change Effect of a global change
in stiffness in stiffness
dB dB
Undamaged Undamaged
! !
!l !l
(a) Effect of damage. (b) Effect of environment.
Figure 2: Modal filter tuned on mode l.
The appearance of spurious peaks will be detected in this work thanks to a peak
indicator IP eak [11] computed for a frequency band around the natural frequencies
of the undamaged system, which is equal to 1 if the filtered frequency response is
constant and tends to zero when the peak grows.
The extension of the previous idea to damage localization is straightforward. In-
deed, the basic idea is to apply the modal filtering on local filters rather than on global
filters. For each local filter, the modal coefficients αl,k are computed such that they
are orthogonal to the projection of all mode shapes on the n sensors of the local fil-
ter, except mode l. From there, the data processing is carried out on each local filter
independently, following the strategy presented in [10], which is summarized below:
1. Compute the PSD of the output of the local modal filter tuned on mode l;
2. Compute the peak indicator IP eak in a frequency band around some natural
frequencies of the undamaged system (not around the frequency ωl of the mode
l);
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for each local modal filter, and for each mode l on which
the filter is tuned.
The process results in a number of peak indicators for each local filter which are used
as features to be monitored.
ACCELERATION AND STRAINS MEASUREMENTS FOR DAMAGE LO-

CALIZATION
To be able to locate damage with modal filters as explained in the previous sec-
tion, we of course have to deal with measurements that are locally sensitive to dam-
age. Pandey et al. [4] showed that for beams, curvatures exhibit this local sensitivity.
In beam structures, the kinematic assumptions are such that the curvatures are pro-
portional to the longitudinal strain at a given height in a section. In general, for any
type of structure, this local sensitivity can be generalized for strains, as shown in [5].
Several works have succeeded with the application of modal filters by using strain
sensors for very small damage localization [2, 3, 12]. At the same time, Mendrok et
1072
al. have applied the modal filters for damage localization by using acceleration sen-
sors in [7], despite the fact that the effect damage on accelerations is less clear than
with strains. To illustrate that principle, we depict in Figure 3 the impact of damage
case D10 (decrease of stiffness of 20% in five elements, see Table I) on the strain and
the acceleration first mode shapes: we plot the relative difference ∆φ 1i
φ1i
(in %) between
the undamaged mode shape and the damaged mode shape at sensor i.
30 1
(%)
20
(%)
0.5
10 0
Éþ 1i
Éþ 1i
þ 1i
þ 1i
0 -0.5
-10 -1
0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100
Sensor Sensor
(a) First strain mode shape. (b) First acceleration mode shape.
Figure 3: Impact of damage (case D10 ) on the mode shapes.
With that example, we see that the damage affects in a different way the first mode
shape depending on the sensors technology. As stated before, the use of strains sen-
sors is very interesting because the effect of damage is concentrated at the damaged
area. On the other hand, with acceleration sensors, the mode shape change is also
maximum around the damaged area but the effect is more spread. From those ob-
servations, we could therefore expect that the damage localization is more accurate
with strain sensors. Note also that the ∆φ 1i
φ1i
scales differ a lot between the two type
of sensors: for the same damage case, the maximum ∆φ 1i
φ1i
value is 22% for the strains,
while it is only 0.5% for the accelerations. It seems therefore that strains are more
sensitive to damage, leading to an earlier damage localization with a strain sensors
network. The use of acceleration sensors is however not meaningless. Indeed, con-
sider that the network is made of sensors [1; 43] and [51; 100] (see Figure 3). If we
use strain sensors, we will not see any differences in the first strain mode shape and
we will miss the damage detection. However, if we consider the acceleration sensors,
we might detect the damage because there is a difference between the damaged and
the undamaged mode shape that can be seen with that network.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CASE STUDY
The damage localization procedure is applied on the same structure that has been
studied in [2], that is a simply supported beam made of concrete (1m × 0.1m × 0.1m)
which is modeled with the Structural Dynamics Toolbox [13] under Matlab with 100
Euler-Bernoulli beam elements.
The whole beam is covered with 100 sensors (strain or acceleration sensors) which
are grouped together in 10 local filters of 10 sensors as in [2]. We introduce noise on
sensor responses under the form of Equation (3):
yi (t) = yi0 (t) + βf (x, t)max(yi0 (t)), (3)
1073
where yi (t) and yi0 (t) are respectively the noisy and non-noisy responses of sensor i
at time t. We take here the continuous probability distribution f (x, t) as the Gaussian
distribution with zero mean and unitary standard deviation. The level of noise β
is fixed at 1%. A numerical simulator has been developed in order to compute time
response of sensors attached to the structure under random (band-limited white noise)
excitation (only the 4 first mode shapes are taken into account).
The different damage cases (stiffness reduction) that will be investigated are shown
in Figure 4 and in Table I (the damage is always situated only in local filter 5). Be-
cause we are interested in an output-only application of the method, we also con-
sidered input forces of different types. Each PSD of these inputs shows a constant
or linearly decreasing pattern and leads to a normal distribution with zero mean and
different standard deviation σ (see Table I).
5 damaged elements
Damaged element
Excitation at x=0.12m
Excitation at x=0.12m
X=0.44m X=0.45m X=0.44m X=0.49m
(a) Damage introduced in one element (b) Damage introduced in five elements
Figure 4: Location of damages and excitation.
TABLE I. DAMAGE CASES AND INPUT SIGNALS

Label Samples Level of damage Input
U1 1 to 120 / I1 : constant PSD, σ = 1N
D1 121 to 200 2% in 1 element I1
U2 301 to 420 / I2 : constant PSD, σ = 100N
U3 601 to 700 / I3 : linearly decreasing PSD, σ = 1N
D7 901 to 1000 10% in 1 element I1
D8 1001 to 1100 20% in 1 element I1
D9 1101 to 1200 10% in 5 elements I1
D10 1201 to 1300 20% in 5 elements I1
STATISTICAL APPROACH FOR AN AUTOMATED DAMAGE LOCALIZA-

TION
As explained in the next section, whatever the sensing technology, we will have
to check two peak indicators to assess the appearance of spurious peaks. Hence, two
1074
features have to be monitored in order to detect when they are shifted from their in-
control values (values in the undamaged state). Control charts [8] are very efficient
for these shifts detection. Control charts plot the feature as a function of the sample
number. When operating conditions change, the feature will fall outside control limits
(lower or upper) which are computed from samples when the conditions are assumed
to be in control. In particular, multivariate control charts which allow the simulta-
neous monitoring of two or more related characteristics are used in this study: these
control charts plot a new single feature which is computed from the multiple moni-
tored features, and when the new feature falls outside control limits, alarm occurs. In
this paper, we will apply the Hotelling T 2 control chart.
COMPARISON OF FILTERED FREQUENCY RESPONSES FROM STRAIN

OR ACCELERATION SENSORS
We start the analysis of the results with the comparison of the filtered frequency
responses that are obtained when the modal filters are tuned on the second mode
shape. We only show in Figures 5 and 6 the filtered PSDs of damage case D10 (max-
imum damage level).
25 -125
U U
20 D10 -130 D10
15 -135
10 -140
dB
dB
5 -145
0 -150
-5 -155
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
Freq [Hz] Freq [Hz]
(a) Acceleration sensors. (b) Strain sensors.
Figure 5: Modal filters of local filter 5 for damage case D10 .
25 -130
U U
20 D10 D10
-135
15
-140
dB
dB
10
-145
5
-150
0
-155
-5
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
Freq [Hz] Freq [Hz]
(a) Acceleration sensors. (b) Strain sensors.
Figure 6: Modal filters of local filter 6 for damage case D10 .
1075
When looking at the filtered frequency responses, we can conclude that the use of
strain responses seems to be more shrewd because the spurious peaks are only present
in the local filter 5 where the true damage is. If one looks at the filtered PSDs from
acceleration sensors, there are also spurious peaks which appear for the highest dam-
age case D10 in the local filter 5. However, a small peak also grows around f3 for
the local filter 6. This unexpected peak could lead to false alarms when applying the
control charts. The filtered frequency responses for the small damage cases (not rep-
resented here) confirmed the observation made previously with the strain/acceleration
mode shapes, according to which the strains are more sensitive to damage than the
accelerations: there are already spurious peaks for the smallest damage cases (cases
D1 , D3 and D5 ) with the strain sensors, while only the strongest damage cases see an
appearance of spurious peaks if we consider acceleration measurements.
Deraemaeker has demonstrated in [5] that the damage effect on the strains map
is more concentrated close to the damage area for the lowest frequencies. We will
therefore check the appearance of spurious peaks near the first and the second eigen
frequencies when the modal filters are tuned on the second and the first strain mode
shapes respectively. On the other hand, the acceleration mode shapes to be consid-
ered are not so obvious. In this example, we have seen in Figure 6 that a spurious
peak appears for the biggest damage case around the third eigen frequency. We have
therefore arbitrarily monitored the spurious peaks around the third eigen frequency
when the modal filter is tuned on the first or on the second acceleration mode shape.
Figure 7 depicts the application of the Hotelling T 2 multivariate control chart1
on the peak indicator feature (only the results of local filters 5 and 6 are shown).
3 2 Strains
Undamaged
Undamaged
Undamaged
1.5 Accelerations
2 UCL
1
log T 2
0.5
1
10
2
0
log T
10
0 -0.5
-1
-1 Strains -1.5
Acceleration -2
-2 UCL -2.5
200 400 600 800 1000 1200
200 400 600 800 1000 1200
Sample Sample
(a) Local filter 5. (b) Local filter 6.
Figure 7: Hotelling T 2 control chart for strain and acceleration measurements.
As already observed, the strain measurements are more sensitive to damage than
the acceleration measurements. It can be observed by comparing the IP eak curves
for each type of sensors in Figure 7(a): indeed, the peak indicator with strain mea-
surements alarms for each damage case while the peak indicator with acceleration
measurements only alarms for the highest damage cases (cases D8 , D9 and D10 ).
Moreover, because of the small unexpected spurious peak around f3 that growths for
local filter 6, there are some false alarms that are triggered for damage cases D9 and
1
The control limits are computed using 90/120 of the undamaged samples (case U1 ).
1076
D10 (see Figure 7(b)). Finally, the peak indicator tends to an asymptotic value for
highest levels of damage. It can be observed in Figure 7(a), where the Hotelling T 2
distance seems to converge for the last damage samples (samples 1001 to 1300).
The summary of all the damage alarms that were triggered during the structural
health monitoring is given in Figure 8 and it confirms the previous observations:
10 10
9 9
8 8
Local filter
7 7
Local filter
6 6
Damage Damage
5 5
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
200 400 600 800 1000 1200 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
Sample Sample
(a) IP eak with acceleration measurements. (b) IP eak with strain measurements.
Figure 8: Summary of damage alerts (true damage cases are surrounded in red).
The analysis of Figure 8 reveals that the damaged area is correctly located with
strain sensors, even if some input PSD changes occur. The acceleration sensors seem
to locate the highest damage level in local filters 4, 5 and 6 while the strains locate
the damage only in the real damaged local filter 5. This last observation is linked to
the effect of damage on measurements: the effect of damage is concentrated around
the strain maps of low mode shapes of the structure [5], while the change of mode
acceleration on mode shapes is more spread as shown in Figure 3.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have compared the application of modal filters for damage lo-
calization with strain and acceleration sensors. By investigating a simply supported
beam, the results confirmed that the strain sensors is the best solution for accurate
early damage localization. The acceleration sensors are only able to locate approx-
imately strong levels of damage. However, the use of accelerometers is not mean-
ingless. Indeed, accelerations are easier and cheaper to measure than strains. Both
types of technologies have their advantages and drawbacks. Strains are more sen-
sitive to damage and the effect is more located around the damaged area, but need
a very dense network of sensors to cover the damage, while the acceleration are less
sensitive to damage and the effect of damage is more spread, meaning that we can use
a less dense sensors network. Further studies will deal with a more realistic damage
modeling (such as crack propagation models) and analyze what are the results when
we consider a more spread strain sensors network. The levels of strains/accelerations
as well as their precision needed to have an efficient application of the modal filters
will also be investigated, before comparing experimentally the modal filtering with
the two sensing technologies.
1077
REFERENCES
1. S. W. Doebling, C. Farrar, and M. B. Prime. A summary review of vibration-based

damage identification methods. The shock and vibration digest, 30(2):91–105, 1998.
2. G. Tondreau and A. Deraemaeker. Vibration based damage localization using multi-scale
filters and large strain sensor of network. In The Fifth European Workshop on Structural
Health Monitoring, Sorrento, Italy, July 2010.
3. G. Tondreau and A. Deraemaeker. Damage localization in bridges using multi-scale
filters and large strain sensor networks. In ISMA 2010, Leuven, Belgium, September
2010.
4. A. K. Pandey, M. Biswas, and M. M. Samman. Damage detection from changes in
curvature mode shapes. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 145(2):321–332, 1991.
5. A. Deraemaeker. On the use of dynamic strains and curvatures for vibration based dam-
age localization. In The Fifth European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring,
2009.
6. B. Gliŝić and D. Inaudi. Fibre optic methods for structural health monitoring. John Wiley
and Sons, Inc, 2007.
7. K. Mendrok and Uhl T. Experimental verification of the damage localization procedure
based on modal filtering. shm.sagepub.com, 20:1615–1630, 2010.
8. Douglas C. Montgomery. Statistical quality control: a modern introduction. John Wiley
and Sons, Inc, 2009.
9. A. Deraemaeker and Preumont A. Vibration based damage detection using large array
sensors and spatial filters. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, (20):1615–1630,
2006.
10. A. Deraemaeker, E. Reynders, G. De Roeck, and J. Kullaa. Vibration-based structural
health monitoring using output-only measurements under changing environment. Me-
chanical Systems and Signal Processing, (22):34–56, 2008.
11. A. Deraemaeker and K. Worden. New trends in vibration based structural health moni-
toring. SpringerWienNewYork, Udine, 2010.
12. A. Deraemaeker. Assessment of damage localization based on spatial filters using nu-
merical crack propagation models. In The Ninth International Conference on Damage
Assessment of Structures, Oxford, United Kingdom, July 2011.
13. SDTools. Structural dynamic toolbox. http://www.sdtools.com.
1078
Multi-Source Acoustic Emission Signals
Analysis Based on Blind Source Separation
using Macro Fiber Composite
H. NASSER and W. ZHOU
ABSTRACT
In case of multiple damage sources, i.e. acoustic emission sources, signals from
different damage sources are overlap each other during propagation as elastic stress
wave. This article proposes a methodology to identify and separate multi-source
acoustic emission signals using both Blind Source Separation (BSS) technique and
Macro Fiber Composites (MFC) sensors. This methodology will be applied on plate
structure, in which the acoustic emission signal propagates as Lamb wave. The strain
responses under arbitrary excitations are simulated numerically. Voltage response of
piezoelectric sensors is calculated analytically for the different angles of incidence of
signal. Considering the simplified case, i.e. a couple of sensors and acoustic sources,
the transform matrix for BSS from acoustic emission source to response of sensors is
obtained with respect to different angles of incidence of signal. For identifiability of
multi-source acoustic emission signals based BSS analysis, full rank of transform
matrix is essential, while the transform matrix is not reversible for only few special
cases. Numerical simulation for separation of multi-source acoustic emission signals is
presented in this article.
INTRODUCTION
Guided-wave Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) methods have attracted lots of

attentions in recent years. Guided-wave SHM methods are based on the elastic wave
propagation theory, and utilize piezoelectric transducers and fairly high frequency
signals mainly. Guided-wave SHM methods, which are very sensitive to small
structural damage and cover a relatively small detection range, also are considered as
the local structural damage detection methods. Guided-wave SHM can be broadly
classified as passive or active depending on whether or not they involve the use of
actuators, respectively. Both passive methods, such as acoustic emission (AE) and
active methods, such as Lamb wave based, have been demonstrated successfully.
_____________
Houssein Nasser, Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor, 29, Avenue John F. Kennedy, L-1855
Luxembourg, Luxembourg – houssein.nasser@tudor.lu
Wensong Zhou, School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150090 China –
zhouwensong@hit.edu.cn
1079
Raghavan and Cesnik [1] gave a comprehensive review on the relative research
field. In essence, AE signals received by sensors are excited by stress waves, which
generate from active damage [2, 3]. For example, an AE signal in thin plates is
detected as dispersive multi-mode Lamb waves [4]. Mizutani et al. [5] carried out the
modal and wavelet transform analysis of Lamb waves on the AE signals of 70 AE
events. Compared with the zeroth order symmetric and anti-symmetric Lamb wave,
which was produced by laser, the internal damage progression of the CFRP plate can
be determined. Lee et al. [6] characterized the elastic waves, including the zeroth order
symmetric and anti-symmetric Lamb waves, emanating from fatigue cracks in plate-
like structures by the experiment. Results of analysis were consistent with the FE
model predictions. Hamstad et al. [7] investigated the effect of AE sources depth to
the displacements with FEM approach, and correlated the AE displacement with
Lamb modes. Hill et al. [8] detected the classical P-wave, S-wave and Rayleigh wave
as well in their experiments. However, the analytical investigations of Rayleigh and
Lamb waves under harmonic excitation have been obtained [9-11]. Matt et al. [12]
gave the voltage responses of piezoelectric transducers to Rayleigh and Lamb waves
in both time and frequency domain under harmonic excitation, and the numerical
solution under arbitrary excitation as well.
As above stated, based the acoustic emission signal received by the sensors, one
can detect the structural damage. Furthermore, the damage location and type can be
also identified through signal processing techniques, such as time-frequency analysis,
feature extraction, pattern recognition and so on. But most of current researches
related to guided wave SHM and piezoelectric transducers only consider single
damage or AE source simultaneously. In case of the multiple damage sources, i.e. AE
sources, signals from different damage sources will overlap during propagation with
elastic wave way. Therefore, for some cases, one transducer will receive the
superposition signal, which contains elastic wave information from more than one AE
source. In this case, one is unable to analysis and identifies the characteristic of single
damage source. The current investigation aims to separate the overlapping signal to
single one for the furthermore analysis with Blind Source Separation (BSS) based on
Independent Component Analysis (ICA). ICA is a computational method for
separating a multivariate signal into additive subcomponents supposing the mutual
statistical independence of the non-Gaussian source signals, which will be introduced.
For more than one acoustic emission source, the methodology proposed in this work
will be able to separate them into single acoustic emission source. BSS technique will
be employed.
The present paper employs Blind Sources Separation, in order to recover multiple
sources damage using Macro Fiber Composite transducers. In the previous work of
Matt et al. [12] an analytical expression of sensing sensitivity of the MFC has been
derived under condition that the sensor length should have a given value with respect
to the propagated wavelength. The work presented here is differed by a statistical
approach based on Independent Components Analysis. The localization aspect is
obtained where the sensitivity of the transducers into two propagation angles are
different. This means that the propagating waves from two acoustic sources are
statistically independent when measured by two transducers mounted at two different
orientations with respect to the direction of the aligned fibre of the transducers. Since
the MFC highlight the dependency with respect to different incident wave angles, the
eventuality of separating the responses due to two acoustic sources become feasible.
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This approach could be applied for isotropic and anisotropic structure behaviour. In
the first section, characteristics of Macro Fiber Composite of both types of MFC “d31”
and “d33” types will be addressed and the voltage response of the MFCs will be
derived based on the work of Matt et al. [12] and Azzouz et al. [13]. After that, the
Blind Source Separation approach will be presented. Finally, numerical validation will
be carried out.
VOLTAGE RESPONSE OF MFC
Macro Fiber Composite transducers (MFC) consists of active fibres with

rectangular cross sections embedded into an epoxy matrix. Macro Fiber Composite is
manufactured, commercialized by Smart Materials Corporation and available under
two types: MFC-P2 operates in “d31” deformation mode using conventional electrodes
and MFC-P1 operates in “d33” deformation mode using interdigitated electrodes by
introducing a longitudinal electric field within the transducer layer. The present MFC
actuator/sensor differs from the monolithic piezoelectric sensor by its directional
dependency. The anisotropic properties of piezocomposite transducers are yielded by
the mishmash of electromechanical properties between the active fibres and the matrix
materials. Moreover, the use of interdigitated electrodes configuration capitalize the
stronger piezoelectric constant “d33” in the longitudinal direction and increase the
directional dependency for sensing and actuation aspects with respect to the transverse
direction. The constitutive equations of thin piezoelectric transducer under plane stress
assumption can be written as:
 1 ν 
 E − LT 0 d3L 
 SL   L EL
  TL 
 S   LT ν 1  
 T − 0 d 3T   TT 
  =  E T E T
   (1)
S
  LT  1  T
 LT
 D3   0 0 0  E 
 GLT  3 
 d 3 L d 3T 0 ε 33 
T
where SL, ST and SLT are the longitudinal, transversal and shear components of strain
respectively. TL, TT and TLT are the longitudinal, transversal and shear components of
stress respectively. D3 is the charge density over the electrode and E3 is the electric
field in the poling direction. The subscripts “L”, “T” and “3” represent the
longitudinal, transversal and poling directions respectively. The properties of the
transducer are defined by; d 3 j is the piezoelectric coefficients, ε 33
T
is the dielectric
permittivity measured at zero stress, EL , ET are the in-plane Young’s modulus, ν LT
is the Poisson’s coefficient and GLT is the in-plane shear coefficient.
The voltage response of the piezoelectric transducer is a function of its
electromechanical properties. The benefits of this design include flexibility and
durability as well as increase the ratio of the longitudinal piezoelectric effect in the
aligned fibre direction with respect to the transverse direction. The effective
electromechanical properties of MFC will be considered in the numerical modelling
according to the values obtained by the analytical mixing rules developed in [14]. The
values are illustrated in Table 1 for the MFC d 31 and d 33 types.
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TABLE I: HOMOGENIZED PROPERTIES OF MFC “d31” AND “d33” TYPES [14]
Symbol Unit MFC P1 type MFC P2 type
EL GPa 42.18 47.17
Young’s Modulus
ET GPa 16.97 16.98
Poisson’s ratio νLT - 0.380 0.395
νTL -
Piezoelectric constant d3L pC/N 436 -183
d3T pC/N -153 -153
Permittivity εT33/ε0 - 1593 1600
For MFC d 31 -type, considering open circuit electrodes as electric boundary

condition the total collected electric charge over the electrode is zero:
∫∫ D dxdy = 0
3 (2)
The voltage response of transducers according to equation (1) under open circuit
electric conditions is written as [12]:
E3 dxdydz t ∫∫[( d 3 L E L + d 3T vLT ET ) S L + ( d 3 L vLT ET + d 3T ET ) ST ]dx dy
V = − ∫∫∫
Apiezo
=
[
Apiezo (1 − vLT vTL )ε 33
T
]
− ( d 32L E L + 2d 3 L d 3T vLT ET + d 32T ET )
(3)
where Apiezo and t are the area covered by the sensor and its thickness respectively.
For MFC d 33 -type the voltage response could be expressed similarly and is compared
to the above equation.
It should be noted that S L and ST are the longitudinal and transversal strain of
MFC sensor. They have a relationship with the in-plane Lamb wave strain Sθ as:
S L = Sθ cos 2(θ )
(4)
ST = Sθ sin 2(θ )
where θ is the angle between the wave propagation direction and the lengthwise
direction of MFC sensor. In static analysis, the relationship curve between the voltage
responses and incidence angles is shown in Figure 1, in which it can be found that the
voltage response is maximum when the strain direction parallels the lengthwise
direction of MFC sensor, while it's minimum when the strain direction is
perpendicular to the lengthwise direction of MFC sensor.
Figure 1: Voltage responses with respect to different angles.
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Figure 1 show the normalized voltage response of MFC P2 type with respect to the
in-plane directions (solid line) and the normalized voltage response of the MFC P1
type (dashed line).
BLIND SOURCES SEPARATION
The methodology employed in this work demonstrate the usefulness of Blind

Sources Separation (BSS) by Independent Component Analysis (ICA) in separating
overlapping acoustic emission signals. Blind source separation (BSS) consists to
recover sources signal from several signals linearly overlapped. Independent
Component Analysis (ICA) is a computational method for separating a multivariate
signal into additive subcomponents supposing the mutual statistical independence of
the non-Gaussian source signals, which is a particular case of BSS (for more details,
the reader is referred to [15]).
Consider a thin plate structure equipped with two rectangular MFC sensors. The
proposed configuration consists of two MFC sensors attached to the upper surface of
the structure at two different angles as illustrated in Figure 2. The directional
dependency of the used sensors is considered. This directional dependency is required,
in order to get two orthogonal overlapping signals from the original sources. The two
acoustic sources are assumed to be statistically independent. Assume that sources
signal denoted by s1 and s2 are generated from two sources at two different places of
the host structrure and supposed to be linearly mixed throuth the sensors responses and
statisticaly independant. The sensors catch two overlapping signals denoted by x1 and
x2 . The voltage response of both MFC transducers are dependant form two
propagated strain. This could be expressed as:
x1 = a11s1 + a12 s2  x  a a12   s1 
or  1  =  11  s  (5)
x2 = a21s1 + a22 s2 x a
 2   21 a 22   2 
where a11 , a12 , a21 and a22 are depend on sensors properties and wave frequency.
These component could be defined as a frequency-dependent sensitivity of sensing
with respect to the impact angle of the acoustic emission sources.
The problem is to estimate two unknown original signals or components si ,
make use of only xi , in case that parameters aij are unknown. This problem could be
solved by ICA-based BSS, which can be done under several assumptions. The
identifiability of independent components requires that: 1- the components si are
statistically independent, and at most one of the them is Gaussian; 2- the number of
overlapping signals xi must be at least as large as the number of estimated
components si ; 3- the mixing matrix aij must be of full column rank for its inverse to
exist. In addition, before applying an ICA algorithm on the data, the data should be
preprocessed by centering and whitening. In this work, the FastICA algorithm
proposed by Hyvärinen and Oja will be employed [15]. This algorithm is based on a
fixed-point iteration scheme maximizing non-Gaussianity as a measure of statistical
independence. It can be also derived as an approximative Newton iteration.
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TRANSFORM MATRIX FROM ACOUSTIC EMISSION SOURCES TO
SENSORS SIGNAL
The final goal of our application is to identify and separate multi sources acoustic
emission signals through Blind Source Separation BSS taking advantage of directional
sensing of Macro Fiber Composite transducers. In the configuration as depicted in
Figure 2, we attempt to measured two orthogonal strains quantities, which mean two
independent measurement. As analysis in above sections, the overlapping signals is
able to separate in case that the transform matrix A is full rank. In this article,
considering the simplified case, shown as Figure 2, the signal received by MFC 1 is
x1 , and MFC 2 is x2 . x1 consists of s1 from Source 1, and s2 from Source 2. The
same, x2 consists of s1 and s2 , which comes from Source 1 and Source 2
respectively. Apparently, all entries in matrix A , a11 , a12 , a21 and a22 depend on the
angles α1 , α 2 , β1 and β 2 .
Figure 2: Piezoelectric sensors and multiple damage sources
For the normal isotropic piezoelectric sensors, such as PZT wafer and so on, the
signal received by sensor is independent on the angle of incidence of signal. In
contrast, for MFC transducer, which can be considered as anisotropy sensors, the
voltage response on MFC depend on the angle of incidence of signal, as Eq.(3).
Actually, the damage locations are are supposed to bi different, which result in the
different angle of incidence, therefore it's easy to obtain a full rank coefficient matrix.
Then, BSS based analysis will be available to obtain the separation signals.
NUMERICAL APPLICATION
In order to validate the proposed acoustic emission signals separation method, in

this section, some results combined numerical and analytical are provided. It's very
time-consuming to simulate the wave propagation using 3D finite element (FE) model
with a huge number of elements, so in this work acoustic emission signals are
simulated on a 2D plate, in which AE signal propagates as Lamb wave.
The FE model of the plate was modeled with ANSYS using plane182 element,
which is a 2D structural solid element defined by four nodes having two degrees of
freedom at each node, and available to the plane strain analysis. The model is
Aluminum plate with thickness 1mm and length 500 mm.
It should be noted that it is unable to simulate the Lamb wave with different angle
of incidence in 2D FE model, in which only the wave in one direction can be obtained.
Then, the overlapping signal can not be obtained with 2D FE model. However, the
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elastic wave superpose each other linearly during propagation, then the superposition
of elastic waves can be implemented as follows, i.e., we obtain two signals one by
one, and then add them together manually. This will be validated as follows.
Two types of excitations are used, i.e. broadband excitation and narrowband
excitation. For demonstrating the linear superposition during wave propagation under
different excitations and in different time, a combination of broadband and
narrowband excitations as one is applied. The excitation was applied to the mid-
thickness node of the plate's free end. The detection point was located at 100mm from
the end of plate.
VOLTAGE RESPONSES SIMULATION
For calculating the voltage responses, the location of two AE sources and two
sensors is as follows (Figure 2): the distance between source 1 and sensor is 0.454m,
source 2 and sensor 0.442m, respectively. In addition, the corresponding angle is
α1 = 37 o , α 2 = 100 o , β1 = 33 o , and β 2 = 80 o . Then, according to Eq.(3), (4) and (5),
the matrix aij can be obtained earily. Figure 3 are simulated to the voltage responses
of two sensors, which are overlapped signals under different incidence angles. Figure
4 are the single voltage response of sensor recovered from above two signals with BSS
methods.
Figure 3: Overlapping signal from MFC 1 (left) and MFC 2 (right).
Figure 4: Signal recovered from MFC 1 (left) and MFC 2 (right).
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CONCLUSIONS AND PERSPECTIVES
In this article, a Blind Source Separation method combined with MFC sensors
was proposed to study the multi-source damage detection based on Lamb wave theory.
Based on the study results, the following conclusions are derived:
1. For MFC sensors, the voltage responses is dependent on the incidence angles of
excitation signals. This characteristic can be used to construct a transfer matrix with
full rank from excitation matrices to responses matrices. And it is necessary for Blind
Source Separation method.
2. Numerical simulation indicates that for a MFC sensors array, it can separate more
than on acoustic emission sources, which is less than the number of MFC sensors.
3. To verify it is truly robust, further investigations in laboratory will be needed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are thankful for the financial support provided by the National Research
Fund (FNR) of Luxembourg funded through MAFICOMECH project (C08/MS/17)
and also in the context of the AM2c project (09/AM2c/29). The authors are greatly
appreciated this financial support.
REFERENCES
1. Raghavan, A., and C. Cesnik. 2007. “Review of guided-wave structural health monitoring;” Shock
and Vibration Digest, 39: 91-116.
2. De Groot, P., P. Wijnen, and R. Janssen. 1995. “Real-time frequency determination of acoustic
emission for different fracture mechanisms in carbon/epoxy composites,” Composites science and
technology, 55: 405-412.
3. Surgeon, M., and M. Wevers. 1999. “Modal analysis of acoustic emission signals from CFRP
laminates,” NDT & E International, 32: 311-322.
4. Gorman, M. R. 1991. “Plate wave acoustic emission,” J. Acoust. Soc. of Am., 90: 358-364.
5. Mizutani, Y., K. Nagashima, M. Takemoto, and K. Ono. 2000. “Fracture mechanism
characterization of cross-ply carbon-fiber composites using acoustic emission analysis,” NDT and E
Internationa, 33: 101-110.
6. Lee, C., J. Scholey, P. Wilcox, M. Wisnom, M. Friswell, and B. Drinkwater. 2006. “Guided wave
acoustic emission from fatigue crack growth in aluminium plate,” Adv. Matls. Research, 13: 23-28.
7. Hamstad, M. A. 2007. “Acoustic emission source location in a thick steel plate by lamb modes,”
Journal of Acoustic Emission, 25: 194-214.
8. Hill, R., E. Okoroafor, and A. Priston. 1996. “Acoustic emission wave propagation model and
issues of damage induction in composites,” Ultrasonics, 34: 321-325.
9. Viktorov, I. 1967. “Rayleigh and Lamb waves: physical theory and applications,” Plenum press,
New York.
10. Rose, J. and P. Nagy. 2000. “Ultrasonic waves in solid media,” J. Acoust. Soc. of Am., 107: 1807.
11. Giurgiutiu, V. 2003. “Lamb wave generation with piezoelectric wafer active sensors for
structural health monitoring,” Smart Structures and Materials. 111-122.
12. Matt, H. and F. Lanza di Scalea. 2007. “Macro-fiber composite piezoelectric rosettes for acoustic
source location in complex structures,” Smart materials and structures, 16: 1489-1499.
13. Azzouz, M., C. Mei, J. Bevan, and J. Ro, J. 2001. “Finite element modeling of MFC/AFC actuators
and performance of MFC,” J. Intell. Matls. Sys. & Struct., 12: 601-612.
14. Deraemaeker, A., H. Nasser, A. Benjeddou, and A. Preumont. 2009, “Mixing rules for the
piezoelectric properties of Macro Fiber Composites,” J. Intell. Matls. Sys. & Struct., 20: 1475-1518.
15. Hyvärinen, A. and E. Oja. 2000. “Independent component analysis: algorithms and applications,”
Neural networks, 13: 411-430.
1086
Finite Element Model Based State Estimation
in Mechanical and Structural Systems
E. M. HERNANDEZ
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a finite element model based state estimation algorithm to
reconstruct the complete dynamic response of an instrumented structure subject to
unmeasured disturbances in the form of realizations of random excitations. The
proposed algorithm operates on noise contaminated measurements of dynamic
response, a finite element model of the system and a spectral density description of the
random excitations and measurement noise. Although this problem typically falls
within the category of Kalman filtering; the main contribution of the paper is that it
develops an estimator with similar state error characteristics as the Kalman filter, but
with the advantage that it can be directly implemented as a modified version of the
finite element model of the system. The proposed observer results in a modified
version of the model of the system with added dampers and applied forces which are
linear combinations of the measurements applied at the sensor locations. The proposed
method is successfully illustrated in a 10 degree of freedom spring-mass-dashpot
structure with two noise contaminated measurements and subject to realizations of
random excitations at all degrees of freedom.
INTRODUCTION
In many structural health monitoring applications it is necessary to estimate

unmeasured (or immeasurable) quantities related to structural response based on noise
contaminated measurements and given incomplete characterization of the excitation.
Traditionally, in structural engineering, static data interpolation schemes have been
used to estimate unmeasured quantities [1]. These methods operate without the need to
perform simulations of the dynamic response of the system and are most effective in
cases where the dynamic response is governed by only a few modes. In cases of more
complex dynamic response, interpolation methods typically fail to provide accurate
estimation.
_____________
Eric M. Hernandez College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences University of Vermont,
301 Votey Hall 33 Colchester Ave., Burlington, Vermont 05405, U.S.A..
1087
A different family of methods that have had limited application in structural
dynamics are the so called model-based filtering or observer methods [3, 4, 5]. In
observer methods one combines a model of the system and measured data using a
dynamic feedback loop in order to estimate the complete state of the system. The main
component of the feedback loop is the output feedback gain, that is, the matrix that
weights the measured data in relation to the open loop model predictions. Among the
most celebrated of these methods is the Kalman filter [6, 7].
The Kalman filter operates by using a feedback gain matrix that is optimal in the
sense of balancing the effect of noise in the measurements and the effect of
unmeasured disturbances, in order to minimize the trace of the state error covariance
matrix. In the case of structural dynamics and vibration monitoring, the disturbances
correspond to unmeasured excitations, and the measurements typically consist of
accelerations or strain time histories at discrete locations within the structure.
The original derivation is given for linear systems in which measurement noise
and disturbances are independent realizations Gaussian random processes and for
which the model is known with accuracy. In real world application these assumptions
are seldom fully satisfied, however experience in a variety of fields has shown that the
KF can also operate robustly in non ideal conditions. In addition to the issues that
arise due to non-ideal conditions, implementation of the KF in structural dynamics and
vibration monitoring can be computationally expensive for large structures modelled
as finite element models. This is mainly due to the required matrix computations
involved in solving the associated matrix exponentials, Riccati equations and
implementation of state recurrence equations.
Theoretical issues have also been raised by some authors related to the consistency
of first order observers when applied to second order symmetric systems; especially
loss of symmetry, definiteness and the fact that first order observers might yield an
estimate of the state that does not correspond to the physical state sought. This last
issue regarding consistency was clearly demonstrated in [8]. Implementation and
theoretical issues mentioned above have prompted the development of “natural
second-order observers” and “second order state estimators” for finite and infinite
dimensional second order systems [8, 9, 10].
The main contribution of this paper is the development of a methodology to
implement state estimation similar to the Kalman filter but within the context of finite
element models. That is, we derive a natural second order state estimator that can be
realized as a finite element model, in contrast to an abstract state-space model. This
has several advantages: First, it allows the analyst to physically understand the process
of optimal estimation in the context of structural dynamics, usually hidden behind the
abstract formulae in state-space. Second it preserves the algebraic structure of second
order systems allowing for efficient implementation within finite element solvers, and
finally it solves (in the simplest manner) the consistency problem regarding velocity
estimates described in [8].
PRELIMINARIES
In this paper we shall restrict our attention to finite n-dimensional controllable and
observable linear structural systems satisfying Newton’s equation of motion with
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velocity proportional viscous damping. These systems can be described by the
following matrix ordinary differential equation
Mq&&(t ) + C D q& (t ) + Kq(t ) = b2 f (t ) (1)
where q(t ) ∈ R n x1 is the displacement vector at time t , M = M T ≥ 0 is the mass

matrix, CD = CDT ≥ 0 is the damping matrix, and K = K T ≥ 0 is the stiffness matrix.
The forcing function vector is f (t ) ∈ R n x1 and b2 ∈ R n x n is the force distribution
matrix, which indicates the degrees of freedom on which the forcing function is
applied. In addition, if m measurements of the system’s response are available, the
measurement equation is given by
y (t ) = Cx(t ) + v(t ) (2)
where x T = [q T q& T ] , C ∈ R m x 2 n is the measurement matrix and v(t ) ∈ R m x1 is the

measurement noise (a realization of a zero mean white Gaussian random process with
covariance R . Throughout the paper, the right hand side of eq.1 is a realization of a
zero mean white Gaussian random process with covariance Q .
The Kalman-Bucy Filter – Basic Equations
In this section the basic equations for the Kalman-Bucy filter (KBF) algorithm are
presented. As mentioned previously, the KF is a recursive estimation algorithm that is
implemented in discrete time; however, for the purposes of this paper we shall present
the continuous time representation [11]. This form is more mathematically convenient
for the derivations to follow. The KBF state estimate xˆ (t ) is given by
x&ˆ (t ) = Axˆ (t ) + K (t )( y (t ) − Cxˆ (t ) ) (3)
where K (t ) ∈ R 2 n x m (not to be confused with the stiffness matrix) is the optimal output
feedback gain matrix and it is given by
K (t ) = P(t )C T R −1 (4)
where R = R T > 0 ∈ R m x m is the measurement noise covariance matrix, C is the

measurement matrix and P(t ) = PT (t ) ∈ R 2 n x 2 n is the state error covariance matrix
given by the solution of the following Ricatti equation
P& (t ) = AP(t ) + P(t ) AT + BQBT − P(t )C T R −1CP(t ) (5)
where Q = Q T ≥ 0 is the disturbance (unmeasured excitation) covariance matrix. For

constant Q and R, the state error covariance matrix converges to a steady state value
given by the solution of eq.5 with the left side equal to zero. It can be shown that the
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feedback gain matrix given by eq.4 is optimal in the sense that it minimizes the trace
of the state error covariance matrix given by eq.5 [11].
Realizability of Observers
In this section the necessary conditions in order to make an observer realizable as a

second order symmetric model are presented. We begin by first considering the state
equation for any observer in first order form which can be written as
x&ˆ (t ) = Axˆ (t ) + G ( y (t ) − Cxˆ (t ) ) (6)
Where G is an arbitrary feedback gain. Given, the internal structure of the

matrices A and C in structural dynamics, the generic observer equation can be written
in partitioned form for displacement measurements as
q&ˆ   − G1c 2 I  qˆ   G1 

 &ˆ  =   + y (t ) (7)
q&  − M K − G2 c 2
−1
− M C D  q&ˆ  G2 
−1
and for velocity measurements as
q&ˆ   0 I − G1c 2  qˆ   G1 

 &ˆ  =   + y (t ) (8)
q&  − M K
−1
− M −1C D − G2 c2  q&ˆ  G2 
The matrix c2 is a measurement matrix where every row has a one at the column
corresponding to the degree of freedom measured and zero elsewhere. From the
previous equations it is evident that for an arbitrary choice of feedback gain G the
derivative of the displacement estimate is not equal to the estimate of the velocity.
This result was first shown in [1]. Observers in which the estimate of velocity is
consistent with the derivative of the displacement estimate are called natural
observers. In this paper we are interested in a subset of natural observers, i.e. those that
can be physically realized as a second order model. In order to make an observer
realizable as a linear symmetric finite element model the following conditions must be
satisfied by the feedback gain matrix
G1 = 0 (9)
and
MG2c2 = c2T G2T M (10)
Examining eq.4 for displacement and velocity measurements we can see that the
KBF feedback gain matrix can be partitioned as
 P cT   P cT 
K dis =  11 2T  R −1 K vel =  12 2T  R −1 (11)
 P21c2   P22 c2 
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As can be seen, if R is full rank (which is the case in structural dynamics
applications), the Kalman-Bucy filter gain will not satisfy the realizability
requirements and thus it cannot be implemented as a linear finite element model, that
is, there is no second order symmetric structural model that can reproduce the
Kalman-Bucy filter estimates. Note that for the systems under consideration P and its
square partitions are always full rank. In the following section we derive the necessary
conditions to make an observer realizable in symmetric second order form and select
the feedback matrix in order to minimize the same function as the KBF, namely the
trace of the state error covariance.
PROPOSED OBSERVER
Under the assumption of velocity measurements (which can be readily obtained

from acceleration measurements), we propose the following form for the lower
partition of the observer feedback gain
G2 = M −1c2T Ec2 (12)
where E is a matrix free to be selected in order to minimize the state error covariance.
With the choice of G2 , the estimation equation can be written as
Mq&ˆ&(t ) + (CD + c2T Ec2 ) qˆ& (t ) + Kqˆ (t ) = c2T E y(t ) (13)
As can be seen from eq.13, the proposed observer is a modified version of the
model of the system with added dampers and excited by forces which are linear
combinations of the measurements and proportional to the added dampers.
Consequently the state error is given by
Me&&(t ) + (C D + c2T Ec2 )e&(t ) + Ke(t ) = b2 f (t ) − c2T E v(t ) (14)
Where E is still free to be selected. In similar to the Kalman filter, the matrix E
will be selected on the basis of minimizing the covariance of the state error. In order to
derive an expression for the state error covariance consider taking Fourier transforms
of both sides of eq.14
(− Mω + (C
2
D
+ c2T Ec2 )iω + K )e(ω ) = b2 f (ω ) − c2T Ev(ω ) (15)
Defining
G (ω ) = − Mω 2 + C D iω + K (16)
and
H o (ω ) = (G (ω ) + c2T Ec 2 iω )
−1
(17)
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we obtain the expression for the state error estimate in the frequency domain e(ω ) as
e(ω ) = H o (ω )(b2 f (ω ) − c2T Ev(ω) ) (18)
The spectral density of the state error is given by
Φ ee (ω ) = H o (ω )b2 Φ ff (ω ) b2T H o* (ω ) + H o (ω )c2T E Φ vv (ω ) Ec2 H o* (ω ) (19)
This last equation assumes that the noise and excitation are uncorrelated and it
takes advantage of the symmetry of E . Finally, the covariance matrix of the state error
is given by
+∞
P = ∫ Φ ee dω (21)
−∞
The objective is to select the matrix E in order to minimize the trace of P . Notice
that this is the same objective function that is used in the KBF, i.e. minimization of the
state error covariance. The main difference is that in our case the covariance matrix is
computed from a Fourier domain analysis as opposed to a time domain analysis. It
must be stated that the KBF is optimal, therefore the proposed estimator cannot
achieve the KBF minimum (nor are we claiming so), but it will achieve the minimum
consistent with the predefined structure of the feedback gain.
Selection of E
As explained in the previous section the optimal selection of E depends on the

minimization of the integral in eq.21. This minimization can be computationally
intensive if carried out numerically and a close form solution is not feasible even for
simple cases. However, one possibility to simplify the problem is to fix the relative
ratio of the elements of E and reduce the problem to a scalar optimization. In this case
the matrix E becomes
E = β Eo (22)
where Eo is a unitary matrix that reflects the relative values of the dampers and
corrective forces and is β the optimization variable. Examining the topology of P as
a function of β in the context of simulations, we have found that a value that achieves
almost optimal performance under a wide range of noise-to-disturbance ratios is
selecting β such that the resulting modified system achieves critical damping in the
mode with highest response participation, we shall denote this choice as β ∗ . In the
next section the effectiveness of this selection is examined in the context of
simulations.
1092
NUMERICAL ILLUSTRATION
In this section we illustrate the behaviour of the proposed model based estimator in
a close coupled mass-spring-dashpot system with 10 degrees of freedom. The mass is
uniformly distributed in each degree of freedom and each spring and dashpot is of
uniform constant stiffness and damping respectively.
The natural undamped vibration frequency of the system is 2 Hz. and the damping
ratio for the first mode is 1%. The system starts from rest and it’s grounded at one end
by one spring and a damper. The Kalman filter will be implemented and the results
will be compared with the proposed model based observer given in eq.13.
In this case all the operating assumptions of the KBF will be satisfied and the
objective is to show that the proposed observer eq.19 can provide estimates which are
close in accuracy in comparison with those provided by the KBF. For this case, the
disturbances are applied at every mass and are realizations of independent white
Gaussian random processes with unit variance and zero mean. Vibration response is
measured at the second and seventh mass (measured from the grounded end).
Measurement noise has a mean of zero and a variance of 10-3, this corresponds to a
mean signal-to-noise ratio of 8 and 25 for each measurement respectively. The
objective is to reconstruct the time history of the force in each spring and since the
stiffness in each spring is constant, estimation of the relative displacement is
equivalent to the estimation of the desired spring force
In order to compare the estimation quality of both estimators, results from 1,000
random simulations were compared. The mean and standard deviation of the
estimation error for the maximum force in all the springs was computed for both the
KBF and the proposed estimator by optimization of eq.25 using a single variable
optimization and the proposed estimator based on the critical damping criteria
( β selected to produce critical damping in fundamental mode).
Fig. 1 shows the histogram of results for each method. As be seen, the proposed
MBE possesses an estimation error which is within less than 1% of the KF estimation
error and for all practical purposes can be taken as equivalent. Moreover, there is
practically no difference between using the feedback matrix E based on optimization
of eq.21 and the feedback matrix E based on achieving critical damping in the
fundamental mode. This result is important because it shows that the proposed
observer can be implemented in a practical manner in comparison with the KF but
providing similar results in terms of accuracy. These results must also be interpreted
with caution since the selection criteria based on critical damping may not work in
cases with very low signal-to-noise ratio, in those cases direct minimization of eq.21 is
necessary.
CONCLUSIONS
The paper proposes a second order natural estimator that is also realizable as a
modified finite element model of the system. The proposed observer can be
implemented in a direct manner (without the need for explicit feedback) in any model
by adding dashpots at the measurement locations and corrective forces collocated with
the dashpots which are proportional to the damping constant of the dashpot and the
velocity measurements.
1093
Figure 1. Histogram of mean estimation error of maximum spring forces, with associated mean and
variance. (a) Kalman Filter (b) Proposed model based estimator, based on optimization of eq.25 (c)
Proposed model based estimator based on using critical damping criteria to select E.
The selection of the optimal damping constants can be done by direct

minimization of the state error covariance equation (eq.21) or in cases with relatively
high signal to noise ratio it can simply be taken as the necessary value to produce
critical damping in the mode with highest response participation. It was illustrated
through random simulations that under ideal conditions the estimation accuracy of the
proposed observer is for all practical purposes equivalent to that of the KF.
REFERENCES
1. Limongelli, M.P. (2003). “Optimal location of sensors for reconstruction of seismic responses
through spline function interpolation”. Earthquake Engineering and Structural dynamics 32(1),
1055-1074.
2. Waller H. and Schmidt R. (1990). “The application of state estimation of state observers in
structural dynamics”. Mech. Syst. and Signal Proc. 4(3), 195-213.
3. Hernandez E. and Bernal D. (2008). “State estimation in structural systems with model
uncertainties”. ASCE Journal of Engineering Mechanics 134(3), 252-257
4. Oshman Y., Inman, D.J. and Laub, A.J. (1989). “Square-root state estimation for second-order large
space structures models”. AIAA Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics 12, 698-708.
5. Kalman R.E. (1960). “A new approach to linear filtering and prediction problem.” Trans. ASME,
Jour. of Basic Engr. 82D, 35-45.
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Jour. of Basic Engr. 83D, 95-108.
7. Balas, M.J. 1999. “Do all linear flexible structures have convergent second-order observers”. AIAA
Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics, 22(6), 905-908.
8. Demetriou M.A. (2004). “Natural second-order observers for second-order distributed parameter
systems”. Systems and Control Letters, 51, 225-234.
9. Hashemipour, H.R. and Laub, A.J. (1988). “Kalman filtering for second order models”. AIAA
Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics, 11, 181-186.
10. Joshi, S. M. (1989). “Design of second order state estimators”. AIAA Journal of Guidance Control
and Dynamics 14(2), 466-468.
11. Simon, D. (2006). Optimal State Estimation. John Wiley and Sons, New York.
1094
Hybrid Immune Algorithm for Structural
Health Monitoring Using Acceleration Data
R. LI and A. MITA
ABSTRACT
In order to detect and identify damage of civil engineering structures precisely and
efficiently, an approach for damage detection by employing hybrid immune algorithm
combined with Negative Selection (NS) and Clonal Selection Algorithm (CSA) is
proposed. NS and CSA play different roles in this process. The first step is to create a
detector set by using normal acceleration data as input. The second step is to use
negative selection algorithm to detect and localize the damage of the structure. At last,
CSA will quantify the damage severity of the structure. The experimental results of an
8-story shear frame structure indicated that this hybrid immune algorithm can
efficiently and precisely detect, localize and quantify damage of civil engineering
structures with different damage location, extent and measurement noise.
1. INTRODUCTION
This research is novel in terms of applying hybrid immune algorithm for structural
damage detection, localization and quantification in civil engineering structures.
One of the first research applying artificial immune systems to fault or anomaly
detection was led by Dasgupta and Forrest in 1995. In this research, tool breakage
detection in milling operations was successfully conducted from dynamic variation of
the cutting force signals. Dasgupta, KrishnaKumar, Wong and Berry proposed in 2004
an aircraft fault detection inserted in an intelligent flight control based on a real-valued
negative selection algorithm for detection of control surface area loss. This algorithm
tried to cover as efficiently as possible the nonself space. However, the localization
problem was not tackled. Indeed, aircrafts were tested for engine failure, wing failure
or full tail failure. In 2008, Strackeljan and Leiviska developed a fault detection
method for rolling bearings by using an artificial immune network called AbNet.
2. PROPOSED APPROACH
A hybrid immune algorithm combined with Negative Selection and Clonal Selection
Algorithm is proposed. NS and CSA play different roles in this process. The
__________________________
R.Li, Doctoral student, Mita Lab, Department of Science & Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1
Hiyoshi Kouhoku-ku, Yokohamashi, Kanagawa, Japan 223-8522
A.Mita, Professor, Mita Lab, Department of System Design Engineering, Keio University, 3-14-1
Hiyoshi Kouhoku-ku, Yokohamashi, Kanagawa, Japan 223-8522
1095
first step is to employ NS to create the detector set with normal acceleration as input.
The second step is that new acceleration data will be put into NS to test if they can
match with any detector from the detector set. The third step, CSA can be added by
using detectors as nonself data in order to create suitable B-cells and memory cells for
damage quantification. Flow chart of the hybrid process shown in figure 1.
Normal Data
Healthy
NS New data NS AICSA Quantification
Damaged Localization
Detector set
Figure 1. Flow chart of hybrid process
2.1. Greedy Algorithm
In this study, the greedy algorithm as negative selection algorithm was chosen.
The greedy algorithm (D'haeseleer et al., 1996) permits to generate a complete
repertoire of detectors, so it guarantees the maximum possible coverage of nonself
strings. The flow chart of this algorithm is presented in figure 2.
Set of self-strings
Generation of No
Match Detector Set
detectors
Yes
Deletion
Figure 2. Negative selective detector generating algorithm
The algorithm proceeds in two consecutive steps.

The first step permits to generate the array DS based on the self set S. The second
step consists in the creation of another array, Dr.
2.2 Adaptive Immune Clonal Selection Algorithm (AICSA)
Improved from CSA, a new algorithm, AICSA is used to identify the damage of
structure. In AICSA, we design three strategies such as secondary response, adaptive
mutation regulation and vaccination operator to improve the CSA’s convergence
speed and global optimum searching ability. AICSA can be used to perform the 2nd
and 3rd level of SHM, which is to localize and quantify the damage (R.Li, A.Mita
2011). For the procedures of AICSA methodology, please refer to reference [1].
3. APPLICATION TO BUILDING STRUCTURE
In this research, an 8-story shear frame structures shown in figure 3, are

considered as the object structures. The structural and modal parameters of this
structure are given in table 1.
1096
The dynamic equation for this structure is (Mita, 2003):
(1)
where M, C, K are respectively the mass matrix, damping matrix and stiffness
matrix. f(t) is the force vector, linked to ground acceleration. are respectively
relative acceleration, velocity and displacement response.
Table 1. Structural parameters and Modal parameters

DOF 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Structural Mass (kg) 1e6 7.06 3.04 2.26 2.48 1.91 1.93 1.93 2.37
parameters Stiffness (N/m) 1e9 4.75 3.13 2.59 2.21 1.87 1.47 1.46 1.26
Modal Natural Fre (Hz) 1.01 2.52 3.93 5.06 6.39 7.41 8.42 9.40
parameters Damping ratio 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005
m8
k8, c8
m7
k7, c7
m6
k6, c6
m5
k5, c5
m4
k4, c4
m3
k3, c3
m2
k2, c2
m1
k1, c1
Figure 3. Shear frame structures
The sample frequency is 100 Hz and tests take into account 1500 time steps.
Table 2. Differences of first mode normalized Table 3. Differences of normalized modal

modal vectors vectors for the structure 8th story damaged
After After
Mass Before Mass 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
damage damage
relation damage relation mode mode mode mode
(5th story) (8th story)
m1 0.22 0.15 0.20 m1 -0.22 0.23 -0.3 -0.81
m2 0.20 0.13 0.17 m2 -0.14 -0.01 0.79 -3.68
m3 0.18 0.11 0.15 m3 -0.02 -0.25 1.29 -1.9
m4 0.14 0.10 0.13 m4 0.09 -0.39 0.83 2.29
m5 0.11 0.31 0.11 m5 0.19 -0.38 -0.24 3.58
m6 0.08 0.08 0.10 m6 0.26 -0.21 -1.14 0.35
m7 0.05 0.07 0.08 m7 0.28 0.04 -1.19 -3.32
m8 0.02 0.05 0.06 m8 0.59 1.32 2.48 4.21
1097
Damage is simulated by 70% of stiffness reduction on specified story of the
structures from 1300th time step.
In this research, differences of relative accelerations between consecutive stories
are used as input. Indeed, differences of normalized modal shapes values relative to
the first mode of the stimulated structures have been computed before and after
damage occurrence as presented in table 2. The representation of these modal vectors
can be viewed in figure 4.
According to the location of the damage, the biggest value of the modal vector's
components is always the value relative to the story's mass where the damage occurred
except for the case of the structure with the 8th story damaged. Thus, differences of
relative acceleration data can be interesting sensitive data for localizing the damage in
the structure except for the case of the 8th story damaged.
Each difference of relative accelerations is defined as di with:
di = acceleration of ith story – acceleration of (i-1)th story
In the case of the structure with 8th story damaged, other modes have to be
considered. The values for several other modes are presented in table 3 and
represented in figure 5.
malized Modal Vector Relative Normalized Modal Vector Relative Normalized Modal Vector Relative Normalized Modal Vector
hout Damage for 2nd Story Damaged for 5th Story Damaged for 8th Story Damaged
8 8 8
7 7 7
6 6 6
5 5 5
Mass
Mass
Mass
4 4 4
3 3 3
2 2 2
1 1 1
0 0 0
0.2 0.3 0.4 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
e Displacement Relative Displacement Relative Displacement Relative Displacement
Figure 4. Relative normalized modal vector of 1st mode
Thus, by applying a low-pass filter to the acceleration response of the 8th story,
damage detection can be improved by removing the influence of the first mode. In this
research, a classical method of windowed linear-phase FIR digital filter design of
order 8 is used for each localization test involving the difference of relative
accelerations between 7th story and 8th story.
1098
The basic idea in damage quantification is to compare the time dependent response
of the system and a parameterized model by a norm or some performance criterion
giving a measure to how well the model response fits the system response. Hence, the
objective is to find a set of parameters that minimize the prediction error between
system output , i.e., the measured data, and model output at each time-step
t. Therefore, our research focus is to minimize the predefined error norm of the
outputs, e.g., the following mean square error function.
(2)
where represents the Euclidean norm of vectors. Formally, the optimization

problem requires finding a vector , so that a certain quality criterion is satisfied,
namely that the error norm is minimized. The function is commonly called
a fitness function or objective function. Typically an objective function is used which
reflects the goodness of solution. Hereby, the damage localization and quantification
problem is thus treated as a linearly constrained multi-dimensional optimization
problem, namely minimize
(3)
where is the
objective space , S is the n-dimensional feasible search space, and
denote the upper bounds and the lower bounds of the n parameters respectively.
Relative Normalized Modal Vector Relative Normalized Modal Vector Relative Normalized Modal Vector Relative Normalized Modal Vector
(2nd mode) (3rd mode) (4th mode) (5th mode)
8 8 8 8
7 7 7 7
6 6 6 6
5 5 5 5
Mass
Mass
Mass
Mass
4 4 4 4
3 3 3 3
2 2 2 2
1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0
-0.5 0 0.5 1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 -2 0 2 4 -5 0 5
Relative Displacement Relative Displacement Relative Displacement Relative Displacement
Figure 5. Relative normalized vector for different modes of the structure for 8th story damaged
1099
4. EXPERIMENT RESULTS
4.1 Damage Detection and Localization Using NS
Raw acceleration response of the structure's top roof was used as input of the
negative selection algorithm. Several tests were lead according to the values of the size
of the window (Win_size), the number of encoding bites (n), the size of the self set
and the level of the r-contiguous bites matching rule. Several values for the r-
contiguous matching rule were used. Moreover, some noise (1%,5% and 10%) was
added to the acceleration response. The most pertinent results are presented below in
tables 4. Noise addition is not so problematic for detection. Indeed, high rates can also
be reached probably due to the fact that more the behaviour is irregular, more the
negative selection algorithm is efficient. Moreover, non perfect detection rates can be
explained by the presence of holes which are quite important due to the high number
of self strings. Finally, the detector set is well distributed on the nonself space because,
at least, more than 87% of the detectors are activated during the damage detection
process.
Table 4. Damage detection results of 5th story (r=8) by using NS algorithm and raw acceleration data
Parameters Detection rate Activated Size of Size of Size of

[%] detectors [%] detset selfset nonself set
Win-size=5, n=6 21,8 56,6 45 297 197
Win-size=10, n=6 29,8 73,3 41 292 192
Win-size=5, n=7 27 72,5 47 297 197
Win-size=10, n=7 41,8 90,5 43 292 192
Win-size=12, n=8 87,9 100 32 290 190
Win-size=16, n=8 93,5 100 30 286 186
Win-size=8, n=9 81,7 100 23 294 194
Win-size=12, n=9 92,1 100 24 290 190
Win-size=16, n=9 99,5 100 25 286 186
4.2 Damage Quantification Using AICSA
The full output information is used. The simulated output data of noise-free, and
with 1% noise, 5% noise, 10% noise are considered. Cases of damage include damage
at 5th and 8th story respectively.
For damage quantification, the stiffness of the structure will only decrease from
the undamaged structure to the damaged one. Therefore, the upper bound of the
stiffness of the candidate damaged structure can be set as the stiffness of the
undamaged structure. The lower bound can be set as 10% of the stiffness of the
healthy structure.
In numerical simulation, AICSA algorithm initial parameters are set as follows:
1) The code length of each parameter is 30.
2) The number of population m=60.
3) The maximum evolutionary generation is 1500,
4) The expected clone scale .
1100
The undamaged structure is firstly identified by AICSA given the full output
information.
Firstly, the 5th story damaged cases are studied. Both noise-free and noise-polluted
output information are used. The results of this case with 70% stiffness reduction at
the fifth story are illustrated in Table 5 and Figure 6.
The stiffness reduction rate is defined as where is the true value of
stiffness with no damage.
Table 5. Damage Identification for 5th story Table 6. Damage Identification for 8th story
damaged damaged
Nois True Calculated Value Nois True Calculated Value
e Value e Value
no 1% 5% 10% no 1% 5% 10%
k1 4.750 4.75 4.74 4.74 4.74 k1 4.750 4.75 4.75 4.74 4.73
k2 3.130 3.13
0 3.06
9 3.02
2 2.98
0 k2 3.130 3.13
0 3.06
4 3.02
0 2.99
8
k3 2.590 2.59
0 2.59
9 2.58
4 2.57
9 k3 2.590 2.59
0 2.59
8 2.58
6 2.56
8
k4 2.210 2.21
0 2.21
8 2.20
4 2.19
3 k4 2.210 2.21
0 2.20
2 2.21
4 2.10
6
k5 0.561 0.56
0 0.55
3 0.55
5 0.56
9 k5 1.870 1.87
0 1.86
3 1.86
1 1.88
9
k6 1.470 1.47
1 1.46
8 1.45
3 1.44
6 k6 1.470 1.47
0 1.46
8 1.45
0 1.43
6
k7 1.460 1.46
0 1.45
0 1.46
8 1.43
6 k7 1.460 1.46
0 1.45
5 1.44
4 1.43
2
k8 1.260 1.26
0 1.25
2 1.24
9 1.22
2 k8 0.378 0.37
0 0.38
1 0.36
6 0.36
6
Error 0 0.53
1 1.42
7 0.89
9 Error 0
8 0.79
1 2.11
9 4.23
2
5% 6% 1% 4% 6% 3%
For noise level 1%, 5% and 10%, the error for the 5th story is 0.535%, 1.426% and
0.891%, for the obvious difference of estimated value of damage severity between the
5th story and other stories, the damage can be identified. It can be concluded that
although there is influence on the estimates by noise presence and different damage
severities, the results is acceptable.
The results of the case as 8th story damaged are shown at Table 6 and Figure 7.
1
True Value
No Noise
0.9 1% Noise
5% Noise
10% Noise
0.8
0.7
0.6
Severity
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Floor Number
Figure 6. Identification for damage at 5th story
1101
1
True Value
No Noise
0.9 1% Noise
5% Noise
10% Noise
0.8
0.7
0.6
Severity
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Floor Number
Figure 7. Identification for damage at 8th story
Although the error for this case is 0.794%, 2.116% and 4.233% which have an
obviously increase compare with that of 5th floor, the result is acceptable for the
damage can also be easily identified.
5. CONCLUSION
A hybrid strategy of artificial immune system for damage detection, localization

and quantification is presented. The first stage for damage detection and localization
by employing NS, acceptable results can be obtained by choosing appropriate
parameters. At the second stage, AICSA as an improved CSA is used to quantify the
damage. Numerical simulation results shown that this hybrid immune algorithm can
efficiently and precisely detect, localize and quantify damage of civil engineering
structures respect to different damage location, extent and measurement noise.
REFERENCES
1. R.Li and A.Mita. 2011. Structural damage identification using adaptive immune clonal selection
algorithm and acceleration data. The International Society for Optical Engineering.
2. Ivanciuc, O. 2008. Weka Machine Learning for Predicting the Phospholipidosis Inducing Potential.
Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry 8, no. 18: 1691–1709.
3. Ji, Z., and D. Dasgupta. 2007. Revisiting negative selection algorithms. Evolutionary Computation
15, no. 2: 223–251.
4. Luo, W., Z. Zhang, and X. Wang. 2006. A heuristic detector generation algorithm for negative
selection algorithm with hamming distance partial matching rule. 4163: 229.
5. Mita, A. 2003. Structural dynamics for health monitoring. SANKEISHA, Nagoya. 114-126
6. Peeters, B. 2000. System identification and damage detection in civil engineering. Leuven:
Katholeike Universiteit Leuven: 256.
1102
Simulation Method of Selection of Diagnostic
Parameters in the Process of Monitoring the
Rail Vehicle’s Conditions
A. CHUDZIKIEWICZ and B. SOWINSKI
ABSTRACT
The development of actions aiming towards the improvement of the travel comfort
and safety, parallel to an increase of velocity in the passenger rail transport has
become one of the reasons for intensification of research in the field of rail diagnostic
systems. The mentioned systems are to be used in the process of monitoring the
condition of individual elements of the rail infrastructure. One of these elements is the
rail fleet.
It was assumed that the research will focus on the state of the I and II degree of
springing flexible systems in objects such as carriages or electric traction sets;
additionally, the process of monitoring should allow for current quantitative evaluation
of these systems. Furthermore, it was also assumed that the monitoring system should
be simple and inexpensive and, for this reason, based on a small number of sensors
built into selected parts of the vehicle. The subsequent assumption was to adopt
acceleration as a signal registered in the process of monitoring and, consequently, used
in the phase of the flexible systems’ condition assessment. The adoption of such
assessment resulted from the existing requirements, concerning the tests through
multi-mass discrete system, where masses are joined by non-mass flexible connectors.
In general, the model of this system in non-linear. As the next step, the simulation plan
was elaborated, assuming the ride on tracks with different states of maintenance and
with different constant speeds. The simulation rides were carried out for an intact
vehicle and for cases with damaged elements of the flexible system. The acceleration
signals were registered in selected parts of the vehicle for every simulation ride. By
which a rail vehicle is admitted to traffic, where acceleration is the fundamental signal
measured and analyzed. In order to determine the number and placement of the
sensors, and to indicate the diagnostic parameters (statistical measures) necessary in
the process of evaluating the state of flexible systems, the method of computer
simulation on a model of the rail vehicle – track system was used. The model of this
system considers the following components: track, its properties and geometry, area of
contact with real profiles of the wheels and track, as well as the vehicle seen as a doing
so, a set of signals was obtained, which characterized an intact vehicle, later adopted
_____________
Andrzej Chudzikiewicz, Bogdan Sowinski, Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of
Transport, 75 Koszykowa, Warsaw, 00-662 Poland
1103
as a model, and a damaged vehicle. The next phase of the carried research was the
analysis of the registered signals, aimed at indicating “optimum” spots for the
placement of the sensors and at adopting the best diagnostic parameters, based on
registered accelerations.
The aim of this paper is to present the research, which allow for verification of the
fundamental assumptions for the future monitoring system of the rail vehicle’s
conditions.
INTRODUCTION
Monitoring of railway vehicles is the subject of considerable research nowadays.

The reason is the tendency to improve the ride safety and comfort and also the
development of control techniques of tilting wagons. There are also economic reasons
for railway vehicle monitoring. Sufficiently early detection of damage can reduce the
cost of repair and maintenance of the rolling stock. Systematic analysis of railway
vehicle monitoring results enables the anticipation of technical condition of the vehicle
in the future, and thus allows an estimation of time a reliable vehicle operation. That
also may be helpful in determining the cause of the vehicle damage.
The development of monitoring tools is connected both with hardware and with
analysis methods.
Basing on many researches, it may be stated that the current state of monitoring
and functioning of diagnostic systems, which support the Polish railways, is distant
from an average level existing in this area in the Western European railways (SNCF,
DB, SJ and others). The increasing velocities of rail journey, reaching up to 300 – 350
km/h in the Western conditions and up to 250 km/h in Poland, are directly responsible
for considerable human casualties resulting from rail catastrophes. Moreover, the
processes influencing the wear and fatigue of the elements and rail units, which so far
have not always been taken into account in analyses, had started to be considered as
a significant source of phenomena affecting the construction’s lifespan, its dynamic
behaviour, the comfort of journey and, finally, the safety of travelling. The above
mentioned components had provoked the appearance of works and studies, which
concerned the problems of diagnosing the elements or whole railway units [1] as well
as works aiming at the development of diagnostic methods for units as complex as the
rail vehicle [2]
Basic studies carried for research purposes in the past years aimed at a precise
identification of phenomena occurring in the rail vehicle – track system. They allowed
for a detailed recognition of this system and for opening the possibilities towards the
construction of systems to monitor the condition of the vehicle and the track.
From point of view of hardware we can observe the application for monitoring of
both vehicles and rails sophisticated ultrasonic, electromagnetic, acoustic sensors, and
heat detectors. This process is accompanied by the rapid development of techniques
for interpreting the results of the measurements.
Extensive survey of theories of railway vehicles monitoring is contain in [3].
Therein mentioned techniques of Fault Detection and Identification are mainly
dedicated to the phenomena when the outputs and inputs to the considered system are
known. In that case fault detection is possible using the model-based fault detection
method [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] - a Kalman filter-based method.
The opposite problem when only outputs are known is considered in papers
1104
[9], [10], [11]. In that case signal-based methods can be applied. Registered signal, i.e.
the response to the excitation of the system, is analysed in time domain or frequency
domain. The treatment of the signal is made by the use of band-pass filters, spectral
analysis and several stochastic characteristics as e.g. standard deviation, correlation
coefficient, root mean square etc.
Our aim is to present in this paper the assumptions of monitoring system which is
developed in Poland and is dedicated to problems of suspension faults detection. This
problem seems especially difficult when it is assumed that measurements are
performed by means of standard equipment and standard procedures on real objects.
The motivation for such a work was the recommendations included in Technical
Specification for Interoperability (TSI). That is to answer for two questions:
Is it possible to select a set of statistical parameters allowing detection of defects in
suspension system?
Is it possible to realize that task by standard methods? For example methods of
measurements suggested by UIC code 518 or EN14363.
If the answers are positive it allows us to build a monitoring system simple, cheap
and reliable in operation. This system is dedicated to railways vehicles not equipped in
systems of active controlling of suspension and because that theoretical background of
the system is a combination of model based approach and vibration based approach to
the problems of fault detection and identification. Also the fact that constructing the
huge data base containing detailed track geometry information can be troublesome and
such a base requires continuous updating contributed to the fact that it was decided not
to track continuously inputs to the railway vehicle system what is necessary in
mentioned above methods.
The general idea assumed by us in the studies is that we have three levels of
warnings.
During processing the measured signal in the first level we conclude that
something is wrong with the vehicle if the limit values in the accordance to e.g. UIC
518 Code are exceeded.
During processing the measured signal in the second level we conclude that
something is wrong with the vehicle if the values recorded during test runs of vehicle
are significantly exceeded. That depends of course on the track quality.
The third level of diagnostics may be called relative one. The idea of this is based
on comparing acceleration recorded values of train wagons elements moving over the
same track. When the result obtained from measurement of one wagon differs from
others it means that this wagon is probably defected. The last mentioned level of
diagnostics will be the main topic of this paper. Basic tools used to achieve the results
were simulations. Object under consideration was passenger car. The vehicle inertial,
dumping and elastic parameters respond to mathematical model of ERRI Wagon.
Simulations were made using VI-Rail software package.
In the paper we describe successively the general idea of signals acquisition and
transmission, the levels of signal treatment and analysis of its stochastic properties.
That analysis has enabled establishing the set of diagnostic parameters to define the
actual health of a vehicle.
Initially, there were taken into account two groups of parameters connected with
dispersion scale of signals and measures of an agreement between two signals.
The first group consists of: peak to peak value, crest factor, waveform factor,
interquartile range, standard deviation, root mean square, central moments of different
1105
order, skewness, kurtosis. The second group consists of: Pearson correlation
coefficient and concordance correlation coefficient. There were considered also
concordance correlation coefficient of two signals moving root mean square. In the
course of this work, several typical measures, commonly used in statistical analysis,
had been neglected due to specific features of modelled system and the authors
focused on the most important ones in their opinion.
GENERAL IDEA OF MONITORING SYSTEM: MEASUREMENTS, DATA

ACQUISITION AND TRANSMISSION
Monitoring system for railway vehicle consists of two basic subsystems:

1. Subsystem which is installed on the monitored vehicle (on-board mobile
subsystem), whose tasks include: continuous monitoring of railway vehicle
suspension as a function of speed and the vehicle's position and generating
alarms or warnings for the diagnostic centre.
2. Diagnostics Centre (stationary subsystem), to which is transmitted
information about the location and status of each vehicle. The main task of
stationary subsystem is as full as possible identification of the damage and
the detection of this incident on maps of vehicle routes.
Due to the hierarchical structure, the on-board mobile subsystem of monitoring
can be divided in the following levels: sensors, data acquisition unit and processing
and communications unit (central acquisition unit).
Because of special purpose of accelerometers there is need special location of
them. We assumed that during measurements obtained were recorded accelerations for
two points of a bogie frame. Sensors - accelerometers on the car body are located
according to UIC 518 rules. Local data acquisition unit has as the main task the
acquisition of sensor signals and signal conditioning. The task of central data
acquisition unit is the retrieval of data from local data acquisition units, check the
correctness of channels, data processing, alarms and warnings generation,
transmission of diagnostic parameters for diagnostics centre after finding such events
as an alarm or a warning. There are one local data acquisition unit for each wagon and
single central data acquisition unit for whole train. Central data acquisition unit is
equipped with the GPS and GSM to communicate with diagnostics centre.
DIAGNOSTICS LEVELS
Three levels of diagnostics exist in the system. They are realized by measuring the
accelerations of the vehicle components such as bogie frames and bodies:
1. Comparison of measurements to the normative values - independent of the
type of wagon,
2. Comparison of measurements to the values obtained during test runs -
dependent on the type of wagon
3. Comparison of measurements obtained for the wagons of the train passing
over the same section of the track - a comparison of results for the same
type of vehicles.
The first level of diagnostics contains procedures analyzing recorded signal and
comparing obtained values to values included in appropriate standards of safety of
1106
railway traffic and standards of vibration impacts on human. There are taken into
account following standards: UIC 513, IS0 2631-1,4, CEN Draft prENV 12299, UIC
518, UIC 776.
The second and third level of diagnostics uses elements of vibration-based method
to detect faults in the suspension system. Applying this method in those levels is based
on the fact, that any damage of suspension alters dynamic properties of railway
vehicle. It is for that reason possible to apply measured dynamic magnitudes, such as
time history of acceleration, its power spectral density and statistical parameters of
acceleration signal etc. to detect faults. Fault detection based on signal characteristics
is generally a form of pattern recognition problem, which looks for the distinction
between two signals, e.g., before and after a vehicle is damaged or differences in
damage intensity or location.
In developing the second level of diagnosis, our research aim was to select the set
of statistical parameters, which allows to distinct differences between two signals. The
first signal is treated as the pattern signal and the second one is the signal obtained
from measurements made during the ride in different environment or from simulation
where irregularities are different but corresponds to the same quality track. Our
considerations were based on analysis of acceleration signals obtained from
simulations and experiments.
General concept of the assumed third level of diagnostics is based on comparing
the signals of bogie frame acceleration measured during the ride over the identical
track section or track sections having equivalent irregularities. The straight track
sections and turnout zones were taken into consideration.
The process of the selection of statistical parameters allowing for the distinction of
the signal outcoming from the damaged vehicle is presented on the basis of the
analysis of bogie frame and car body accelerations. We have assumed the decrease of
vertical or lateral stiffness as the faults in primary or secondary suspensions. Our
research tool was simulation study of passenger wagon. That wagon was modeled by
the use of VI-Rail software package. Simulations were made in turnout zone and on a
straight track for various velocity of railway vehicle and various track maintenance
condition. As examples of made simulations we show results obtained for a turnout
zone.
SIMULATION RESULTS
In connection with track geometry, two sets of excitations influencing the vehicle
dynamics can be distinguished. The first originates from nominal geometry and is
described in the form of deterministic functions (e.g. regular arcs, transition curves,
lateral rail inclination changes). The second set consists of track deviations of random
character. The above sets may also refer to transient track sections (e.g. turnouts).
For turnouts, differences between “left” and “right” (outer and inner) rail
parameters are observed. One can say that non-symmetry of geometric features
occurs. All mentioned above factors connected with geometry and its rapid changes
cause transient vibrations of a vehicle. Those rapid changes of geometry effect as
some sort of impact to the system and allow to study, by the use of system response,
the system structure or the changes in system parameters. During the ride of vehicle in
turnout zone we can say that we know the excitation of the system. Monitoring the
1107
vehicle in that ride is like a moving the laboratory measurements to operational
environment.
Here are shown examples when the stiffness is reduced to half of its nominal value
and is equal to one-tenth of the nominal value. In the examples cited below the vehicle
speed was equal to 40 km/h. We begin the analysis with examples in which the
vertical stiffness (kz) of primary suspension spring changes itself. It was assumed that
this is the spring on the left side of the first wheelset and displacements and
accelerations are recorded above that spring on the first bogie frame. In Figure 1. are
shown diagrams of vertical accelerations.
Vertical acceleration of bogie frame

4
Acceleration [m/s ]
2
nominal stiffness
3 stiffness reduced 0.5 Kz
stiffness reduced 0.1 Kz
2
-1
-2
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70
Distance [m]
Figure 1. Comparison of bogie frames vertical accelerations for rail cars with faults.
One can say that it is clearly shown here the two effects of rapid changes in
geometry of the turnout. The first one occurs when the wagon meets the blade and the
second one occurs when the wagon meets the frog.
For accelerations obtained for the "damaged" vehicle were calculated statistical
parameters and compared to pattern signal statistical parameters obtained for the
vehicle with nominal parameters of suspension. Summary results are presented in
TABLE I for vehicle at speed of 40 km/h and modelled damage of spring of primary
suspension – loss of stiffness in vertical direction, kz=0.5kznom and kz=0.1kznom.
Let us now discuss examples in which the stiffness in lateral direction (ky) was
changed. It is the spring on the left side of the front of the leading bogie.
In Figure 2 are shown courses of lateral accelerations of bogie frame for reduced
lateral stiffness of the primary suspension spring. The vehicle speed was equal to 40
km/h and the stiffness coefficients of primary suspension were equal to ky=0.5kynom
and ky=0.1kynom (TABLE II).
TABLE I. STATISTICAL PARAMETERS OF ACCELERATION SIGNALS OBTAINED DURING

SIMULATION – LOSS OF STIFFNESS IN VERTICAL DIRECTION
Statistical parameter kz=0.5kznom kz=0.1kznom
vertical acc. lateral acc. vertical acc. lateral acc.
Pearson correlation coefficient 0.71 0.75 0.16 0.57
concordance correlation coefficient 0.66 0.75 0.12 0.57
peak to peak value relative change (%) 30.1 13.18 290 12.18
"pattern signal" kurtosis 15.88 26.00 15.88 26.00
kurtosis of the "damaged signal" 33.40 48.81 0.86 32.01
RMS relative change (%) 48.34 6.38 127.47 3.36
interquartile range relative change (%) 53.23 88.19 10.5 31.33
1108
Lateral acceleration of bogie frame
12
Acceleration [m/s ]
2
nominal stiffness
8 stiffness reduced 0.5 Ky
stiffness reduced 0.1Ky
4
-4
-8
-12
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70
Distance [m]
Figure 2. Comparison of bogie frames lateral accelerations for rail cars with faults.
TABLE II. STATISTICAL PARAMETERS OF ACCELERATION SIGNALS OBTAINED DURING

THE SIMULATION - LOSS OF STIFNESS IN LATERAL DIRECTION
Statistical parameter ky=0.5kynom ky=0.1kynom
vertical acc. lateral acc. vertical acc. lateral acc.
Pearson correlation coefficient 0.73 0.74 0.83 0.77
concordance correlation coefficient 0.72 0.74 0.83 0.75
peak to peak value relative change (%) 31.15 9.25 10.02 1.11
"pattern signal" kurtosis 15.88 26.01 15.88 26.01
kurtosis of the "damaged signal" 9.81 33.92 28.39 46.18
RMS relative change (%) 9.13 0.84 0.92 20.63
interquartile range relative change (%) 35.01 29.79 37.47 39.41
Analogically as previously for accelerations obtained for the "damaged" vehicle

were calculated statistical parameters and compared to pattern signal statistical
parameters obtained for the vehicle with nominal parameters of suspension.
Discussing all of the simulations it should be noted that the change of velocity
does not significantly affect the character of changes in diagnostic parameters.
Damages associated with the direction of vertical vibration are clearly marked in the
vertical accelerations, and damages related to the lateral direction in the lateral
accelerations. The problem of "sensitivity" of the statistical parameters of the signal on
the accuracy of the triggering of the measurement was tested by comparing the
simulation results shifted relative to each other on a number of samples. It occurred
that the correlation coefficients are very sensitive to signal shift. This fact is of great
importance in the practical application of diagnosis on the third level.
Deterioration of the quality of the track increases the diversity of statistical
parameters of the signal. It can be observed the reduction of the value of the
correlation coefficients in the results of the analysis of signals.
CONCLUSIONS
While analyzing the computed statistical measures of accelerations recorded

during the simulations, some conclusions can be drawn. The first is that it is possible
to establish the set of diagnostic parameters defining the actual health of a vehicle. To
this set one can include the concordance correlation coefficient, peak-to-peak value,
root mean square, interquartile range and kurtosis. Although the latter parameters
1109
should be considered as an auxiliary. It is worth to mention that these statistical
measures values may be sensitive to track quality and the vehicle speed.
According to [12] the essential task of monitoring system is to answer five
questions connected to the existence of damage, location, type, extent and prognosis.
Proposed, in this paper, system gives the positive answer for the first question and
the partial answer to the second and third question. Due to three levels of diagnostics
also this system gives positive answer for the fourth question. Registration the
statistical values of parameters connected with dispersion of signals and studying
trends in their behaviour will give us also good basis for positive answer for fifth
question. Besides those, presented system forms the economical and efficient
alternative for on-board monitoring systems used for railway vehicle with active
suspensions.
REFERENCES
1. Chudzikiewicz, A., Droździel, J., Sowiński, B. 1999. Symulacje dynamiki wagonu pasażerskiego
w zakresie niskich częstotliwości. (Simulations of the dynamics of a passenger car in the low-
frequency range). Pojazdy Szynowe (Rail Vehicles), 3/1999, pp.16-26.
2. Uhl, T., Mendrok, K., Chudzikiewicz, A. 2009. Rail track and rail vehicle intelligent monitoring
system. Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring,
Stanford, CA, September 9–11, 2009, Vol. 1, pp. 617–624.
3. Bruni S., Goodall R., Mei, T. X., Tsunashima H., Control and Monitoring for Railway Vehicle
Dynamics, Vehicle System Dynamics, vol. 45, No 7, pp.743 – 779, (2007).
4. Hayashi Y., Kojima T., Tsunashima H., Real Time Fault Detection of Railway Vehicles and
Tracks, The Institution of Engineering and Technology International Conference on Railway
Condition Monitoring, (Birmingham, UK 29-30 November 2006).
5. Goodall R.M., Roberts C. 2006. Concepts and Techniques for Railway Condition Monitoring, The
Institution of Engineering and Technology International Conference on Railway Condition
Monitoring, Birmingham, UK 29-30 November 2006.
6. Sakellariou J.S., Petsounis K.A., Fassois S.D. 2002. On Board Fault Detection and Identification in
Railway Vehicle Suspensions via a Functional Model Based Method, International Conference on
Noise and Vibration Engineering, Leuven, Belgium, 16-18 Sept, 2002.
7. Goda, K., Goodall, R.M. 2004. Fault Detection and Isolation System to a Railway Vehicle Bogie,
Vehicle System Dynamics, vol. 41, Supplement, pp. 468-476.
8. Mei T.X., Ding X.J. 2008. A Model-Less Technique for the Fault Detection of Rail Vehicle
Suspensions, Vehicle System Dynamics, vol. 46, Supplement, pp. 277-287.
9. Hayashi Y., Tsunashima H., Marumo Y. 2008. Fault Detection of Railway Vehicle Suspension
Systems Using Multiple-Model Approach, Journal of Mechanical Systems for Transportation and
Logistics, vol. 1, No. 1, pp.88-99.
10. Chudzikiewicz A., Sowinski B. 2010. Problems of Choosing Statistical Parameters In the Process
of Monitoring the System of Railway Vehicle, 8th International Conference on Railway Bogies and
Running Gears, pp.127-129, Hungary, Budapest, 8-10 November 2010.
11. Chudzikiewicz A., Sowinski B., Szulczyk A. 2010. Statistical parameters of vibrations as measures
of rail vehicle condition, Proceedings of 17th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, pp.
73, Cairo, Egypt 18-22 July 2010.
12. Farrar C.R., Worden K. 2007. An Introduction to Structural Health Monitoring, Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society, A 365, pp.303-315.
Acknowledgement
The authors express their gratitude for the financial support by the Polish Ministry of Science and
Higher Education for the support of research within the framework of the project MONITORING OF
TECHNICAL STATE OF CONSTRUCTION AND EVALUATION OF ITS LIFESPAN – MONIT.
Action Operational Programme Innovative Economy
1110
Experimental Broadband Estimation of
Guided Waves Group Velocity with High
Signal to Noise Ratio
N. QUAEGEBEUR, P. MASSON, P. MICHEAU and N. MRAD
ABSTRACT
Most of the damage detection and localization approaches are currently based on
the measurement of a Time-of-Flight (ToF) and the knowledge of the group velocity
for a mode propagating at a given frequency. In order to extract mode-related infor-
mation from a time-domain signal affected by a dispersive propagation, numerous
approaches have been proposed but the group velocity must be known with precision.
In order to evaluate the group velocity for dispersive frequency ranges, broadband
excitation patterns must be used. This works presents a cost-effective approach to es-
timate the group velocity from simple measurements in a given frequency range. The
principle is to generate a set of properly patterned impulse signals using a piezoce-
ramic (PZT) and to sense the response after propagation using either a Laser Doppler
Vibrometer (LDV) or another PZT. While broadband excitation using a single im-
pulse excitation might lead to limited wave amplitude, the originality of the present
approach is to use N input signals with different central angular frequencies in order
to reconstruct an impulse response. The parameters of the N input signals are opti-
mized such that the addition of all signals has a broadband frequency content in order
to increase the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). The experimental setup consists of an
thin aluminum plate instrumented with one PZT actuator and a LDV to measure the
out-of-plane displacement. The influence of the number of signals N used for the
reconstruction of the impulse response and the actuator / sensor distance are investi-
gated experimentally for frequencies below 1.5 MHz. It is shown that an increase of
SNR in the impulse response measurement can be obtained for the LDV sensor and
thus a better agreement between theoretical and experimental predictions of group
velocity can be observed even for dispersive or multimodal propagation.
INTRODUCTION
Most of the damage detection and localization approaches currently used in Struc-
tural Health Monitoring (SHM) are based on the measurement of ToF and the knowl-
edge of the group velocity for one mode propagating at a given frequency. More re-
cently, multimodal approaches have been proposed, based on multimodal imaging of
dispersed signals [1,2] or broadband generation of signals using chirp excitations [3].
The advantage of those multimodal and broadband imaging techniques resides in their
Nicolas Quaegebeur, Patrice Masson and Philippe Micheau
GAUS, Mech. Eng. Dept., Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, J1K
2R1, Canada
1111
ability to integrate damage information in an extended bandwidth, allowing refined
analysis of damage size and type.
Broadband excitation are also required for characterization of dispersion curves.
Classically, the group velocity over a large frequency range is determined by succes-
sive ToF measurements at different discrete frequencies [4, 5]. In practical cases, ap-
plication to multi-modal and dispersive propagation [6] has been demonstrated with
narrow band excitations but the application with broadband excitation remains a chal-
lenge. In order to allow experimental (or numerical) determination of group velocity
in the case of broadband, multimodal or dispersive propagation, time-frequency anal-
ysis of impulse responses have been proposed using Chirplet algorithm [7] or various
Time-Frequency analysis [8]. The principle is to generate locally a broadband surface
displacement and measure locally the surface displacement with a known distance
between sensor and actuator. However, the amplitude of generated displacements is
very low, and since large separation distance between actuator and sensor is required
for proper estimation of ToF, noise is present in displacement measurements and lim-
its the applicability in the case of highly absorbing materials, such as composites.
Recently, a chirp excitation method has been proposed for generation of broadband
signals using variable frequency burst [9]. This approach allows to increase the global
SNR and to generate broadband excitation in a given frequency range but is limited
in applicability due to the large time-windows, up to 200 µs, that must be employed.
Moreover, for practical implementation, phase and amplitude variations with respect
to the frequency cannot be avoided and limit the extraction of precise features, such
as ToF and modal amplitude for multimodal propagation.
This paper presents a sub-band decomposition technique that allows high SNR
measurements of impulse response in a given frequency range. Broadband excitation
is decomposed over a given number of frequency sub-bands, generated by a PZT
and measurement of displacement is performed using LDV. The first section of the
paper presents the methodology used for sub-band decomposition and reconstruction
of impulse response. The second section of the paper presents the experimental setup
and application to group velocity estimation for metallic structures.
SUB-BAND DECOMPOSITION OF IMPULSE RESPONSE

In this section, the theoretical approach for impulse response measurement with
high SNR is proposed. The aim is to measure the impulse response i(t) of a system
after propagation of an impulse signal δ(t) in a dispersive structure, represented by
its impulse response d(t) as presented in Fig. 1:
i(t) = d(t) δ(t) + n(t) (1)
where denotes the convolution product and n(t) the random measurement noise,
associated with a constant Power Spectral Density (PSD) σ over the considered fre-
quency range.
In order to increase SNR of impulse response measurement and guarantee the per-
fect reconstruction of the impulse response d(t), a sub-band decomposition procedure
is used as presented in Fig. 1. The procedure involves three major steps:
• decompose the input signal into N sub-bands signals si (t):
si (t) = gi (t) δ(t) (2)
1112
Desired Decomposition Subband Reconstruction Reconstructed
broadband filters excitation filters broadband
excitation signal measured signals
g1(t)
s1(t)
d(t) + h1(t)
p1(t)
n1(t)
δ(t) iS(t)
gi(t)
si(t)
d(t) + pi(t)
hi(t) +
ni(t)
gN(t) sN(t)
d(t) + hN(t)
pN(t)
nN(t)
Figure 1. Description of sub-band decomposition for determination of impulse response.
where gi (t) denotes the transfer function of the decomposition filter i.

• generate each sub-band signal into the system in order to measure its response
pi (t):
pi (t) = d(t) si (t) + ni (t) (3)
where ni (t) denotes the measurement noise n(t) associated to ith measurement,
associated with a constant PSD σi .
• reconstruct the impulse response using reconstruction filters hi (t):
∑
N
is (t) = hi (t) pi (t) (4)
i=1
Perfect reconstruction is obtained in a considered frequency range [Ωl , Ωh ] if and only

if [10]:
∑
N
1= Hi (ω)Gi (ω), ∀ω ∈ [Ωl , Ωh ] (5)
i=1
where ω represents the angular frequency, Ωl and Ωh the lower and upper frequency
bonds, Gi (ω) and Hi (ω) denote the Fourier transform of decomposition filter gi (t)
and the reconstruction filter hi (t) associated with the ith sub-band respectively.
In the general case, gi (t) signal basis can be chosen from a wide variety of func-
tions. In the present case, the signal basis is built from Hanning windowed burst.
Thus, in the present study, the ith sub-band component is defined in the time-domain
by:
( ( ))2
πt
gi (t) = sin(Ωi t + ϕi ). sin , 0 < t < Ti (6)
Ti
where Ωi denotes the central angular frequency, ϕi the phase, and Ti represents the
burst duration. For the present analysis, it is chosen to limit the overlap between
two adjacent sub-bands. Thus the ith sub-band is considered within the bandwidth
ω = Ωi ± ∆Ωi , where ∆Ωi = 2π/Ti denotes the main lobe bandwidth, and identical
widths ∆Ωi are chosen. Thus, if N sub-band are used, the central frequency Ωi in a
given frequency range [Ωl , Ωh ] are chosen using the following parameters:
( )
i−1
Ωi = Ωl + (Ωh − Ωl ), ∀ i = 1...N (7)
N −1
1113
1
Ampitude
0
−1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time (µs)
1.5
angle(FFT)
100
|FFT|
1
0
0.5 −100
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 0 200 400 600 800 1000
Frequency (kHz) Frequency (kHz)
Figure 2. Influence of the reconstruction filter for sub-band decomposition. In the present case, N = 4
sub-bands are used for decomposition between fl =100 kHz and fh =1 MHz. The time-domain signal
(top), FFT amplitude (middle) and FFT phase (bottom) are plotted using reconstruction filters as
described in Eq. 11.
This condition ensures that the bandwidth is equal for all sub-bands, and that all
signal lengths Ti are equal. The choice of time-window Ti influences the overlap
between each sub-band. In the present case, since only two adjacent components are
considered in a given sub-band, the time window is adjusted such that its Fourier
transform is null at the boundaries, i.e. Gi (Ωi+1 ) = 0. This condition leads to the
following choice of time-window length Ti :
( )
N −1
Ti = 4π (8)
Ω h − Ωl
In order to guarantee a linear phase between all components, the maximum value of
components must be in phase in the time-domain. Thus for each component, ϕi is
chosen such that the amplitude is maximal at t = Ti /2:
π Ωi Ti
− ϕi = (9)
2 2
The influence of each sub-domain on the overlapping band is described using the
maximum likelihood principle which ensures a smooth transition. In that case, the
reconstruction filters are expressed as:
G⋆i (ω)
Hi (ω) = , ∀ω ∈ [Ωi , Ωi+1 ] (10)
|Gi (ω)|2 + |Gi+1 (ω)|2
G⋆i (ω)
= , ∀ω ∈ [Ωi−1 , Ωi ] (11)
|Gi (ω)|2 + |Gi−1 (ω)|2
= 0 otherwise (12)
where ⋆ denotes the complex conjugate and |.| denotes the magnitude. In practical
cases, Hi (ω) can be obtained analytically or computed using experimental signals.
Fig.2 illustrates the sub-band decomposition and influence of reconstruction fil-

ters. In this case, four central frequencies are used from 100 kHz to 1 MHz by steps
of 300 kHz. For each sub-band, the time-domain signals are plotted (top) and the
Fourier transform are represented in magnitude (middle) and phase (bottom).
Using Eqs. 2-4, the reconstructed signal can be expressed , leading to the is (t)
noise measurement PSD σs (ω) at angular frequency ω:
∑
N
σs (ω) = |Hi (ω)|2 σi (13)
i=1
1114
where σi denotes the PSD of ni (t), statistically identical to n(t), such that σi = σ
for all frequencies and sub-bands. It can be shown that using Eq. 8, the PSD of the
measurement noise after reconstruction defined in Eq. 13 is bounded by:
( )2 ( )2 ( )2
σs (ω) 4 Ωh − Ωl 2
≤ = (14)
σ Ti 2π N −1
In Eq. 14, σ and σs denote the noise PSD using direct impulse response measurement
and sub-band decomposition, respectively. The term (Ωh − Ωl )/2π represents the
attenuation of measurement noise PSD due to pass-band filtering between Ωl and Ωh .
The second term 2/(N − 1) in Eq. 14 represents the decrease of noise PSD due to
sub-band decomposition. As expected, an increase in the number of sub-bands N
tends to reduce the measurement noise, and thus an increase of SNR is obtained if
N > 3.
When compared with impulse response measurement, the increase of SNR for the
sub-band approach is due to the increase of generated signal length. Indeed, since the
time-window length Ti for each sub-band decomposition is set by Eq. 8, the overall
measurement window after multiple sub-band generation is T = N Ti .
EXPERIMENTAL ASSESSMENT
Experimental setup
In order to apply the sub-band decomposition, group velocity measurement are
performed on a 1m square 6061-T6 aluminum plate of 1.54mm thickness, as pre-
sented in Fig. 3. For this purpose, a PZT actuator of 5 mm diameter (PIC 255 from
Physik Instrument) is bonded at the center of the structure using cyanoacrylate. The
transverse displacement at different locations is measured by a LDV (Polytec PSV-
300). The input signals are generated using a HP 33120A generator with a sampling
frequency of 4 MHz and amplified by a voltage amplifier (Musilab UA-8400). Signal
acquisition is performed using a LabVIEW interface with a high-impedance National
Instruments PCI-5105 12 bits acquisition board. The recorded signal length is 1 ms
and the sampling frequency is fixed at 6 MHz. All measurements are averaged 100
times.
Agilent 33120 A Musilab UA 8400 amplifier Almuminum plate Polytec PSV-300
15 MHz function generator 2 MHz - 8 channels 1.54 mm thick Laser vibrometer
Load : 550 pF
1m x 1m 1.5 MHz - 125mm/s/V
kHz Vin : 10 V Vout : 200 V
GPIB BUS
PZT
0.5 mm thick
Input monitor 2 mm x 2 mm
+ PCI BUS
PZT sensor
Laser Vibrometer
LabVIEW interface + Matlab NI 5105 - Data Acquisition Board

60 MHz - 12 bits - 8 channels
Figure 3. Experimental setup used for measurements of broadband signals using LDV and PZT.
1115
LDV time-domain signals (u.a.) LDV Fourier transform (|FFT|)
1 1
a) Impulse Response
0.5 0.8
N=1
0.6
0
0.4
−0.5
0.2
−1 0
1 1
b) Reconstructed
0.5 0.8
N=4
Ti = 5 μs 0.6
0
ΔΩi = 400 kHz 0.4
−0.5
0.2
−1 0
1 1
c) Reconstructed
N=8 0.5 0.8
Ti = 10 μs 0.6
0
ΔΩi = 200 kHz 0.4
−0.5
0.2
−1 0
1 1
d) Reconstructed
N= 15 0.5 0.8
Ti = 20 μs 0.6
0
ΔΩi = 100 kHz 0.4
−0.5
0.2
−1 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600
Time (µs) Frequency (kHz)
Figure 4. LDV sensor signal reconstruction up to 1.5 MHz for different numbers of sub-bands N . The
reconstructed sensor signals (left) and Fourier transform magnitude (right) are computed for direct
impulse response measurement (a) and numbers of sub-bands N = 4 (b), N = 8 (c) and N = 15 (d).
Influence of the number of sub-bands N

In order to validate the present approach, different numbers of sub-bands N for
impulse response reconstruction have been tested. In this case, a LDV sensor and
PZT actuator distance of 200 mm is chosen in order to obtain well separated wave
packets up to 1.5 MHz. Fig. 4 presents the reconstructed sensor signals obtained
using Eq. 6 and the corresponding Fourier transform computed using 1024 points for
different numbers of sub-bands from N = 1 (direct impulse response measurement)
to N = 15 (frequency step of 100 kHz between each sub-band). In each case, the
central frequency for each component is computed using Eq. 7, burst window length
is computed using Eq. 8 and reconstruction filters are used according to Eq. 11. The
responses obtained in the case of one component N = 1 (a) is indicated as a reference
obtained when a discrete impulse function is directly used as an input signal. In each
case, the time-signal amplitudes and Fourier transform magnitudes are normalized by
the maximal value.
In Fig. 4, the measurement noise above 500 kHz is visible in both time-domain
signals and Fourier transform when direct measurement of impulse response is con-
sidered (N = 1). The other hand, the use of sub-band decomposition (c-e) allows a
reduction of measurement noise even with only N = 4 sub-bands, while no changes
in both time-domain signals and associated Fourier transform can be observed com-
pared to the direct impulse response measurement. Thus, the present method appears
as promising for generation of impulse response and more generally, transient broad-
band signals.
Fig. 5 represents the time-frequency (TF) representation of the reconstructed sen-
sor signals of Fig. 4. Reassigned Short-Time Fourier Transform (ReSTFT) with a 60
points Hamming windowing is used in the present analysis. The theoretical curves
derived from group velocity calculations using mechanical parameters of 6061-T6
1116
Al (Young modulus E = 71.7GP a, density ρ = 2730kg/m3 and Poisson’s ration
ν = 0.33) are presented in dotted lines for validation of the obtained results using:
ToF = d/Vg where ToF denotes the ToF associated with the considered mode, d
stands for the sensor / actuator separation distance and Vg stands for the group veloc-
ity associated with the considered mode.
In Fig. 5, the measurement noise is responsible for a deterioration of ToF analysis.
For instance using a direct impulse response (N = 1), A1 and S0 mode are barely
visible above 500 kHz while the analysis of ToF for N = 15 reveals the presence
of those modes in the considered frequency range. In the following, N = 15 sub-
bands associated with a time-window length of T = 20µs will be used for analysis
of propagation properties below 1.5 MHz.
1500 1.00 1500 1.00
Frequency (kHz)
Frequency (kHz)
1000 A1 mode
0.75 1000 A1 mode 0.75
500 0.5 500 0.5

A0 mode A0 mode
S0 mode
0
S0 mode 0.25 0 0.25
0 50 100 150 0 50 100 150
a) Time (µs) b) Time (µs)
1500 1.00 1500 1.00
Frequency (kHz)
Frequency (kHz)
1000 A1 mode
0.75 1000 A1 mode
0.75
500 0.5 500 0.5

A0 mode A0 mode
S0 mode 0.25 S0 mode 0.25
0 0
0 50 100 150 0 50 100 150
c) Time (µs) d) Time (µs)
Figure 5. Time-Frequency representation of sensor signals described in Fig. 4 using ReSTFT for
different numbers of sub-bands N = 1 (a), N = 4 (b) N = 8 (c) and N = 15 (d) and with an
actuator/sensor separation distance of 200 mm.
Extraction of group velocity and modal amplitude

From the time-frequency representation, the group velocity can finally be esti-
mated knowing the sensor/actuator separation distance, as shown in Fig. 6 using
N = 15 sub-bands and sensor / actuator separation distances of 200 mm.
1.0
Velocity amplitude
6000 0.8
A0 mode
S0 mode 0.6
Vg (m/s)
4000
0.4 A1 mode
A0 mode S0 mode
2000 0.2
A1 mode
0 0
0 500 1000 1500 0 500 1000 1500
a) Frequency (kHz) b) Frequency (kHz)
Figure 6. Group velocity estimated from broadband experimental identification using N = 15 sub-
bands with a separation distance of 200 mm (a) and extracted modal velocity amplitude (b).
A good agreement with theoretical group velocity curve can be obtained over the
whole considered bandwidth and the modal excitation, defined by the amplitude of
each separated mode at a given frequency can be extracted. This quantity usually re-
quires complex experimental analysis since the common way to extract this informa-
tion is to generate well separated wave packets, such that a large spacing between ac-
tuator and sensor are required and dispersive propagation impairs this measurement.
With the proposed method, this quantity is easily extracted from impulse response by
measuring the maximal value at each frequency. This allows a precise, broadband
and multimodal extraction of modal amplitudes without requiring a complex setup.
1117
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, an approach is proposed for broadband generation of guided waves
in structures. The principle is to use a sub-band decomposition in order to reconstruct
the impulse response of the structure with high SNR using a PZT as actuator and a
LDV as sensor. The advantage of the present method is that the phase and amplitude
are controlled by the use of reconstruction filters, such that precise measurements of
ToF and modal amplitude are possible in a given bandwidth. Application to estima-
tion of group velocity for metallic structures is proposed. Influence of number of
sub-bands, sensor/actuator separation distance and sensing technology is studied and
optimal criteria for determination of group velocity with high SNR are derived. It
is shown that the present approach allows impulse response reconstruction with high
SNR up to 1.5 MHz, while direct impulse response measurements are prone to noise
that impair the estimation of ToF.
REFERENCES
[1] Quaegebeur, N., Masson, P., Langlois-Demers, D., and Micheau, P. 2011.
“Dispersion-based imaging for structural health monitoring using sparse and
compact arrays,” Smart Materials and Structures 20, 025005.
[2] Masson, P., Quaegebeur, N., and Langlois-Demers, D. 2011. “A novel imaging
technique for SHM using sparse and compact arrays,” in Proceedings of SPIE,
Health monitoring of structural and biological system. San Diego , (7984-28).
[3] Michaels, T., Michaels, J., Lee, S., and Chen, X. 2011. “Chirp generated acous-
tic wavefield imaging,” in Proceedings of SPIE, Health monitoring of structural
and biological system. San Diego , (7984-18).
[4] Wang, L. and Yuan, F. 2007. “Group velocity and characteristic wave curves of
Lamb waves in composites: Modeling and experiments,” Composites Science
and Technology 67, 1370–1384.
[5] Hu, N., Shimomukai, T., Fukunaga, H., and Su, Z. 2008. “Damage identifica-
tion of metallic structures using A0 mode of Lamb waves,” Structural Health
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[6] Raghavan, A. and Cesnik, C. 2007. “Guided-wave signal processing using
chirplet matching pursuits and mode correlation for structural health monitor-
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[7] Kuttig, H., Niethammer, M., Hurlebaus, S., and Jacobs, L. April 2006. “Model-
based analysis of dispersion curves using chirplets,” Journal of the Acoustical
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[8] Valle, C. and Littles, J. 2002. “Flaw localization using the reassigned spectro-
gram on laser-generated and detected Lamb modes,” Ultrasonics 39, 536–542.
[9] Michaels, J., Lee, S., Hall, J., and Michaels, T. 2011. “Multi-mode and multi-
frequency guided wave imaging via chirp excitations,” in Proceedings of SPIE,
Health monitoring of structural and biological system. San Diego , (7984-17).
[10] Petraglia, M. and Mitra, S. June 1993. “Adaptive FIR filter structure based on
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1118
Self Focusing of 2D Arrays for SHM of Plate-
Like Structures Using Time Reversal Operator
L. AMBROZINSKI, T. STEPINSKI and T. UHL
ABSTRACT
Lamb waves have shown a great potential in structural health monitoring (SHM)
of thin plates that are frequently used in engineering structures. Dense transducer
networks or active ultrasonic arrays can be employed to generate and receive Lamb
waves. Active arrays, however, enable beam steering and can work as spatial filters
enabling assessment of large plate areas from a single fixed position.
In this paper a novel method for selective focusing of Lamb waves is presented.
The algorithm is an extension of the DORT method (French acronym for
decomposition of time-reversal operator) where the continuous wavelet transform
(CWT) is used for the time-frequency representation (TFR) of nonstationary signals
instead of the discrete Fourier transform.
An application of the proposed method to self focusing of Lamb waves in an
aluminum plate is demonstrated both for a linear and a 2D star-shaped array. The 2D
star-like array was designed to eliminate the effect of ambiguous mirrored images
encountered for linear arrays. The results obtained with both arrays are presented and
compared in the paper. It is shown that the decomposition of the time reversal operator
obtained with the proposed method enabled separating point like scatters in the
aluminum plate and allowed to focus Lamb waves at a desired point.
INTRODUCTION
Flat or slightly curved plates can be found in numerous engineered structures where
high safety standards are required. Guided waves (GW) offer considerable advantages
in monitoring (SHM) applications, where large plate-like areas of the involved
structure have to be assessed. GWs that propagate in thin plates, known as Lamb
waves, are multimodal and dispersive. Structural discontinuity (e.g., a damage) present
in the structure scatters the incident GWs in all directions and additional modes can be
produced due to the mode conversion phenomena. Therefore, damage detection and
localization is a complex task and advanced signal processing has to be applied to
characterize the damage [1].
_____________
Lukasz Ambrozinski, Tadeusz Uhl AGH-University of Science and Technology Al. Mickiewicza
30, 30-059 Krakow Poland
Tadeusz Stepinski Uppsala University PO Box 534 SE-751 21 Uppsala, Sweden
1119
Some of the difficulties encountered in SHM of plate-like structures resulting from the
nature of GWs could be avoided by using the time-reversal concept. For instance,
time-reversal mirrors (TRM), a powerful tool introduced for ultrasonic waves [2]
[3], enabled improvement of signal to noise ratio [4] and reduction of the effect of
dispersion [5][6]. The iterative TRM is a method to obtain a selective focusing on the
strongest reflector [7]. However, in the SHM applications focusing on targets with
lower reflexivity is also desired. In order to detect and focus the wave on the multiple
scatterers DORT method has been introduced [8]. DORT is a signal processing
technique that is capable of estimating the time delays required to selective focus
waves on a target, based on the received data. The method has been successfully
applied in the NDT applications [9] as well as for Lamb wave characterization [10].
In this paper, an extension of the DORT technique that consists in applying the
continuous wavelet transform (CWT) to the eigenvectors, is presented. The improved
method has been applied to Lamb wave snapshots that normally take the form of
nonstationary signals. Using the CWT enabled obtaining time-frequency
representation (TFR) of the signals that makes possible both time and frequency
localization of the target responses. Based on the modified method a damage detection
algorithm employing a 2D star-shaped array was developed. The array consists of a
transmission sub-array which can be self-focused on a target and a reception sub-array
used to capture damage-reflected echoes.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
In this section a brief review of the DORT technique followed by a description of

the proposed extension of the method and its application to damage detection.
DORT algorithm
DORT is a method of signal analysis capable of detecting and selective focusing

elastic waves on point-like scatters with the use of transducer arrays. It was shown that
the time reversal operator (TRO), defined as K*K, where K denotes the array transfer
function and * is the complex conjugate, can be diagonalized. Each of the eigenvectors
corresponding to the significant eigenvalues of K*K includes both phase and
amplitude information about the signals that should be applied to the array elements to
focus ultrasonic wave on a particular scatterer. Therefore if
(1)
is the m-th eigenvector of the TRO in a monochromatic case the signal that should be
applied to an array in order to focus the array’s beam on the m-th scatterer can be
calculated using the following equation:
(2)
where p is the transducer number in the array [11].
1120
DORT-CWT algorithm
The DORT method enables selective focusing of ultrasonic waves on scatterers in

different media. The number of scatterers that can be resolved with the algorithm
depends on the size of the TRO matrix K*K, which is determined by the number of
transducers.
Since the snapshots produced by the propagating Lamb waves are nostationary
due to the dispersion phenomenon, in the proposed algorithm CWT is used to obtain
the TFR of the signals. In the algorithm implementation presented here the complex
Morlet wavelet was used as the mother wavelet. It enabled obtaining signals
decomposed in the complex domain with a very good time and frequency localization.
Next, the time-reversal operator, K(nTs)*K(nTs), was calculated for the successive
time samples at a chosen frequency. In the final step of the DORT-CWT, likewise in
the classical DORT, the most significant eigenvalues were selected and the
backpropagation was performed. In the proposed method distribution of eigenvalues
vs. time samples, Vm(nTs), is obtained. The backpropagation step can be performed,
like in the classical approach, with the use of eq. (2). Although each of the
eigenvectors calculated for the successive time instants could be backpropagated, only
the vectors corresponding to the significant eigenvalues should be taken into account.
Even if a threshold value is applied to separate the relevant eigenvalues, still a large
number of eigenvectors that should be backpropagated remains. Thorough analysis of
the eigenvalues’ distributions, performed on our simulated and experimental data
revealed that the number of local maxima of the significant eigenvalues is equal to the
number of damages existing in the plate. It will be shown below that backpropagation
of the vectors corresponding to those maxima enables wave focusing on the damages.
Numerical backpropagation
The last step of the both DORT and DORT-CWT algorithms is backpropagation
of the most significant eigenvectors, which can be performed physically or
numerically. In this paper, calculations of backpropagated-fields were based on eq.
(2), which defines the relation between the eigenvectors and signals that should be
applied to the actuators to focus the wave on a particular target. If the backpropagated
field is presented as a bitmap the pixel value Si,j can be calculated using eq. (2) in the
space domain as a sum of the signals emitted from all the array elements as follows
(3)
where k denotes the wavenumber, and is the distance between pixel Si,j and the
element p. The value of the wavenumber k has to be calculated from the dispersion
curves for the frequency at which the K*K matrix was diagonlalized.
1121
Figure 1. Flowchart of the damage detection algorithm.
Concept of the damage detection method
Since it is possible to self focus an array on a target, a damage detection system based
on a 2D array was developed. The array used in the system consists of two sub-arrays.
The first of them operates in the transmission mode whereas the other operates in the
reception mode. The DORT-CWT method used for self-focusing the transmitting
array operates according to the flowchart presented in Figure 1, which illustrates the
proposed damage detection algorithm. Due to focusing the target illuminated by the
beam produces greater refection than that would be obtained for a single transducer or
unfocused array. The echoes are captured by the sub-array operating in reception
mode and a linear mapping technique [12] is applied to the signals to remove the
dispersion. In the final step damage imaging is performed using standard delay and
sum (DAS) beamforming.
Two series of experiments will be presented in this section. The aim of the first
experiment was to examine the performance of the DORT-CWT method applied to a
linear ultrasonic array. In the first step, which was the same for all conducted
experiments, the interelement responses for the array elements were recorded. Next,
the backpropagated field was generated numerically. Finally, the array operating in
transmission mode and generating signals defined by the DORT-CWT algorithm was
used. The wave propagation in the plate was investigated with a use of laser scanning
vibrometer.
The second series of experiments was conducted to investigate the operation of the
damage detection system based on the self-focusing 2D array. Two array topologies
were examined; the first was a cross-shaped array consisting of a linear transmitting
sub-array and a linear receiving sub-array intersecting at an angle of 90°, and the
second was a star-shaped array with four arms.
Experimental setup
The experiments were conducted using an aluminum plate with dimensions

1000x1000x2mm shown in Figure 2. The plate was provided with three targets
simulating damages: a 10x1mm notch, denoted as N, and two small masses (M1, M2)
that were acoustically coupled to the investigated structure using wax. In the first
series of experiments a linear array consisting of 8 CMAP12 PZT square multilayered
transducers from Noliac, Denmark, was attached with wax in the middle of the plate.
The transducers’ size was 2x2x2mm and their spacing was 5 mm.
1122
The number of elements in the array was limited to 8 by the hardware used. A
basic version of PAQ 16000 with PAS 8000 from EC Electronics, Poland was used
for signal generation and data acquisition. Bursts of 2 cycles of 100 kHz sinusoid
modulated with Hanning window were used to obtain inter-element responses. Data
acquisition was performed with sampling frequency 2.5 MHz. The Noliac actuators
used for the examined plate excited an enhanced asymmetric mode A0, and a reduced,
almost negligible symmetric mode S0. Wavelength of the dominant mode at the
excitation frequency 100 kHz was 12,9 mm.
a)
b)
N M2 T
M1
A C
c) B
Array
of transducers
Figure 2. a) Scatterers distribution on the investigated plate. b) Topology of the star-shaped array,
Hardware
c) Laminate board used to build the array.
In the second series of experiments the linear array was replaced with the 2D array
which topology shown in Figure 2b. The array, consisted of 4 linear sub-arrays
intersecting at an angle of 45°; each of them consisted of 8 CMAP12 PZTs spaced at
a distance of 5 mm. The central element of each sub-array was left empty. The array,
shown in Figure 2c, was made of a thin elastic printed circuit copper laminate which
minimally influenced stiffness of the investigated plate.
The sub-array, denoted in Figure 2b as T, was used to collect the interelement
impulse responses. Parameters of the excitation signal and data acquisition were kept
constant in all experiments. The acquired signals were used to perform damage
detection according to the flowchart presented in Figure 1.
Self-focusing using linear array
In the first experiment the interelement responses were captured by the array and
the acquired signals were processed using the DORT-CWT algorithm. A time
distribution of the eigenvalues can be seen in Figure 3a where the significant peaks are
pointed by arrows. Note that the number of the peaks is equal to the number of the
damages existing in the investigated structure.
1123
a) b)
1.2
1 3
normalized eigenvalues
1 1 1
normalized eigenvalues
0.8 0.8
2 2
0.6 0.6
3
0.4 0.4
0.2 0.2
0 0
1.8 2 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3 2 2.5 3
time [s] -4 time [s] -4
x 10 x 10
Figure 3. Normalized eigenvalues obtained with DORT-CWT for linear array (a) and for the sub-
array of the star-shaped array (b).
a) b) c)
Figure 4. Numerical backpropagation. Wave focusing on the damages M1, M2 and N are shown in
the panels a), b) and c), respectively. Markers indicate damages locations.
The eigenvectors corresponding to the significant peaks indicated in Figure 3a

were numerically backpropagated and as it can be seen in Figure 4, all damages were
correctly resolved, however, the backscattered fields are mirrored due to the linear
topology of the array used in experiment.
Since the numerical backpropagation can give only a coarse information on the
waves propagation the second experiment was conducted, which consisted in
monitoring of the physical backpropagation in the plate using vibrometer.
In the experiment the array used previously to measure the interelement responses,
was employed, in the transmission mode, to generate the phase-shifted signals. The
phase shifts were computed for each array element according to eq. (2) using the
distribution of eigenvalues presented in Figure 3a. Narrowband pulse signals were
used to perform the backpropagation. In these experiments bursts of 4 cycles of a sine
modulated with the Hanning window were generated. The center frequency, 100 kHz,
was equal to that used in the K*K matrix diagonalization. Scanning laser vibrometer
Polytec PSV-400 was used for monitoring the field generated by the array. The
vibrometer enabled contactless measurements of the out-of-plane surface velocity in
the plate. Time signals were acquired in the points forming an arc-shaped grid. The
maximum values of the first arriving wave packets captured by the scanning
vibrometer were used to create the beampatterns shown in Figure 5. A high accuracy
in the angle steering can be observed, which proves that the DORT-CWT algorithm
correctly resolved the damages simulated in the plate.
1124
Figure 5. Beampatterns obtained using the scanning laser vibrometer for monitoring physical
backpropagation. The beams steered in the direction of damages M1, M2, and N are shown in panels
a), b) and c), respectively.
Damage detection using cross and star-shaped array
The second series of experiments was conducted to investigate the performance of

the damage detection algorithm proposed in the previous sections. On the examined
plate the linear array was replaced with the star-shaped array presented in Figure 2b
and c. The array, denoted in Figure 2b as T, was used to collect the interelement
impulse responses. The DORT-CWT was used to calculate the time-frequency
distribution of the eigenvalues presented in Figure 3b. The difference observed when
comparing Figure 3a and b can be explained by the fact that the second experiment
was conducted after a longer period of time after the first one; in the meantime the
additional masses were removed and coupled with wax to the plate again, which
changed their reflectivity. The peak eigenvalues indicated in the distribution were
backpropagated using the sub-array T operating in the transmission mode using the
time–shifts calculated according to eq. (2). The bandwidth and the excitation
frequency of the generated signals were the same as in the previous experiment
involving vibrometer. The scatterers-reflected signals were captured by the sub-arrays
denoted in Figure 2 as A, B and C. In the first step, however, verifying the cross-
shape array topology only signals acquired by the sub-array B were taken into
account.
Damage images presented in
Figure 6 a, b and c were obtained using the signals from the sub-array B in the case
when the sub-array T was steered in the direction of the target denoted by M1, M2 and
N respectively. From the images it can be seen that for a linear receiving array
a mirrored image was obtained, and the scatterers could not be localized
unambiguously. In all images can be observed, however, that the more distinct
reflection is related to the damage illuminated by the self-focused beam.
a) b) c)
1125
d) e) f)
Figure 6. Damage imaging results obtained with the cross (a, b, c) and star-shaped array (d, e, f) for the
transmitting sub-array steered in the direction of target denoted by M1, M2, and N.
In the next step the calculation was repeated using the data acquired by all three
arms of the receiving sub-array. Subsequently, the dispersion removal was applied to
the snapshots and damage imaging was performed according to the flowchart
presented in Figure 1. From the results presented in
Figure 6d, e and f can be seen that the damages were localized correctly. Moreover, in
all images it can be observed that the illuminated targets are the strongest ones, which
proves that the beams were steered correctly.
CONCLUSIONS
An extension of the DORT method with application for self-focusing arrays for
Lamb waves was presented in the paper. The performance of the modified method
was confirmed experimentally showing a high accuracy in beam-steering.
The presented method was applied to a SHM system employing a 2D array
operating in the pulse-echo mode. The developed system enabled damage detection
and localization in an aluminum plate with superior reflection of damage illuminated
by the self-focused beam. The shape of the designed array enabled avoiding the effect
of ambiguous mirrored image.
REFERENCES
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1126
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Structural Health Monitoring 1 (9) (2010) 75-86
1127
OPERATIONAL EFFECTS CONSIDERATION
IN SHM
1129
A View into Baseline Free Guided Wave
Approaches for Structural Health Monitoring
U. LIESKE and C. BOLLER
ABSTRACT
Much work has been done in the field of structural health monitoring based on
guided (Lamb) waves especially for aerospace applications but also others. This work
can be basically split into two different concepts. The first is a concept, where a
measured signal is compared to a historical baseline measured for the same or at least
similar signal path and signal processing method to obtain a damage indication. The
other concept makes use of instantaneous and hence time coincident data from
comparable signal paths or time reversed methods instead of historical baselines.
Compared to the first this latter concept is considered to be baseline free. Both
concepts can be applied either experimentally or numerically, yielding damage
parameters or images for the assessment of the structural health. An essential
condition for the baseline free analysis is the availability of several transducers
communicating among each other and allowing a statistical pattern differentiation
between damaged and undamaged conditions. The paper will provide an overview and
a comparison of different published approaches considered baseline free and will try
to outline a concept on how baseline free monitoring might be tackled in the longer
term.
INTRODUCTION
Lamb wave inspection techniques can split into baseline methods and baseline-
free methods. Baseline in this context means the independence of historical signal data
for the specific sensor path. This is sometimes also considered to be reference free, but
as long as a priori knowledge about the structure or comparable sensor paths are
referenced this can’t be considered to be reference free in general terms. The following
section will give an overview about the general approaches of baseline methods and
methods without a baseline or methods considered reference free. Most of the baseline
free techniques described so far were conducted on relatively simple target shapes.
Measurements on more complex shaped structures are mainly done with baseline
methods because of the superposition of different wave modes that lead to very
Uwe Lieske, Christian Boller, Fraunhofer Institute for Non-Destructive-Testing, Dresden branch,
Maria-Reiche-Str. 2, 01109 Dresden, Germany, uwe.lieske@izfp-d.fraunhofer.de
1131
complicated signals. Baseline free methods cannot be easily applied on this data,
because most of the published methods so far rely on single mode signals or at least a
clearly separated single mode timeframe in a multi-mode signal [15].
LAMB WAVE INSPECTION
Baseline Method
Baseline methods in terms of acoustics based testing utilize the acoustical

fingerprint of a measurement-path to describe the state of the inspected structure.
Therefore an initial measurement, which could be an impulse-echo measurement as
well as an actuator-sensor (pitch-catch) measurement, will be stored as a historical
baseline for signal comparison with actual measurement data. Since the magnitude and
propagation speed of guided waves varies with temperature and strain [8], a set of
different baselines need to be collected prior to damage evaluation. Later
measurements along a specific measurement path can reference these measurements to
determine the structural state. Baseline based measurements have the advantage, that
they can also be applied to complex shaped structures without having to bother about
the structure’s complexity. the damage has to pass a certain threshold value
depending on the baseline data set and the signal processing to determine any change
in the structure. However a self-check of a sensor’s health and bonding condition is
required in that regard because both properties will influence on the data recorded
due to lack of time coincidence. Many examples of signal processing for damage
detection are described in [3, 7]. Throughout the following, baseline based monitoring
will be considered to be non-time coincident (historical) while baseline free
monitoring will be considered to be time coincident (reference measured at the
incident of monitoring).
Baseline-free Methods
SIMULTANEOUS BASELINE METHOD
Simultaneous sensor paths were used by Overly [17]. The advantage of

comparable sensor paths is that no historical baseline is needed to determine
structural damage, because all sensor paths are assumed to be exposed to the same
temperature and structural strain state. Ageing of the transducers will also have less
of an influence because an equivalent ageing of those can be assumed too. This
yields another advantage since any impedance information obtained from the
transducers can be associated with a transducer’s bonding quality. This again will
have a positive impact on the quality of the signals generated, would this be related
to either magnitude or phase.
Figure 1a shows a configuration of baseline-free (simultaneous baseline)
monitoring in its simplest configuration. It shows three transducers in a row with
two signal paths to be compared, one being in an undamaged zone (Path 1) and one
being in a damaged zone (Path 2). Such a configuration is most likely to occur in a
structure where the portion of damaged material is significantly inferior to the
portion of undamaged material, which is common with most of the structural
1132
Transducer
Transducer 1 1 Transducer
Transducer 2 2 Transducer
Transducer 33
Path
Path 11 Path
Path 22
Crack
Crack
a
a
Path 1
Path 1 Path
Path 2 2
bb Crack
Crack
Figure 1. Sensor arrangement for simultaneous baseline approach (a), conventional impulse-
echo technique (b)
components used today due to inhomogeneous loading and hence damaging

patterns. Knowledge of the acoustic signal transmission paths as well as good and
comparable bonding quality of the transducers is imperative for a good
simultaneous baseline approach. The approach could be compared to conventional
impulse-echo or transmitting techniques, where the magnitude of a back wall and
potential damage echo is compared to an A-scan of a nearby coordinate (Figure 1b).
A special case of the simultaneous baseline method is the use of the polarization
behavior of two piezoelectric transducers collocated at the same position at both
sides of a thin walled structure (Figure 2a) [11, 18]. The polarization for both
transducers is along the normal of the each surface. The guided waves, generated by
both transducers are reflected from the boundaries of the structure and from damage
(if any) and sensed by the same transducers (impulse-echo, [18]) or by a second
transducer set on the inspection target [11]. If no damage is present, the impulse-
echo signal received by transducer 1 (Y11) or the pitch-catch signal Y12 will be the
same as achieved from the impulse echo measurement of transducer 3 (Y33) or the
pitch-catch signal Y34. Using this method having an actual damage inside the
structure, a mode conversion will happen if the initial wave packages encounter the
damaged area. Due to the different compression and tension behavior of symmetric
and antisymmetric Lamb waves at the upper and lower surface of the structure, the
a b
1 2 1 2
3 4 3 4
Amplitude in V
Amplitude in V
2 2
Y12
0 0
Y34
-2 -2
0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
time in µs time in µs
Amplitude in V
Amplitude in V
2 2
Y12 - Y34
0 0
-2
0 50 100 150 200 250 -2
0 50 100 150 200 250
time in µs time in µs
Figure 2. Signals Y12 and Y34 without (a) and with (b) a notch (FEM Simulation), pitch-catch case
1133
converted signal parts will have the opposite sign on the measurement paths Y12
and Y34 (Figure 2b) indicating the damage. Another advantage of this transducer
arrangement is the possibility for mode-selective excitation by the simultaneous
excitation of the transducers with an appropriate input voltage (symmetric modes
same sign, antisymmetric modes opposite sign). This method can also be used for a
pitch-catch measurement scenario. The need to attach transducers to both sides of
the structure under inspection may however be disadvantage of this method in
specific cases.
EUSR/SAMPLING PHASED ARRAY
The embedded ultrasonic structural radar (EUSR) is a sampling phased array

technique where different transducers are arranged in a sensor array. The measurement
is conducted in sequences where every transducer will excite a waveform whereas all
other transducers only receive. This is done for all transducers of the array. The
difference to a phased array technique is, that the ultrasonic beam is not steered by
time delay and voltage scaling of the transducer elements when they act as actuator
but rather by scaling and delaying the sampled data of each transducer when it acts as
a receiver during postprocessing. The structure under test must be known to calculate
the correct delays for the beam steering so this method requires a priori information
about the inspection target. Several techniques like Lamb wave tuning to actuate only
a single wave mode with piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) [13, 14] and
dispersion compensation [5] were used to enhance the contrast of the measurement
results.
REFERENCE FREE TIME REVERSED METHOD
A reference free time reversed method has been proposed in [6, 12]. This
method uses the reversibility of the dispersion when a wave package is reversed in
time at the receiver and propagated back to the initial sender. In an undamaged
structure, where no scattering occurs during signal propagation, the shape of the
excitation waveform will be perfectly reconstructed by this time reverse process.
When damage exists the wave package received will have lost some energy due to
scattering and the reverse propagation will not result in the initial waveform. In the
case of a multi-mode this reversal process will cause side lobes in the reconstructed
signal. Therefore only a single wave package should be chosen for time reversal (if
possible)and it needs to be clearly separated with preferably no wave packages from
reflecting boundaries or other wave modes to arrive nearby.
TIME MIGRATION/SAFT
Time migration techniques can be used for baseline based or baseline-free

methods. The structure under surveillance will be discretized into pixels and
travelling time form the actuator to the actual pixel and from the actual pixel to the
receiver will be calculated for the wave mode selected. The envelope amplitude
relating to the calculated travelling time of the received signal for this pitch-catch
path will be added to the amplitude value of the actual pixel. This procedure is done
1134
TABLE I. REMARKS FOR LAMB WAVE INSPECTION TECHNIQUES
Method Exemplary Remarks
publications
Baseline Method [3, 7] − damage indicator needs to pass a certain
threshold depending on baseline data set and
signal processing
− no need a priori knowledge
Simultaneous [16],[17] − limitations in transducer arrangement to avoid
Baseline methods reflections from boundaries and adjacent
transducers; due to collocated transducer
arrangement or boundary reflections and need for
comparable coupling conditions
Reference free time [6, 12] − no baseline and no a priori information required
reversed method − transducer arrangement complicated due to
boundary reflections
EUSR/Sampling [1], [2], [4], [9], − a priori knowledge about the structure
Phased Array/Time [15] (propagation speed, etc…) required
Migration/SAFT − method yields a damage mapping procedure
− Lamb wave tuning and dispersion compensation
algorithms can improve result quality
for every pixel and every pitch-catch path. When damage exists at a specific pixel,
the field value therein becomes pronounced.
SIMPLIFIED TIME MIGRATION STUDIES
The following procedure is intended for illustration purpose of different

experimental scenarios. The simulated signals were created by a simplified method
described in [19]. The relationship between the burst excitation and the signal at
arbitrary positions is expressed by (1)
V fd (t ) = IFFT ( FFT (Vtb (t )) ⋅ GS 0 ) + IFFT ( FFT (Vtb (t )) ⋅ G A0 ) (1)
where Vfd and Vtb signify forward transformed and toneburst signals. The Fourier
transform of the excitation signal is multiplied by a transfer function G, which holds
the phase and amplitude change for a specified position (x,y) with the distance d
from the excitation source by the use of the analytical derived phase velocity cph.
After inverse Fourier transform the signal Vfd represents the signal at position x,y
with the appropriate time shift and dispersion effect of both fundamental Lamb
modes.
Simplified Model Limitations
Scattering due to damage is assumed as additional excitation source being

triggered during arrival of the initial wave package. Therefore this simple model
does not fulfill energy conservation principles. The magnitude of the damage signal
is assumed to be much higher than under experimental conditions spreading with
the same magnitude in all directions. Edge reflections are neglected in this
1135
simplified model as well as damage-damage interaction. Magnitude changes due to
damping have also not been considered here for reasons of simplicity.
Plate with one Damage, Different Temperatures
One advantage of the time migration technique is its independence of

environmental temperature conditions, as long as the wave speed scale is the same
ratio for all material directions. By migrating the time reversed signal back to its
origin the wave packages will merge at sources. The time when the merging
happens will change a little depending on actual wave speeds during the sampling.
Figure 3a shows time domain signals calculated for three different temperatures
(T1<T2<T3) at the same location of an isotropic plate. The migration of the signals
back in time by a model with constant temperature T2, the merging of the signals at
the damage location will happen a bit earlier for temperature T1 and a bit later for
temperature T3 than at the reference temperature T2. However the location of the
damage is indicated at the same position in all three cases (Figure 3 b1- b3).
Plate with one damage, different excitation frequencies
The dispersive behavior of Lamb waves makes signal evaluation sometimes

difficult, but it can also be used to enhance the contrast of time migration methods.
The idea behind this is that different excitation frequencies will excite Lamb waves
with different propagation speeds ratios in the target under inspection (Figure 4
left). Averaging the magnitude profiles of different excitation frequencies will
cause the artifacts caused by other wave package to be minimized (Figure 4 right).
1.5
T1
T2
1 T3
0.5
Amplitude
- 0.5
-1
a
- 1.5
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
time in µs
Ti me: 407.00 µs Time: 406.00 µs Time: 405.00 µs
0.5 0.5 0.5
0.4
0.3
T1 50.4
T2 50.4
T3 5
0.3 0.3
0.2 40.2 40.2 4
0.1 0.1 0.1

y in m
y in m
y in m
3 3 3
0 0 0
-0.1 -0.1 -0.1

2 2 2
-0.2 -0.2 -0.2
-0.3
-0.4
b1 1-0.3
-0.4 b2
-0.3
1
-0.4 b3 1
-0.5 0-0.5 0-0.5 0

-0.5 0 0.5 -0.5 0 0.5 -0.5 0 0.5
x in m x in m x in m
Figure 3. influence of temperature for sampled data (a), Merging of time reversed S0 wave
packages on the damage location at three different times due to different wave speeds at different
temperatures, damage at x=0,145m, y=-0,105m
1136
7
200kHz, 407µs
100kHz, 407µs
250kHz, 413µs
150kHz, 413µs
6 300kHz, 418µs
200kHz, 418µs
damage
5
Magnitude
3
0
-0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
x in m
Figure 4. Phase velocity diagram (left), Magnitude profile at y=-0.105 (right)
VISION OF BASELINE FREE MEASURMENTS
The challenge with baseline-free methods for SHM has to be seen in their
application to real components. So far all research related to baseline-free SHM has
been mainly based on plate like structural components only. Those structures are
simple from a geometry point of view. However with real components geometries
become complex. Notches and resulting multiaxial stress-strain states are one of
their characteristics. Getting stress-strain conditions of those structures truly
understood requires a numerical analysis of those structures from a mechanical
loading as well as from a fatigue damage point of view. It is only in this context
where it will be known where the zones in a structural component likely to damage
will be and which zones are of limited damage and hence can be taken as the
undamaged reference. This knowledge will therefore allow differentiation between
damaged and undamaged zones and will allow transducers to be placed accordingly
such that paths for monitoring can be well differentiated between the damaged and
undamaged conditions. Increasing the number of transducers and hence possible
signal paths will also allow the statistics in identification of damaged and
undamaged zones to be enhanced. Signals obtained from say a Lamb wave analysis
will have to be combined with the stress-strain conditions determined such that the
appropriate parameters for the undamaged material can be determined. This is a
major challenge to be tackled in the future and if achieved would allow structural
components to be truly analyzed baseline free.
CONCLUSION
Lamb wave inspection on complex shaped structures is mainly driven by baseline

methods so far. Baseline free methods have been demonstrated to work on simple
shapes under certain measurement and setup conditions. Time migration methods will
probably become more relevant in the future due to progress in computational power
and efficiency in numerical simulation tools such as with the introduction of spectral
elements modeling. This may work specifically well in combination with mode
selective excitation due to Lamb wave tuning and dispersion compensation
algorithms, which have shown good performance in enhancing damage resolution.
1137
Structural analysis from a stress-strain point of view will have to be combined with the
simulation of the physics of non-destructive testing which might then lead to an
assessment of a structure’s health at virtually any point along a structure’s life cycle.
AKNOWLEDGMENT
Parts of this work were conducted under grant no. 13976/2418 „System- und
Verfahrensentwicklung zur Zustandsbewertung von luftfahrtrelvanten Strukturen
mittels mobilen Prüfgeräts“ of the Sächsische Aufbaubank.
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FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL. 1998;45(4):1032-1043.
3. W. Staszewski, C. Boller, and G.R. Tomlinson, Health Monitoring of Aerospace Structures:
Smart Sensor Technologies and Signal Processing, Wiley, 2004.
4. Leutenegger TF. Detection of defects in cylindrical structures using a time reverse numerical
simulation method. 2002.
5. Wilcox PD. Rapid Signal Processing Technique to Remove the Effect of Dispersion from
Guided Wave Signals. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS,
AND FREQUENCY CONTROL. 2003;50(4):419-427.
6. Kim SB, Sohn H. Application of Time-Reversal Guided Waves to Field Bridge Testing for
Baseline-Free Damage Diagnosis. Proceedings of SPIE. 2006;6177:1-10.
7. Su Z, Ye L, Lu Y. Guided Lamb waves for identification of damage in composite structures :
A review Journal of Sound and Vibration. 2006;295:753-780
8. Chen F, Wilcox PD. The effect of load on guided wave propagation. Ultrasonics. 2007;47:111-
122
9. Cuc A, Giurgiutiu V. Structural Health Monitoring with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors
for Space Applications. AIAA Journal. 2007;45(12)
10. Diamanti K, Soutis C. Piezoelectric transducer arrangement for the inspection of large
composite structures. Composites: Part A. 2007;38:1121-1130
11. Kim SB, Sohn H. Instantaneous reference-free crack detection based on polarization
characteristics of piezoelectric materials. SMART MATERIALS AND STRUCTURES.
2007;16:2375-2387.
12. Park HW, Sohn H, Law KL, Farrar CR. Time reversal active sensing for health monitoring of a
composite plate. Journal of Sound and Vibration. 2007;302:50-66.
13. Yu L, Giurgiutiu V. In situ 2-D piezoelectric wafer active sensors arrays for guided wave
damage detection. Ultrasonics. 2008;48:117-134.
14. Yu L, Xu B, Liu W, Giurgiutiu V. Piezoelectric wafer active sensors for in situ ultrasonic-
guided wave SHM. Fatigue & Fracture of Engineering Materials & Structures. 2008:611-628.
15. Chiu WK, Tian T, Chang F-K. The effects of structural variations on the health monitoring of
composite structures. Composite Structures. 2009;87:121-140
16. Davies J, Cawley P. The Application of Synthetic Focusing for Imaging Crack-Like Defects in
Pipelines Using Guided Waves. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS,
FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL. 2009;56(4):759-771.
17. Overly TG, Park G, Farinholt KM, Farrar CR. Piezoelectric Active-Sensor Diagnostics and
Validation Using Instantaneous Baseline Data. IEE Sensors Journal. 2009;9(11):1414-1421.
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Press 2008:485
1138
Physics Based Temperature Compensation
Strategy for Structural Health Monitoring
S. ROY, K. LONKAR, V. JANAPATI and F.-K. CHANG
ABSTRACT
One of the widely accepted challenges in the field of structural health monitoring
(SHM) using ultrasonic guided waves is to carry an accurate damage diagnosis even in
the presence of changing environmental conditions. The present paper investigates the
role of ambient temperature in causing changes to the structural wave propagation in a
newer perspective and presents a novel methodology to compensate its effect. The
changes in the sensor signal parameters, caused by the variation in ambient
temperature, are related to the changes in the physical properties of the system through
a linear system identification model. A very limited data set is used to train the input-
output model which has the capability to generate a large baseline space of sensor
signals underlying its practical efficacy and usefulness.
INTRODUCTION
The on-line health monitoring and self-adaptability of fly-by-feel autonomous

vehicles such as UAVs would inevitably need an accurate real time state sensing
capabilities. The operation of these vehicles under changing environmental and
loading conditions necessitates the collection and processing of data from the on-board
transducers. The structural health monitoring (SHM) which typically includes, but not
restricted to, the monitoring of stresses in critical hot spots, estimating the initiation
and severity of damage types, relies largely on the accuracy of the information from
these transducers attached either on the surface or embedded inside the material.
However the transducer signals are vulnerable to changes due to many contributing
factors, often masking the real damage information leading to false diagnostics and
prognostics.
The SHM research community addresses the challenge of environmental
influence, especially the effect of changes in ambient temperature on the guided
waves, by proposing compensation strategies based on the experimental sensor data.
Lu and Michaels [1] proposed a methodology, optimal baseline subtraction ‘OBS’,
which selects the best matched waveform from a very large baseline set. Croxford and
Michaels [2] and Clarke et al. [3-4] presented an optimal stretch method ‘OSS’ that
Surajit Roy, Kuldeep Lonkar, Vishnuvardhan Janapati, Prof. Fu-Kuo Chang, Structures And
Composites Laboratory, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University,
Stanford, CA – 94305, USA.
1139
requires only single baseline data set at an arbitrary reference temperature. However it
was concluded that optimal stretch cannot be used as a stand-alone method for
temperature compensation and instead a combined scheme of ‘OBS’ and ‘OSS’ was
proposed to reduce the amount of data sets that are necessary for ‘OBS’. However
these data driven temperature compensation strategies are not ideal for practical
implementation because they require a lot of in-situ sensor measurements.
Jennifer [5] proposed a scheme to reconstruct the ‘S0’ mode of guided waves at
different temperatures by relating the amount of phase shift of individual frequency
components in the signal to the changes in the mechanical stiffness of the base metal
plate. However the issue of amplitude attenuation was not addressed in this study.
Croxford et al. [6] proposed an interesting approach for temperature compensation of
guided waves, but the focus was mainly on how the temperature induced changes on
the physical properties of the base metal would affect the sensor response. It should be
noted here that a typical sensor response is affected not only by the changes in the
properties of base material but the variation in properties of transducer and adhesive
are equally important. Ha et al. [7] carried out a numerical study to understand the
effect of adhesive on PZT induced lamb waves at elevated temperatures. The paper
reported fairly matching trends with the experimentally observed sensor signals and it
was concluded that adhesive type and thickness play a critical role in determining the
sensor response at elevated temperatures.
However there is still a need to develop an efficient physics based temperature
compensation strategy to account for the changes in experimental sensor signals for
structural health monitoring of structures made up of new and advanced materials.
Further the compensation model should be able to train itself by a very limited set of
actual sensor measurements so as to be practically feasible and appealing.
In this paper a new direction is explored to address the challenge of temperature
compensation for ultrasonic guided waves. First the influence of change in ambient
temperature on the PZT sensor signals is studied by collecting the sensor response on
a thin aluminum plate. Feature extraction from the sensor signals is carried out by
decomposing the sensor signal in the time-frequency domain, using a dictionary of
basis functions. A linear system identification model is proposed to relate the changes
in the coefficients of the basis atoms with the changes in the material properties of the
base material, the PZT transducer and the adhesive material. The efficacy of this new
strategy is tested under laboratory conditions by accurately identifying the location of
simulated structural damage at elevated temperatures.
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
Experimental Setup
Figure 1 shows the schematic of the PZT SMART® transducers attached to the
surface of the aluminum plate using Hysol 9696 thin film adhesive. The effects of
changes in the ambient temperature on the PZT sensor signals are studied on a thin
rectangular aluminum plate (18”×12”×0.078”, T-6061 alloy). The PZT transducers are
actuated using standard Burst 5 (5-peak Gaussian tone-burst) signal type at central
frequency of 250 kHz using ScanGenie, a 64-channel data acquisition system
provided by Acellent Technologies Inc.
1140
a) PZT Transducers 0.078” b)
12”
18”
Figure 1 a) Schematic of 18”x12”x0.078” rectangular aluminum plate with 5 PZT SMART®

transducers, b) ScanGenie, a 64-channel data acquisition system
The sampling frequency of data collection is 12 MHz and the signals are collected
in pitch-catch mode wherein one transducer acts as an actuator while the rest of them
act as sensors. The sensor signals are collected under controlled ambient temperatures
by keeping the plate inside an oven. The upper limit of temperature for this study is
restricted to 95°C due to the constraints on the component level, primarily amongst
them being the adhesive which gets softer at higher temperatures, having glass
transition temperature at around 100-110°C.
Influence of Temperature
Figure 2 shows a typical sensor signal between an actuator-sensor pair and the
influence of temperature on the peak amplitude and time of arrival of the first wave
packet. It is observed that the delay in arrival of first wave packet is not the only effect
but the change in waveform or in general the amplitude of the signal peaks should also
be taken into account while understanding the influence of temperature on sensor
signals. It can be seen from Figure 2c and 2d that the amplitude of the signal peaks
varies nonlinearly w.r.t change in temperature whereas the change in arrival time of
the signal peaks follows a linear trend. Further the influence of temperature on the
central excitation frequency of the sensor signal was reported by Konstantinidis et al.
[8]. It was reported that the central frequency of the tone-burst signal follows a linear
trend too; however the frequency variation is too small to cause any significant change
in the signal waveform.
ENVIRONMENTAL COMPENSATION
Signal Analysis
Signal feature extraction is one of the key steps in understanding the signal
behavior. Recently, emphasis is laid on matching pursuit or basis pursuit techniques
for signal analysis using over-constrained dictionary of basis functions due to their
excellent signal reconstruction properties [9]. In this paper matching pursuit (MP)
algorithm as presented by Fernando and Kolasa [10] is implemented to decompose the
PZT sensor signals in the time-frequency domain. Gabor dictionary is selected for
analysis because of the similarity of the basis functions with the tone-burst actuation
1141
signal. The elements of Gabor dictionary are built from scaled ( ), translated ( ), and
modulated ( ), version of the Gaussian window function defined as:
(3)
, , , cos (4)
Actuation signal Peak Amplitude

a) 1st wave packet b)
Sensor signal change
Signal Amplitude (V)

Signal Amplitude (V)
Phase Shift
Time (sec) Time (sec)

c)
d)
Normalized Peak amplitude
Normalized Phase Shift
Temperature (°C) Temperature (°C)

Figure 2. a) Typical PZT transducer signals between an actuator-sensor pair with windowing on the first
wave packet representing the ‘S0’ mode of a lamb waves, b) Effect of temperature on the sensor signals
at two different temperatures in the time domain, c) & d) Variation of normalized peak amplitude and
phase shift (delay in arrival time of the peak) of the first wave packet w.r.t temperature respectively
Where is the optimal phase dependent on the parameters , & . Let

represents the input signal vector sampled at times 0,1 … , 1. The matching
pursuit algorithm, after iterations, expresses the signal vector as follows:
, (5)
Where, represents the residual and , , , are the

parameters after iterations. The iterations are stopped when either
reaches a prescribed tolerance or maximum number of iterations is reached.
Mathematically the sensor signal is being projected along different directions
represented by the basis functions . For numerical implementation, let the
coefficients and be defined as:
1142
, cos (6)
, (7)
The coefficients and along with the parameters completely describe the
signal vector as a combination of the constituent Gabor atoms
0,1 … , 1 [10]. Figure 3a shows the variation of residual energy with the
number of iterations involved in decomposing the first wave packet of the sensor
signal using the matching pursuit algorithm. It can be seen that the signal residual
energy decreases monotonically and the Gabor function obtained from the first
iteration contains around 70% of the total signal energy content of the first wave
packet. The signal decomposition for the first wave packet (S0 mode) is stopped at
only ten iterations as the signal residual energy remains almost stationary thereafter.
The first five Gabor functions are plotted in the Figure 3b which represents the
constituent atoms or the building blocks of the first wave packet of the tone-burst
sensor signal. Constrained decomposition [11] of the experimental sensor signals
collected at different temperatures is carried out to determine the corresponding signal
parameters and . Figures 3c and 3d show the variation of the coefficients and
(corresponding to the first iteration, 1) w.r.t temperature.
a) b) Gabor function, iteration = 1

0.4
Residual Energy (normalized)
Iteration = 2
0.3
Iteration = 3
0.2
Iteration = 4
0.1
Iteration = 5
0
0 2 4 6 8 10
Iteration Number Time (sec)
c) d)
(normalized)
(normalized)
Temperature (° C) Temperature (° C)
X Experimental Numerical Prediction
Figure 3. a) Signal residual energy (normalized) vs. iteration number , b) Gabor functions for the
first 5 iterations of matching pursuit algorithm applied to analyze the first wave packet in sensor signal, c)
& d) Variation of and ( 1 w.r.t temperature, Experimental vs. Numerical Prediction.
1143
Temperature Compensation Strategy
Simulations Physics based

compensation
model
Lab validation
Flat coupon
Experiments
Figure 4: Concept development for field implementation of physics

based temperature compensation strategy for SHM
Field implementation
Figure 4 shows the concept for development, validation and field implementation
of physics based temperature compensation strategy for structural health monitoring of
aerospace structures. The strategy aims to understand the effect of ambient
temperature variation on the propagation of ultrasonic waves in a structure through
advanced wave propagation simulation tools [12] and laboratory experiments on a flat
plate. The learning from both the simulation studies and the experiments will lead to a
numerical model relating the influence of key physical parameters on the sensor
response. The compensation model will then be tested and validated on flat coupons as
well as complex geometries before being used for field implementation and
evaluation.
The PZT sensor signal is a measure of the electric field generated by the
transducer due to the applied/induced mechanical strain. Any change in the sensor
signal, other than signal noise, can be attributed to a known physical cause for instance
change in physical properties of the PZT transducers, bonding material and the base
metal due to the change in ambient temperature. The following functional relationship
between the changes in the PZT sensor response and the changes in physical
properties w.r.t temperature is hypothesized
∆
∆ . ,∆ . ,∆ _
(8)
However, owing to the absence of any analytical expression for function , the
following linear system identification model is proposed wherein the relative changes
in the sensor response is expressed as a linear combination of the relative changes in
physical properties of the system.
∆
∆
∆ , (9)
∆
∆ ,
Where ∆ and ∆ are the relative change in coefficients of Gabor function for
the iteration at w.r.t the base structural state, ∆ is the relative change
in the stiffness of the adhesive material, ∆ , and ∆ , are the relative
1144
changes in the piezoelectric coefficients relating the mechanically induced strain to the
induced electric charge [13]. The continuous variation of the material properties with
temperature is obtained from the literature [14-15]. The following relation is obtained
from the experimental measurement of adhesive stiffness, Hysol 9696 at higher
temperature
E ‐7.72518E‐03T3 1.18376T2 – 65.436T 3206.71 (10)
Where is in and is measured in . The choice of the mechanical

properties in equation (9) is guided by the parametric study carried out by Sungwon et
al. to understand the relative effect of different physical properties on the sensor
response [7]. It is observed through numerical simulations that the change in material
properties of the base metal principally affects the time of arrival of the first wave
packet whereas the adhesive stiffness and the electro-mechanical properties of PZT
transducer primarily affect the amplitude of the sensor response.
The unknown constants and 1,2,3 & 1,2, … 10 in equation 9
can be obtained from the experimental signal measurements recorded at different
temperatures. The knowledge of signal parameters and along with the
parameters , , , at any specified temperature will allow complete
reconstruction of the signal vector at that temperature.
RESULTS
The error ingrained in the linear temperature compensation model as specified in

equation 9 should be within a specified tolerance. The allowable tolerance can be
related to the desired resolution of the damage size (shown in table I), detected by
tracing the changes in the experimental sensor response caused by increase in crack
size on a plate (figure 5). The change in the sensor signal from the reference state can
be expressed in logarithmic scale as:
| |
20 (11)
| |
Table I: Crack length (mm) vs. Signal to noise

PZT Transducers
ratio (SNR) in log-scale
Crack Length (mm) SNR (log-scale)
3 -15dB
Crack Length 10 -2.0 dB
20 1.5 dB
Plate Geometry: 18”×12”×0.078”
Figure 5. Schematic of an aluminum plate with slot in the middle, used to characterize the damage size
effect on the sensor signal by propagating cracks on both sides of the slot.
The signal to noise ratio expressed in equation (11) can be used as a specific
error measure between the experimental and reconstructed signal at different
temperatures. Two approaches are proposed for signal reconstruction at a specified
1145
temperature. In the first approach (Approach I), the ambient temperature is known
apriori. One can obtain the signal parameters and reconstruct the signal at the specified
temperature using the linear compensation model. The approach is deterministic in
nature; however the practical difficulty may lie in estimating the exact temperature
information at the place where the PZT transducers are attached.
The second approach (Approach II) is probabilistic in the sense that the
temperature information is not known apriori. Instead the entire baseline set of sensor
signals is reconstructed at closely spaced temperature intervals once the unknown
constants of the linear compensation model (equation 9) are determined. This
approach is similar to the optimal baseline subtraction ‘OBS’ method [1] except the
fact that here the data comprising the baseline space is generated through a numerical
model, using a very limited sensor data, and need not be collected experimentally
which makes it an attractive proposition than ‘OBS’ for practical implementation.
Table II enumerates the sensor measurements taken on aluminum plate (Figure 1a)
at different temperatures for signal analysis and reconstruction. The choice of
reference temperature is arbitrary and set at 30°C for the present analysis. It can be
observed from figure 6 that the numerically reconstructed signals at specified
temperatures match quite well with the experimentally observed measurements. It is
worth mentioning that only six temperatures are used to obtain the parameters of the
model in the temperature range of 30°C to 95°C and still the values are quite low
for the reconstructed signals. The values are calculated using equation (11) where
the base state refers to the experimentally observed measurement and the current state
refers to the reconstructed signal at the given temperature. Figures 3c and 3d also
show good agreement between the experimental and numerically predicted
coefficients and at different temperatures.
Table II. Sensor signals at different temperatures as used for signal analysis and reconstruction
Temperatures for sensor Signal Measurements used in Temperatures for signal
signal measurements compensation model reconstruction
40°C, 60°C, 70°C, 80°C & 90°C 35°C, 50°C, 95°C
30°C - 95°C (steps 5°)
Base/Reference: 30°C Base/Reference: 30°C
Two cases of damage identification are carried out using the reconstructed
signals at elevated temperatures on aluminum plates (2mm thk.). In one case, sensor
signals are collected at 60°C by attaching sticky tape between an actuator and sensor
while in another case the signals are collected from the plate with edge cracks on both
sides of the middle slot at an elevated temperature of 50°C. The diagnostic images
shown in figure 7 are obtained using the algorithm as described in [16]. The first
image in each case does not use any temperature compensation resulting in ambiguous
damage identification. In Approach I, the reconstructed signal at known temperature
(60°C) is used as a baseline whereas in Approach II, the sensor signal is compensated
with the best matched waveform from the large baseline set (signals at closely spaced
temperature intervals), generated from the linear compensation model.
1146
a) b)
Signal amplitude (V)

35° 50°
23 28

c)
Experimental Signal
Reconstructed Signal (1st wave packet)

Figure 6: Comparison of 1st wave packet between
experimentally measured signal and reconstructed
signal using linear compensation model; sensor
signals collected at a) 35°C, b) 50°C and c) 95°C.
The reconstructed signal at specified temperatures 95°
matches quite well with the actual measured 28
values from the experiments
Time (sec)
Case a) Thin Aluminum Plate with Sticky Tape, 60°C
Simulated
Structural
Damage No Compensation Compensation Compensation
Approach I Approach II
Thin Aluminum Plate (2mm) with
surface mounted PZT transducers
Case b) Thin Aluminum Plate with Simulated Edge Crack (10mm), 50°C
No Compensation Compensation Compensation

Crack
Approach I Approach II
Figure 7. Damage diagnostics using temperature compensation model: Case a) Aluminum plate
with sticky tape (attached mass), signals collected at 60°C, Case b) Aluminum plate with 10mm crack
on both sides of the middle slot, sensor signals collected at 50°C. Damage location is correctly identified
at elevated temperatures using the compensation Approach I and Approach II.
1147
CONCLUSIONS
A new methodology for temperature compensation for PZT sensor signals is

proposed taking into account the variation in the physical properties of the base metal,
transducer and adhesive. The changes in the signal parameters are linearly related to
the changes in the physical properties affected by temperature variation. In other
words the nonlinearity observed in the sensor response is approximated by linear
combination of the nonlinearities of the physical properties.
The advantage of using a physics based temperature compensation model is that
one need not collect large set of baseline data at every possible temperature. Instead
the entire baseline space can be generated with a very limited set of training data.
Further the temperature compensated sensor signals will largely improve the
diagnostic capability of SHM system in real time by aiding in characterization of load
and damage effects on the PZT sensor signals [17].
The effect of temperature on the first wave packet of the sensor signals is primarily
focused upon in this study due to the fact that the later parts of the signals are often
mixed up with multiple reflections from the edges making the analysis to be more
complicated. Also the influence of thermal stresses is not considered here as the sensor
signals are collected in traction free conditions. The next steps of this research are to
extend the present work for new and modern materials like hybrid and composites,
validate the methodology for structures with complex geometries and predicting the
sensor response at temperatures beyond the range of the training set.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge National Aeronautics and Space

Administration (NASA), Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) and
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for supporting this work under
grants NRA-07-IVHM1-07-0064, FA9550-09-1-0677 and FA9550-08-1-0391
respectively. The authors would also like to thank Acellent Technologies Inc. and
General Sealants Inc. for extending their support in this research.
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1. Lu Y. and Michaels J.E. 2005. “A methodology for structural health monitoring with diffuse
ultrasonic waves in the presence of temperature variations”, Ultrasonics, (43) 717-731.
2. Croxford A.J. et al.. 2010. “Efficient temperature compensation strategies for guided wave
structural health monitoring”, Ultrasonics, (50) 517-528.
3. Clarke T. et al.. 2010. “Guided wave health monitoring of complex structures by sparse array
systems: Influence of temperature changes on performance”, Journal of Sound and Vibration, (329)
2306-2322.
4. Clarke T. 2009. “Guided wave health monitoring of complex structures,” Ph.D. Dissertation,
Imperial College, London.
5. Andrews J.P. et al.. 2008. “Lamb wave propagation in varying isothermal environments”, Structural
Health Monitoring, Vol 7(3) 265-270.
6. Croxford A.J. et al.. 2007. “Strategies for guided-wave structural health monitoring”, Proceedings
of the Royal Society A, (463) 2961-2981.
7. Ha S. et al.. 2010. “Adhesive layer effects on PZT-induced lamb waves at elevated temperatures”,
Structural Health Monitoring, Vol 9(3) 247-256.
1148
8. Konstantinidis G. et al.. 2006. “The temperature stability of guided wave structural health
monitoring systems”, Smart Materials and Structures, (15) 967-97.
9. Mallat S.G. and Zhang Z. 1993. “Matching pursuits with time-frequency dictionaries”, IEEE
Transactions on Signal Processing, (41) 3397-3415.
10. Fernando S.E. and Kolasa L.A. 2002. “Algorithm 820: A flexible implementation of matching
pursuit for Gabor functions on the interval”, ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, Vol 28
(3) 337-353.
11. Lu Y. and Michaels J.E. 2008. “Numerical implementation of matching pursuit for the analysis of
complex ultrasonic signals”, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency
Control, Vol 45(1) 173-181.
12. Lonkar K. and Chang F.K., 2011. “Development of SEM-based PESEA Code for Modeling PZT
Induced Acousto-ultrasonic Waves Propagating in Metallic & Composite Structures”, In the
Proceedings of 8th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, Stanford University,
CA.
13. Giurgiutiu V. 2008. “Structural health monitoring with piezoelectric wafer active sensors”,
Academic Press.
14. Brammer J.A. and Percival C.M. 1970. “Elevated-temperature elastic moduli of 2024 Aluminum
obtained by a laser-pulse technique”, Experimental Mechanics, (10) 245-250.
15. Sherrit S. et al.. 1999. Temperature dependence of the dielectric, elastic and piezoelectric material
constants of Lead Zirconate Titanate ceramics, Proceedings of the International Conference on
Smart Materials, Structures and Systems, 7-10th July 121-126.
16. Larrosa C et al.. 2011. "In-situ assessment of composite laminates via active sensor networks”,
Aircraft Airworthiness and Sustainment Conference, San Diego, CA.
17. Lopes Jr. V. et al., 2011. “Characterization of the temperature, load and damage effects using
piezoelectric transducer patches based on fuzzy clustering”, In the Proceedings of 8th International
Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, Stanford University, CA.
1149
Load-Enhanced Imaging of Fatigue Cracks
Via Sparse Guided Wave Arrays
J. E. MICHAELS, S. J. LEE, X. CHEN and T. E. MICHAELS
ABSTRACT
Detection and localization of fatigue cracks originating from fastener holes is an

important application of proposed systems for structural health monitoring (SHM).
However, detection of even large fatigue cracks using ultrasonic guided waves can be
challenging when cracks are tightly closed, which is common in the absence of
applied tensile loads. It can also be problematic to detect fatigue cracks using baseline
comparison methods if the baseline data are not recorded under the same
environmental and operational conditions as the current signals of interest. Work
presented here considers guided wave signals recorded from a spatially distributed
array of PZT discs bonded to an aluminum plate. A hole was drilled in the center of
the plate to simulate a fastener hole, and cracks were grown via low cycle tension-
tension fatigue. At intervals during the fatigue test, signals were recorded as a
function of static tensile load from all transmit-receive transducer pairs. Data were
first analyzed by comparing current signals to baselines recorded from the undamaged
specimen at different loads. Results indicate that load mismatch can significantly
degrade images, and cracks may be invisible if loads are not applied. Data were next
analyzed by comparing signals at one load to those at another load at the same
damage state, and results show that cracks can be effectively detected and localized
without using baseline data from the undamaged state. This load-dependent but
baseline-free approach could thus enable robust monitoring of fatigue cracks in the
presence of varying loads.
INTRODUCTION
Ultrasonic guided waves are a frequently considered candidate for structural

health monitoring (SHM) systems because they are mechanical waves whose
propagation is directly affected by damage. Furthermore, they travel relatively long
distances in plate-like structures of engineering interest while still maintaining
sufficient energy to detect damage. Guided wave sensors can be arranged in a variety
of configurations, including linear [1], circular [2], and spatially distributed [3,4]. The
spatially distributed, or sparse, configuration can take advantage of increased
Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Atlanta,

GA 30332-0250, USA
1150
sensitivity to damage by forward scattering [5], also called the shadowing effect,
whereas compact linear and circular configurations must rely solely on backscattering.
However, a disadvantage of the sparse configuration is that analysis methods
generally must incorporate baseline signal subtraction so that direct arrivals can be
removed from the signals. As many researchers have shown, baseline subtraction
without appropriate compensation for varying environmental and operational
conditions is problematic because large residual signals may either obscure damage or
result in excessive false alarms.
In this paper we consider the varying operational condition of quasi-static and
quasi-homogeneous applied loads such as arise during normal operation of a structure.
The effects of such loads on propagation of both bulk and guided ultrasonic waves in
homogeneous media are generally well understood [6,7]. As is also the case for
temperature variations [8,9], applied loads change both structural dimensions and
wave speeds. Unlike temperature, applied loads can also enhance the detectability of
defects, such as when a tensile load opens a tight crack. Here we motivate, define and
demonstrate load differential imaging, whereby images are generated from differences
in sparse array signals caused by small loading variations. We show that such images
are very effective in detecting and locating fatigue cracks that may otherwise be
tightly closed and thus not visible to interrogating guided ultrasonic waves.
IMAGING METHOD
The imaging method used here is based upon signal changes, and is thus a
differential method. Consider sets of signals recorded at two different times from all
possible pairs of a sparse array consisting of N transducers. For example, these two
times may correspond to before and after introduction of damage, or before and after a
change in operational conditions. For convenience, we refer to the first set as baseline
signals, and to the second set as current signals; note that the term “baseline” does not
necessarily mean “damage-free.” A set of residual signals is calculated by simply
subtracting the baseline signals from the current signals. These residual signals are
analyzed via delay-and-sum imaging whereby they are back propagated and summed
at each pixel location using an appropriate delay law [4], and the pixel intensity is
computed as the square of the summed values:
2
 N −1 N 
E ( x, y ) =  ∑ ∑ sij (tij ( x, y ))  . (1)
 i =1 j =i +1 
In this equation sij(t) is the residual signal from sensor pair i j, and tij is the delay time
that corresponds to the time of propagation from the transmitter to the pixel location
to the receiver. If the ith transducer (the transmitter) is located at (xi,yi), the jth
transducer (the receiver) is located at (xj,yj), and the pixel location is (x,y), then tij is,
( xi − x ) 2 + ( y i − y ) 2 + ( x j − x ) 2 + ( y j − y ) 2
tij ( x , y ) = , (2)
cg
where cg is the group velocity. Although the residual signal in Eq. (1) can be either
the raw (RF) signal, or the envelope-detected (rectified) signal, here we use only the
envelope-detected signals. The group velocity is estimated from the times of the first
arrivals from all transducer pairs.
1151
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
An aluminum plate specimen was instrumented with an array of six piezoelectric
transducers and subjected to fatigue loading to investigate loading effects on guided
wave SHM. The plate, made of 6061 aluminum and machined to enable mounting in
an MTS machine, measured 305 mm × 610 mm × 3.18 mm and is shown in Figure 1.
Transducers, which are also shown in the figure, were fabricated from 7 mm diameter,
300 kHz, radial mode PZT discs that were attached to the plate with epoxy and further
protected with a backing of bubble-filled epoxy.
Figure 1. Aluminum plate specimen mounted in the testing machine prior to fatiguing. A close-up of
one of the transducers is shown in the inset photograph.
An arbitrary waveform generator was programmed to apply a 50-to-500 kHz

linear chirp excitation to the transducers, a commercial ultrasonic instrument acted as
a receive amplifier, and a multiplexer switched between the 15 unique transmit-
receive pairs. Signals were digitized at a sampling rate of 20 MHz at a resolution of
14 bits, and 20 waveforms were averaged for each acquisition to reduce incoherent
noise. Because of the length and bandwidth of the chirp excitation, signals are
difficult to interpret in the time domain. Thus, signals were filtered during a post-
processing step to obtain the equivalent response to a 5-cycle tone burst at 100 kHz
[10]. It was observed that the A0 guided wave mode was dominant, and the
corresponding group velocity was measured to be 2609.8 m/s.
The plate was fatigued with a 3 Hz sinusoidal tension-tension loading profile from
16.5 to 165 MPa. Fatiguing was periodically paused to record ultrasonic data as a
function of applied tensile load starting at 0 MPa and ending at 115 MPa in steps of
1152
11.5 MPa, resulting in a total of 11 unique loads for each data set. After the first such
data set was recorded prior to initiation of fatiguing, a 5.1 mm diameter through hole
was drilled in the center of the specimen. A small starter notch was subsequently
inscribed on one side of the hole to act as a site for initiation of a fatigue crack. Data
were recorded as summarized in Table 1, and fatiguing was terminated prior to failure
when the largest crack was about 25 mm in length.
Table 1. Summary of Recorded Data, Fatiguing Schedule and Observations
Data Fatigue Observations / Crack Lengths at Surface (mm)

Set Cycles Left Front Left Back Right Front Right Back
1 0 No-damage baseline (no hole, no notch)
2 0 No-damage baseline (5.1 mm diameter hole drilled)
3 0 No-damage baseline (starter notch cut at left, front of hole)
4 5,000 No visible cracks
5 8,000 1.7 1.2 ---- ----
6 10,000 3.6 2.7 ---- ----
7 12,500 5.4 4.9 ---- ----
8 15,500 7.6 7.5 ---- ----
9 17,000 9.9 9.8 ---- ----
10 18,500 13.5 13.3 4.7 4.7
11 19,500 16.8 16.4 8.4 8.1
12 20,000 19.5 19.7 11.5 10.7
13 20,400 22.7 22.6 15.6 15.6
14 20,600 25.2 25.2 18.7 18.5
IMAGING WITH DAMAGE-FREE BASELINES

The previously described imaging method is first applied by comparing current
signals to damage-free baselines. As an example, we first consider images
constructed between data sets 1 and 2, which would be expected to show the 5.1 mm
hole that was drilled in between these two data sets. Figure 2 shows three such
images, which correspond to matched loads of 0%, 50% and 100% (0 MPa, 57.5 MPa
and 115 MPa); i.e., signals and baselines were recorded at the same load. As
expected, the three images are very similar since the hole is only very slightly affected
by the applied tensile load.
The situation is much different when the loads are not matched. Figure 3 shows
three images, also constructed from data sets 1 and 2, but with the baselines (data
set 1) recorded at zero load and the current signals recorded at 20%, 60% and 100%
loads (23 MPa, 69 MPa and 115 MPa). The image of Figure 3(a), which has only a
23 MPa mismatch, is not significantly degraded from those of Figure 2. However, the
image of Figure 3(b), with a 60 MPa mismatch, is obviously degraded, and that of
Figure 3(c), with a 115 MPa mismatch, is degraded to a degree that the hole is no
longer detectable.
1153
300 300 300
250 250 250
200 200 200

mm
150 150 150
100 100 100
50 50 50
0 0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
mm mm mm
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 2. Images constructed between data set 1 (baseline signals) and data set 2 (current signals) from
matched loads. (a) 0 MPa, (b) 57.5 MPa, and (c) 115 MPa. All three images are shown on the same
10 dB color scale.
300 300 300
250 250 250
200 200 200

mm
150 150 150
100 100 100
50 50 50
0 0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
mm mm mm
(a) (b) (c)
mismatched loads. (a) 0-to-23 MPa, (b) 0-to-69 MPa, and (c) 0-to-115 MPa. The images are shown on
separate 10 dB color scales where each is normalized to its peak value.
The reason for the degradation of images when loads are mismatched can best be
understood by considering the effects of applied loads on guided wave propagation.
As has been previously shown [7], there are two primary effects: (1) dimensional
changes; i.e., strains, and (2) changes in wave speed due to the acoustoelastic effect.
To first order, both of these changes perturb times of arrival of echoes but in an
anisotropic manner. Thus, there will be significant residual energy in differenced
signals caused solely by load changes regardless of whether damage has also been
introduced. In the case of Figure 3(c), this energy dominates the residual energy
resulting from introduction of the through-hole.
Now consider a similar series of images obtained from data sets 3 (baseline
signals) and 7 (current signals) where the primary difference between the data sets is a
single fatigue crack that is about 5 mm in length. Figure 4 shows the resulting
images, which are quite different from those of Figure 2 for the through-hole. In
particular, the fatigue crack is not detectable at zero load because the crack is tightly
closed, whereas at loads of 57.5 MPa and 115 MPa it is clearly visible, more so at the
higher load because it is more completely opened.
1154
300 300 300
250 250 250
200 200 200

mm
150 150 150
100 100 100
50 50 50
0 0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
mm mm mm
(a) (b) (c)
matched loads. (a) 0 MPa, (b) 57.5 MPa, and (c) 115 MPa. All three images are shown on the same
10 dB color scale.
300 300 300
250 250 250
200 200 200

mm
mm
150 150 150
100 100 100
50 50 50
0 0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
mm mm mm
(a) (b) (c)
mismatched loads. (a) 0-to-23 MPa, (b) 0-to-69 MPa, and (c) 0-to-115 MPa. The images are shown on
separate 10 dB color scales where each is normalized to its peak value.
Figure 5 shows images from data sets 3 and 7 for mismatched loads; this figure
corresponds to Figure 3 for data sets 1 and 2. None of these images is satisfactory in
the sense that it can unambiguously detect the fatigue crack. A comparison of Figures
4 and 5 indicates that the fatigue crack is adequately imaged only when loads are both
well-matched between current signals and baselines and of sufficient magnitude to
open the crack. These results clearly show the possible pitfalls when imaging fatigue
cracks (as opposed to holes and notches) in the presence of applied loads. If the loads
are too small, cracks may be tightly closed and thus undetectable. If loads are
mismatched, then they may either obscure small cracks or result in false alarms.
IMAGING WITH LOAD-DIFFERENTIAL BASELINES

The results of the previous section motivate a different approach to imaging of
fatigue cracks – the load-differential method. In this method “baseline signals” are
recorded at one load, and “current signals” are recorded at the same damage state but
at a slightly increased tensile load. Differences between the signals are thus caused by
a combination of crack opening effects and loading effects. The image of Figure 3(a),
which is of the through hole with a 23 MPa load mismatch, clearly shows the hole
with only a few additional artifacts as compared to the images of Figure 2. This
1155
comparison suggests that load differences of 23 MPa and smaller may not adversely
affect imaging, at least for this specific specimen and transducer arrangement.
Figure 6 shows six load-differential images for data set 7 to validate this idea. The
difference in loads is 23 MPa for each image, and the baseline loads start at 0 MPa
and increment by 11.5 MPa. The remaining three images in the sequence are not
shown because they contain nothing of interest on the dB scale used (i.e., they are
uniformly dark). It can be deduced from these images that the crack does not begin to
open until the load is about 35 MPa, and that it is fully open at about 80 MPa. The
images also indicate that the crack is on the left side of the hole, which is correct.
300 300 300
250 250 250
200 200 200

mm
150 150 150
100 100 100
50 50 50
0 0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
mm mm mm
(a) (b) (c)

Loads: 30/50, B7/F7 Loads: 40/60, B7/F7 Loads: 50/70, B7/F7
300 300 300
250 250 250
200 200 200

mm
150 150 150
100 100 100
50 50 50
0 0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
mm mm mm
(d) (e) (f)
Figure 6. Load-differential images constructed from data set 7 where current signals and baseline
signals are recorded at different loads. (a) 0-to-23 MPa, (b) 11.5-to-34.5 MPa, (c) 23-to-46 MPa,
(d) 34.5-to-57.5 MPa, (e) 46-to-69 MPa, and (f) 57.5-to-80.5 MPa. All six images are shown on the
same 10 dB color scale.
A composite image can readily be generated for each data set by averaging a
series of load-differential images. This composite image, while perhaps not as useful
for locating individual cracks as a single load-differential image, does capture in one
image the cumulative effects of the applied loads. Figure 7 shows a collage of
composite images from all data sets that were generated by averaging the five load-
differential images computed from non-overlapping loads separated by 23 MPa (e.g.,
0-to-23, 23-to-46, 46-to-69, 69-to-92 and 92-to-115). Note that the first three
composite images are from data sets recorded prior to fatiguing but with differing
structural conditions (i.e., no hole, hole, hole plus notch). It can be seen from these
images that the fatigue crack is perhaps barely visible by data set 6 and is clearly
evident at data set 7. Cracking is obviously increasing as fatiguing progresses.
1156
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Figure 7. Composite load-differential images from all 14 data sets. All images are shown on the same
20 dB color scale.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

A load-enhanced imaging method for detecting and locating fatigue cracks has
been developed and successfully demonstrated. This method is based on the fact that
a small tensile load can open a crack but does not otherwise significantly change
received signals. These results are significant because not only does the method
provide a means of imaging fatigue cracks in the presence of variable loads, it takes
advantage of the positive effects of loading to enable such imaging without relying on
baselines recorded from the damage-free structure.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory under Contract No.
FA8650-09-C-5206 (Charles Buynak, Program Manager).
REFERENCES
1. V. Giurgiutiu and J. Bao, “Embedded-ultrasonics structural radar for in situ structural health
monitoring of thin-wall structures,” Struct. Health Monitoring, 3(2), 121-140 (2004).
2. P. D. Wilcox, “Omni-directional guided wave transducer arrays for the rapid inspection of large
areas of plate structures,” IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control, 50(6), pp. 699–709,
2003.
3. J. E. Michaels, “Detection, localization and characterization of damage in plates with an in situ
array of spatially distributed ultrasonic sensors,” Smart Mater. Struct., 17, 035035 (15pp), 2008.
4. J. S. Hall and J. E. Michaels, “Minimum variance ultrasonic imaging applied to an in situ sparse
guided wave array,” IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control, 57(10), pp. 2311-2323,
2010.
5. P. Fromme, “Influence of guided ultrasonic wave scattering directionality on the detection
sensitivity for SHM of fatigue cracks,” Proc. SPIE, 7650, 76501M (10 pages), 2010.
6. Y.-H. Pao and U. Gamer, “Acoustoelastic waves in orthotropic media,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 77, pp.
806-812, 1985.
7. N. Gandhi, J. E. Michaels and S. J. Lee, "Acoustoelastic Lamb wave propagation in a
homogeneous, isotropic aluminum plate," Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive
Evaluation, 30, D. O. Thompson and D. E. Chimenti (Eds.), AIP, in press.
8. Y. Lu, J. E. Michaels, “A methodology for structural health monitoring with diffuse ultrasonic
waves in the presence of temperature variations, Ultrasonics,” 43, pp. 717–731, 2005.
9. A. J. Croxford, J. Moll, P. D. Wilcox and J. E. Michaels, “Efficient temperature compensation
algorithms for guided wave structural health monitoring,” Ultrasonics, 50, pp. 517-528, 2010.
10. J. E. Michaels, S. J. Lee, J. S. Hall and T. E. Michaels, “Multi-mode and multi-frequency guided
wave imaging via chirp excitations,” Proc. SPIE, 7984, 79840I (11 pages), 2011.
1157
Effect of Water Temperature on the
Laser-Based Ultrasonic Testing
of Immersed Structures
P. RIZZO1,* and E. PISTONE1
ABSTRACT
Laser-generated ultrasonic guided and bulk waves are increasingly considered for the
nondestructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring of engineering systems.
Methods based on the use of pulsed laser or continuum laser are ideal when a non-
contact approach for the generation of stress waves is desired.
This paper presents the initial progresses of an ongoing study where a pulsed laser is
used to generate stress waves in underwater structures. In particular, in this paper we
show the results of one experiment that investigates the effect of water temperature on
the ultrasonic energy propagating through one immersed test specimen. We first
studied the effect of water temperature on the amplitude of the laser-generated waves.
Then, we conducted a cross-correlation analysis on the waveforms to assess their
similarity. Finally, we performed a frequency analysis to investigate the frequency
content of the laser-generated bulk waves.
INTRODUCTION
Reliable and efficient nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques are needed to

ensure the performance and the proper response of engineering systems, avoiding
failures as well as keeping maintenance costs at a minimum. One of these techniques,
laser ultrasonic testing (LUT) has been used for the past two decades to perform
material characterization and to assess the integrity of structures. LUT involves the
generation of mechanical waves through the focusing of a laser beam on the surface of
the specimen under investigation. If the material is absorptive and higher energy,
ablation occurs, thus producing mechanical waves [1].
Monchalin and Scruby demonstrated that a duration pulse even in the order of a
few nanoseconds can excite a very broad frequency spectrum which is in the DC-20
MHz range [2, 3, 4]. LUT is also extremely appealing in NDT applications because it
has several other advantages, such as, non-contact generation and detection of stress
waves, broad or narrow-band signal generation and applicability to curved surfaces[5].
___________
1
Laboratory for Nondestructive Evaluation and Structural Health Monitoring Studies,
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261 USA.
1158
Multiple wave generation can occur and it also depends on the geometry and
boundary conditions of the specimen. As more than one type of wave can propagate
after each ablation, distinguishing between them can be difficult. In the case of thick
and dry specimens, LUT generates both bulk waves and surface waves; however, bulk
waves better identify the mechanical properties and the thickness of the element.
Singhal et al. [6] applied the continuous wavelet transform and pattern recognition in
order to distinguish between the different types of laser-generated waves in bulk
materials. Their study proves that this method is suitable to successfully characterize
complex transient signals.
On the other hand, the investigation of laser-generated waves in immersed plates
has been carried out by few researchers [7, 8, 9]. Among all the possible mechanical
waves, in this case the Scholte waves are the most appropriate to assess the integrity of
the specimen because they propagate with little attenuation. However, they work only
if specific conditions are met. Glorieux et al. presented a study on the Scholte waves
distinguishing the case of hard-solid fluid interface from the case of soft-solid fluid
interface. They showed that only in the latter case it is possible to characterize solids.
In fact, the greatest part of the energy of the laser-generated waves is retained in the
soft solid and this information can be used to infer the material conditions. By
contrast, if the solid is hard, the mechanical waves will travel in the fluid and little
information can be deduced about the solid [10]. Cegla et al. discovered that the
amount of energy retained between solid and liquid is also frequency dependent. In
particular, for the case of a thin aluminum plate, they presented two behaviors. At low
frequencies (below 500 KHz-mm), the greatest part of the energy stays in the plate
while, at high frequencies (above 1 MHz-mm), the opposite behavior occurs [11].
Therefore, the use of LUT in underwater plates presents some challenges and both
material properties and frequencies play a key role.
Furthermore, when the laser travels through water, it is subjected to absorption
which depends on the laser‟s wavelength. Beer‟s law dictates an exponential decay of
the waves‟ amplitude as the water-level increases. However, Gibson et al. suggested
that non-perfect exponential behavior can occur depending on the material
characteristics of the medium [12]. For example, water transparency and suspension
can affect absorption. Theisen-Kunde et al. also studied the effect of temperature on
water absorption in the 1920-1940 nm wavelength range. They concluded that
temperature strongly affects the absorption of water for these specific wavelengths,
but they did not extend their results to other wavelengths [13]. In addition to that, Han
et al. successfully distinguished between different types of laser-generated waves at
liquid-solid interface for the 532 nm wavelength range [14]. However, they give few
details about the effect of water absorption on mechanical waves.
Although the use of laser ultrasonic is known and widespread, very little attention
has been given to the application of laser ultrasonic techniques for the NDT of
immersed structures. The main challenge is that several phenomena occur and things
become complicated when these phenomena overlap.
In this paper we studied the effect of water temperature on bulk waves in the case
of a thick aluminum block. The specimen is in dry conditions but a column of water
with varying temperature is positioned on the upper surface of the block. The results
of the peak-to-peak, cross correlation and frequency analysis are presented. For the
experiment, we used a Q-switched Nd:YAG pulsed-laser operating at 532 nm to
1159
generate stress waves. The laser beam was focused on the surface of the specimen in
order to deliver a point-source of one millimeter. In order to achieve this, we used a
mirror and a plano-convex lens (PCX) with an effective focal length of 350 mm. In all
the experiments, an aluminum block with dimension 255 x 150 x 50 mm was used.
The longitudinal speed velocity was considered equal to 6.32 mm/μsec [1].The time
waveforms were digitized using Labview and post-processed using Matlab.
EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP
Figure 1 shows the set-up used to estimate the effect of water temperature on the
ultrasonic signal strength. A plastic pipe 50.8 mm in diameter was glued on the
aluminum block and filled with 100 mm of water. The temperature of the water-
column in the pipe was initially equal to 62 °C. Measurements were continuously
taken until the water reached the thermal equilibrium with the ambient at 25 °C. In
particular, we repeated all the measurements for each degree temperature ten times in
order to assess the repeatability of the results. By means of the mirror and the PCX
lens, the laser beam was delivered through the column of water on the surface of the
aluminium block. An ultrasonic transducer (resonance frequency equal to 1 MHz) was
attached on the opposite surface of the block to detect the bulk longitudinal waves
generated by the laser pulses. Finally, the level of energy was equal to 190 mJ.
PEAK-TO-PEAK ANALYSIS
We performed a peak-to-peak analysis in order to study the effect of water

temperature on the signal strength of the laser-generated bulk waves. Figure 2 shows
the results of the peak-to-peak analysis. In particular, we averaged the peak-to-peak
amplitude for each degree temperature and the vertical bars represent the 2σ interval,
where σ indicates the conventional standard deviation. As can be seen, the peak-to-
peak amplitude decreases as the water temperature increases.
Figure 1. Experimental set-up used in the water temperature test. Photo of the laser, PCX lens,
aluminum block and pipe filled with water.
1160
0.085
y = -0.0004x + 0.09
Peak to peak (V)

0.080 R² = 0.9199
0.075
0.070
0.065
0.060
24 29 34 39 44 49 54 59 64
Temperature ( C)
Figure 2. Average of the peak-to-peak amplitude as a function of the water temperature.
If we consider that the laser pulses are simply increasing the surface temperature
of the metallic specimen, we may say that the laser is acting as a transient heat source.
If we further assume that the laser uniformly irradiates a small area of the specimen
(where the laser is impinging on the metal), we may say that the temperature change in
the specimen is proportional to the quantity of energy absorbed [4]. However, if we
raise the temperature of the column of water, higher energy is required to irradiate the
same small area of the specimen. Therefore, it is argued that the decrease in the peak-
to-peak amplitude is a consequence of the increase of the water temperature.
Since the 532 nm wavelength suffers very little of absorption in water, these
results may be fully representative of the temperature effect on laser-generated bulk
waves. Furthermore, the repeatability of the results is very good, as proved by the fact
that the standard deviation is always under a 4.5% for each degree temperature.
CROSS-CORRELATION ANALYSIS
We performed a cross-correlation analysis on the laser-generated bulk waves in

order to measure the similarity of the time waveforms as a function of temperature.
We averaged the 10 waveforms detected at 62 °C and we considered them as a
reference for the cross-correlation. Figure 3 shows the results of this analysis.
1.00
Cross-correlation
0.99
0.98
y = 0.0006x + 0.9597
0.97 R² = 0.9245
0.96
24 29 34 39 44 49 54 59 64
Temperature ( C)
Figure 3. Average of cross-correlation as a function of the water temperature.
1161
We averaged the cross correlation for each degree temperature and the vertical
bars represent the 2σ interval, where σ indicates the conventional standard deviation.
As it is shown, the cross-correlation values are very closed to unity, thus indicating an
excellent similarity of the time waveforms. The highest standard deviation is equal to
0.58%. Therefore, it is argued that the characteristics of the aluminum block remain
constant during the whole experiment. It can be concluded that the wave speed is
stable despite the increase in temperature of the water column.
FREQUENCY ANALYSIS
We conducted a frequency analysis in order to study the variance of the frequency

content of the laser-generated bulk waves. We first calculated the Fast Fourier
Transform (FFT) of the time waveforms. Figure 4 shows two typical waveforms
detected. In particular, figure 4a shows the typical waveform detected at 62 °C while
figure 4b shows the typical waveform detected at 25 °C. Figure 5 shows the respective
FFTs. As can be seen, as the water temperature increases, the amplitude of the laser-
generated bulk waves slightly decreases. The first arrival of the longitudinal bulk
waves is perfectly detectable and its time of arrival is consistent with the theoretical
one (7.9 μs). Furthermore, the frequency content does not significantly change. In fact,
the resonant peak is always around 1 MHz and the shape of the FFTs remains stable
with a small increase in amplitude, as the water temperature increases. As an
additional frequency analysis, we calculated the area under the FFTs curves up to 2
MHz as an indicator of the energy of the signals. Figure 6 shows the results of this
analysis.
0 .0 5 0 .0 5
(a) (b)
Amp lit ude (V)
Amp lit ude (V)
0 .0 0 0 .0 0
-0.05 -0.05
0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15
Time (μsec) Time (μsec)
Figure 4. Laser-generated time waveforms registered at (a) 62 °C and (b) 25 °C
(a) (b)
0.4
Amplitude
Amplitude
0.4
0.2 0.2
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10
Frequency [Hz] x 10
6 Frequency [Hz] x 10
6
Figure 5. FFTs of the time waveforms displayed in figure 4. (a) 62 °C (b) 25 °C
1162
1.45
Area (A.U.)
1.35
1.25
1.15 y = -0.005x + 1.4908

R² = 0.8063
1.05
24 29 34 39 44 49 54 59 64
Temperature ( C)
Figure 6. Average of area under the FFT curves as a function of the water temperature.
We averaged the area for each degree temperature and the vertical bars represent
the 2σ interval, where σ indicates the conventional standard deviation. As can be seen,
the area under the curve decreases as the water temperature increases, being consistent
with the decrease in amplitude of the bulk waves. Both analyses confirm that the
frequency content remains stable with minor changes that are consistent with the
effect of the variance of temperature.
CONCLUSION
This paper represents the preliminary phase of a project aimed to develop a new
NDE technology for the inspection of underwater structures. We proved that the 532
nm wavelength is suitable for the scope since water absorption does not affect the
propagation of laser-generated bulk waves. Another important outcome is the fact that
water temperature affects the signal-to-noise ratio of the laser-induced stress waves. In
fact, the amplitude of the signals decreases as the water temperature increases. We
argue that higher temperature requires higher energy to irradiate the specimen, thus
causing a decrease in amplitude of the bulk waves. The cross correlation analysis as
well as the frequency analysis indicates that the conditions of the aluminum block are
minimally affected by the impinging of the laser. Future work includes new
experiments aimed at investigating the behavior of leaky Lamb waves in plates and a
finite element model will be developed in order to compare these results with the
experimental ones.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number
CMMI 1029457, Dr. M.P. Singh program director.
1163
REFERENCES
1. Shull, P.J. 2002. Nondestructive Evaluation: theory, techniques, and applications, Marcel Dekker
Ed., New York.
2. Monchalin, J-P. 1986. “Optical detection of ultrasound”, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics,
Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 33(5): 485-499.
3. Monchalin, J-P., Neron, C., et al. 1998. “Laser-Ultrasonics: From the Laboratory to the Shop
Floor,” Advanced Performance Materials, 5: 7–23.
4. Scruby, C., and Drain, L. 1990. Laser Ultrasonics: Techniques and Applications, Adam Hilger,
New York, NY.
5. Achenbach, J. D. 2000. “Quantitative nondestructive evaluation,” International Journal of Solids
and Structures, 37:13-27.
6. Singhal, M., Pramila, T., et al. 2006.“Characterization of laser generated bulk waves using wavelet
transforms and pattern recognition”, presented at the 12th Asia-Pacific Conference on NDT,
Auckland, New Zealand, 5-10 November 2006.
7. Han, Q., Qian, M., Wang, H. 2006. “Investigation of liquid/solid interface waves with laser
excitation and photoelastic effect detection,” Journal of applied physics 100, 093101,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2365377.
8. Ko, S., Ryu, S. et al. 2007 “Laser induced short plane acoustic wave focusing in water,” Applied
physics letters 91, 051128, http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2768192.
9. Glorieux, C., Van de Rostyne, J. et al. 2006. “Shear properties of glycerol by interface wave laser
ultrasonics,” Journal of applied physics 99, 013511.
10. Glorieux, C. K., Rostyne, V. et al. 2001. „„On the character of acoustic waves at the interface
between hard and soft solids and liquids,‟‟ Acoustical Society of America Journal, 110 (3) : 1299–
1306.
11. Cegla, F. B., Cawley, P., et al. 2005. “Material property measurement using the quasi-Scholte
mode-A waveguide sensor,” Acoustical Society of America Journal, 117(3):1098-1107.
12. Gibson, U.J., Osterberg, U.L. 2005. “Optical precursors and Beer's law violations; non-exponential
propagation losses in water”,Optics Express, 13 (6).
13. Theisen-Kunde, Dirk, Danicke, Veit et al. 2008. “Temperature dependence of water absorption for
wavelengths at 1920 nm and 1940 nm”, presented at the 4th European Conference of the
International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering, November 23-27, 2008.
14. Han, Q., Wang, H. et al. 2005. “Liquid-solid interface waves with laser ultrasonic and mirage
effect”, Chinese Physical Letters, 22 (12):3104-3106.
1164
Mystery Revealed on Natural Frequency
Change of a Structure During Rainstorms
M. H. CHENG, V HECKMAN and T. HEATON
ABSTRACT:
Recent observations as well as previous research show a 2-3% increase in the

natural frequencies of Caltech’s Millikan Library, a nine-story reinforced concrete
frame and shear wall building, during rainstorms. It has been a mystery about whether
changes in the building structure or the soil underneath cause the phenomenon.
The Southern California Seismic Network (SCSN) installed a 24-bit 3-axis

rotational sensor in the basement of the Millikan Library in 2008. It acts as an
excellent data source to examine the mode shape changes that accompany frequency
changes of the building. During the rainstorm period in late 2010, the authors ran
several shaking tests of the building at its natural frequencies, and the ratio of the roof
translational response to the basement rotational response was used to reveal the
mystery. Experimental results suggest that the building concrete swells in response to
moisture and cracks on the building surface are forced to close. The corresponding
increase in the Young’s modulus of the building structure causes an increase in the
measured natural frequencies.
Furthermore, when the authors watered the ground adjacent to the Millikan
Library, no changes in the building’s natural frequencies were observed. The
irrelevance of “soil saturation” supports the suggested hypothesis. Finally, a 1-
dimensional Timoshenko Beam model with soil-structure interaction is used to verify
the proposed explanation for the mystery.
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, various data analysis methods have been employed in the field
of structural health monitoring. Many studies relate the change in natural frequency of
a structure to structural damage, but there can be other factors that cause a change in
natural frequency. Clinton et al. (2006) found that temperature, rainstorms,
windstorms, and diurnal variations could change the natural frequency of a building
by approximately 3 percent. Also, Xing et al. (2008) noticed that temperature could
affect the natural frequency of a highway bridge by up to 3 percent.
_____________
Ming Hei Cheng, Vanessa Heckman, and Thomas Heaton, Department of Mechanical and
Civil Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E California Blvd, MC 104-44,
Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
1165
In this paper, we will explore the effect of rainstorms on Caltech’s Millikan
Library (Figure 1), a nine-story reinforced concrete frame and shear wall building. We
performed vibration experiments using the Kinemetrics shaker installed on the roof of
the library. Experimental results suggest that the building concrete swells in response
to moisture, and cracks on the building surface are forced to close. The corresponding
increase in the stiffness of the building causes an increase in the measured natural
frequencies. A 1-dimensional Timoshenko Beam model with soil-structure interaction
will be used to verify the proposed explanation for the mystery.
Figure 1. Caltech’s Millikan Library.
RAINSTORM EFFECT ON NATURAL FREQUENCY CHANGE
During past winter storm seasons, a prompt increase in the natural frequencies
of Millikan Library was observed. The effect was more significant in the East-West
and torisonal modes. After each event, Clinton et al. (2006) noticed a gradual recovery
of the natural frequencies to the pre-rainfall levels within 10 days. A recent plot of the
deviation for the three fundamental frequencies of Millikan Library in December 2010
is shown in Figure 2.
Following the rainfall event on December 16, 2010, the fundamental natural
frequency in the East-West direction increased by approximately 2.9% from the mean
value; the North-South one increased by approximately 0.7%; and the torisonal one
increased by approximately 2.5%.There are two parallel concrete walls running in the
NS direction, which corresponds to a higher natural frequency in this translational
direction, compared to the concrete frames in the EW direction. In this study, we
mainly focus on the translational modes. The NS fundamental frequency is
approximately 1.65Hz, while the EW one is approximately 1.15Hz. While the NS
natural frequency is 1.4 times larger, the stiffness in that direction is 2 times larger
than the EW direction. Therefore, if the building concrete swells in response to
moisture, the percentage increase in stiffness in NS direction is relatively smaller
because it has a much larger numerical value of frequency. This results in a lower
percentage increase in NS natural frequency during rainfall.
1166
Figure 2. Deviation for the three fundamental frequencies at Caltech’s Millikan
Library in Dec 2010.Natural frequencies are calculated using the seismic data from the
Southern California Earthquake Data Center (SCEDC). Thin red lines represent the
mean natural frequencies, which are computed using a 6-month record from July 2010
to Dec 2010. Thin yellow linesrepresent a 4-min percentage deviation from the mean.
Thin blue lines represent the daily average of percentage deviation from the mean. The
rainfall and wind gust data are collected from the Pasadena station (MD4916) at
www.wunderground.com.
RATIO OF ROOF TRANSLATIONAL RESPONSE TO BASEMENT

ROTATIONAL RESPONSE
Immediately after the rainstorm stopped on December 23, 2010, we ran

several shaker vibration tests on the Millikan Library. Full bucket frequency sweep
experiments were performed from 1.5Hz to 2.0Hz along the NS direction and 1.0Hz to
1.5Hz along the EW direction (Figure 3a and 3b).
1167
Figure 3a. NS frequency sweep test on Millikan Library on 12/23/2010.
Figure 3b. EW frequency sweep test on Millikan Library on 12/23/2010.
1168
Comparing the ratio R before and after the rainfall, i.e. the roof relative
translational response (base translational response subtracted from the roof
translational response) over the base rotational response at the time we shook the
building in its fundamental natural frequencies, we can determine whether the changes
in the building structure or the soil underneath cause the increase in the fundamental
natural frequencies. Rotational accelerometers were recently installed in the basement
of Millikan library in late 2008.
Results from a shaker test of Millikan Library under normal condition (January
15, 2011) and one immediately following rain (December 23, 2010) are given in Table
1. The building exhibits the same trend in both the NS and EW directions. The ratio R
decreases4.4% and 6.4%, while the fundamental natural frequency increases0.7% and
2.9% in NS and EW direction, respectively(Table 2). The decreases in ratio R are
caused by either an increase in building stiffness or a decrease in soil stiffness; the
increase of fundamental natural frequency is caused by anincrease of building stiffness
and/or an increase of soil stiffness. In a situation where the two events happen
concurrently, we conclude that rainfall triggers an increase in building stiffness. One
such underlying mechanism that could explain this phenomenon is the swelling of
building concrete in response to moisture, forcing cracks on the building surface to
close. Mckenna (2002) discovered a sharp decrease in crack displacement
immediately following precipitation. The corresponding increase in the stiffness of the
building structure causes an increase in the measured natural frequencies.Other
material researchers also showed that the Young’s modulus of wet concrete was larger
than dry concrete, because the water in saturated pores limited the deformation and
thus stiffened the concrete (Wang and Li, 2007; and Zheng and Li, 2011).
Table 1. Mean ratio R from shaker vibration test results.

Normal condition After rain
4
NS 9.09x10 8.72x104
5
EW 1.39x10 1.35x105
WATERING THE FIELDS ADJACENT TO MILLIKAN LIBRARY
On May 29, 2006, the fields adjacent to Millikan Library (to the immediate
North and South) were thoroughly watered during three consecutive evenings after six
days without rain or irrigation. The amount of water was based on a major rainstorm
in Feb 2003 which last three days and resulted in an approximate increase of 3%, 1%,
and 2% in the EW, NS, and torsional fundamental natural frequencies, respectively.
If the “soil swelling” hypothesis were true, the largest percent change in
frequency due to the lawn irrigation would have occurred in the NS fundamental
frequency. It is because the lawns adjacent to Millikan lie to the immediate North and
South of the building; and the NS fundamental mode is characterized by 30% roof
displacement due to tilt and translation, compared to a merely 3% for EW and 2% for
torsion (Bradford et al., 2004). However, no apparent increase in natural frequencies
was observed due to lawn irrigation during the experiment.Therefore, the irrelevance
of “soil saturation” supports the suggested hypothesis that the result of rainstorm is an
1169
increase in structural stiffness caused by a temporary reversal of structural damage
from cracks and a subsequent increase in natural frequencies.
Figure 4. Variation of the ambient fundamental frequency after watering the fields
adjacent to Millikan Library in 2006
TIMOSHENKO BEAM MODEL WITH SOIL-STRUCTURE INTERACTION
In previous work, a simple 1-dimenional prismatic Timoshenko beam model

with soil-structure interaction (SSI) (Figure 5) was derived to approximate the
dynamic linearly elastic deformation of a building (Cheng and Heaton, 2011).
Timoshenko beam model is a computational model with differential equations
coupling the effects of a shear beam and a bending beam, with the constraint that the
total deflections are caused by the sum of the shear deformations and the flexural
deformations. We add a rotational spring at the base to simulate the effect of the
rocking of the building on a soil foundation.
A Timoshenko beam consists of two governing equations:

 2 w (1a)
E*I  kG* A(  )   * I 2  0
x 2
x
  2 w (1b)
kG* A(  )   * A 2 w  0
x x 2
1170
where E* and G* are the effective Young’s modulus and the effective shear modulus,
respectively; I is the second moment of area; L is the building height; A is the cross-
sectional area; and k is the shear factor (to adjust for different cross-sectional shape);
ρ* is the effective density; ω is the natural frequency of the system; w is the lateral
deflection of the beam; ϕ as the rotation due to bending (when shear stress is
neglected).
Figure 5. Timoshenko beam with SSI.
We have previously constructed a Timoshenko beam model, using the first

two natural frequencies and the measured mode shape in each direction, to estimate
the linear elastic response of Millikan Library. We have investigated the
corresponding change in ratio R by inducing the same amount of increase in
fundamental natural frequency in each direction solely by increasing the stiffness of
the building structure (Young’s modulus and shear modulus) in the model. The
corresponding results (Table 2) show that the amount of change in ratio R in both
directions agrees well with the measured value, and thus the proposed explanation for
the rainfall mystery is verified.There is a slight difference in the percentage change of
the ratio in NS direction between the data provided from the Timoshenko beam and
the measured data. This is because we intentionally used a simplified model to
estimate the building’s mode shapes that is not a precise replication of the building
response.
Table 2. Comparison of the deviation of ratio R and fundamental natural frequency.

Change of fundamental
Change of ratio R
natural frequency
Measured data +0.7% -4.2%
NS
Timoshenko beam model +0.7% -0.3%
Measured data +2.90% -2.9%
EW
Timoshenko beam model +2.90% -2.3%
1171
FUTURE WORK
We will extend our analysis to the wind storm data and try to explain the
mystery on natural frequency change of a structure under wind gust. Also, we are
currently investigating the correlations between the natural frequencies of Millikan
Library and the environmental variables (including temperature, wind gust, and
humidity).
CONCLUSION
A series of shaker vibration experiments were conducted on Caltech’s

Millikan Library to gain an understanding about the mechanism responsible for the
observed increase in natural frequencies following rainfall. Experimental results
indicate that the observed frequency rise is accompanied by a decrease in the ratio of
the roof response to the base rotation. This supports the hypothesis that the building
concrete swells in response to moisture, and cracks on the building surface are forced
to close. The corresponding increase in the stiffness of the building structure causes an
increase in the measured natural frequencies during rainstorm.
Furthermore, when the authors watered the ground adjacent to the Millikan
Library, no changes in the building’s natural frequencies were observed. The
irrelevance of “soil saturation” supports the suggested hypothesis. Finally, a 1-
dimensional Timoshenko Beam model with soil-structure interaction successfully
verified the proposed explanation for the mystery. This study thus brings an important
message to the community of structural health monitoring that not all changes in
natural frequencies could be attributed by structural damage.
REFERENCES
1. Bradford, S. C., Clinton, J. F., Favela, J., Heaton, T. H. 2004. Results of Millikan Library vibration
testing. Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Report
no. EERL 2004-03, February 2004.
2. Cheng, M. H. and Heaton, T. 2011. Building motion prediction by Timoshenko Beam. EERI
Annual Meeting, 9-12 February 2011, San Diego, USA.
3. Clinton, J. F., Bradford, S. C., Heaton, T. H., and Favela, J. 2006. The observed wander of the
natural frequencies in a structure. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of American, 96 (1): 237-
257.
4. McKenna, L. M. 2002. Comparison of measured crack response in diverse structures to dynamic
events and weather phenomena. PhD thesis, Northwestern University, March 2002.
5. Wang. H. and Li, Q. 2007. Prediction of elastic modulus and poisson’s ratio for unsaturated
concrete. International Journal of Solids and Structures, 44: 1370-1379.
6. Xing, S., Halling, M. W., Barr, P. J., and Meng, Q. 2008. Ambient vibration analysis of a highway
bridge with subspace method and frequency domain decomposition. The 14th World Conference on
Earthquake Engineering, October 12-17, Beijing, China.
7. Zheng, D. and Li, X. 2011. Prediction of saturate concrete elastic modulus by considering pores and
microcracks. Advanced Materials Research Vols, 168-170: 594-598.
1172
Influence of Environment Condition on the
Group Velocity of the Lamb Wave for
SHM System
K. TAKAHASHI, H. SOEJIMA, T. OGISU, Y. OKABE, N. TAKEDA
and Y. KOSHIOKA
ABSTRACT
We have been developing a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system. One of

the monitoring targets of the system is the debonding in the bond-line of Carbon Fiber
Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) adhesive structures. In the SHM system, Fiber Bragg
Grating (FBG) optical fiber sensors are used to detect Lamb waves and piezoelectric
(PZT) transducers are used as actuators to generate Lamb waves. When debonding
occurs in the bond-line of CFRP adhesive structures, the transmission route length of
the Lamb waves increases, and the time taken for the Lamb wave to reach the FBG
sensors increases. The SHM system measures the Lamb waves and calculates the
debonding length from the increase of the transmission time. Therefore, in the case of
debonding monitoring, the precise group velocity of a specific Lamb wave mode is
required to achieve an accurate evaluation ofthe debonding length.However, it is well
known that the group velocities of the Lamb waves are affected by environmental
conditions such as temperature and strain. Thus, it is necessary to investigate the
influence of strain and temperature on the velocity of the A0 mode in the Lamb waves
and to develop a technique to compensate the influences of environmental conditions.
In this study, we investigated the influences of temperature and strain on Lamb
waves. Moreover, we developed prototype integrated tape-type FBG sensors to
measure ambient temperature, and we evaluated the temperature detection
performance of the sensor.
Kohei Takahashi, Hideki Soejima, Toshimichi Ogisu, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., Aerospace
Company, 1-1-11 Yonan, Utsunomiya, Tochigi 320-8564, JAPAN.
Yoji Okabe, Dept. of Mechanical and Biofunctional Systems, Institute of Industrial science,
The University of Tokyo 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 153-8505, Japan
Nobuo Takeda, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics School of Engineering, The
University of Tokyo 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8565, Japan
Yasuhiro Koshioka, RIMCOF Research Center of Advanced Metals and Composites,
Materials Process Technology Center , Kikai Shinko Bldg. #202-2, 3-5-8, Shibakoen,
Minato-ku, Tokyo, 105-0011, Japan
1173
Introduction
In recent years, a quantity of CFRP primary and secondary structures in

aerospace vehicles has been increasing. The weight of CFRP now accounts for more
than half the structural weight in large commercial aircraft such as the Airbus A350
and the Boeing B787; thus, CFRP has contributed to the weight reduction and the
decrease in adverse environmental effects. This tendency is expected to continue in
the future. However, CFRP has some drawbacks, and the failure and fracture behavior
of CFRP differs greatly from that of metals such as aluminum and titanium. For
example, CFRP does not exhibit plasticity, and damage that cannot be identified
from outside the CFRP can arise and spread within the laminate construction. Such
damage has the possibility of causing catastrophic failure of the CFRP structures.
Therefore, Aircraft developed in recent years have been designed with highmargin of
safety to ensure that there are no catastrophic failures even if debonding occurs.
However, this design concept increases the weight of aircraft structures and
decreases the advantage of CFRP.
We have been developing a SHM system to diagnose the structural integrity of
CFRP structures from an early stage of damage to propagation stage of debonding.
Fig.1 shows an overview of our SHM system. FBG optical fiber sensors are used to
detect Lamb waves, and piezoelectric transducers are used as actuators to generate
Lamb waves in the SHM system. A FBG optical fiber sensor has a portion of
grating in which the refractive index changes periodically. The center wavelength
of the light reflected from the grating varies with the grating period. An arrayed
waveguide grating (AWG) is used as a filter to detect changes in the center
wavelength of FBG optical fiber sensors, and a high-speed demodulator can
measure the change in the center wavelength of the FBG as the voltage changes in
our SHM system. Therefore, our SHM system can perform precise measurements
of Lamb waves, generated by a PZT actuator, by using FBG optical fiber sensors.
There are several procedures for analyz ing Lamb waves to evaluate some types of
structural damages. One of the most understandable methods is to analyze changes
in the arrival time of Lamb waves, which are caused by changes in structural
integrity. We have confirmed that our SHM system can evaluate the debonding
length in the bond-line of CFRP adhesive structures with some types of test
specimens under laboratory conditions [1-4].
As was previously mentioned, it is important to measure the group velocity of a
specific Lamb wave mode precisely. However, the group velocities of Lamb waves
are affected by environmental conditions; moreover, temperature variations cause
High speed
High-speed opticalFBG
demodulator
wavelength detection device
Light source
AWG-type
filter
Generator
PZT actuator
PZT film actuator
FBG sensor Processor
Figure 1. Overview of the developed SHM system
1174
12mm FBG sensor 100mm 70mm PZT actuator
420mm
Figure.2 Overview of the specimen and the configuration of FBG/MFC installation.
changes in the refractive index of the optical fiber core, which induce changes in the
center wavelength of the light reflected from FBG. In this study, we conducted
preliminary investigation with coupon specimens under conditions that simulate the
practical conditions of an in-service aircraft. In addition, the temperature
measurement performances of prototype integrated tape-type FBG sensors, which
are under development, were evaluated in the test.
Experimental Procedures
Fig. 2 shows an overview of the test specimen andthe configuration of tape-type

FBG sensors and MFC actuator. In order to investigate the velocity change in the A 0
mode precisely, the shape of the test specimen was made long and slender to prevent
the reflection of the Lamb wave from the top, bottom, and side edges of the specimen.
Two tape-type FBG sensors were bonded to the surface of the CFRP panel to analyze
accurately the A 0 mode velocity from the timedifference during which the Lamb wave
passed and the distance between FBG sensors. The FBG sensors and MFC actuators
were bonded on the specimen with a cyanoacrylate-type adhesive. One of the FBG
sensors is a prototype integrated tape-type FBG sensor, which is currently under
development. This sensor has two FBG sensors that are sandwiched between two
layers of polyimide films. The FBG optical fiber sensor with a capillary tube and
the other FBG optical fiber sensor were used to evaluate the temperature and strain
influences, respectively.
The test was conducted separately in two stages. In the first stage, the specimens
were set up in a temperature-controlled chamber and the atmosphere temperature was
changed from -65 to 110 °C. We quantitatively evaluated the relation between the
group velocity and the temperature and the temperature measurement performance of
tape-type FBG sensors, respectively. The atmosphere temperature was set at intervals
of 5 or 10 °C, and a 100 kHz three-cycle sinusoidal Lamb wave with a Hamming
window was oscillated from a PZT actuator when the temperature was steady and the
arrival time of the Lamb wave A 0 mode was calculated by wavelet analysis. Group
velocity was calculated by dividing the distance between FBG by the difference of
those arrival times of the A0 mode. The performance of the FBG sensor with a
capillary tube for temperature detection was evaluated at the same time. Channel
number and setting temperature of the AWG were recorded and evaluated during the
test.
In the second stage, measurements of Lamb waves were carried out under both
1175
1 0.5
0.5
0 0
-0.5
-1 -0.5
(a) (b)
Figure 3. Lamb wave in the initial condition measured by (a) FBG1 and (b) FBG2.
strain and temperature-varying conditions. The temperature range was varied from
room temperature to 70 °C and the applied strain was up to 5000 με . In order to
investigate the repeatability of group velocity, the tensile loads were repeated in
range of strain from 0μεto 5000με .
The group velocity of the A0 mode was calculated from the analytical result of the
measured Lamb waves as well as the test of the first stage. The performance of FBG
for temperature detection under strain-applied conditions was evaluated at the same
time.
Results and Discussion
Fig. 3 shows the measured Lamb wave in the initial condition.It is confirmed that
the measurement of Lamb waves by our SHM system is not influenced by the
reflection of the Lamb wave from the edge of the specimen.
Fig. 4 shows changes in the group velocity of A 0 mode that was measured under
temperature-varying conditions, confirming that the tendency of the curves correspond
well in a wide range from -65 to 110 °C. The difference of the group velocity in the
three specimens is the largest in the temperature range of -35 to 5 °C, and it becomes
about 50 m/s. However, the value of the group velocityis about 1600 m/s, and the
difference is about 3% compared with that value, and it is supposed thatdebonding
detectability of the SHM system is not greatly affected by the difference.On the other
hand, the group velocity has changed from 1650 m/s at-65 °C to 1350 m/s at 110 °C,
and the decrease rate reaches about 20%. Generally, the temperature of inspected areas
1700 Specimen A
Group Velocity / m/s
Specimen B
1600 Specimen C
1500
1400
1300
-80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Atmosphere Temperature / degree C
Figure 4. Change in Lamb wave A0 mode group velocity measured under temperature-varying
conditions.
1176
Figure. 5 Changes in Lamb wave A0 mode group velocity in the tension test carried out at various
temperatures.
in aircraft structures changes greatly depending on the location of the airport where
inspection and maintenance are executed, and the place where the sensor isinstalled.
Thus, the temperature must be detected in real time in order to achieve precise
evaluation of debonding.
Fig. 5 shows changes in the group velocity of A0 mode in the tension test on two
specimens that was carried out at room temperature, 50 °C, and 70 °C, confirming that
the tendency of two test pieces correspond well. The curve of each temperature is
separated completely, and the temperature change influences the group velocity more
than the strain change. In the low strain range, the group velocity of the first half of the
loading cycle is about 50 m/s larger than that of the last half of the loading cycle. As a
cause of this change, there is a possibility that some damages such as microcracks
occurred in the CFRP panel, and it affected the group velocity of the Lamb wave. In
almost strain range, it is confirmed that the change in the group velocity caused by the
strain applied is less than that caused by the temperature variation. Detailed evaluation
of the influence will be done in future studies.
Fig. 6 shows the AWG setting temperature of the FBG for temperature detection
in the temperature change test, confirming that the FBG for the temperature detection
measured temperature accurately. In the temperature range from -40 to 110 °C, the
approximate straight line and the actual measurement value correspond very well. In
150 11,10ch
11,12ch
Atmosphere Temperature /
13,12ch
100
degree C
50
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
-50
-100
AWG Temperature / degree C
Figure. 6 Temperature measured by the prototype sensor.
1177
Detected temperature / degrees C
at an ambient temp. of 20 degrees C
100 at an ambient temp. of 50 degrees C
at an ambient temp. of 70 degrees C
80
60
40
20
0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
Strain
Figure. 7 Temperature measured by the prototype sensor under strain-applied conditions.
the low-temperature region under –40 °C, there are some scatters in the temperature
detection performance. But this performance decrement is caused by a lack of data
points; if we measured AWG data under cryogenic temperature using a high-power
temperature chamber, the accuracy will be improved. We plan to substitute the
AWD setting temperature measured by the FBG sensors in the capillary tube bonded
on the structure of an aircraft in the approximate straight line, and decide the ambient
temperature of the environment.
Fig. 7 shows the temperature detected byusing the above-mentioned procedure in
the tensile test. From this figure,it is clear that although strain was applied to the FBG
that was located between the FBG used for temperature detection and the light source,
the reflected light in the FBG used for temperature detection was not affected by
changes in the strain. Therefore, the SHM system could measure the ambient
temperature without a large amount of error. It is confirmed that ambient temperature
can be measured precisely for any strain condition by using the prototype FBG sensor
and the SHM system.
Conclusion
To improve the accuracy of damage diagnosis in our SHM system, we

investigated the influence of temperature and strain on the Lamb wave.Moreover, we
developed prototype integrated tape-type FBG sensors to measure ambient
temperature, and we evaluated the temperature detection performance of the sensor.
We confirmed that the group velocity of A0 mode varies with the applied
temperature, and the variation rate of the group velocity reached about 20%. It was
confirmed that the change in the group velocity caused by the applied strain is smaller
than that caused by temperature changes.
We also confirmed that the prototype tape-type FBG sensor and our SHM
system are useful for deriving the accurate group velocity of the A0 mode. Hence, it
is believed that we can detect debonding precisely by using the sensor and our SHM
system.
In a future work, we will evaluate the debonding detectability of our SHM
system and the integrated tape-type FBG sensors in various environmental
conditions by using some type of specimens.
1178
Acknowledgements
This work was conducted as a part of the project “Aerospace Industry Innovation
Program-Advanced Materials & Process Development for Next-Generation Aircraft
structures” under the contract with the RIMCOF, Research Center of Material
Process Technology Center, founded by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry (METI) of Japan.
References
1. T. Ogisu, M. Shimanuki, H. Yoneda, Y. Okabe, N. Takeda and T. Sakurai, “Evaluation of
FBG/PZT Actuator Hybrid Damage Monitoring System using Structural Element Specimen”,
Proc. 5th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring 2005 , pp. 770-779, 2005.
2. T. Ogisu, M. Shimanuki, S. Kiyoshima, Y. Okabe and N. Takeda, “Feasibility Studies on Active
Damage Detection for CFRP Aircraft Bonding Structures”, Advanced Composite Materials, Vol.
15, No. 2, pp. 153-173, 2006.
3. Y. Okabe, J. Kuwahara, K. Natori, N. Takeda, T. Ogisu, S. Kojima and S.
Komatsuzaki,“Evaluation of Debonding Progress in Composite Bonded Structures using
Ultrasonic Waves Received in Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors”, Smart Materials and Structures,
Vol. 16, pp. 1370-1378, 2007.
4. H. Soejima, N. Nakamura, T. Ogisu, Y. Okabe, N. Takeda, and Y. Koshioka, “The strain
dependence on the Lamb wave sensing system using FBG sensor and PZT actuator”, Proc.of
the 5th European workshop Structural Health Monitoring 2010, pp182-187.
1179
Measurement of Distributed Strain and
Deformation and Load Identification
Using Optical Fiber Strain Sensors
K. TACHIBANA, H. MURAYAMA, H. IGAWA, T. NAKAMURA
and J. YOKOKAWA
ABSTRACT
We have implemented strain measurements along three sensing lines of long-length

fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors in a wing model. The sensing system based on
optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) can measure strain at an arbitrary
position along long-length FBG sensors with the high spatial resolution. We
estimated displacement from the measured strain data by applying the beam theory. In
addition, in order to investigate the applicability of the load identification method
based on the inverse analysis, we applied it to a simply supported beam. In this
experiment, the strain distribution along the beam was measured by the long-length
FBG and the displacement distribution was also estimated from the measured strain
data. Then the applied load distribution was identified by the inverse analysis using the
strain or the displacement data.
INTRODUCTION
One of the purposes of structural health monitoring is to assess the structural integrity
in real time. In order to realize this, it is useful to identify load distribution from strain
or other data measured by sensors. We can obtain useful information to give feedbacks
for structural design and operations from load distributions as well as from strain
distributions in most cases. For example, a wing of an in-service aircraft is subjected
to a distributed load to lift its body. The distributed load influences the in-flight safety,
fatigue aging and so on. If we know the load distribution, feedback to design, more
accurate fatigue damage evaluation, optimization of maintenance inspection become
possible. It is difficult in general to directly measure a load distribution by sensors.
However, the load distribution can be identified by using other structural conditions,
such as strain and displacement. This problem can be solved by an inverse analysis [1,
2]. Our previous studies proposed a new method of load identification that expresses a
distributed load discretely, and identifies it from strain and displacement distributions
by using a generalized inverse matrix [3].
_____________
Kazuki Tachibana, Hideaki Murayama, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1
Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656 Japan
Hirotaka Igawa, Toshiya Nakamura, Jyo Yokokawa, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency,
6-13-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo, 181-0015 Japan
1180
Strain distributions can be measured by the sensing system using long-length fiber
Bragg gratings (FBGs) based on optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) [4].
In the previous study, this method of identification has been proved to be applicable to
a panel structure through simulations and experiments. It has been also proved to be
applicable to a wing structure through simulations [5].
In this study, we conducted experiments using a wing model in a wind tunnel and a
simply supported beam in order to verify the applicability of our method. First, we
applied the strain distribution measurement technique based on OFDR to the wing
model. Through temperature compensation, we could measure strain distributions with
sufficient accuracy. The displacement distributions were estimated successfully from
the measured strain distributions by applying the beam theory to the wing model along
the long-length FBG. Secondly, in order to conduct the load distribution identification
in a simple model, we applied the sensing system to the simply supported beam. In
this case, we performed the strain distribution measurement, the displacement
distribution estimation and the load distribution identification.
DISTRIBUTED STRAIN SENSING SYSTEM
FBG Sensor
An FBG sensor can measure strain and temperature by monitoring the reflected light.
The FBG is a periodical refractive-index modulation inscribed into a fiber core. When
the incident light comes to the FBG, this periodical refractive-index modulation acts as
a diffraction grating to selectively reflect a narrow-band spectrum with a specified
peak wavelength, which is called Bragg wavelength, and transmit the rest of the light.
The Bragg wavelength λB is expressed as,
B  2neff  (1)
,
where neff is the effective index of the core and Λ is the grating pitch. If strain or
temperature is applied to the FBG, the effective index of the core neff and the grating
pitch Λ change. As a result, Bragg wavelength λB changes. We can detect strain or
temperature by monitoring the shift of the Bragg wavelength.
Measurement System based on OFDR
We can measure a strain distribution using a long-length FBG based on the OFDR
system [4]. Our system is similar to that of Childers’ [6]. Our OFDR enables us to
measure strain at an arbitrary position along the FBG. We have succeeded strain
distribution measurement using a 1500 mm long-length FBG [7]. Our OFDR can
measure a strain distribution with the resolution of less than 1 mm and the accuracy of
less than 10 με.
1181
WIND TUNNEL EXPERIMENT
Wing Model and Experimental Condition
Figure 1 shows a picture of the wing model in the wind tunnel experiment. The wing
model is mainly made of aluminum alloy. As shown in Figure 2, we bonded three
sensing lines with long-length FBGs and two thermo couples on the surface of the
wing model. The long-length FBGs with the length of about 100 mm were cascaded
serially with a slight space between each FBG and the total sensing range of each line
was about 2.5 m. We measured strain distributions along these three sensing lines.
Wind speed and w/ or w/o nacelle were varied in the test as shown in Table II. In each
condition, attack angle and wind on/off were varied as shown in Table I.
Figure 1. Picture of wing model. Figure 2. Sensor location.
Table II Experiment condition (wind speed (m/s), nacelle (on/off))

Condition number 201 202 203 204 205
wind speed (m/s) 60 30 70 60 70
Nacelle w/ w/o w/ w/o w/o
Table III Experiment case (Attack angle (degree), wind (on/off))

Attack angle(degree) wind
Case1 0 off
Case2 0 on
Case3 4 on
Case4 8 on
Case5 12 on
Case6 16 on
Case7 20 on
Case8 0 on
Case9 0 off
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Strain Distribution Measurement and Temperature Compensation
Since strains measured by FBGs could be influenced by temperature, we need to

compensate it. The shift of Bragg wavelength, B , is expressed as,
   dn   
   
  n   dT   
P12   P11  P12     
2
 B  2n 1   T
n  
(2)

   
2 
  
   ,
where Pij is Pockels coefficient, v is Poisson ratio, and α can be supposed as linear
expansion coefficient of the object under strain sensing (in this case, aluminum alloy).
We assumed temperature distributions along the sensing lines based on two thermo
couples by using the following equation given by,
T2  T1
T i   T1  Li   L1 
L2  L1 ,
(3)
where T1 and T2 are the temperature measured by Thermocouple 1 and 2, respectively,

and L1 and L2 are the position of Thermocouple 1 and 2, respectively. T(i) is the
temperature on the position of L(i).
As the wing model is complicated structure, linear expansion coefficient of the wing
model is not the same as free aluminum alloy and varies by the position. Therefore, we
determined linear coefficients at each measurement position, α(i), from the shifts of
the Bragg wavelengths of the Case 1 and Case 9. In Case 1 and Case 9, load condition
and w/ or w/o nacelle are the same, but temperature distribution is different. We
determined α(i) so that the shifts of the Bragg wavelengths in Case1 and Case9
become identical by temperature compensation. Figure 3 shows strain distributions
measured by FBG1 before and after the temperature compensation (Condition 203,
Case 2 and Case 8). This result shows we could compensate temperature successfully,
as the strain distributions of the two cases are almost the same, and strain at wing tip is
almost 0 με after the temperature compensation.
Figure 3. Strain distributions before and after temperature compensation.

(Blue line: Condition 203, Case 2 Red line: Condition 203, Case 8 ).
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Deformation Identification
We estimated the displacement distribution of the wing model from strain data by
applying the beam theory. According to the beam theory, displacement δ is expressed
as,
 1 2  
      dx      dx 2 (4)
   y ,
where  is the curvature radius of neutral plane, ε is strain and y is the distance from
the neutral axis. We used the strain distribution measured by the sensing system and
the temperature compensation method mentioned above. The distance from the neutral
axis was measured in the CAD model by CATIAV5R19. shows a comparison of
estimated displacement distributions with displacement measured by 3 dimensional
measurement based on stereo vision using two cameras. Wind speed was 60 m/s and
attack angle was 4 degree. The agreement between the results from FBGs and the
stereo vision were excellent.
EXPERMENT OF SIMPLY SUPPORTED BEAM
Discrete Representation of Distributed Load
In this experiment, we assumed that load was distributed along x axis, which was
expressed as p(x). We divided the loading region and defined finite elements as shown
in Figure 5. Load distribution on element e, pe(x), is expressed as
p e ( x)  n1e ( x) p1e  n2e ( x) p2e , (5)
where nie is shape function of node i on element e and pie is the load value on node i of
an element e. In the case of Figure 5, nie is expressed as,
x2  x e x  x1
n1e ( x)  n2 ( x)  (6)
x2  x1 , x2  x1 .
By superposing Eq. (5) throughout the loading region, p(x) is expressed as,
n n
p( x)   N i ( x) pi   pˆ i ( x) (7)
i 1 i 1 ,
where n is the number of all nodes, pi (i = 1,2,…,n) is the load value on nodes i and Ni
(x) (i = 1,2,…,n) is determined by superposing nie(x).
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Figure 4. Comparison of estimated displacement with displacement measured by 3D measurement.
Figure 5. Discrete representation of pressure (one dimension).
Method of Load Identification
Actual strain,  (x) , and actual displacement,  (x) , can be approximated as liner
sum of strain ̂ and displacement î (x), which are caused by load pˆ i ( x) . This is
based on the assumption of elastic deformation and Eq. (7). As ̂ and î (x) are
proportional to pˆ i ( x) , strain  (x) and displacement  (x) are expressed as
n n n n
 ( x)   î ( x)  sî( x) pˆ i ( x)  sî( x) N i ( x) pi ( x)  si( x) pi ( x) (8)
i 1 i 1 i 1 i 1 ,
n n n n
 ( x)   î ( x)  dî( x) pˆ i ( x)  dî( x) Ni ( x) pi ( x)  di( x) pi ( x) (9)
i 1 i 1 i 1 i 1 .
Strain and displacement at each measurement point are  j (j = 1,2,…,m) and  j (j

m m
= 1,2,…,m), respectively, and are expressed as,
  1m   s11 s 21  s n1  p1 
 m   
  2   s12 s 22  s n 2  p 2 
         
(10)
    
 m   s s 2 m  s nm  p n 
 m   1m ,
  m1   d11 d12  d1n  p1 
 m   
  2   d 21 d 22  d 2 n  p 2 
         
(11)
    
 m   d  d mn  p n 
 m   m1 d m2
.
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According to Eqs. (10) and (11), sij and dij are equal to strain and displacement value
on measurement point j, respectively, when unit load is applied to load estimation
node i. sij and dij can be calculated a priori by the beam theory in this case. Then, the
distributed load can be identified from the measured strain or displacement data by
solving Eqs. (10) and (11) as,

 p1   s11 s 21  s n1    1m 
     
 p 2   s12 s 22  s n 2    2m 
          
(12)
     
 p  s  s nm    mm 
 n   1m s 2m
,

 p1   d11 d12  d1n    m1 
     
 p 2   d 21 d 22  d 2 n    m2 
          
(13)
     
 p  d  d mn    mm 
 n   m1 d m2
.
Generally, as m≠n, inverse matrices [sij]+ and [dij]+ are generalized inverse matrices.
Measured strain and displacement could include some error, which could result in fatal
error of identified load distributions. According to the error of measured strain and
displacement, we must smooth solutions by reducing the rank of matrices [sij]+ and
[dij]+ appropriately.
Experimental Model
Figure 6 shows an overview of this experiment. The test beam is made of aluminum
alloy. A 1500 mm length gauge FBG is bonded along the center line of the upper
surface with the epoxy adhesive.
Load Identification
In this experiment, the number of load estimation nodes, n, was 300 and the number
of measurement points of strain and displacement, m, was 1408. Strain data was
measured using the long-length FBG based on OFDR. Displacement data was
estimated based on the beam theory. Figure 7 shows identification results from strain
and displacement data. Upper graphs are load distributions and lower graphs are sheer
force distribution, respectively. Sheer force was given as the integral of the load
distribution. Dotted line indicates applied value and solid circle indicates calculated
value. They are in good agreement.
Figure 6. Overview of simply supported beam model.
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Figure 7. Identified load distributions (upper) and shear force distributions (lower)
from strain (left) and displacement (right) data.
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
We conducted several experiments using the wind tunnel and the simply supported
beam. In the wind tunnel experiment, we confirmed that strain distributions could be
measured using FBG based on OFDR. Displacement distributions could be estimated
from the strain distribution data successfully. In the experiment of the simply
supported beam, we confirmed that distributed load could be identified from measured
strain distribution data and estimated displacement distribution data.
As the wing model experiences less torsion, we can assume the wing model as a 1D
cantilever beam. Based on this assumption, we are going to identify the load
distribution applied to the wing model in the future work.
REFERENCES
1. C.W. Coates, et al. 2005. ” An Inverse Method for Selection of Fourier Coefficients for Flight
Load Indetification,” AIAA 2005-2183.
2. S. Shkarayev, et al. 2001. “An Inverse Interplation Method Utilizing In-Flight Strain
Measurements for Determining Loads and Structural Response of Aerospace Vehicles,” Proc.
of the 3rd IWSHM, pp. 336-343.
3. T. Nakamura, et al. 2007. “Inverse Analysis of Distributed Load with Strain Sensors,” Proc. of
MECJ-07, pp. 203-204, Osaka, Japan (in Japanese).
4. H. Igawa, et al. 2005. “Measurements of Strain Distributions with a Long Gauge FBG Sensor
Using Optical Friquency Domain Reflectometry,” Proc. of SPIE, Vol. 5855, pp.547-550.
5. H. Murayama，et al. 2009. “Application of Distributed Sensing Technique with FBG Sensors
on Structural Health Monitoring,” The 6th International Workshop on Structural Health
Monitoring，pp.1020-1029.
6. B.A. Childers et al. 2001. “Use of 3000 Bragg Grating Strain Sensors Distributed on Four
Eight-meter Optical Fibers during Static Load Tests of a Composite Structure,” Proc. of SPIE,
Vol.4332, pp. 133-142.
7. H. Igawa, et al. 2009. “Measurement of Distributed Strain and Load Identification Using 1500
mm Gauge Length FBG and Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry,” Proc. of SPIE 7503.
1187
Extension of the Generalized Unknown
Input Kalman Filter for Online-
Reconstruction of External Structural Loads
Y. NIU, M. KLINKOV and C.-P. FRITZEN
ABSTRACT
External load information is of great interest in structural health monitoring

(SHM), since it can help to evaluate possible damage of a structure due to fatigue
loading or after extreme events. However, some loads might not be measured directly
and have to be reconstructed from structural response measurements. This is a type of
ill-posed inverse problem where small perturbation of the measurements may cause
unstable solutions. Therefore, a robust load reconstruction strategy is needed.
In this paper, an extension of the generalized Kalman filter with unknown inputs
method, G-KF-UKI (Generalized Kalman Filter with Unknown and Known Inputs), is
proposed. This method can realize online input force estimation and is robust to
modeling errors and measurement noise. Besides this, the presented G-KF-UKI
strategy also includes known inputs (e.g. control inputs or known force inputs), which
makes it applicable to a larger class of systems. An experiment on a laboratory two-
storey structure and a simulation study on wind load reconstruction are given as
examples to show the effectiveness of this method.
INTRODUCTION
In structural health monitoring (SHM), the knowledge of external loads is very

useful for the safety evaluation of structures under fatigue loading but also for extreme
events (e.g. boat crash on a bridge or a typhoon). Due to physical or economical
restrictions, a direct measurement of such loads might be not possible. A widely used
strategy is to reconstruct the unknown loads from structural response measurements.
This is usually a type of ill-posed inverse problem, in the sense that the inevitable
measurement noise may lead to big estimation errors [1]. To overcome this difficulty,
a variety of methods has been proposed. Some recent progresses are mentioned in [2].
Among the available studies, methods with online force reconstruction ability are
very promising. The recently proposed generalized Kalman filter with unknown inputs
(G-KF-UI) method [3] is a new member in this family. It can estimate the unknown
input forces in real-time and is robust to measurement noise. Furthermore, it is also
suitable for the case that the process noise and measurement noise are correlated.
Yan Niu, Maksim Klinkov and Claus-Peter Fritzen, University of Siegen, Center for Sensor
Systems (ZESS) and Institute of Mechanics and Control Engineering-Mechatronics, Paul-
Bonatz-Strasse 9-11, 57076 Siegen, Germany.
1188
In this paper, the G-KF-UI method is further developed to include both known and
unknown inputs so that it is suitable for a broader class of systems. This extension of
the G-KF-UI is abbreviated as G-KF-UKI and its main features are explained in the
following section.
MAIN PRINCIPLES OF THE G-KF-UKI METHOD
Assume a structure can be represented by a discrete-time state-space model as in

Eqs. (1a) and (1b). Details on how to transform a structural model from the equations
of motion to its state-space form can be found in e.g. [4].
xk +1 = Ad xk + Bd uk + Gd f k + wk , (1a)
yk = C d xk + Dd uk + H d f k + vk . (1b)
In Eqs. (1a, 1b), f k ∈ R m , uk ∈ R m _ known , x k ∈ R n , y k ∈ R p , wk ∈ R n and v k ∈ R n

are the unknown force inputs, known force (or control) inputs, system states, output
measurements, process noise and measurement noise at time instant k , respectively.
Ad , Bd , G d , C d , Dd and H d are the system matrices with appropriate dimensions.
Both wk and v k are assumed to be zero-mean and white stationary stochastic signals
with following covariance,
w   Q S 1, if k = l
E   k [wl vl ] =  T δ kl , δ kl =  , (2)
 vk   S R 0 , if k ≠ l
where E []⋅ is the expectation operator. Very often, the cross covariance S is set to
zero, but this is not necessarily the case. It is noticed that when the acceleration
sensors are used, wk and v k will be correlated and then S will have nonzero
elements. Some discussion on this correlated noise topic can be found in [3]. In order
to take advantage of the Kalman filter with unknown inputs (KF-UI) algorithm [5]
which is derived under the assumption that the process noise and the measurement
noise are uncorrelated, the following preliminary transformations are introduced [6],
Ad∗ = Ad − SR −1C d , Bd∗ = Bd − SR −1 Dd , G d∗ = G d − SR −1 H d , (3)
wk∗ = wk − SR −1vk and v k∗ = v k . (4)
Using Eqs.(3,4), the structural model in Eqs.(1a,1b) can be transformed into
xk +1 = Ad∗ xk + Bd∗ uk + Gd∗ f k + wk∗ , (5a)
yk = C d xk + Dd uk + H d f k + vk∗ . (5b)
w∗    Q∗ S ∗  Q − SR −1 S T 0 1, if k = l
[ ]
E   ∗k  wl∗ vl∗  =  ∗T = δ kl , δ kl =  . (6)
  vk    S R∗   0T R 0 , if k ≠ l
1189
Eq. (6) shows that the transformed w k∗ and vk∗ are uncorrelated now.
Defining x̂ k|k −1 , x̂ k|k and f̂ k|k as the a priori state estimate, the a posteriori state
x x
estimate and the unknown force estimate at time instant k , respectively. e k|k −1 , e k|k
and e kf|k denote the a priori state estimate error, the a posteriori state estimate error
x x
and the unknown force estimate error. Pk|k −1 , Pk|k , Pk f and Pkxf represent the a priori
state estimate error covariance, the a posteriori state estimate error covariance, the
x
force estimate error covariance and the cross covariance of e k|k and e kf|k . With the
above definitions, the G-KF-UKI algorithm is presented as below.
Initialization:
x̂ 0|0 , f̂ 0|0 , P0x|0 , P0f , P0xf , (7)
Time update:
xˆ k|k −1 = Ad∗ xˆ k −1|k −1 + Bd∗ uk −1|k −1 + Gd∗ ˆf k −1 + SR −1 yk −1 , (8)
Pkxf−1   Ad∗ 
T
] Pk −1fx|k −1
x
x
Pk|k −1 =[ Ad∗ G d∗  T  + Q ,
∗
(9)
 Pk −1 Pk f−1  G d∗ 
Measurement update:
~
Rk = C d Pk|kx −1C dT + R ∗ , (10)
M k = (H dT R k−1 H d ) H dT R k−1 ,
~ −1 ~
(11)
Pk f = (H dT R k−1 H d ) ,
~ −1
(12)
~
K k = Pk|kx −1C dT Rk−1 , (13)
Pk|kx = Pk|kx −1 − K k (R k − H d Pk f H dT )K kT ,
~
(14)
Pkxf = (Pk fx ) = − K k H d Pk f ,
T
(15)
ˆf = M ( y − C xˆ
k|k k k d k|k −1 − D d u k ) , (16)
(
xˆ k|k = xˆ k|k −1 + K k y k − C d xˆ k|k −1 − Dd uk − H d ˆf k|k . ) (17)
According to the derivation of the original KF-UI algorithm [5], the necessary and
sufficient conditions for the existence of the G-KF-UKI are also given in this paper:
(a) The sensor number p must be larger or equal to the sum of the unknown force
input number m plus half of the number of system states n , i.e., p ≥ m + n 2 ;
T
Ad∗ C d ] T is required to have full column rank;
T
(b) Matrix [ C dT
−1
(c) Matrix [ H d − C d Ad∗ Gd∗ ] is required to have full column rank;
(d) The direct feedthrough H d is required to have full column rank.
1190
Figure 1. Load reconstruction strategy using the G-KF-UKI method
It is worth mentioning here that the above listed four conditions actually provide
guidance in the selection of sensor types, numbers and locations. For example, the
condition (d) indicates that the acceleration measurement is necessary, and condition
(a) gives a constraint on the sensor numbers.
In Figure 1, the load reconstruction strategy using this G-KF-UKI method is
shown in the form of a block diagram.
EXAMPLES
To show the effectiveness of this proposed load reconstruction strategy, two examples
are provided in this section.
Experimental Study on a Laboratory Two-Storey Structure
When the known input is zero, the G-KF-UKI is actually reduced to the G-KF-UI. For
this case, a laboratory two-storey structure is taken as a test rig, as shown in Figure 2.
The reconstruction results are shown in Figure 3. More details on the modeling
process and this experiment can be found in [3].
Figure 2. Laboratory two-storey structure. Figure 3. Reconstruction results
1191
TABLE I. THE NODAL COORDINATE
(z) OF THE REDUCED FE-MODEL
Node z [m] Node z [m]
1 -10.00 20 355.05
2 0.00 21 375.85
3 12.00 22 381.20
4 22.25 23 396.65
5 27.60 24 407.05
6 58.65 25 417.45
7 84.65 26 427.85
8 95.05 27 438.25
9 105.45 28 443.60
10 116.20 29 480.00
11 147.05 30 497.60
12 157.45 31 505.20
13 168.00 32 520.70
14 204.25 33 531.20
(a) (b) 15 225.20 34 545.20
16 272.00 35 565.20
Figure 4. (a) GNTVT; (b) Reduced-order 17 308.25 36 580.70
FEM of the GNTVT (in courtesy of The 18 329.20 37 598.00
Hong Kong Polytechnic University). 19 344.65 38 618.00
Simulation Study on Wind Load Reconstruction
One of the potential applications of this G-KF-UKI method is to reconstruct the

wind load on high-rise structures. In this example, a reduced-order finite element
model (FEM) of the Guangzhou New TV Tower (GNTVT) is used [7]. The damping
ratio values are taken from the operational modal analysis (OMA) results in [8].
In the following analysis, only longitudinal wind load is considered and the wind
speeds at different levels are all assumed having the same direction.
The wind speed at level z above the ground can be written as,
υ (z ,t ) = υ (z ) + υˆ (z ,t ) , (18)
where υ (z ) and υ̂ ( z ,t ) denote the mean wind speed and the fluctuating wind speed,
respectively [9]. A popular description for the mean wind speed is a power law [10],
υ (z ) = υ0b (z 10)α . (19)
In Eq.(19), υ 0 represents the 3-sec gust basic wind speed at 10m elevation. α and b
are constants depending on the terrain type. In this simulation, exposure B is selected
which corresponds to the urban and suburban areas. According to the field
measurements of the wind speed in [7] and the 3-sec gust speed profile in ASCE 7-98
[9], the values for υ0 , α and b are chosen and listed in Table II. The fluctuating
wind speed υ̂ ( z ,t ) is modeled as an ergodic multivariate stochastic process [11].
Using the settings in Table II, υ ( z ) and υ̂ ( z ,t ) at the heights from node 3 to node 38
are generated with the help of the NatHaz online wind simulator [12].
1192
TABLE II. SETTINGS USED IN WIND SPEED GENERATION
Exposure Total Nr. of Cut-off 3-sec gust basic Mean wind speed
category frequencies frequency wind speed at 10 m profile parameters
N f c [Hz] υ 0 [m/s] α b
B
1024 2.5 2.9 1/4 0.45
Having the wind speed υ ( z ,t ) , the fluctuating wind load on this vertical cantilever
structure at level z can be calculated as [9],
F (z ,t ) = ρµ s (z )A(z )υ 2 (z ,t ) ,
1
(20)
2
where ρ is the air density. µ s ( z ) and A(z ) are the drag coefficient and the
orthogonal exposed wind area at level z , respectively. Values for ρ , µ s ( z ) and A( z )
used in this simulation are given in Table III.
TABLE III. SETTINGS USED FOR WIND LOAD CALCULATION
Air density ρ [ kg / m 3 ] Drag coefficient µ s ( z )
1.23 1.6
Orthogonal exposed area A(z ) [ m ] (Approximated values are used)
2
Node 3-10 Node 11-15 Node 16-22 Node 23-28 Node 29-33 Node 34-38
680 340 170 340 100 10
Substituting Eq.(18) into Eq.(20), F ( z ,t ) can be decomposed into the sum of a

known part Fknown (z ,t ) and an unknown part Funknown ( z ,t ) .
F ( z ,t ) = Fknown (z ,t ) + Funknown (z ,t ) , (21)
Fknown (z ,t ) = ρµ s (z )A(z )υ 2 (z ) , Funknown ( z ,t ) = ρµ s (z )A(z ) fluc( z ,t ) ,

1 1
(22)
2 2
and fluc(z ,t ) = 2υ ( z )υˆ (z ,t ) + υˆ 2 ( z ,t ) . (23)
The expressions in Eqs.(21) - (23) show that the reconstruction task now becomes to
estimate the quadratic part fluc( z ,t ) on nodes 3 to 38, which means there are in total
36 unknown inputs and at least 36 acceleration sensors are needed, not including other
sensors. From [11], it is known that the wind speeds at adjacent levels are not
independent but correlated and governed by a coherence function. In order to reduce
the number of unknown inputs, only fluc( z ,t ) at nodes 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 28, 33 and 38
are set as unknown inputs in the design of G-KF-UKI and the fluc( z ,t ) at the
remaining nodes are approximated using interpolation. This idea is also shown in a
more intuitive manner in Figure 5. In order to eliminate the effects from higher modes
and just focus on the reconstruction ability of this method, the tower model and the G-
KF-UKI design both use the same modes (the first 8 modes are used in this example).
Part of the reconstruction results for the fluc( z ,t ) on nodes considered in the G-KF-
UKI design and approximated using interpolation are given in Figure 6.
1193
Figure 5. Wind load reconstruction using the G-KF-UKI together with interpolation
Figure 6 shows that the fluctuating part fluc( z ,t ) can be reconstructed using the
G-KF-UKI together with the interpolation strategy. The accuracy still can be further
improved by using less interpolation in the design stage.
Figure 6. fluc( z ,t ) reconstruction results on nodes 11, 16, 21, 28, 33 and 36
1194
It is noted here that in reality a low-pass filter could be used to eliminate the
responses from higher modes in order to get a better reconstruction result. Besides
this, the structural model used for the design of G-KF-UKI should represent the
dynamic characteristics of the investigated structure under different types of inputs
well.
CONCLUSIONS
In this contribution, a G-KF-UKI method is proposed and evaluated using two

examples. Its potential usage for wind load reconstruction is shown using a simulation.
Even though there are still many practical issues needed to be considered, it is still
very interesting to introduce this online load reconstruction method to extract wind
load information. More work will be carried out on this topic. Meanwhile, when the
known inputs are considered as control signals, it is also possible to embed the G-KF-
UKI in the control loop and combine the force reconstruction with structural control.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors are very grateful to the Research School on Multi-Modal Sensor
Systems for Environmental Exploration (MOSES) and the Center for Sensor Systems
(ZESS) in University of Siegen for the financial support to this research work.
REFERENCES
1. Stevens, K. 1987. “Force Identification Problems – An Overview,” in Proceedings of SEM

Spring Meeting, pp. 838-844.
2. Zhang, Q., Jankowski, L. and Duan, Z. 2010. “Identification of Coexistent Load and Damage,”
Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, 41: 243-253.
3. Niu, Y., Klinkov, M. and Fritzen, C.-P. 2011. “Online Force Reconstruction Using An
Unknown-Input Kalman Filter Approach,” accepted for publication in the Proceedings of The
8th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, Leuven, Belgium, July 4-6, 2011.
4. Gawronski, W. 2004. Advanced Structural Dynamics and Active Control of Structures.
Springer-Verlag New York Inc., pp 41-63.
5. Pan, S., Su, H., Wang, H. and Chu, J. 2010. “The Study of Joint Input and State Estimation
with Kalman Filtering,” Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control 00(0), pp. 1-
18.
6. Anderson, B.D.O. and Moore, J.B. 1979. “Optimal Filtering,” Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Pearson Prentice Hall.
7. Lin, W., Ni, Y.Q., Xia, Y. and Chen, W.H. 2010. “Field Measurement Data and a Reduced-
order Finite Element Model for Task I Of the SHM Benchmark Problem for High-rise
Structures,” presented in the 5th World Conference on Structural Control and Monitoring,
Shinjuku, Tokyo, July 12-14, 2010.
8. Niu, Y. Kraemer, P. and Fritzen, C.-P. 2011. “Operational Modal Analysis for the Guangzhou
New TV Tower,” presented in IMAC XXIX, Jacksonville, USA, Jan. 31 – Feb. 3, 2011
9. Law, S.S., Bu, J.Q. and Zhu, X.Q. 2005. “Time-varying Wind Load Identification from
Structural Responses,” Engineering Structures, 27:1586-1598.
10. Zhou, Y. and Kareem, A. 2002. “Definition of Wind Profiles in ASCE 7,” Journal of Structural
Engineering, 128(8): 1082-1086.
11. Deodatis, G. 1996. “Simulation of Ergodic Multivariate Stochastic Process,” Journal of
Engineering Mechanics, 122(8): 778-787.
12. NatHaz Online Wind Simulator: http://windsim.ce.nd.edu/int_winsim.html.
1195
Characterization of the Temperature, Load
and Damage Effects Using Piezoelectric
Transducer Patches Based on Fuzzy
Clustering
V. LOPES, JR., C. G. GONSALEZ, S. DA SILVA, S. ROY, K. KODE,
F. SUNOR and F.-K. CHANG
ABSTRACT
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) denotes a system with the ability to detect
and interpret adverse changes in a structure. One of the critical challenges for practical
implementation of SHM system is the ability to detect damage under changing
environmental conditions. This paper aims to characterize the temperature, load and
damage effects in the sensor measurements obtained with piezoelectric transducer
(PZT) patches. Data sets are collected on thin aluminum specimens under different
environmental conditions and artificially induced damage states. The fuzzy clustering
algorithm is used to organize the sensor measurements into a set of clusters, which can
attribute the variation in sensor data due to temperature, load or any induced damage.
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the interest for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has increased
in many areas, mainly in aircraft companies. One area of SHM that receives the most
attention in the technical literature is the feature extraction. Feature extraction is the
process of identifying damage-sensitive properties, derived from the measured
vibration response, which allows one to distinguish between the undamaged and
damaged structure. The best features for damage detection are typically application
specific [1]. The referred paper also reports new technical developments published
between 1996 and 2001 in SHM. Van der Auweraer and Peeters [2] review many
international research programs and activities, which are devoted to this topic.
Vicente Lopes Junior and Camila Gianini Gonsalez, Univ Estadual Paulista, UNESP, Ilha
Solteira, SP, Brazil, Phone: +55 (18) 3743-1038, email: vicente@dem.feis.unesp.br
Samuel da Silva, Western Paraná State University (UNIOESTE), Centro de Engenharias e
Ciências Exatas (CECE), Foz do Iguaçu, PR, Brazil.
Surajit Roy and Fu-Kuo Chang, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford
University, USA
Kranthi Kode and Fatih Sunor, Department of Computational and Mathematical Engineering,
Stanford University, USA
1196
An interesting viewpoint in a novel approach that deal with the estimation of the
system‟s remaining useful life was addressed in a report from Los Alamos National
Laboratory [3]. The authors foresaw that damage prognosis could be an important
engineering research topic in the near future because of the potential life-safety and
economic advantages that this technology could provide.
In most real cases the structure that is being monitored using SHM system is
subjected to changes in environmental or operational conditions that can cause
changes in the sensor measurements. These changes often mask the actual damage
information that is carried by the signal propagating through the structure [4]. The
temperature and load variation are important aspects that must be correctly
evaluated in order to avoid false-positive warnings, since the variation in the signals
can be misunderstood. It becomes imperative that the changes in the environmental
and operational conditions must be properly compensated from the sensor
measurements for accurate structural damage detection and identification. Some
researchers have been studying the temperature variation effects on piezoceramic
patches and trying to come up with efficient temperature compensation strategies
[5-6]. However in the absence of environmental compensation models the accurate
identification of any structural damage using sensor measurements becomes a
challenging task. Worden et al. [7] reviewed the application of machine learning
techniques for structural health monitoring. Several interesting algorithms were
discussed to classify the sensor data as damaged or non-damaged.
Fuzzy logic approaches have been applied in problems related to damage

detection for a long time. However, limited number of works has been done
specifically on the use of fuzzy clustering algorithms for SHM. Silva et al. [8]
presented tests in a benchmark problem proposed by IASC-ASCE with different
damage patterns by using fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm computed into an index
feature extracted by AR-ARX models. The performance of two popular fuzzy c-
means (FCM) and Gustafson–Kessel (GK) were evaluated for damage detection in
a benchmark structure available by Los Alamos National Laboratory [9].
This paper aims to classify the sensor data based on the changes in the ambient
temperature, load or damage in a structure. The procedure employs a fuzzy
clustering algorithm to separate the signal feature indexes into different set of
clusters for the proposed classification. Author‟s parallel research topic includes the
development of temperature compensation strategy for SHM [10]. This will allow
the removal of the environmental effect from the signal, and therefore, the damage
influence can be characterized, i.e. the damage location can be determined and the
quantification of the damage estimated.
The paper is summarized as following. Section 1 presents a brief review about

SHM using ultrasonic guided waves. The experimental setup used for data collection
on aluminum specimens in healthy and damaged scenarios for different temperature
and load cases is described next. It also describes the effects of the temperature and
load on the guided wave propagation in metallic structures. Section 2 presents the
concept of the proposed approach and the description of the feature indexes used for
1197
the classification problem. Section 3 presents the results followed by final remarks to
highlight the main conclusions and further steps to improve the method.
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
The use of guided-waves for structural health monitoring has been an active area
of research and growing interest. These waves can be generated on thin plate like
structures using surface mounted or embedded piezo-electric transducers which work
on the well known principle of piezoelectricity. They can travel long distances without
much attenuation and interrogate inaccessible areas. However these waves are
susceptible to changes in environmental and operational conditions.
Experimental Setup:
In this study, the sensor measurements are taken through two Smart® PZT sensor
patches attached to the surface of the thin aluminum rectangular coupons
(14”x12”x0.078”, Al 6065 alloy). Each „SMART layer‟ has four PZT transducers,
which can act as both actuators and sensors. The signals are generated in a pulse-echo
mode where one „SMART layer‟ sends the excitation pulse while the other records
the received waveform. Several sets of experiments are carried out to collect the
signals from the PZT sensors under different environmental (elevated temperatures
ranging from 30ºC to 90ºC) and operational conditions (different static load levels).
The present study is carried out with „Burst5‟ (5-peaks Gaussian tone-burst) signal
type at an actuation frequency of 250 kHz. The choice of signal parameters is
governed by the clear resolution of the signal in both the time and frequency domain.
The basic experimental setup and the typical representation of time varying signal
recorded from the surface mounted PZT transducers are shown in Figure 1.
a) b) Actuation Signal
Ist wave packet Sensor Signal
Normalized signal amplitude (V)
Time (sec)
Figure 1: a) Thin Aluminum rectangular specimen (14”x12”x0.078”) loaded in MTS with

attached PZT transducer patches at top and bottom, b) Typical actuation and sensor signal as
recorded from the PZT transducers. The first wave packet in the sensor signal that contains
significant information about any hidden damages lying directly in the path of actuator and
sensor is also highlighted
1198
Temperature and Load Effects:
The temperature data ranging from 30ºC to 90ºC is collected in a controlled

environmental chamber. The static load data is collected by loading the test coupons in
the MTS uniaxial testing machine and recording the sensor data at different load levels
using Acellent‟s „SmartComposite Premium‟ data
acquisition hardware and software. The experiments
are repeated thrice for consistency in data collection.
The damage conditions are simulated by introducing
edge crack of various lengths. Figure 2 shows the
sensor layout on the aluminum specimen and the
actuator-sensor pair that is primarily focused upon in
this paper. The actuator-sensor pair (path 4->8) is
primarily considered in this study because of its
proximity to the induced damage in the form of
crack.
Figure 3 shows the effect of temperature and load on

the first wave packet for the specified actuator-sensor
pair. It can be observed that both the temperature and
Figure 2: Schematic of sensor load changes the sensor signal considerably.
layout on aluminum coupon However specific features in the signals can be
using Smart® sensor patches. studied for isolating the contributions from different
causes. It is observed from figure 3 that the changes
in environmental temperature will affect both the amplitude and the phase of the wave
packet. The effect of load is also similar except that the phase changes are not as
significant as due to the environmental changes. Although the amplitude and phase of
the time-domain representation of the sensor measurements provide information and
are indubitable choices for damage monitoring, this work proposes and expanded
analysis combining feature indexes extracted from time and frequency domain as
described in the next section.

Unloaded Sample Room Temperature
Loaded Sample (2kips) Temperature (60°C)
Figure 3: a) Load effect on sensor measurements for actuator „4‟ to sensor „8‟ at 250kHz
excitation, comparison is between the sample under no load condition and under tensile load of
2kips, b) Temperature effect on sensor measurements for actuator „4‟ to sensor „8‟, comparison is
between signal collected at room temperature and another collected at 60ºC.
1199
The following table summarizes the experimental conditions for different sample
measurements on a specific actuator-sensor pair (path 4->8) at 250 kHz actuation
frequency with 5-peak tone burst actuation.
Table 1: Sensor measurements under different experimental conditions viz. different crack lengths,
different ambient temperatures and different loading conditions. Sample ID represents the signal index
for actuator 4 to sensor 8 at 250 kHz actuation frequency.
Induced damage: Temperature

Sample ID Load (kips) Description
Crack size (mm) (°C)
Baseline signal at pristine

state at room
S1,S8, S19 --- --- ---
temperature under
traction free conditions
Signals collected at 30º,

S2-S7 0.5 30º-80° --- 40º, 50º, 60º, 70º &
80°C
Signal collected at
different static loads:
S9-S18 --- --- 0.5-5
0.5kips – 5kips, in steps
of 0.5kips
Signals collected at
different crack lengths
S20-S25 0.25-1.25 --- --- (0.25mm, 0.5mm,
1mm,….1.25mm) at
room temperature under
FUZZY CLUSTERING
The goals of clustering methods are the classification of objects according to the
similarity between them, and organization of data into groups. In others words, the
goal is to identify a finite number of clusters to describe one dataset. In these
procedures, the membership of a data point in a cluster is a fuzzy decision. Few
studies have been made with the use of fuzzy clustering for SHM, besides the
advantage for practical applications, as for instance, the unsupervised learning
capability. In this work the method of fuzzy classifiers used is the fuzzy c-means.
The fuzzy c-means (FCM) is one of the most used algorithms for fuzzy clustering.
It is a problem of minimizing, where the cost function to be minimized is given by
[9]:
1200
∑∑ ‖ ‖ (1)
subject to (2)
∑ * +, (3)
∑ * + (4)
where is a function associated with the object of the cluster, is the

centroid of the cluster, is the total number of clusters, and is a constant
that determines the relative positions of the clusters ( is normally chosen to be 2,
and is the value used here), is the feature index, is the number of objects
(training cases) that depends on the number of datasets (in this paper = 25, the
number of cases studied).
The distance norm can be written as:
‖ ‖ ( ) ( ) (5)
where is known as a norm-inducing matrix. In FCM, is usually the identity
matrix. Hence, one can only detect clusters with the same shape and orientation due
to the same norm-inducing matrix for all clusters. The solution of the optimization
problem described by Eq. (1) comes from the optimality equations via Lagrange
multipliers. Details about this procedure can be found in [11].
Signal Features
The signal features can be obtained from both time domain representation and
time-frequency domain representation. In the time domain representation, besides the
obvious choices of i) peak amplitude and ii) delay in arrival time of the Ist wave
packet, the iii) correlation coefficient between the baseline and the analyzed signals
are also included.
In the time-frequency domain many interesting signal features can be extracted. In
this paper spectrogram of the signal is obtained using Short-Time Fourier Transform
( ). The matrix provides the signal energy map in the time-frequency
domain in discrete sense, as the signal changes so are their energy map. In this paper a
measure of this change in energy map of the signal is considered as one of the feature.
The signal energy map provided by the matrix is decomposed using singular
value decomposition.
( ) (6)
where and are the left and right singular vectors of the matrix and
contains the singular values in the diagonal form. Eq. (6) can be rewritten as
1201
( ) (7)
This method, known as proper orthogonal decomposition [12], is analogous to the
method of separation of variables. In other words matrix constitutes the basis space
for the frequency modes whereas matrix constitutes the basis space for the temporal
modes. Each signal measurement as specified in table 1 has their corresponding and
subspace matrices. The angle spanned by the subspace matrices is also taken as
feature for clustering algorithm to separate the effects of temperature, load and
damage. The trace of matrix gives information about the eigenvalues variation, and
is also used in the clustering algorithm.
RESULTS
Twenty five different conditions for temperature, load and damage, shown in table
1, were used for cluster classification. The entire data set is segregated into seven
clusters representing the baseline or reference condition (Bas), two levels of
temperature (T1& T2), two levels of load (L1& L2), and two levels of damage (C1&
C2).
Figure 4. Classification of the measurements shown in Table1 (Bas = baseline condition; T1 = first level
of temperature; T2 = second level of temperature; L1 = first level of load; L2 = second level of load; C1
= first level of damage; C2 = second level of damage)
Figure 4 shows the result for the classification using the five feature indexes
described in the previous section. One can see, that all signals were correctly
classified, except sample measurement number 20 and 21. These measurements in the
1202
coupon corresponding to very small edge cracks, (0.25 and 0.5 mm) were not
classified in any specific cluster, instead the total percentage were split in the clusters
T1, L1 and C1. This shows that the damage characterization by the classification
methodology has definitive size resolution.
The practical implementation of any SHM system is a laborious task, since it
needs measurements that represent all different environmental and operational
conditions. The same damage free structure may result in different baseline signals. In
order to offset this drawback, the present paper uses non-dimensional, normalized data
for cluster classification, as shown in figure 4. The capacity of generalization of this
approach was tested on different coupons with same geometry and transducers spacing
as used for the training coupon. The measurements for verifications were obtained in
two coupons, nominated VC1 (verification coupon 1) and VC2 (verification coupon
2). Table 2 shows the measurements conditions in VC1 and VC2
Table 2: Sensor measurements under different experimental conditions viz. different crack lengths,
different ambient temperatures and different loading conditions for VC1 and VC2. Sample ID represents
the signal index for actuator 4 to sensor 8 at 250 kHz actuation frequency.
Induced damage: Temperature

Sample ID Load (kips) Description
Crack size (mm) (°C)
Coupon VC1 Signals collected at 50º,

--- 50º-70° ---
V1-V3 60º & 70°
Signal collected at
Coupon VC1
--- --- 3 -5 different static loads:
V4-V6
3kips, 4kips, and 5kips
Signals collected at crack

Coupon VC2 lengths 1.5 mm at room
1.5 --- ---
V7 temperature under
The measurements in VC1 and VC2 were correctly classified using the cluster
classification obtained with the data from Table 1. Figures 5a and 5b show the centers
of the clusters, the feature indexes used in the classification, and the feature indexes
computed with the data from Table 2 to check the capacity of generalization of this
approach. Each figure shows two features indexes for better visualization, where
Index1 is the correlation coefficient, Index2 is the time of flight and Index3 is the peak
amplitude, all in time domain. Index4 and Index5 are the angle spanned by the
subspace matrix Q and the trace of , respectively.
CONCLUSIONS
One practical necessity of SHM procedure is the reduction of false positives and
false negatives, since it can increase the costs of the maintenance or cause accidents. It
is well known that variation in environmental and operational conditions change the
1203
sensor signals and can be misinterpreted. This paper proposes an approach based on
fuzzy cluster to distinguish the effects of damage (edge cracks) and non-damage
(temperature and applied loads) conditions in metallic structures. This approach
utilizes a combination of features extracted in time and frequency domain.
a)
b)
Figure 5. Plot of different clusters in the two dimensional plane spanned by a) Feature Index 1
(Correlation coefficient) vs. Feature Index 2 (Time of Flight), and b) Feature Index 3 (peak amplitude)
vs. Feature Index 5 (trace of matrix). Symbol „x‟ identify the clusters centers, the symbol „o‟
represents the feature indexes obtained from the training data (Table1) and the symbol „‟ represents the
feature indexes of the data collected on the verification coupons (Table2).
1204
One contribution of this paper is the possibility of using the identified cluster
obtained from training on few samples to characterize the sensor signals on similar
structures. Since the feature indexes are normalized and non-dimensional, the array
of sensors and actuators used for classification of the clusters (training set) and for
verification (test set) must be bonded with the same relative distance. Additionally,
the authors work with the development of compensation strategies for addressing
the load and temperature effect on the PZT sensor signals. It will allow the removal
of these effects and the quantification of the damage.
Acknowledgements
Prof Lopes Jr is a visiting Professor at Structures and Composite Laboratory (SACL)

and acknowlodge the support of Prof Fu-Kuo Chang for this internship. The
supplying of the “SMART layers” from Acellent Technologies is very much
appreciated. The authors also are thankful to FAPESP, Fundação de Amparo à
Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, CNPq, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento
Científico e Tecnológico and Western Paraná State University (UNIOESTE), Centro
de Engenharias e Ciências Exatas (CECE).
REFERENCES
1. Sohn, H.. Farrar, C.R., Hemez, F. M., Shunk, D. D., Stinemates, S. W., Nadler, B. R. and
Czarnecki, J. J/., Los Alamos National Laboratory report LA-13976-MS, 2004.
2. Van der Auweraer, H.* *and Peeters, B. International Research Projects on Structural Health
Monitoring: An Overview, Structural Health Monitoring Journal; vol. 2: p. 341 - 358, Dec 2003.
3. Farrar, C.R., Sohn, H., Hemez, F.M., Anderson, M.C., Bement, M.T., Cornwell, P.J., Doebling,
S.W., Schultze, J.F., Lieven, N., Robertson, A.N., "Damage Prognosis: Current Status and Future
Needs," Los Alamos National Laboratory Report, LA-14051-MS, 2004.
4. Hoon Sohn, “Effects of environmental and operational variability on structural health monitoring”,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 365, p. 539-560, 2007.
5. A.J. Croxford et al, “Strategies for guided-wave structural health monitoring”, Proceedings of the
Royal Society A, 463, p. 2961-2981, 2007.
6. T.Clarke et al, “Guided wave health monitoring of complex structures by sparse array systems:
Influence of temperature changes on performance”, Journal of Sound and Vibration, 329, p. 2306-
2322, 2010.
7. Keith Worden et al, “The application of machine learning to structural health monitoring”,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 365, p515-537, 2007.
8. Silva, S., Dias Junior, M., Lopes Jr., V. Damage Detection in a Benchmark Structure Using AR-
ARX Models and Statistical Pattern Recognition. Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical
Sciences and Engineering, v. 29, p. 174-184, 2007.
9. J.C. Bezdek, Pattern Recognition with Fuzzy Objective Function Algorithm, Plenum Press, New
York, 1981.
10. Surajit Roy et al., “Physics based temperature compensation strategy for structural health
monitoring”, In the Proceedings of 8th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring,
Stanford 2011.
11. J. C. Bezdek, S. Pal, Fuzzy Models for Pattern Recognition, IEEE Press, 1992.
12. Anindya Chatterjee, “An introduction to the proper orthogonal decomposition”, Current Science,
Vol 78, No.7, 808-817, 2000.
1205
An Efficient Temperature Compensation
Technique for Guided Wave Ultrasonic
Inspection
J. B. HARLEY and J. M. F. MOURA
ABSTRACT
One challenge in the development of structural health monitoring

technology is the necessity to distinguish benign effects from those caused
by damage. For ultrasonic guided waves systems, this is a problem of particular
importance. Guided waves create complex, multi-modal, and dispersive wave
fields which reflect off specimen boundaries as well as damage. Direct time-
domain comparisons with a known baseline can be used to overcome these
complexities, but fail to discriminate damage from benign environmental
effects. Although many environmental changes affect guided waves, variations
in temperature are often the most dominant. This paper proposes a
computationally efficient temperature compensation technique based on the
scale-invariant correlation coefficient. Using experimental measurements, we
compare the performance of the scale-invariant correlation coefficient with two
other compensation strategies: the local peak coherence and optimal signal
stretch methods. We demonstrate the scale-invariant correlation coefficient to
be robust, effective, and computational efficient.
INTRODUCTION
Guided wave methods produce complex signals due to the multi-modal

and dispersive behavior of the propagation medium [1]. To avoid directly
analyzing these raw signals, they are often subtracted by a baseline signal
which is taken at an earlier time. Baseline subtraction reduces complexity by
removing effects from static sources, such as the reflecting boundaries. Under
ideal conditions, the residual signal can be used to detect the presence of
damage [2]. Unfortunately, baseline subtraction techniques are often more
sensitive to benign environmental effects than they are to damage. This leads to
false-positive results.
Fluctuations in temperature are one of the most significant benign effects to
produce false-positive results [3]. The effects of temperature have been linked to
variations in wave propagation speeds due to changes in the material’s Young’s
Joel B. Harley and José M.F. Moura, Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, U.S.A. E-mail: jharley@andrew.cmu.edu.
1206
modulus [4]. These changes cause the velocities of each guided wave mode to vary
with temperature [5]. As a result, measured signals tend to compress or dilate across
the time axis with temperature [3]. Although each mode speed varies individually,
references [2], [6] have demonstrated that the aggregate result can be approximately
modeled as a uniform scaling operation. Therefore, we can model a change in
temperature T {·} on an ultrasonic signal x(t) by
T {x(t)} = x(αt) , α>0, (1)
where α represents the scale factor change from temperature.

Based on this model, several researchers have developed methods for compen-
sating for temperature. These techniques include the local peak coherence (LPC)
method [2], [7] and the optimal signal stretch (OSS) method [3], [8], [9]. In this
paper, we present another technique based on the computation of the scale transform
and scale-invariant correlation coefficient (SICC). Compared with LPC and OSS,
we demonstrate SICC to be both effective and computationally efficient.
TEMPERATURE COMPENSATION METHODS
Local peak coherence
LPC takes advantage of the properties of diffuse wavefields. A wavefield is said

to be diffuse if it can be defined by its probabilistic characteristics at any point in
the medium [10]. Diffuse wavefields can be the result of multi-modal, dispersive,
and rich scattering environments. These conditions are common in structural health
monitoring. Since a diffuse-like wave lasts for a long duration, its scaling behavior
can be estimated from a series of localized delay measurements between the ob-
served and baseline signals. If the observed signal x(t) is a scaled replica of the
baseline signal x(t) = s(αt), then we can say that for some small region around
t = t0 , the scale effect is approximately a delay,
x(t) = s(αt) ≈ s(t − (1 + α)t0 ) as t → t0 . (2)
LPC estimates a sequence of these delays around various points in time and
then estimates α by linear regression. Using the estimated scale factor, the baseline
can be stretched appropriately and compared with the observed signal. We compare
the observed signal x(t) with the stretched baseline s(t) = s(αt) using the sample
Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient,
Z T (x(t) − µx ) (s(αt) − µs )
ρxs = √ dt , (3)
0 σx (σs / α)
where T is the length of the signals. The sample mean µ and the sample standard
deviation σ in (6) are defined by
s
1 T 1 T
Z Z
µx = x(t) dt , σx = |x(t) − µx |2 dt . (4)
T 0 T 0
1207
Optimal signal stretch
OSS is an exhaustive search optimization procedure for determining a scale

factor that best fits the current observed signal [3], [8]. OSS is performed in two
steps. First, a library of baseline signals is generated by scaling a single baseline with
a set of K chosen scale factors. The range and resolution of the set is determined
from some prior knowledge of temperature’s effects on the specimen. Each baseline
in the library is then quantitatively compared with the observed signal. As with LPC,
we compare the observed signal x(t) and each baseline s(t) = s(αk t), measured
over a finite period of time T , using the sample Pearson product-moment correlation
coefficient,
T (x(t) − µx ) (s(αk t) − µs,k )
Z
Φxs,k = √ dt , 1<k<K, (5)
0 σx (σs / αk )
where µ and σ are defined by (4).

We refer to the baseline which maximizes the correlation coefficient between it
and the observed signal
φxs = max Φxs,k (6)

k
as the optimal baseline. The maximum correlation coefficient is used as a descriptor

of similarity between the observed signal and the optimal baseline. Under ideal cir-
cumstances, in which our uniform scaling model is perfect, the maximum correlation
coefficient should not vary with changes in temperature.
THE SCALE-INVARIANT CORRELATION COEFFICIENT
The scale transform
The scale-invariant correlation coefficient is based on a special property of the

scale transform [11]. The scale transform, a special case of the Mellin transform
[12], is a mathematical tool useful for analyzing time and frequency scaling of
signals. The scale transform is defined by the integral [11]
1 Z∞
S {x (t)} = X (c) = √ x (t) t−jc−1/2 dt , (7)
2π 0
where S {·} represents the scale transform operation. The inverse scale transform
is defined by the complex conjugate of the forward operation,
1
Z ∞
S −1
{X (c)} = x (t) = √ X (c) tjc−1/2 dt . (8)
2π 0
The transform has a unique relationship with the scaling operation. The scale
transform of an energy-preserving time-scaled replica of a signal x(t) translates to
1208
a phase shift in the scale domain, [11]
n√ o
S αx (αt) = X (c) ejc ln(α) . (9)
Therefore the magnitude of the scale transform is invariant to energy-preserving

scale effects. We refer to this scaling operation as being “energy-preserving” because
the squared-sum, or energy, of the signal remains constant.
The scale-invariant correlation coefficient
Given two signals x(t) and s(t), the scale cross-correlation function between
them is defined as [11]
Z ∞
x(t) ⋄ sα (t) = x(t)s(αt) dt , α>0 (10)
0 n o
=S −1
S {x(t)}S {s(t)} , (11)
where the overbar represents a complex conjugate operation. In (10), Ψ(α) repre-
sents the inner product of every x(t) and s(αt) pair for α > 0. If we define x̄(t)
and s̄α (t) to be zero-mean and energy-normalized replicas of x(t) and s(t), the
scale cross-correlation of these signals becomes
(x(t) − µx ) (s(αt) − µs )
Z ∞
Ψxs (α) = x̄(t) ⋄ s̄α (t) = √ dt , α > 0 , (12)
0 σx (σs / α)
where the mean and standard deviation are defined in (4). The scale-invariant cor-
relation coefficient (SICC) is then defined as the maximum value of the normalized
scale cross-correlation and its associated scale factor is the argument,
ψxs = max Ψxs (α) , β = arg max Ψxs (α) . (13)

α α
The SICC is a function that exists within the range −1 ≤ ψxs ≤ 1, where ψxs = 1
when s(t) = x(βt) and ψxs = 0 when there is no scale relationship between x(t)
and s(t).
Fast computation
If we consider the expression for the scale transform in (8), it can be rearranged
through algebraic manipulation so that
Z ∞
S {x (t)} = X (c) = x (t) e(−jc+1/2) ln(t) d [ln(t)]
Z−∞
∞
= e1/2 ln(t) x (t) e−jc ln(t) d [ln(t)] . (14)
−∞
In this form, the scale transform resembles a Fourier transform but across logarith-
mic time. Therefore, if we exponentially skew the signal x(t) using a change of
1209
variables where t = eτ , this expression becomes
Z ∞
S {x(t)} = X (c) = x (eτ ) e(−jc+1/2)τ dτ (15)
n 0 o
= F e(1/2)τ x (eτ ) ,
where F {·} represents the Fourier transform.

This shows that the scale transform can be computed by exponentially skewing
a signal and then taking its Fourier transform. In discrete-time, we can achieve the
same effect by exponentially sampling a continuous-time signal and then computing
its discrete Fourier transform with the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm.
Since exponential sampling is not practical in many applications, uniformly sampled
signals may instead be exponentially resampled. Exponential resampling can be
performed quickly, in linear time, using spline interpolation [13]. Details on this
process can be found in references [13], [14].
EXPERIMENTAL METHODOLOGY
In our experiment, guided waves are excited and measured across a thin alu-
minum plate of dimensions 9.8 cm by 30.5 cm by 0.1 cm. Guided waves are
generated and measured using a pair of piezoelectric transducers (PZT 5A4E)
permanently bonded to the surface of the plate. The transducers are driven using
an impulsive signal to excite the entire frequency spectrum. Since signal scaling
occurs simultaneously in both the time and frequency domains, limiting the excited
frequencies will also limit the accuracy of the uniform scaling model in (1) [8].
During the experiment, the aluminum plate is periodically cooled and warmed
inside of a refrigerator between the hours of 10:00 AM to 10:30 AM the next day.
In the first 4 hours, the plate is brought from 3.8 ◦C to 22 ◦ C, cooled again to 5 ◦ C
over the next 4 hours, and then returned to room temperature overnight. At 6:53
PM, a grease-coupled, cylindrical steel mass with a 3.8 cm diameter and 4.5 cm
height is placed on the aluminum plate to simulate damage. Every 2 minutes, a
guided wave is generated and recorded by the sensors. To verify the uniform scale
model, the ambient temperature inside the refrigerator is measured every minute.
While a mass may not perfectly simulate damage, it represents a change in the
propagation environment unrelated to temperature.
Before applying each temperature compensation method, each observed signal
is high-pass filtered with a 3 kHz cutoff frequency and shifted to the left by
0.5 ms. The filtering removes systematic low frequency noise from the data. The
shift compensates for group delay introduced by the impulsive excitation signal.
If the excitation has a group delay of t0 and α represents the scaling effect from
temperature, the measured signal will be of the form x(αt − t0 ).
Figure 1 demonstrates an example of three guided wave measurements taken at

different times during the experiment. Figures 1a and 1b show records taken before
the mass is placed on the plate but at different temperatures, 13.1 ◦ C and 3.8 ◦ C
1210
10
(a) 5
0
-5
-10
10
Voltage [mV]
(b) 5
0
-5
-10
10
(c) 5
0
-5
-10
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Time [ms]
Fig. 1: Three example records of measured ultrasonic data. (a) observed record at 13.1◦ C. (b) observed
record at 3.8◦ C. (c) observed record at 18.3◦ C.
respectively. Figure 1c shows a record taken at 18.3 ◦ C, after the introduction of

the mass. By visual inspection, figures 1a and 1b appear more similar to each other
than to figure 1c. However, computation of the sample Pearson product-moment
correlation coefficient, without temperature compensation, show figures 1a and 1c
to be three times more highly correlated than figures 1a and 1b. We get similar
results from standard baseline subtraction methods.
The three temperature compensation strategies, LPC, OSS, and SICC, are ap-
plied to each measured guided wave record, using the record shown in figure 1a as
the known baseline. The temperature compensated correlation coefficients associ-
ated with each technique, expressed in (13), (6), and (3), are then computed. Figure
2a shows the correlation coefficients computed over the course of the experiment.
A coefficient value close to 1 suggests similarity with the given baseline. When no
temperature compensation is employed, the correlation coefficient varies largely as
a result of temperature fluctuations.
In figure 2a, we can perfectly separate the correlation coefficients before and
after the mass is introduced with all three compensation techniques. However,
while OSS and SICC vary little throughout the experiment, the LPC correlation
coefficient begins to change erratically after the mass is introduced. Figure 2b shows
the estimated scale factors between the baseline and each observed signal in the
experiment and figure 2c shows the measured ambient temperature throughout the
experiment. As is evident in these figures, the measured temperature closely mirrors
the scale estimates for OSS and SICC throughout the experiment. After the mass is
introduced however, the LPC scale estimate no longer becomes a good predictor of
the current temperature. These figures demonstrate that although LPC successfully
detected the mass in this experiment, the method would be less than ideal in a
long-term monitoring situation.
Our results show SICC and OSS to be near identical in performance. However,
the two methods differ substantially in their computationally efficiency. Unlike
OSS, the SICC method requires no library and is computed using only three FFT
operations. If N is the number of samples in each measured signal and we assume
both methods to have the same range and resolution, the computational complexity
1211
1.0
Correlation coefficient
0.8
0.6
(a)
0.4
0.2
0.0
1.004
1.002
Scale estimate
(b)
1.000
0.998
20
Temperature [ ◦ C]
15
(c)
10
12:00 PM 6:00 PM 12:00 AM 6:00 AM
Time
No compensation
ed ed ed
as as uc Local peak coherence (LPC)
re cre trod
ec n
d e i s in Scale-inv. corr. coef. (SICC)
re tur as
ratu e
a
r M
e
mp mp Optimal signal stretch (OSS)
Te Te
Temperature
Fig. 2: A comparison of the temperature compensation techniques: LPC, OSS, and SICC. (a) Temperature
compensated correlation coefficients. (b) Scale estimates from each method. (c) Measured ambient
temperature.
1212
of OSS grows at a rate of O(N 2 ln(N)), compared with SICC which grows at a
rate of O(N ln(N) log2 (N)) [14]. So for an increasingly large N, the computational
cost of OSS compared with SICC increases significantly.
CONCLUSIONS
We have derived the scale-invariant correlation coefficient method for tempera-

ture compensation and compared it with two other methods: local peak coherence
and optimal signal stretch. All three methods are based on the assumption that
temperature can be modeled as a uniform time-scaling operation on measured
ultrasonic signals. Using all three compensation techniques, we can successfully
detect a mass on a plate, under variations in temperature, by applying a threshold
to the resulting correlation data. However, the local peak coherence method becomes
less reliable after adding the mass and we demonstrate optimal signal stretch to be,
in general, a computationally expensive method. In comparison, the scale-invariant
correlation coefficient is shown to be robust, effective, and computationally fast.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Joel B. Harley is supported by a National Defense Science and Engineering

Graduate Fellowship, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.
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1213
Machine Learning for Pipeline Monitoring
under Environmental and Operational
Variations
Y. YING, J. H. GARRETT, JR., J. B. HARLEY, J. M. F. MOURA,
N. O’DONOUGHUE, I. J. OPPENHEIM, J. SHI and L. SOIBELMAN
ABSTRACT１
We study structural health monitoring ultrasonics experimentally, using

piezoelectric transducers affixed to a steel pipe. In this paper, we apply machine
learning algorithms to detect and localize changes produced by damage while
differentiating from changes produced by ambient environmental and operational
variations. Damage was simulated physically by a mass scatterer grease-coupled to the
surface of the pipe, and benign variations were simulated by varying the internal
pressure of the pipe and the ambient temperature over time. We create a library of 335
features extracted from ultrasonic signals by utilizing a variety of signal processing
and machine learning techniques. Adaptive boosting algorithm is employed to select
the most significant features out of the feature library. The selected features are then
fed to support vector machines to determine the presence and the location of the
damage. The results show that the machine learning scheme is effective at identifying
principal features like shift-invariant correlation coefficients, wavelet coefficients and
curve length, and provides an average accuracy of 95% for damage detection and 93%
for damage localization.
INTRODUCTION
Pipelines serve important roles in many engineering applications, and regular

assessment and maintenance is essential to prevent structural failures. Guided wave
ultrasonics is an appealing technology for structural health monitoring (SHM),
because guided waves can propagate long distance with high sensitivity to damage in
structures and can be generated by low-cost and low-power piezoelectric transducers.
However, guided waves in pipes consist of an infinite number of modes, most of
which are highly dispersive and travel along multiple paths [1-3]. Therefore, it is
difficult to detect changes produced by damage, and it is even more difficult to
Yujie Ying*, James H. Garrett, Jr., Irving J. Oppenheim, Jun Shi, and Lucio Soibelman, Dept.
of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213,
U.S.A., *Contact author: yying@cmu.edu
Joel B. Harley, José M.F. Moura, Nicholas O’Donoughue, Dept. of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, U.S.A.
1214
differentiate changes due to damage from benign changes due to environmental and
operational conditions, such as temperature, humidity, and air pressure. Research
efforts have been made on data normalization in order to compensate for benign
variations [4-6], whereas limited work has been addressed for pipes, where the
waveforms are more complex than Lamb waves in plate-like structures.
We investigate a machine-learning-based framework for robust damage detection
and localization in pipes. One unique aspect of our approach is that it is free of mode
selection. We use a broad band excitation at relatively high product of frequency and
wall-thickness, using only one piezoelectric wafer (PZT) as the actuator. Second, we
create a feature library with hundreds of features extracted from ultrasonic signals.
The most significant features are automatically searched over the feature pool by a
machine learning approach. Third, different machine learning and pattern recognition
techniques are developed and/or applied to determine the conditions of the pipe. Our
earlier work [7] demonstrates the feasibility of this framework for damage detection in
a pipe under varying internal pressure. This paper will continue our efforts on machine
learning applications while incorporating more complicated ambient conditions in
experimental data collection, and discuss preliminary results of damage location.
EXPERIMENTAL METHODS FOR DATA COLLECTION
For our experiments, we used a steel pipe specimen 1.8 m in length, with a 35 mm
outside diameter and 4 mm wall thickness. The pipe had a welded-on cap connected to
an air compressor, and a pressure gauge at one end to control the internal atmospheric
pressure from 0 pounds per square inch (PSI) up to 110 PSI. Two PZT (PSI-5A4E)
wafers were mounted on the surface of the pipe using cyanoacrylate adhesive, located
1.5 m apart. Each wafer was 12 mm long and 6 mm wide (Figure 1a). One PZT
transducer functioned as a transmitter and the other as a receiver, in pitch-catch
configuration. The signal transmission and data acquisition unit was a National
Instruments PXI system with an arbitrary waveform generator and a digitizer. The
waveform generator drove the PZT transmitter by a ±10 V sinc pulse, with 300 kHz
center frequency and 200 kHz bandwidth. The digitizer was connected to the PZT
receiver and records responses, sampled at 1 MHz.
Data was collected in three phases on three different days, with a one-month
interval between Phase I and II, and four months between Phase II and III. This was
done to include arbitrary variations in ambient temperature, humidity, PZT bonding
and other uncertainties over time, besides the controlled pressure variations. During
each phase of the experiments, a mass scatterer (38 mm in diameter, as shown in
Figure 1b) was grease-coupled at different locations on the pipe surface to simulate a
defect at those locations. Six locations were chosen in Phase I: three near the
transmitter (Zone 1), and three close to the receiver (Zone 3); nine different positions
were chosen in Phase II as well as in Phase III: three locations at each zone. For every
mass position, 20 “damaged” records of 10 ms long signals were measured as the pipe
was randomly pressurized or discharged between 0 and 110 PSI. In order for an equal
number of “damaged” and “undamaged” records, we collected 20 “undamaged”
records, also at varying pressure levels, each time after removing the mass from the
pipe and before placing it to the next position. It follows from arithmetic that a total of
960 records were collected, with a breakdown shown in TABLE I.
1215
Pressure gauge Valve
PZT transmitter PZT receiver
Zone 1 Zone 2 Zone 3
Figure 1. (a) Schematic of the pressurized steel pipe specimen, and (b) photo of the mass scatterer
TABLE I. A BREAKDOWN OF DATASETS COLLECTED IN THREE PHASES

UNDAMAGED DAMAGED
Zone 1 Zone 2 Zone 3
Phase I 120 60 - 60
Phase II 180 60 60 60
Phase III 180 60 60 60
Before any of the above datasets were collected, 20 records were obtained from an
“undamaged” pipe, the mean of which is regarded as baseline data. In SHM, a
baseline is a signal collected when there is no damage in the structure under test and is
used as a reference to evaluate the present conditions of the structure.
Figure 2 shows example records (only the first 3 ms time histories are plotted)
collected in the three phases: from top to bottom, 1) with no damage present, 2) with
damage near the transmitter, and 3) with damage near the receiver. As expected, all
the signals are complex and hard to interpret due to multiple modes and dispersion. In
addition, records from the same phase look almost identical to the naked eye
regardless of the presence/location of the mass. On the contrary, the records show
large differences from phase to phase, indicating that the changes caused by ambient
conditions on different days exceed the changes produced by damage. Our goal is to
detect the subtle changes due to the mass and then localize the mass as being present
on different zones on the pipe, in spite of significant changes due to environmental and
operational variations. As a result, a machine-learning-based scheme for damage
detection and localization are investigated in the following sections.
Voltage [mV]
Voltage [mV]
Voltage [mV]
20 20 20
0 0 0
-20 -20 -20

0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3
Time [ms] Time [ms] Time [ms]
Voltage [mV]
Voltage [mV]
Voltage [mV]
20 20 20
0 0 0
-20 -20 -20

0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3
Voltage [mV]
Voltage [mV]
Voltage [mV]
20 20 20
0 0 0
-20 -20 -20

0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 2. Signal records of (a) Phase I, (b) Phase II, and (c) Phase III: from top to bottom, 1) with no
damage present, 2) with damage (mass) in Zone 1, and 3) with damage in Zone 3.
1216
FEATURE LIBRARY CREATION
The performance of machine leaning algorithms relies on the effectiveness of

features. In practice, it is very unlikely to find one universally good feature that is
robust to any ambient variations, for any kinds of structures. Also, for certain machine
learning methods like principal components analysis, the most suitable “features” may
be a function of multiple features rather than an individual feature. Therefore, our idea
is to extract a large population of possibly good features to form a library (discussed in
this section), and then utilize machine learning to automatically search over this
feature “candidate” pool for the most appropriate features for a specific problem.
As illustrated in the flowchart in Figure 3, we first apply various signal processing
and machine learning tools, such as the Hilbert transform, time reversal [3], wavelet
decomposition, wavelet reconstruction, principal component analysis (PCA), and the
Fourier transform, to generate different signal domains as bases for features to extract
from. These domains include the original signal, time reversal focusing signal,
reconstructed signal, the envelopes and amplitude spectra of the above domains,
wavelet coefficients, principal components of the baseline, and principal components
of the reconstructed baseline (after wavelet processing). It should be noted that four
mother wavelets are chosen for discrete wavelet analysis in this study, Daubechies of
order 2 (db2), Coiflets of order 5 (coif5), Symlets of order 5 (sym5), and discrete
Meyer (dmey) wavelets, according to the wide band nature of our signals. The
procedure of wavelet analysis was detailed in a different paper [8]. Two types of
features are considered: one requires a baseline and the other is independent of the
baseline, resulting in 335 different features in total (listed in TABLE II). The features
are computed by analysis of local maxima, statistical methods and correlation.
Raw signal
Energy normalization
Hilbert transform Fourier transform
Energy-normalized signal
Time
reversal
Wavelet decomposition
Approximation Detail
coefficients coefficients
Thresholding &
wavelet reconstruction
Time reversal Reconstructed
focusing signal signal
Hilbert Principal component Fourier

transform analysis transform
Signal Principal Amplitude
envelope components spectrum
Figure 3. Flowchart of signal processing to generate a feature library
1217
TABLE II. LIST OF FEATURES EXTRACTED (335 IN TOTAL)
FEATURES DOMAIN
Original signal
• Amplitudes of the 1st/2nd/3rd
greatest peaks Time reversal focusing signal
• Curve length
Baseline-free
• Kurtosis Reconstructed signal

• Mean of local maxima Envelopes of the original signal / time reversal focusing
• Peak-to-peak value signal / reconstructed signal
• Standard deviation Amplitude spectrums of the original signal /
• Standard deviation of local reconstructed signal
maxima
Detail coefficients
• Cross correlation coefficient Original signal (with principal components)

dependent
Baseline-
• Differential curve length [8] Reconstructed signal (with principal components)

• Shift-invariant cross Amplitude spectrums of the original signal /
correlation coefficient reconstructed signal (with principal components)
FEATURE SELECTION AND PRINCIPAL FEATURES
Creating a library of features is necessary for generalization purposes. However,

applying machine learning classifiers to all the 335 features is not computationally
efficient, and some features may produce adverse effects by adding noise to the
classifiers. As a consequence, we have developed a feature selection tool based on
adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) algorithm. AdaBoost is essentially an ensemble
classification approach that linearly superposes a number of weighted “weak” binary
classifiers to generate a final “strong” classifier [9]. Each weak classifier is constructed
based on one feature, thus the sequence of weak classifiers indicates the rank of
principal features. Traditional AdaBoost allows the features to be selected repeatedly;
we have made slight modifications to the algorithm so as to avoid repeated features,
before passing the selected features on to machine learning classifiers.
In this paper, we discuss the results of applying AdaBoost to different sets of
training data in order to identify principal features for both damage detection and
localization. The results show that three types of features are most frequently selected,
shift-invariant correlation coefficients, wavelet coefficients related features, and curve
length. The shift-invariant correlation coefficient utilizes the invariance of the
magnitude of the Fourier transform to time-shifting changes, and can be considered as
a more robust version of a standard correlation coefficient that is commonly used to
measure the similarity of two time domain signals. Wavelet coefficients from wavelet
decomposition are advantageous to reveal local discontinuities of a signal and de-
noising. The curve length of a signal is useful for describing the signal complexity [6].
A variation in curve length may be caused by changes in the modal amplitudes or
locations of waves. The curve length is also robust to time-scale changes since the
signal’s shape remains the same.
Figure 4 provides an example to demonstrate the performance of the principal
features selected by AdaBoost. All the Phase II records are plotted in a normalized
feature space defined by two poor features (Figure 4a), and by two principal features
1218
(Figure 4b), respectively, where the blue crosses represent “undamaged” records, and
red circles are “damaged” records. It is clear that the two classes are well separated by
the principal features, while the data points are largely overlapped when poor features
are used. Figure 5 shows the similar results for damage localization in Phase III. Now,
if all the records in the three phases are plotted in the feature space (Figure 6), we can
still more or less differentiate the two classes in the same phase, but the overall
boundary for the records in the three phases is less evident. To conclude, AdaBoost is
effective for feature selection; additional classification algorithms are required for
automatic damage detection and localization.
1 1 Undamaged
Damaged
wavelet coef (db2)

0.8 0.8
Std of the signal
Curve length of
0.6 0.6
0.4 0.4
0.2 Undamaged 0.2

Damaged
0 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Maximum amplitude of the signal Shift invar corr coef of
reconstr signal (coif5) and 8th PC
Figure 4. Normalized feature space of Phase II records for damage detection with (a) poor features, and
(b) principal features selected by AdaBoost.
Amplitude of 3rd greatest peak
1 1 Zone 1
of wavelet coef (dmey)
Zone 3
0.8 0.8
Std of the signal
0.6 0.6
0.4 0.4
0.2 Zone 1 0.2

Zone 3
0 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Maximum amplitude of the signal Shift invar corr coef of
reconstr signal (sym5) and PC mean
Figure 5. Normalized feature space of “damaged” records from Phase III for damage localization with
(a) poor features, and (b) principal features selected by AdaBoost.
Amplitude of 3rd greatest peak
1 1
Zone 1
of wavelet coef (dmey)
Undamaged
wavelet coef (db2)
0.8 Damaged 0.8 Zone 3

Curve length of
0.6 0.6
0.4 0.4
0.2 0.2
0 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Shift invar corr coef of Shift invar corr coef of
reconstr signal (coif5) and 8th PC reconstr signal (sym5) and PC mean
Figure 6. Normalized feature space of records from all the three phases with principal features selected
by AdaBoost for (a) damage detection, and (b) damage localization.
1219
DAMAGE DETECTION AND LOCALIZATION
We have developed in [7] a classifier AdaSVM by combining AdaBoost with

support vector machines (SVM). AdaBoost is used to select the first 100 non-repeated
principal features from the feature library, followed by SVM for classification. SVM
is a linear maximum margin classifier, providing a mapping of data into a higher
dimensional space by kernel tricks so that a linear hyperplane or set of hyperplanes
can be determined in that high dimensional feature space [10]. Soft margin SVM with
the radial basis function as kernel is implemented by LIBSVM [11].
Two types of tests were conducted corresponding to each mass position, based on
different training data used. For Type I tests, the training and the testing data are
different records from the same phase (with no overlap); for Type II tests, the training
and the testing data are from different phases. It should be noted that a binary
localization (to determine Zone 1 or Zone 3) is discussed as a preliminary study in this
paper. To further classify the mass positions into three zones, either a multi-class SVM
or hierarchy binary classifier can be implemented.
Figure 7 shows the results of damage detection and localization, with the average
accuracy of 95% and 93%, respectively (TABLE III). We notice that three positions in
Phase I can not be correctly localized in Test I, while 100% accuracy is received when
Phase II and III are used for training (Test II). We would expect that the decisions
would become more robust as the number of training data increases. The relationship
between the accuracy and the number of training data was discussed in [7].
Alternatively, more features may be considered as new inputs for the feature space.
100 100
Percentage [%]
Percentage [%]
80 80
60 60
40 40
20 20
Test II Test II
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
6 Test I 6 Test I
Mass Position Mass Position
100 100
Percentage [%]
Percentage [%]
80 80
60 60
40 40
20 20
Test II Test II
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 Test I 6 Test I
Mass Position Mass Position
100 100
Percentage [%]
Percentage [%]
80 80
60 60
40 40
20 20
Test II Test II
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 Test I 6 Test I
Mass Position (a) Mass Position (b)
Figure 7. Accuracies of (a) damage detection, and (b) damage localization, applying AdaSVM over
different damage positions in the three phases: from top to bottom, Phase I, Phase II and Phase III.
1220
TABLE III. AVERAGE ACCURACY OF DAMAGE DETECTION AND LOCALIZATION
DETECTION LOCALIZATION
Type I test Type II test Type I test Type II test
Phase I 100% 100% 65.8% 100%
Phase II 98.3% 95.3% 95.8% 100%
Phase III 100% 78.3% 95% 100%
Average 95% 93%
CONCLUSIONS
This paper described a machine-learning-based framework for ultrasonic pipeline

monitoring using embedded piezoelectric transducers. Three phases of laboratory tests
were performed on a steel pipe with a mass scatterer (surrogate of damage) placed at
different locations at different environmental and operational variations in air pressure,
ambient temperature, and other unknown variations over time. A total of 335 features
were extracted from the ultrasonic signals to create a feature library which might
consist of both effective and poor features. Machine learning algorithms were applied
to automatically identify useful features, and thereafter to determine the presence and
the zone of the mass. The results showed that the framework was effective to both
detect and localize the mass, with average accuracy of 95% and 93%, respectively.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors greatly acknowledge the support from the Westinghouse Electric
Company and the technical advice from Dr. Warren Junker.
REFERENCES
1. Giurgiutiu, V. 2008. Structural health monitoring with piezoelectric wafer active sensors. Academic
Press.
2. Lowe, M. J. S., Alleyne, D. N., and Cawley, P. 1998. Defect Detection in Pipes Using Guided
Waves. Ultrasonics, 36(1-5): 147-154.
3. Ying, Y., Harley, J., Garrett, J.H., Jin, Y., Moura, J.M.F., O'Donoughue, N., Oppenheim, I.J., and
Soibelman, L. 2010. Time reversal for damage detection in pipes. Proceedings of SPIE, 76473S.
4. Sohn, H., Farrar, C.R., Hunter, N. F. and Worden, K. 2001. Structural Health Monitoring using
Statistical Pattern Recognition Techniques. J. of Dynamic Sys., Mea. and Control, 123(4): 706-711.
5. Sohn, H. 2007. Effects of environmental and operational variability on structural health monitoring.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. A 365(1851): 539–560.
6. Lu, Y., and Michaels, J. E. 2009. Feature Extraction and Sensor Fusion for Ultrasonic Structural
Health Monitoring under Changing Environmental Conditions. Sensors J., IEEE, 9(11):1462–1471.
7. Ying, Y., Harley, J., Garrett Jr., J.H., Jin, Y., Oppenheim, I.J., Shi, J., and Soibelman, L. 2011.
Applications of Machine Learning in Pipeline Monitoring. ASCE International Workshop on
Computing in Civil Engineering, Miami, FL, June 2011.
8. Ying, Y., Garrett Jr., J.H., Harley, J., Oppenheim, I.J., Shi, J., and, Soibelman, L. 2011. Damage
Detection in Pipes under Changing Environmental Conditions using Embedded Piezoelectric
Transducers and Pattern Recognition Techniques. International Conf. on Pipelines and Trenchless
Technology, Beijing, China, October 2011.
9. Freund, Y., and Schapire, R.E. 1997. A Decision-Theoretic Generalization of On-Line Learning
and an Application to Boosting. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 55(1): 119–139.
10. Cortes, C., and Vapnik, V. 1995. Support-vector networks. Machine Learning, 3(20), 273-297.
11. Chang, C., and Lin, C. 2001. LIBSVM: a library for support vector machines. Software available at
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~cjlin/libsvm.
1221
PROGNOSTICS AND DATA MINING FOR
HEALTH MANAGEMENT
1223
Prognostic Modeling and Experimental
Techniques for Electrolytic Capacitor
Health Monitoring
C. KULKARNI, J. CELAYA, G. BISWAS and K. GOEBEL
ABSTRACT
Electrolytic capacitors are used in several applications ranging from power

supplies on safety critical avionics equipment to power drivers for electro-
mechanical actuators, and this makes them good candidates for prognostics and
health management research. Prognostics provides a way to assess remaining useful
life of components or systems based on their current state of health and their
anticipated future use and operational conditions. Past experiences show that
capacitors tend to degrade and fail faster under high electrical and thermal stress
conditions that they are often subjected to during operations. In this paper, we study
the effects of accelerated ageing due to thermal stress on a set of capacitors. Our
focus is on deriving first principles degradation models for thermal stress conditions.
Data collected from simultaneous experiments are used to validate the desired models.
Our overall goal is to derive accurate models of capacitor degradation, and use them to
predict performance changes in DC-DC converters.
INTRODUCTION
This paper proposes a first principles physics of failure model for degradation
analysis and prognosis of electrolytic capacitors in DC-DC power converters. It has
been reported in the literature that electrolytic capacitors are the leading cause for
breakdowns in power supply system’s [1]. Our work has focused on analyzing and
modeling electrolytic capacitors degradation and its effects on the performance and
efficiency of DC-DC converter systems. The degradation typically manifests as
increases in ripple current and the drop in output voltage at the load. For example, in
avionics systems ripple currents in the power supply can cause glitches in the GPS
position and velocity output, and this may result in errors in the Inertial Navigation
(INAV) computations of position and heading, causing the aircraft to fly off course [2,
3].
Chetan Kulkarni, Gautam Biswas,ISIS/Dept. of EECS, 1025 16th Ave S, Vanderbilt University,
Nashville, TN 37203
Jose Celaya+, Kai Goebel*, *NASA Ames Research Center +SGT, NASA Ames Research
Center, MS 269-4, Moffett Field, CA 94035
1225
In earlier work, we discussed studies related to capacitor degradation under
nominal operation and accelerated degradation under high electrical stress [2, 4, 5]. In
this paper, we focus on accelerated degradation caused by thermal stress. We have
developed an experimental setup for measuring a number of parameters on capacitors
as actual degradation occurs under thermal overstress conditions. Thermal stress
occurs when the capacitors operate in high temperature environments. A physics of
failure model based approach to studying degradation phenomena enables us to
combine the energy based modeling of the DC-DC converter with the models of
capacitor degradation, and predict (using stochastic simulation methods) how system
performance deteriorates with time. This more systematic analysis may provide a
more general and accurate method for computing the remaining useful life (RUL) of
components and the converter system under different assumed operating conditions.
Component degradation models are derived by studying degradation phenomenons
such as electrolyte evaporation, failure models that have been presented in the
literature, and validating these models using data collected from accelerated
degradation studies [4]. The physics of failure models provide mathematical
formulations that are directly linked to component parameters. The data from these
experiments is used to verify results from the models developed and also for refining
the model parameters for more accuracy.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briefly covers the
general notion of physics of failure (POF) modeling. Section 3 discusses in detail the
mechanisms that govern the degradation process in capacitors. Section 4 discusses the
accelerated degradation experiments conducted on electrolytic capacitors. The last
section discusses data analysis for the data collected from the measurements and
mapping it with the physics of failure models. The paper concludes with comments
and future work to be done.
PROGNOSTIC METHODOLOGY
Physics-of-failure models capture failure phenomenon in terms of component

geometry and energy based principles that define the effect of stressors on the
component behavior. This is in contrast to the traditional approach for deriving
degradation models from empirical data. Physics-of-failure techniques present a
general methodology for estimating lifetimes due to specific failure mechanisms [6, 7,
8]. The failure rate models can be tuned to include parameters that relate to the present
health of the device/system and the expected conditions under which it will be
operated [9]. This approach is likely to provide more accurate estimates of the
prediction of remaining useful life (RUL).
In this work, we focus our prognostics studies on electrical and electronic
components in DC-DC power supply converters. Our research agenda includes a
detailed study on electrolytic capacitors used to filter the output signal in the
converter. To accelerate the degradation process in capacitors, and to study end of life
issues we have developed experimental testbeds where a suit of capacitors can be
subjected to different stress conditions. The degradation data collected provides
estimations of the damage parameters of the POF model. Simultaneously, we are also
developing procedures to validate the POF model.
1226
CAPACITOR FAILURE MODELS
We study the effect of thermal overstress on capacitors i.e., Tapplied ≥ Trated,

where Tapplied is the applied overstress temperature in storage (i.e., not during actual
operation when the capacitor may charge and discharge) and Trated is the rated
temperature at which the capacitor can be stored.
Thermal Model
When the storage temperature (controlled chamber temperature) is increased

the core temperature of the capacitor also increases. The raised temperature in the
capacitor core causes the electrolyte to start evaporating at faster than normal rates
[10]. It has been observed that the temperature of the cartridge and casing remain
almost constant across the diameter and along the length of the capacitor.
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that cartridge and casing are isothermal
bodies. As a result, the capacitor can be treated as two concentric isothermal
cylinders as shown in Fig. 1(a) with temperature values T1, T2 respectively. Further
heat flow can be considered to be radial. These assumptions hold for capacitors
having cylindrical surface area much greater than the end areas [11].
High temperature on the surface causes heat flow radially towards the core
of the capacitor (see Fig. 1(b)) [10, 12]. The heat flow is considered only in one
direction from the outer surface to the core. The capacitor structure is made up of
different layers through which the heat flows as shown in the Figure 1. In the
thermal model these layers represent successive thermal capacitances and thermal
resistances. In the capacitor, the anode and electrolyte layers are represented as the
thermal capacitances, labeled as C1, C2 respectively (see Fig. 1(b)). Similarly the
dielectric and cathode layers are modeled as thermal resistances R1 and R2,
respectively.
T2
T0 T1
S urface
Tem perature
C ore
Tem perature
a
b
(a) (b)
Figure 1: Capacitor Heat Transfer Model
1227
Electrolyte Decrease
Exposure of the capacitors to temperatures Tapplied ≥ Trated results in accelerated

aging of the devices [13, 14]. Higher ambient storage temperature accelerates the rate
of electrolyte evaporation leading to degradation of the capacitance [15]. The
depletion in the volume and thus the effective surface area is given by
𝑉 𝑊w 𝐴e 𝑗e𝑜
=1− 𝑡 (1)
𝑉O 𝑉O
where:
V: is the dispersion volume at time t VO: is the initial dispersion volume
Ae: surface area of evaporation. ww: volume of water molecules.
jeo : evaporation rate ( 1.5 mg m-1 at 125 °C )
Details of the derivation of this equation can be found in [16, 17]. Evaporation
also leads to increase in the pressure in the chamber, which decreases electrolyte
evaporation. The equation gives us the decrease in the active surface area due to
evaporation of the electrolyte, which results in a decrease in C and an increase in ESR
[15, 18].
Physics of Failure Model
To study the degradation leading to failure we are working towards

developing physics based models. The structure of electrolytic capacitors can be
considered as a relatively long strip line structures which is cylindrically wound and
packed in a case. Figure 2(a) shows the anode and cathode, the dielectric oxide
layers, and electrolyte interconnecting layer (spacer). This configuration is
equivalent to a transmission line, and its reduced electrical model is shown in
Figure 2(b) [17]. The input impedance of the capacitor network is defined in terms
of the total lumped series and parallel impedance of the simplified network [19]
(Figure 2(a)). Key effects include: (a) capacitance of the structure doubles, (b)
resistances associated with the electrolyte and oxide films of the structure becomes
half [17]. These results are due to the cylindrical configuration of the structure
where both the sides of each layer are used. The total lumped capacitance of the
structure is given by
𝟐 ∈R ∈O AO
𝐂= (2)
tO
where : ∈ R : relative dielectric constant ∈O : permittivity of free space

AO : oxide area tO : oxide thickness
1228
(a) Strip Line Structure (b) Circuit Diagram
Figure 2: Strip Line Structure and Equivalent circuit Diagram of Electrolytic Capacitor
The capacitance value is directly proportional to the oxide layer area and
inversely proportional to the oxide thickness. As we discussed earlier, the increase in
the core temperature evaporates the electrolyte decreasing the oxide area (AO) thus
causing degradation. The rate at which the oxide layer degrades is directly related to
the rate of evaporation of the electrolyte. The resultant decrease in the capacitance can
be computed by solving for h, the dispersion height of the electrolyte, using equation
(1):
𝑊w 𝐴e 𝑗e𝑜
h = hO- 𝑡 (3)
2Πr
where: hO = initial height, and r: average radius of the electrolyte cylindrical surface.
The effective change of area can be calculated from h. which gives us the
change in the capacitance from equation (2). Similarly, the total lumped electrolyte
resistance (RE) for a rolled configuration is
𝝆E tO PE
RE = (4)
𝟐LW
where: 𝝆E : electrolyte resistivity ; tO : oxide thickness ; L and W = length and

width of the anode surface area; and PE = correlation factor related to electrolyte
spacer porosity and average liquid pathway.
With decrease in the electrolyte due to high temperature the average liquid
path length is reduced, which decreases PE directly. The decrease in PE reduces RE as
the electrolyte evaporates. Electrolytic capacitors have a leakage current associated
with direct charge on its plates. For a healthy capacitor operating nominally leakage
current is not significant, but it begins to increase as the oxide layer degrades, which
can be attributed to crystal defects that occur due to electrolyte evaporation under high
thermal stress conditions [20]. Under normal circumstances no damage or decrease
in the life expectancy of the capacitor is observed. But in cases where the capacitors
are stored under thermal stress conditions permanent damage is observed [18]. This
can be explained by the decrease in RE as we have derived above. Therefore,
decrease in RE increases the leakage current through the capacitor. In summary, the
1229
degradation in the capacitor under thermal stress can be linked to two parameters: AO
and PE, which directly affect the capacitance and leakage current, respectively.
ACCELERATED AGEING EXPERIMENTS
In this setup we emulated conditions similar to high temperature storage

conditions, where capacitors are placed in a controlled chamber and the temperature is
raised above their rated specification [13, 14]. Pristine capacitors were taken from the
same lot rated for 10V and maximum storage temperature of 85°C.
The chamber temperature was gradually increased in steps of 25°C till the pre-
determined temperature limit was reached. The capacitors were allowed to settle at a
set temperature for about 15 min and then the next step increase was applied. This
process was continued till the required temperature limit was attained. To decrease
possibility of shocks due to sudden decrease in the temperature the above procedure
was followed. For this experiment all the capacitors were subjected to a constant
temperature of 125°C with no temperature variation. At the end of specific time
interval the temperature was lowered in steps of 25°C till the required room
temperature was reached. The ESR value is the real impedance measured through
the terminal software of the instrument. Similarly the capacitance value is computed
from the imaginary impedance using Electrochemical Impedance (EIS)
Spectroscopy Z-Fit. Characterization of all the capacitors was done for measuring the
impedance values using an SP-150 Biologic SAS instrument, twice a week. The
details of the measurement procedure and calculation procedure are given in [2, 21].
As the devices degrade we observe a considerable decrease in the
capacitance and while there is a considerably less change measured in the ESR.
Under thermal stress it is observed that the degradation in the capacitors is
primarily due to decrease in the capacitance [20, 22]. In this experiment the failure
precursor is linked to the decrease in the capacitance value.
DATA ANALYSIS
As per the standards MIL-C-62F14 [20] a capacitor is considered unhealthy

if under storage condition and high thermal stress its capacitance decreases by 10%
or more below its pristine condition value.
Figure 3 shows the plots for all the six capacitors under test. The decrease in
capacitance is plotted as a function of ageing time. The gradual decrease in the
capacitance can be related to the physics of failure model derived earlier. As the
temperature increases the electrolyte inside the capacitors evaporates and from
equations (2) and (3) the decrease in the capacitance is directly linked to the
decrease in the effective oxide area (AO) of the capacitor. This decrease in the oxide
area is in turn directly related to the rate of evaporation of the electrolyte given by
(1). Till about 2200 hours of storage we observe a linear decrease in capacitance as
predicted by the physics of failure model. As we continue beyond this time period,
at around 2250 – 2400 hours we observe a step change in the capacitance indicating
a sudden breakdown indicating a (sudden) breakdown phenomenon.
1230
Figure 3: Capacitance Loss of all the six capacitor units
Presumably, after the electrolyte level falls below a certain value,

breakdown occurs, which causes the leakage current to jump, leading to the sudden
drop in capacitance. In future work, we will extend this qualitative analysis to
methods where we estimate the parameters of the degradation model from data, and
study the breakdown phenomenon in greater detail.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper proposed a model-based approach to study electrolytic capacitor

degradation. We studied the possible physics of failure model that explained the
degradation process leading to decrease in the capacitance. According to industry
standards, an electrolytic capacitor is considered unworthy of being used in the system
when under storage conditions its capacitance decreases by 10% of its initial value.
With our experiments we are developing a systematic method for predicting this
ageing time of components under different conditions. We will be able to recalculate
some of the model parameters more accurately from the experimental data and
improve the model.
The next steps are to extend the physics of failure model that also extends
into the breakdown region for the capacitor. In future, we plan to develop more
precise physics of failure models based on this work which will help in estimating the
degradation parameters. These updated parameter estimation results for the model will
help in predicting the failures and degradation in the capacitor elements with higher
accuracy and precision. The work will provide a methodology for more accurate
estimation of model parameters, and therefore, the capability to build more accurate
degradation models.
REFERENCES
1) Yaow-Ming Chen. Electrolytic capacitor failure prediction of LC filters for switching-mode

power converters. Industry Applications Conference, 2005. Fortieth IAS Annual Meeting,
2(2):1464 – 1469, Oct 2005
1231
2) Kulkarni, C., G. Biswas, X. Koutsoukos, C. Jose, and G. Kai, "Integrated
Diagnostic/Prognostic Experimental Setup for Capacitor Degradation and Health
Monitoring", IEEE AUTOTESTCON 2010, Orlando, FL, IEEE, Sep -2010
3) Raj Bharadwaj, K. Kim, Kulkarni C.S., G. Biswas, “Model-Based Avionics Systems Fault
Simulation and Detection ", American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, AIAA
Infotech Aerospace 2010, April 2010, Atlanta, GA. AIAA-2010-3328
4) Kulkarni, C., G. Biswas, X. Koutsoukos, G. Kai, and C. Jose, "Physics of Failure Models for
Capacitor Degradation in DC-DC Converters", The Maintenance & Reliability Conference,
MARCON 2010, Feb 2010, Knoxville, TN.
5) Kulkarni, C., G. Biswas, C. Jose, and G. Kai, "Prognostics Techniques For Capacitor
Degradation and Health Monitoring", The Maintenance & Reliability Conference, MARCON
2011, March 2011, Knoxville, TN, MARCON
6) A. Saxena, J. Celaya, E. Balaban, B. Saha, S. Saha, and K. Goebel, “Metrics for Evaluating
Performance of Prognostic Techniques,” in International Conference on Prognostics and
Health Management (PHM08), Denver CO, pp. 1-17, 2008
7) Patrick Kalgren and et al. Application of prognostic health management in digital electronic
system. Aerospace Conference, 2007 IEEE, pages 1–9, March 2007.
8) Parler, Sam G, Jr, and Laird L Macomber, "Predicting Operating Temperature and Expected
Lifetime of Aluminum-Electrolytic Bus Capacitors with Thermal Modeling," Cornell Dubilier,
Nov. 1999.
9) D. W. Brown, P. W. Kalgren, C. S. Byington, and R. F. Orsagh, "Electronic Prognostics - A
Case Study Using Global Positioning System (GPS)," in IEEE Autotestcon Orlando, FL, 2005.
10) MIL-C-62F General Specification For Capacitors, Fixed, Electrolytic
11) R.P.Tye. Thermal Conductivity. Academic Press Inc, Burlington, MA, 1968.
12) M. L Gasperi.,“Life prediction model for aluminum electrolytic capacitors”, 31st Annual
Meeting of the IEEE-IAS, 4(1):1347–1351, October 1996.
13) Jose, C., C. Kulkarni, G. Biswas, and G. Kai, "Towards Prognostics of Electrolytic
Capacitors", AIAA Infotech@Aerospace 2011, April 2011, St. Louis, Missouri
14) IEC 60068-1 Environmental testing
15) Alvsten Bengt. Electrolytic Capacitors Theory and Applications. RIFA Electrolytic Capacitors,
Sweden, 1995.
16) Kulkarni, C., Biswas, G., & Koutsoukos, X., A prognosis case study for electrolytic capacitor
degradation in DC-DC converters. Annual Conference of the Prognostics and Health
Management Society, PHM 2009.
17) Muhammad Rusdi,Yoshikiyo Moroi, Hiromichi Nakahara, and Osamu Shibata, "Evaporation
from Water−Ethylene Glycol Liquid Mixture", Langmuir-American Chemical Society, 2005,
21 (16), pp 7308–7310
18) Vishay Roederstein, “Aluminum Capacitors- General Information”, Document # 25001, Jan –
2007.
19) D M Tasca, "Pulse Power Response and Damage Characterization of Capacitors", Electrical
Overstress-Electrostatic Discharge Symposium Proceedings, EOS/ESD Association, 1981:
EOS-3
20) Biologic, Application note # 14-Zfit and equivalent electrical circuits, BioLogic Science
Instruments, 2010.
21) IEC 60384-4-1 Fixed capacitors for use in electronic equipment
1232
Improving the Accuracy of Structural Fatigue
Life Tracking Through Dynamic Strain
Sensor Calibration
H. LEE, J. SHELDON, M. WATSON, C. PALMER and T. FALLON
ABSTRACT
The ability to accurately determine the amount of structural life that has been
consumed in military aircraft can be compromised by the inability to be consistent in
the manufacture and installation of strain sensors and general aircraft-to-aircraft
variations in the structures themselves. The variations must be accounted for in order
to be able to make correct decisions - regarding the ability to safely operate the aircraft
as well as reducing the need to purchase new aircraft (resulting from retiring of aircraft
with remaining useful life) - which are based on fatigue life calculations. Accurate
strain gauge calibration is thus necessary to ensure accurate aircraft fatigue usage
estimates. However, the methods that are currently used for strain gauge calibration
are costly, time consuming, or inaccurate.
To address these issues, the authors are developing an innovative strain sensor
calibration system that uses a portable device to 1) apply a low level and localized
dynamic load near the strain gauge, 2) record the input load and structural response
measured by the strain gauge, 3) evaluate the measurements relative to a reference
structure, and 4) provide a calibration factor for each individual strain sensor/structure.
This paper presents an overview of the approach and describes experimental results
for both baseline (static) and dynamic excitation tests. The accuracy goal of 1% has
been set for the calculated calibration factors on simpler structures and 2% on trial
parts of increasing complexity. Tests were thus conducted to verify test repeatability
and evaluate calibration accuracy in these scenarios.
INTRODUCTION
Decisions regarding the ability to safely operate military aircraft are currently
performed with the aid of structural fatigue life tracking estimates that are based on the
load history (cyclic and peak loads) and ‘structural life consumption’ models for
individual aircraft. The load history going into these models is determined using in-
flight strain sensor data. However, the usefulness of the strain data can be
Hyungdae Lee, Ph.D., Jeremy Sheldon, Matt Watson, and Carl Palmer, Ph.D., Impact
Technologies, LLC., 200 Canal View Blvd., Rochester, NY 14623
Timothy Fallon, Naval Air Systems Command, 48110 Shaw Road, Unit 5, Patuxent River, MD
20670
NAVAIR Public Release 11-702, Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
1233
compromised by the inability to consistently manufacture and install the sensors as
well as by aircraft-to-aircraft variations in the structures themselves. As such,
variations in strain readings in different aircraft can be greater than 10% under the
same loading conditions [1]. These differences must be accounted for to have
acceptable accuracy levels in the ultimate life usage calculations.
Unfortunately, current strain sensor calibration methods are inadequate, expensive,
and time consuming. For example, the ideal calibration approach involves placing the
entire aircraft in a full scale test rig and applying known loads to the structure. This
approach is extremely expensive and time-consuming, and thus cannot realistically be
performed for every aircraft. Alternately, the aircraft could be flown in tightly
prescribed maneuvers where loads can be fairly well determined. However, this
approach is far less accurate, and in some cases, it is difficult to prescribe appropriate
maneuvers to repeatedly test (load) certain sections within the aircraft. As such, a need
exists for a cost/time-effective means to calibrate strain gauges on each aircraft with
an accuracy that is comparable to the full scale test rig approach.
In order to address this
Test on Aircraft of Interest DAQ and Control
need, the authors are Local Dynamic
developing an innovative Input
(Discrete or
strain sensor calibration Continuous) Small Local Stress Wave
method (Figure 1) that Through Sensor
utilizes a hand-held device to
Ground Truth (or Baseline) Feature Extraction
introduce low amplitude Coherence1
excitations near the target

Mag
0
FEA at Sensor FRF

strain gauge to create 5
Mag (dB)
Features from Location

localized dynamic loads that Calibrated A/C (Expected Behavior) 0
0 50
Frequency (Hz)
100
are measurable by the gauge

Feature Fusion
but don’t sacrifice the
structural integrity of the
aircraft part [2]. The
resulting structural response Calibration Factors for Strain Sensors on In-Service Fleet A/C
is then compared with the
Figure 1 – Strain Sensor Calibration Concept
input force (measured using
an integrated force sensor) to calculate correlation metrics using advanced signal
processing methods. A calibration factor is then generated for each strain sensor by
comparing the calculated correlation metrics to those from a reference aircraft (or
sufficient model). This novel approach should allow fleet aircraft strain calibration to
be achieved with full-scale test accuracy without the cost and complexity of a full-
scale test. Once fielded, the system will produce a reliable and easy-to-use strain
gauge calibration method that can be used on each individual aircraft. This will result
in a more accurate determination of aircraft service life.
DYNAMIC CALIBRATION METHOD OVERVIEW

The key steps in the developed strain gauge calibration process (Figure 2) include:
1) exciting the fleet aircraft structure using a periodic or impact force; 2) measuring
the force input and response (using a force sensor and the strain gauge respectively); 3)
performing sensor and signal integrity checks to flag hardware degradation or poor
excitations/data; 4) applying signal preprocessing techniques such as filtering, noise
reduction, and outlier detection/removal; 5) extracting calibration features from the
1234
force and strain signals (using
signal processing techniques In-Service
in the time and frequency Fleet Aircraft
domains); 6) calculating
calibration factors by
Force In and Strain Out
correlating the features with
ones determined from a Sensor & Signal Integrity Check
reference aircraft structure (FirstCheck™)
using the same measurement
process; and 7) fusing the Signal Preprocessing
calculated factors to obtain a
final calibration factor of the Ref. Calibration Feature Extraction
Aircraft Coherence Force
strain sensor. As seen in the 1 4
Mag. (lb)
Mag
2
0
Strain
0
figure, two different methods FRF 40
Mag. ( µ∈)
5
Mag (dB)
20
of exciting the structure are 0

0 50
Frequency (Hz)
100
0
4 4.5 5 5.5
Frequency (Hz)
6
being evaluated. These are 1)

an impact force input (using Ref. Cal. Calibration Factors Calculation
an impact hammer) and 2) a Features
periodic impact (using a Fusion Technique (Final CF)
shaker) method. Although
both are being evaluated, the Figure 2 – Strain Sensor Calibration Process
best performing and implementable approach will ultimately be selected for at-wing
application. The results from applying this calibration process on structures of
increasing complexity are described in this paper.
APPLICATION TO CANTILEVERED BEAMS – “SIMPLE STRUCTURE”

In order to validate the basic dynamic strain sensor calibration concept, the authors
first performed tests on a simple cantilevered beam structure (Figure 3). The
experimental set-up included: three identical 6061-T6511 aluminum coupons (12"(L)
x 1.5"(W) x 0.375"(D)) that were mounted to a heavy T-slot table; two excitation
devices [an electrodynamic modal shaker (TMS 2100E11) and an electric impact
hammer (TMS 086M92ES)]; an integrated force sensor (PCB 208C03); LabVIEW-
based data acquisition & control software; MATLAB-based analysis software; and six
dual-element strain gauges (Vishay N2A-13-S061P-350) per coupon.
Display T-Slot Table SGs on Coupons SG1 θ=0° SG1 θ=10° SG1 θ=20°
SG2 θ=20°
Shaker
SG2 θ=0°
SG2 θ=10°
Lift Table SG3 θ=0° SG3 θ=10° SG3 θ=20°
Power DAQ & Adjustable Ref. Target Target

Amplifier Host PC Table (θ=0°) (θ=10°) (θ=20°)
(a) Experimental Setup (b) Strain Gage Location and Alignment Angle
Figure 3 – Experimental Setup with Aluminum Coupons
1235
On each coupon, three gauges were mounted on the top surface and three were
mounted on the bottom surface (in full-bridge configuration), located at 4", 6.5", and
9" from the loading point. On each coupon, the gauges were installed with different
alignment angles with respect to the principal axis at each location (Figure 3b). This
was done to evaluate the effects of inconsistent sensor installation, which as
previously mentioned, is a potential issue in the field. The three coupons were tightly
clamped along the side of the T-slot table in the cantilevered configuration shown in
Figure 3. A hole, located close to the free end of each cantilevered coupon, served as
the loading point for static weight or dynamic excitation. The coupon with strain
gauges at 0° alignment angle (far left in the figure) was used as the ‘reference’. The
other two coupons (in which the strain gauges were misaligned at 10° and 20° angles)
were used as the ‘target’ structures (simulating a poorly installed sensor).
Baseline Data Collection: As an initial step, a series of static load tests were
performed on the aluminum cantilever coupons to determine the actual calibration
factors for each strain gauge. This test mimics the ‘ideal’ calibration process and
provides a benchmark that is used to assess the accuracy of the approach. Weights
from 2.5 to 15lb (in 2.5lb increments) were hung from the structure, and the resulting
strain signals were measured. The relationship between the static load and resulting
strain was then determined using a linear function. This was used to determine the
baseline calibration factor (CF) for each gauge (Table 1).
Table 1 – Baseline CFs on Ref SGs at (SG1θ=0°, SG2θ=0°, and SG3θ=0°, refer to Figure
3b) at Nominally Same Location but with Different Alignment Angle
SG and Loading
SG1 ( L=9") SG2 (L=6.5") SG3 (L=4")
Distance
Alignment Angle θ=10° θ=20° θ=10° θ=20° θ=10° θ=20°
Baseline CF 1.041 1.183 1.041 1.183 1.042 1.183
Impact Excitation Method: Next, a series of impact excitation tests were performed
on the reference coupon and two target cantilever coupons using the electric impact
hammer. Figure 4 shows an example of the coherence and Frequency Response
Function (FRF) results from these tests. As seen, the structural resonant frequencies
occurred at ~40Hz and 80Hz for the reference coupon and ~50Hz and 90Hz for the
target coupons. At those frequencies, the coherence and FRF values significantly drop
and increase respectively. To minimize the effect of uncertainty at resonance, the
analysis thus focused on the sensor/structure frequency response below 40Hz.
Coherence of Force and Strains - SG1 FRF of Force and Strains - SG1
1 6
o
θ =0
o
0.8 5 θ =10
Magnitude (dB)
o
θ =20
Magnitude
0.6 4
Resonant Freq.
0.4 3
o
θ =0
0.2 θ =10
o 2 Useful Freq. Band for
o CF Calculation
θ =20
0 1
0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100
Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)
(a) Coherence (b) FRF
Figure 4 – Coherence and FRF of Force and Strain
1236
As seen in the results table (Table 2), the impact CF satisfied the criterion of less than
1% calibration error for the simple structure (with one exception).
Table 2 – Impact CFs on Ref SGs at (SG1θ=0°, SG2θ=0°, and SG3θ=0°) at Nominally
Same Location but with Different Alignment Angle
SG and Loading
SG1 ( L=9") SG2 (L=6.5") SG3 (L=4")
Distance
Baseline CF 1.041 1.183 1.041 1.183 1.042 1.183
Impact CF 1.043 1.180 1.042 1.169 1.040 1.179
CF Deviation (%) 0.2 -0.3 0.1 -1.2 -0.2 -0.3
Average Result 0.4% [Using absolute values of CFs]; 0.2% [without outliers]
Periodic Excitation Method: A series of periodic tests were then performed on the
coupons at excitation frequencies ranging from 1-10Hz (in 1 Hz increments). The
spectra of the signals were calculated and used to extract the excitation frequency
components. The strain readings were then normalized by the force measurement to
compensate for variations in input force. The results can be seen in Table 3. As seen,
the periodic CF satisfied the less than 1% criterion for all test cases.
Table 3 – Periodic CFs on Ref SGs at (SG1θ=0°, SG2θ=0°, and SG3θ=0°) at Nominally
Same Location but with Different Alignment Angle
SG and Loading
SG1 ( L=9") SG2 (L=6.5") SG3 (L=4")
Distance
Baseline CF 1.041 1.183 1.041 1.183 1.042 1.183
Periodic CF 1.049 1.188 1.047 1.173 1.042 1.188
CF Deviation (%) 0.8 0.4 0.6 -0.8 0 0.4
Average Result 0.5% [Absolute values]
APPLICATION TO REPRESENTATIVE AIRCRAFT STRUCTURE

After validating the approach on the simple structures described above, a more
complex part was constructed to validate the approach for a representative structure.
The structure represented a simplified version of an aircraft wing structure (Figure 5).
It consisted of 20+ metallic parts of high-strength corrosion resistant 7075-T6 alloy,
and included hinge lugs, a bulkhead, spars, and wing skins that were fastened together
using welds, rivets, and screws. The overall size of this test wing was 24" wide, 22"
long and 9" high. The specimen was mounted on a T-slot table through a mounting
fixture with a sliding slot. This test specimen was designed to enable evaluation of the
transmissibility of the excitations through complex paths that are representative of
those seen in the field.
Figure 5 – Representative Aircraft Structure
1237
Figure 6 shows the strain sensor locations and alignment angles that were used.
Half bridge tee rosette-type strain gauges (Vishay C2A-13-125LT-350) were placed
on the left top lug with alignment angles of 0° and 10. Full bridge shear pattern-type
strain gauges (Vishay CEA-13-187UV-350) were placed on the bulkhead and spars
with alignment angles of 0°, 10°, and 20°. Similar to before, the strain gauges with
alignment angles of 0° were used as the reference for CF calculation.
Left Top Lug Location Spar Location Bulkhead Location
Target 20° Target 0°
10°
Ref
0° 0° 10°
Ref Ref Target
Figure 6 – Wing Structure Sensor Locations (with Alignment Angle)

Baseline Data Collection: Similar to the test procedure used for the cantilevered
beam tests, static tests using weights ranging from 25-195lb were used to determine
the actual calibration factors. Table 4 summarizes the baseline CFs of each pair of
strain gauges. In the table, the distance represents the Euclidean distance between the
loading point and sensor location. The actual transmission paths were longer and
more complicated.
Table 4 – Baseline (or Static) CFs on Wing Structure
Location Left Top Lug Spar Bulkhead
Gauge Ref Target Ref Target Ref Target
Distance 28.0" 26.5" 12.7" 12.5" 20.8" 20.6"
Angle θ=0° θ=10° θ=0° θ=20° θ=0° θ=10°
Baseline CF 0.362 0.728 1.050
Impact Excitation Method: Figure 7 (left) shows the test set-up for the impact tests.
As seen, the loading point was again positioned at the free end of the structure. The
de-noised signals were then used to calculate the coherence and frequency response
function (right side of Figure 7). In this case, the frequency band of 2-50Hz was
chosen for CF calculation.
Coherence of Force and Strain
DAQ Module Wing Structure 1
Magnitude
0.5 Ref
Target
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Loading Point FRF of Force and Strain
Force Sensor 1
Magnitude
Ref Freq. Range for CF

0.5 Target Calculation
Alignment
Mechanism Impact Hammer 0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Frequency (Hz)
Figure 7 – Impact Test Setup (left) and Resulting Coherence and FRF (right)
1238
Table 5 summarizes the impact CFs of each pair of strain gauges and their
deviations from the baseline CFs. As seen, <1.5% error was achieved in all locations.
This is quite impressive when considering the loading distance and complexity of the
transmission paths. It is also worth noting that spar sensors were actually located on
different sides of the structure, the reference was on the right spar and the target was
on the left spar. In addition, the target gauges were offset by 1" (in addition to being
misaligned) with respect to the reference gauge. As such, these test conditions
represented a case with very poor sensor installation and are thus encouraging. These
results are expected to improve by impacting the structure at locations that are far
closer to the gauge. This will be evaluated in future work.
Table 5 – Impact CF on Wing Structure
Distance 28.0" 26.5" 12.7" 12.5" 20.8" 20.6"
Angle θ=0° θ=10° θ=0° θ=20° θ=0° θ=10°
Baseline CF 0.362 0.728 1.050
CF 0.367 0.720 1.046
Dev (%) 1.4 -1.1 -0.4
Periodic Excitation Method: A series of periodic tests (Figure 8), were then
performed at excitation frequencies of 2-50Hz. Depending on the excitation frequency,
a range of 1-5lbs force was
applied to the wing structure. The DAQ Module Wing Structure
CFs of each pair of strain gauges
was then calculated using the
same process used in the beam
application. Once again,
impressive results (Table 6) were
produced at the Top Lug and
Force Sensor
Bulkhead locations, when
considering the loading distance,
transmission paths, and sensor
offset/misalignments. Modal Shaker Lift Table
Unfortunately, the bridge terminal
on the target spar location was Figure 8 – Periodic Test Setup
broken during these tests and the CF could therefore not be calculated.
Table 6 – Periodic CF on Wing Structure
Distance 28.0" 26.5" 12.7" 12.5" 20.8" 20.6"
Angle θ=0° θ=10° θ=0° θ=20° θ=0° θ=10°
Static CF 0.362 0.728 1.050
CF 0.360 N/A 1.0496
Dev (%) -0.6 N/A -0.038
1239
CONCLUSIONS
To address the limitations (i.e., cost, time, accuracy, etc.) of current in-situ strain
gauge approaches, the authors have developed novel dynamic strain sensor calibration
methods that are based on periodic and impact excitations. The authors’ approach
applies low level, localized dynamic loads near the strain gauge (e.g., from a hand
portable unit that produces vibrations) to obtain in-situ response information from
individual gauges. This response information is merged with previous “ground truth”
information to obtain calibrations for individual strain sensors on fleet aircraft. As
described in this paper, verification tests have been performed on simple (cantilevered
beams) and more complex (a wing structure) to evaluate the accuracy of the approach.
Even after simulating inconsistent sensor installations (by rotating sensors on the
target structure by 10° and 20° and offsetting them by a slight distance) and loading
the structure at considerable distances, the experimental results showed that the
dynamic strain sensor calibration methods can accomplish calibration accuracy to the
desired level of less than 1% error on the simpler structure and less 2% error on the
more complex structure.
As a next step, a rugged, hand-held, easy-to-use device is being designed to allow
implementation of the approach in the field. The device will enable a maintainer to
quickly, cost-effectively, and accurately calibrate strain gauges at multiple sensor
locations on an aircraft. This capability will enable more frequent and accurate strain
gauge calibration, which will help to ensure aircraft fatigue usage estimates are based
on reliable structural load histories. This will reduce the cost associated with
purchasing new aircraft (resulting from the retiring of aircraft with remaining useful
life), and more importantly, reduce the risk associated with flying unsafe aircraft. The
work described in this paper will thus have a positive effect on legacy structural lifing
programs, such as the Navy’s Structural Assessment of Fatigue Effects (SAFE)
initiative, and emerging structural prognostics and health management (SPHM)
technologies that are being developed for platforms such as the Joint Strike Fighter
[3]. The big picture goal of all this work is to increase fleet availability and reduce
costs (O&M and procurement).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The financial support for this work, provided by the NAVAIR Small Business
Innovation Research program office under contract # N68335-10-C-0230, is gratefully
acknowledged. Also, the authors would like to thank the contributions of numerous
colleagues at Impact Technologies.
REFERENCES
1. DoD SBIR Solicitation, “N08-025 Innovative Method for Strain Sensor Calibration on Fleet
Aircraft,” 2008.
2. Lee, H., J. Sheldon, C. Palmer, and D. Ball, “Aircraft Strain Gage Calibration Using Response to
Dynamic Inputs,” The 7th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA, September 9-11, 2009.
3. Davis, C.R., “F-35 Lightning II Program Brief,” F-35 Lightning II Program, September 26, 2006.
1240
A 9-Step Process for Developing a Structural
Health Monitoring System
S. GRAVES, K. RENS and F. RUTZ
1241
A 9-Step Process for Developing a Structural Health Monitoring System
Spencer Graves1, Kevin Rens2 and Fred Rutz2
ABSTRACT
"The portion of the structural health-monitoring process that has received the least
attention in the technical literature is the development of statistical models to enhance
the SHM (structural health monitoring) process", according to a book-length literature
review (Sohn et al. 2004, p. 157). This article will help fill this gap by extensions to
general SHM applications of the statistical advances made for the SHMs for emissions
controls, mandated on all new cars and trucks sold in the developed world and in
many developing countries.
In the 1990s tightening legal mandates for "on-board diagnostics (OBDs)" pushed
the Low Emissions Partnership of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors to fund research
to (a) improve the statistical sophistication of their OBD work, and (b) help them
negotiate with regulators. A summary of this research was embedded in the "8-step
process for OBDs" described by Box et al. (2000). This paper will compare a 9-step
extension of this Box et al. (2000) process with the 4-part SHM process of Ferrar et al.
(2001), used by Sohn et al. (2004) to structure their literature review; see Table 1.
There are similarities between the monitoring processes of Table 1 and the 6-step
Structural Identification process of Catbas, Moon, and Aktan (2010), but the purposes
can be different. Structural identification is often but not always conducted as part of
monitor design, and monitors (i.e., monitoring systems) can be designed without a
formal structural identification effort. Further comparison of structural identification
and monitor design will not be attempted here.
This 9-step process provides more detail than Ferrar et al., especially regarding the
use of likelihood for feature extraction and information condensation. Likelihood is
arguably the single most important concept in statistics. Good statistical procedures
with no apparent reference to likelihood can generally be justified using likelihood,
often with nonstandard assumptions more appropriate for certain applications (Box
1980).
The Ferrar et al. process contains one piece absent from Box et al.: information
condensation. This was added in Table 1. It was not mentioned by Box et al., because
OBDs in motor vehicles store very little data for subsequent analysis, unlike more
general SHM applications. Beyond this, the Box et al. process provides more detail
for on statistical aspects of SHM design than the Ferrar et al. process.
The remainder of this article briefly describes the 9 steps on the right hand side of
Table 1. Our work in this area is being influenced by a current project collecting data
real time from the Fillmore St. bridge over Monument Creek in Colorado Springs, CO
(Vogrin 2009). This bridge has seriously tilted rocker bearings and problems with the
expansion joint at one end. Managers in the Engineering Division of the City of
Colorado Springs decided to seek additional information prior to designing
remediation. As part of this, they contracted with Structure Inspection and
Monitoring, Inc. (SIM), to monitor the behavior of that bridge over a one-year cycle,
1 Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc., 751 Emerson Ct., San José, CA 95126;
spencer.graves@prodsyse.com
2 Civil Engineering, University of Colorado Denver, North Classroom, Room 3027, Campus Box 113,
PO Box 173364, Denver, CO 80217
1242
analyzing three types of data together: (a) Monthly surveys of northing, easting and
elevation of 8 points on the bridge. (b) Monthly inclinometer readings from 20 meter
deep test holes drilled in the street at each end of the bridge. (c) Real time monitoring
of thermal cycling installed by SIM.
4-Part SHM Process (Farrar et al. 2001) 9-Step OBD Process (Box et al. 2000)
1. Operational evaluation 1. Define "Good" and "Bad"
2. Data acquisition, fusion, and cleansing 2. Collect data on both
3. Feature extraction and information 3. Develop (probability) models for both
condensation 4. Data compression / information
condensation (not in Box et al.)
5. Base diagnostic on likelihood
4. Statistical model development for
feature discrimination 6. Evaluate monitor behavior vs.
threshold
7. Does a solution exist?
8. Evaluate in real systems
(not mentioned) 9. Improve this process
Table 1. SHM / OBD Development Processes of Ferrar et al. (2000) and Box et al.
(2000) (The use of likelihood, step 5 on the right hand column, can help with both
feature extraction and model development, steps 3 and 4 in the left hand column.)
INTRODUCTION
Structural health monitoring (SHM) is now mandated for emissions controls on

new cars and trucks sold today throughout the developed world and in many
developing countries; in such applications, they are called “on-board diagnostics”.
Many other complex systems such as aircraft and various kinds of production
equipment include sensors for many variables used for automatic control and
condition monitoring. When malfunctions are indicated, maintenance personnel often
know which parts need to be maintained or replaced. The field of medical care
includes many examples of data monitored in real time for patients. For example,
implantable defibrillators provide an electrical stimulus to the heart if the pulse is too
slow, a big shock to terminate tachycardia and audible alarms if the system is
malfunctioning (BusinessWire 2011).
Civil infrastructure, however, has less of this than many other disciplines, partly
because in essence, “civil engineering structures are each a prototype.” (Wenzel 2009,
p. 2) There are by now many examples of bridges with structural health monitoring
systems installed. In 2009, the Vienna Consulting Engineers boasted “having
successfully finished more than 400 BRIMOS® projects worldwide.” (Wenzel 2009,
p. 303; BRIMOS = BRIdge MOnitoring System; www.brimos.com/Brimos) SmarTec
published a summary of over 250 SHM systems they installed over 15 years (Glisic,
Inaudi and Casanova 2009). Aktan et al. (2003) described SHM for a fleet of bridges,
describing how lessons learned from in-depth studies of a sample of bridges of similar
1243
design might be used to improve decision making about bridges not studied in that
depth. Many other SHM installations exist but seem mostly to still be research
projects conducted by civil engineering professors in local universities.
However, the total number of SHM systems installed to date on bridges is still tiny
relative to the roughly 2.5 million bridges world wide, of which an estimated 10
percent are structurally deficient (Wenzel 2009, p. 1). Modern advances in computer
and sensor technologies suggests substantial opportunities to improve the quality of
decisions regarding what bridge maintenance and replacement activities to schedule
when.
Sohn et al. (2004) provided a detailed overview of available SHM literature. They
divided SHM into 4 parts, identified in the left column of Table 1 above, based on
Ferrar et al. (2001). This table summarizes a comparison of this Ferrar et al. process
with an 8-step process for developing a diagnostic, described by Box et al. (2000) for
motor vehicle applications. We have identified only one major issue that was
discussed by Ferrar et al. but not considered by Box et al.: Data compression /
information condensation. This omission from Box et al. is due to the fact that there
are negligible off-line data analysis computations with OBDs for production vehicles.
All actions to be taken as a result of problems identified by these monitors are
determined during vehicle design.
In the next section, we discuss the 9 steps in the right-hand column of Table 1.
9-STEP PROCESS
1. Define "Good" and "Bad": The critical product from the first three steps in this
process is a set of probability models describing good and bad plants (i.e., systems
monitored). The development of such models ultimately requires a clear definition of
what is meant by “good”, i.e., acceptable in its current condition, and “bad”, requiring
repair or replacement for continued use. This can be surprisingly difficult. Part of the
problem is that there is actually a multidimensional continuum of conditions depicted
for one dimension in Figure 1. This includes clear specification of “worst acceptable”
and “best unacceptable” separated by an adequate “undefined” region. If the size of
this undefined region is too small, it may not be feasible to design a monitor (i.e.,
monitoring system) that will respond quickly to a real problem without excessive false
alarms.
bad undefined good
hard best worst as

failure unacceptable acceptable new
Figure 1. Continuum of Conditions of the Plant (system being monitored)
Of course, any real SHM application will have many possible types of
malfunctions, and “good” may be better represented as a multidimensional sphere or
ellipsoid, with “bad” being everything outside of a larger sphere or ellipsoid.
In the Fillmore St. bridge project mentioned above, the driving question is whether
any of the piers are moving. At the present stage, we have not yet completed enough
analysis of real data to be able to establish a system for automatic analysis of the data
and comparison with thresholds. “Good” means that the piers are all stable. “Bad”
1244
means they are moving. However, all measurements contain error, and we have not
developed thresholds for automatic decision making.
2. Collect data on both: Just as the strengths of materials in a some structure are
substantially below specifications, real data often contain features like outliers and
serial dependence absent from the naive models typically assumed to design monitors
(i.e., monitoring systems). It is therefore necessary to obtain real data to the maximum
extent feasible, so monitor designers can evaluate the extent of any violations of
assumptions and make appropriate adjustments. In general, it is not feasible to collect
real data tracking every possible failure mode before, during and after a malfunction.
It's important to think carefully about possible failure modes, because a malfunction
sufficiently different from the assumptions may not be detected.
From data collected so far on the Fillmore St. bridge, it's clear that there have been
no major motions of any of the piers. Our analyses to date suggest standard thermal
cycling with all but the east abutment fixed (see Figure 2 below).
3. Develop (probability) models for both: A probability model is one that combines
what is known about the physical relationships between variables of interest with a
characterization of the residuals from the physical model. All models are wrong, but
some are useful (Wikipedia, “George E. P. Box”). The progress of science is built on
a succession of improvements to previous models. The improvements could take the
form of including additional explanatory variables in the model or improving the
estimates of Young's modulus or thermal coefficients of linear expansion or some
other constants in the model. A model might be enhanced to incorporate previously
ignored nonlinearities. Dynamics might be added to a previous static model.
However, a wise first step in data analysis is to create normal probability plots
of individual variables (Wikipedia, “Normal Probability Plot”). This plots the n data
points sorted vs. the standard normal scores of where the i th of the n observations
would be expected to fall. The resulting image shows an approximate straight line if
the normal distribution is an adequate approximation to the distribution. It is curved to
the right or left if the distribution is skewed. Outliers appear as points off the line.
Mixtures of normal distributions appear as line segments with slopes proportional to
the standard deviations (or their reciprocals) of the different components (Titterington
et al. 1985). This can be valuable in deciding whether outliers should be investigated
or discarded. The importance of occasionally checking outliers is illustrated by the
fact that the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole was discovered only after an
automatic outlier rejection algorithm returned no valid data! (Wikipedia “Ozone
depletion”)
Normal probability plots with early Fillmore data on the horizontal axis showed
a fairly straight like with a steep slope in the middle for over 99 percent of the data
with roughly straight lines with a much shallower slope for less than 0.5 percent at the
lower left and top right. In one example, the slope of the center portion suggested a
normal distribution with standard deviation of 1 mV (millivolt) while the extremes had
a much shallower slope suggesting a standard deviation of 6 mV.
Creating probability models for both good and bad plants (systems monitored)
is arguably the most important step in designing a monitor, because if the data from
either good or malfunctioning plants are substantially different from assumptions, it
could lead to decision errors. There could be so many false alarms that people decide
1245
to ignore the monitors. Or the structure could collapse without warning, because the
monitor was designed with inaccurate assumptions about the nature of the data from a
malfunctioning plant. For the Fillmore project, we are working to build other models,
e.g., relating lateral motion with temperature (and looking at the residuals from those
plots).
An example is presented in Figure 2. This presents plots vs. temperature of the
displacement of the Fillmore St. bridge relative to the middle pier and the gap between
the end of this steel bridge and the east abutment. Several things are apparent from
these plots. First, the single temperature measurement had a much higher correlation
with the displacement in the middle (0.98) than with the gap at the end (0.90). This
suggests possible instability of the abutment, which might explain known problems
with a malfunctioning expansion joint at that abutment. Both plots show deviations
between the displacement data and the standard linear theory of thermal expansion,
and the displacement at the center pier suggests nonlinearity. By a “probability
model”, we mean some formal characterization of the probability distribution of these
deviations, e.g., that they are normal (Gaussian) with a certain standard deviation.
Second, the plots show a non-random behavior, with successive observations closer
together than would be the case with the simple assumption of independent
observations. Third, there are outliers in the measurements from the center pier.
Figure 2. Displacement vs. Temperature on the Fillmore St. Bridge over

Monument Creek, Colorado Springs (plots of 10 percent trimmed means in 10
minute intervals Aug. 26 - Dec. 4, 2010)
4. Data compression / information condensation: Increasingly, SHM installations

use wireless sensors where data communications are a substantial portion of the
energy budget. In such applications, battery life can be increased and the size of the
power source (e.g., from energy harvesting from solar, wind or vibrations) can be
reduced by using intelligent data compression, e.g., reporting only when
measurements cannot be adequately predicted from a model (Elliott et al., 2011, esp.
re. Time Series Data Compression). Data compression and information condensation
is also important for minimizing the volume of data to be stored long term, which
could also be a major cost of long term monitoring. Smart sensors could also include
adequate nonvolatile memory to allow them to perform similar to flight recorders on
aircraft, storing information from the period leading up to a collapse of a structure that
could help forensic engineering teams understand better what happened. This in turn
1246
could improve both the quality of their observations and their ability to convince
others to adopt their recommendations.
The Fillmore project is trying to evaluate pier stability. The raw data includes
roughly one observation every second or two. Initially, it seemed that the dominant
behavior was driven by the daily heating cycle, so we summarized all variables using
means in 10 minute intervals, trimming 10 percent from both extremes to eliminate the
outliers seen in normal probability plots. These summaries were used to prepare
Figure 2.
5. Base diagnostic on likelihood: In modern statistical theory, “likelihood” is

another term for probability, except that “probability” is used to qualify limits on
predictions while “likelihood” is used to make inferences from data about the relative
plausibility of alternative parameter values or probability functions that might have
generated those data. Virtually any standard monitoring techniques can be derived
from likelihood (Graves 2007, 2005, 2002, 2001). This includes a cumulative sum
(i.e., the sum of all observations up to each point in time possibly with a floor and / or
ceiling; NIST 2010, sec. 6.3.2.3). It also includes exponentially weighted moving
averages (EWMAs: ỹ t= ỹ t1+θ( y t ỹ t 1 ) ; Wikipedia “Moving Average”), and
Kalman filters (multivariate generalization of the EWMA; Wikipedia “Kalman
filter”). It also includes Bayesian monitors computing the posterior probability of the
plant being “bad” given all the data collected to each point in time.
Work to date on the Fillmore project has used robust linear regression.
Ordinary least squares is known to produce maximum likelihood estimates of a linear
model with normally distributed errors. Because of the outliers previously mentioned,
we are using a robust regression algorithm that is essentially least squares for most
observations but reduces the weight on observations with large residuals. For the
Fillmore project, real time alarms seem not to be needed. If they were, initial attempts
at monitoring might use a cumulative sum or EWMA of the deviations from a linear
or quadratic model evident in Figure 2, possibly with a scheme to reduce the weight or
eliminate points with excessively large residuals. These monitoring algorithms
typically assume the data (residuals) are statistically independent. Since that is clearly
not the case here, some effort might be made to either compensate by setting
thresholds higher than otherwise or to actually model the serial dependence.
6. Evaluate monitor behavior vs. threshold: Virtually any monitor will involve
iteratively updating a figure of merit and comparing it with one or more action limits.
For example, if the probability of the plant being “good” falls below a threshold, an
action may be mandated. At the most extreme, the computer could issue an alarm
automatically closing a bridge pending examination by an engineer. A visual
inspection might be scheduled in response to a less serious problem. If the result
appears to have been a false alarm, the decision threshold might be adjusted to reduce
the incidence of similar false alarms in the future. When designing a monitoring
system, it is important to test a proposed monitor with real data because, for example,
the probability models of Step 3 used to develop the likelihoods of Step 5 may assume
the observations are statistically independent, and they may not be. These monitors
may still be useful, but the thresholds may need to be adjusted to provide an adequate
response to a real malfunction (or to a malfunction in synthetic data obtained by
modifying real data in some way) while still producing an acceptably low rate of false
1247
alarms. Evaluations like this are often done using Monte Carlo simulation or repeated
use of synthetic modifications of real data before a monitor is actually installed on a
structure. We have not carried the Fillmore project to the point of establishing
automatic alarms, as there seems not to be a realistic chance that such is needed for
this application.
7. Does a solution exist? Step 6 will be performed during the monitor design phase
before it is actually installed on a structure or shortly after the initial installation to
ensure that it functions as required. In some cases, the data may not contain enough
information to support a sufficiently rapid response to a real malfunction with an
acceptably low false alarm rate. In that case, the monitor designer must return to Steps
1-5 above to develop an improved monitor. For example, can the distinction between
good and bad be increased (Step 1)? Can more sensitive sensors or data processing
methods be used to obtain more informative data (Step 2)? Can a probability model
be developed that better describes the actual data (Step 3)? Can the data compression
algorithm be tightened to return more informative results (Step 4)? Can any
approximations used in converting the probability models into a monitor be improved
(Step 5)? After a change is made in one or more of these items, the evaluation of Step
6 needs to be repeated.
8. Evaluate in real systems: After the monitor is actually installed, it needs to be

tested further to ensure that it performs as advertised. This can include comparing the
monitoring data with the results of more traditional inspection techniques. It could
also include recording the times of occurrence of particularly heavy loads to confirm
that the real data appropriately reflect those events. In some cases, when bridges have
been demolished, they have been fitted with SHM systems to confirm the behavior of
the SHM system as damage is introduced to the structure (Wenzel 2009, sec. 9.8).
9. Improve this process: Very few engineers design just one. Most people and most
organizations involved in designing one monitor hope to design another. It is
therefore wise for the design team to schedule a “postmortem” review after the
project is completed to evaluate the process they used to achieve the result and how
that process could be changed to produce a better result in similar projects in the future
with fewer unanticipated problems.
FUTURE WORK
This is a work in process. We have so far collected data real time from the
Fillmore St. bridge for seven months. We are using this in developing diagnostic
software to make it easier first for students and later practicing engineers to understand
and use the 9-step process just described. We are currently considering making a
public presentation to engineering faculty and students, leading to a module that might
be used in a current structural engineering class and possibly in a new civil
engineering class devoted to condition assessment and failure analysis.
REFERENCES
1. Box, George E. P. (1980) "Sampling and Bayes' Inference in Scientific Modeling and Robustness"
(with discussion), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society series A, 143(4) 383-430.
1248
2. Box, G.; Graves, S.; Bisgaard, S.; Van Gilder, J.; Marko, K.; James, J.; Seifer, M.; Poublon, M. and
Fodale, F. (2000) "Detecting Malfunctions in Dynamic Systems", Proceedings of the 2000 SAE
World Congress & Exposition (SAE Technical Paper Series number 2000-01-0363).
3. BusinessWire (2011) “Medtronic Announces FDA Approval of Protecta™ Implantable
Defibrillators That Reduce Inappropriate Shocks”, March 28, 2011 02:30 PM Eastern Daylight
Time (http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110328006510/en/Medtronic-Announces-FDA-
Approval-Protecta%E2%84%A2-Implantable-Defibrillators, accessed 2011.04.09).
4. Catbas, F.N., Moon, F., and Aktan, A.E (2010)., “An Integrated View for Structural Identification
of Civil Infrastructure Systems: An Overview of a Collaborative ASCE Committee Effort”, pp.
440-446 in Sivaji Senapathi, Kevin Casey, and Marc Hoit, 2010 Structures Congress, American
Society of Civil Engineers, Reston, VA.
5. Elliott, James C.; Graves, Spencer; and Kovnat, Sam (2010) “Equipment and Systems for Structure
Inspection and Monitoring”, World Intellectual Property Organization Pub. No. WO/2011/016857
(http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=2011016857)
6. Farrar, C. R.; Doebling, S. W. and Nix, D. A. (2001). "Vibration-Based Structural Damage
Identification". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Mathematical, Physical &
Engineering Sciences 359 (1778): 131–149 (cited from Sohn et al. 2004 and Wikipedia, "Structural
Health Monitoring", accessed 2010.09.11).
7. Glisic, Branko; Inaudi, Daniele and Casanova, Nicoletta (2009) "SHM process : lessons learned in
250 SHM Projects", 4th International Conference on Structural Health Monitoring on Intelligent
Infrastructure (SHMII-4) 22-24 July 2009, Zurich, Switzerland.
8. Graves, Spencer (2007) “Bayes' rule of Information and Monitoring in the Manufacturing of
Integrated Circuits”, ch. 7, pp. 187-211 in Blanca M. Colosimo and Enrique del Castillo, Bayesian
Process Monitoring, Control and Optimization (Chapman and Hall).
9. Graves, Spencer; Bisgaard, Søren; and Kulahci, Murat (2005) “A Bayes-Adjusted Cumulative
Sum (Cusum)” (http://prodsyse.com/Bayes-Adj%20Cusum2.pdf, accessed 2011.04.14).
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Monitors Using Gage R & R and Reliability Data” (http://prodsyse.com/Bayesian%20EWMA.pdf).
11. Graves, Spencer; Bisgaard, Søren; Kulachi, Murat; Van Gilder, John; Ting, Tom; Marko, Ken;
James, John; Zatorski, Hal; and Wu, Cuiping (2001) Foundations of Monitoring Dynamic Systems
(http://prodsyse.com/Foundations%20of%20Monitoring-Univariate.pdf, accessed 2011.04.14).
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(www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook, accessed 2011.05.02)
13. Sohn, Hoon; Farrar, Charles; Hemez, Francois M.; Shunk, Devin D.; Stinemates, Daniel W.;
Nadler, Brett R. and Czarnecki, Jerry J. (2004) A Review of Structural Health Monitoring
Literature: 1996–2001 (Los Alamos National Laboratories,
"http://institute.lanl.gov/ei/shm/pubs/LA_13976_ MSa.pdf"accessed 2010.07.10).
14. Titterington, D. M.; Smith, A. F. M.; and Makov, U. E. (1985) Statistical Analysis of Finite
Mixture Distributions (Wiley).
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2009 (http://sidestreets.freedomblogging.com/tag/fillmore-street, accessed 2010.09.11).
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2011.04.15).
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2011.04.15).
1249
Combined and I Indices Based on Principal
Component Analysis for Damage Detection
and Localization
D. A. TIBADUIZA, L. E. MUJICA, M. ANAYA and J. RODELLAR
ABSTRACT
In this paper, two indices (combined or phi index and I index), different to the
presented in [1][2][3] are used to detect damages; these indices are calculated from the
information obtained from the projection of the experiments into the PCA models
(baseline). They give us a measurement about the difference between the tested and
the healthy structure. The experiments are taken from an active piezoelectric system
which is excited with lamb waves in different phases and the fact that any defect in the
structure changes its vibrational response is exploited.
For localization, five different methods of contribution analysis are used (complete
decomposition contribution, partial decomposition contribution, angle based
contribution, reconstruction based contribution and diagonal contribution). With these
methods, the contribution of each sensor to each index is analyzed, in this way, sensor
with largest contribution suggests the path where the damage could be located (from
the actuator to this sensor). The combination of all indices and all contributions (a
total of 2 x 5) are analyzed and compared. To validate the approaches, they are applied
to an aircraft turbine blade instrumented with seven PZT’s. Different damages are
simulated.
INTRODUCTION
The problem of monitoring defects in structures can be tackled from different points of
view, generally they are focused on analysis of physical/mathematical models or
analysis of a set of data (experimental or by simulation). Systems which do not use
physical models the problem can approach as pattern recognition, some features from
the dynamical response of the healthy structure are used as pattern. The fact that any
defect in the structure changes its vibrational response is exploited. To perform global
detection, classification and localization of damages, techniques such as Principal
Component Analysis (PCA) are useful because by means of multivariable analysis, it
___________
D.A. Tibaduiza, L. E. Mujica, M. Anaya and J. Rodellar, Control Dynamics and Applications
Group (CoDAlab). Department of Applied Mathematics III. EUETIB. Universitat Politécnica de
Catalunya (UPC). Barcelona, Spain. e-mail: {diego.tibaduiza, luis.eduardo.mujica,
maribel.anaya, jose.rodellar}@ upc.edu.
1250
provides arguments for discerning which dynamic is the most important in the system.
The use of PCA as pattern recognition tool using time based signals have shown good
results for structural damage detection, localization and classification [1][2][3].
These approaches combine the use of an active piezoelectric system, which contain
piezoelectric transducers (PZT’s) that can be used as actuators or sensors to produce
and collect lamb waves in structures in different phases. In each phase of the diagnosis
procedure, one PZT is used as actuator (a known electrical signal is applied) and the
others are used as sensors (collecting the wave propagated through the structure at
different points). The number of phases is related to the number of PZT’s. In each
phase, an initial baseline model for undamaged structure is built applying PCA to the
data collected in several experiments. Current structure (damaged or not) is subjected
to the same excitation, and the collected data are projected into the PCA models (one
by each phase). This paper present a damage detection and localization methodology
based on principal component analysis and two damage indices. The methodology
includes the use of a piezoelectric active system which allow to excite and collect the
signal from the PZTs attached on the surface of an aircraft turbine blade in different
phases. Five methods for damage localization are performed and its results are
presented.
PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS
Introduction
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a technique of multivariable and megavariate
analysis [4] which may provide arguments for how to reduce a complex data set to a
lower dimension and reveal some hidden and simplified structure/patterns that often
underlie it. The goal of Principal Component Analysis is to obtain the most important
information from the data [5]. In order to develop a PCA model it is necessary to
arrange the collected data in a matrix X. This m × n matrix contains information from
n sensors and m experimental trials [6]. Since physical variables and sensors have
different magnitudes and scales, each data-point is scaled using the mean of all
measurements of the sensor at the same time and the standard deviation of all
measurements of the sensor. Once the variables are normalized the covariance matrix
Cx is calculated. It is a square symmetric m × m matrix that measures the degree of
linear relationship within the data set between all possible pairs of variables (sensors).
The subspaces in PCA are defined by the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the
covariance matrix as follow:
Cx P = PΛ (1)
Where the eigenvectors of Cx are the columns of P, and the eigenvalues are the
diagonal terms of Λ (the off-diagonal terms are zero). Columns of matrix P are sorted
according to the eigenvalues by descending order and they are called the Principal
Components of the data set. The eigenvectors with the highest eigenvalue represents
the most important pattern in the data with the largest quantity of information.
Geometrically, the transformed data matrix T (score matrix) represents the projection
of the original data over the direction of the principal components P.
T = XP (2)
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In the full dimension case, this projection is invertible (since PPT=I) and the original
data can be recovered as X=TPT. Now, with the given T, it is not possible to fully
recover X, but T can be projected back onto the original m-dimensional space and
obtain another data matrix as follow:
∧
X = TP T = X (PP T ) (3)
∧
Considering X as the projection of the data matrix X onto the selected r principal
components and X as the projection onto the residual left components, the following
decomposition can be performed:
∧
X = X+ X
(4)
∧
X = X ( PP T ) (5)
X = X (I − PP T ) (6)
Damage Detection Indices

There are several definitions of fault detection indices [8]. Two well-known indices
are commonly used to this aim: the Q-index (or SPE-index), the Hotelling’s T2-
statistic (D-statistic). There exist another type of indices reported in the literature as
combined index [10] and I index [11]. The first one is a combination of the Q-index
and T2-index and is used to monitor the behavior of a process, the second one is used
in meta-analysis and can be interpreted as a percentage of heterogeneity.
Q-statistic, T2-statistic, Combined Index ( ϕ or phi), I index of the i-th sample (or
experiment) are defined as follows:
Q = (I − PP T ) (7)
T = PΛ−1P T (8)
ϕi = Q + T = (I − PP T ) + PΛ−1P T (9)
0 for Q ≤ ( k − 1) (10)

I =  Q − ( k − 1)
 * 100 % for Q > ( k − 1)
Q
where, k is the number of experiments.
CONTRIBUTION METHODS FOR LOCALIZATION

According to [8] five methods can be used for fault detection in process monitoring.
Authors of this work adapted these methods for use in damage detection and
localization in structures. These methodologies are used to calculate the contribution
of each sensor to each index in each experiment trial. In this way, the damage will be
located between actuator and sensor with largest contribution. All the indices can
determine if there are damages and distinguish between them, however they do not
provide reasons for it. The main idea is to determine which variable or variables are
responsible. The variables with the largest contribution are considered major
contributors to the damage.
Complete Decomposition Contribution (CDC)

Complete decomposition Contributions also called contribution plots are well known
diagnostic tools for fault identification [7]. In each index is indicated the significance
1252
of the effect of each variable on the index. The contribution of the variable (or sensor)
j to the index is defined as in the equation 11.
1 1 (11)
Index T 2 T 2
CDC j = x M ξ jξ M x j
where ξ j is the jth column of the identity matrix, and represents the direction of xi.
Partial Decomposition Contributions (PDC)
This method decomposes a damage detection index as the summation of variable
contributions.
1
PDC Index = x T M 2 ξ j ξ Tj x (12)

j
Diagonal Contributions (DC)

The diagonal contributions remove the cross-talk among variables. The DC is defined
as:
DC Index
j = x T ξ j ξ Tj Mξ j ξ Tj x (13)
Reconstruction Based Contributions (RBC)
The Reconstruction Based Contribution [9] is an approach that uses the amount of
reconstruction of a damage detection index along a variable direction as the
contribution of that variable to the index. The RBC is defined as:
(ξ Tj Mx ) 2
RBC Index
j = (14)
(ξ Tj Mξ j )
Angle-Based Contributions (ABC)
The ABC measures the cosine between a measure and a variable direction.
The ABC of variable j is the squared cosine of the angle between x and ξ j
ξ Tj x (ξ Tj Mx ) 2 RBC Index
j
ABC Index
j =( )2 = = (15)
ξj x ξ Tj Mξ j xT Mx Index ( x )
1 1
2 2
where ξj =M ξj and x = M x
EXPERIMENTAL MOCKUP
This work involves experiments with an aircraft turbine blade. This blade was
instrumented with seven piezoelectric transducer discs (PZT’s) attached on the
surface: three of them were distributed in one face and the others on the other face (see
Figure 1). The experiment to assess the structure is performed in several phases [4]. In
every phase, just one PZT is used as actuator (an electrical excitation signal is applied)
and the others are used as sensors.
a. b.
Figure 1 Aircraft turbine blade with the PZT’s location and ubication of damages
1253
Adding two masses in different locations, nine damages were simulated. 140
experiments were performed and recorded: 50 with the undamaged structure, and 10
per damage [1]. The PCA model was created using 80% of the whole dataset collected
using the undamaged structure. Signals from the other 20% and the whole dataset of
the damaged structure were used for testing the approach.
DAMAGE DETECTION
The damage detection methodology includes the use of the phi vs I plots. Figure 2
shows the plot for the actuator 1. In this figure it is possible to observe that the data
from undamaged structure are grouped and separated of the data from the damaged
structure, in the same way, the figure shows that there is clustering of results within
each damage.
100 ACTUATOR 1
Un
80
D1
D2
60 D3
D4
I
40 D5
D6
20 D7
D8
0 D9
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
phi
Figure 2 phi vs I plot for actuator 1.
Is possible to obtain similar plots with the other actuators, the amplitude and position
of the points in the plot depend of the ubication of the actuator in relation with the
damage, but in all the plots is possible to detect abnormalities.
DAMAGE LOCALIZATION
The location of damage was made using 5 methods: CDC, PDC, RBC, ABC, DC. As
explained in the Contribution Methods for localization section. Figures 3 and 4 show
the different contributions in each sensor to phi index and I index using the CDC
method when damage 1 is present. Figure 5 presents the final localization f the
damage 1 using I index and CDC. As it is observed in Figure 4, contributions of
sensors 3, 6 and 7 are null, this is due to the threshold defined in the index I, which
allows to eliminate the less significant contributions. Figures 6 to 9 show the
comparison between the five methods (CDC, PDC, RBC, ABC and DC) of
contribution of each sensor to each index. Sensors in figure are the PZT that are not
working as actuator. In general terms, it shows that the use of all methods allow to
locate the damage and, the fact that contributions in most cases have similar results,
although it may be noted that in some cases the methods PDC, RBC, ABC & DC
provide major contributions compared with the CDC method.
1254
Figure 3 Combined index with CDC method Figure 4 I index with CDC method
Figure 5 Damage localization for damage 1using the I-index
100 100
80
50
60
40
0
20
-50 0
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4 5
5
5 4 5 4
6 3 6 3
2 2
sensors 1 sensors 1
methods methods
Figure 6 Comparison between methods of contribution to Phi and I -Index using PZT1 as actuator
50 1
40
0.5
30
0
20
10 -0.5
0 -1
1
1
2
2
3
3
4 5 4 5
5 4
6 3
5 4
2 6 3
sensors 1 2
methods sensors 1
methods
1255
Comparison methods for PHI-index using actuator 4
Comparison methods for I-index using actuator 4
80
80
60
60
40
40
20
0 20
-20 0
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 5 4 5
5 4 5 4
6 3 6 3
2 2
sensors 1 sensors 1
methods methods
80 1
60 CONTRIBUTION TO I-index 0.5
40
0
20
-0.5
0
-1
-20
1
1 2
2 3
3 4 5
4 5 5 4
5 4 6 3
6 3 2
2 sensors 1
sensors 1 methods
methods
Negative contributions such as those obtained in Figures 6, 8 and 9 for the phi index
have no physical sense. Also, as is shown for damage detection, also in the damage
localization, sensors 3, 6, and 7 have contributions equal to zero since in this case are
far from the damage and there is a stringer on the way between the actuator and
sensors.
CONCLUSIONS
A novelty methodology in SHM is presented, this include the use of PCA as pattern
recognition technique and two indices (phi and I ) for damage detection and 5 methods
for damage localization (CDC, PDC, RBC, ABC and DC).
For damage detection, it was showed the utility of phi vs I plots, using this kind of
plots it is possible to discern the presence of damage in the structure, in general terms,
in this figures, the undamaged data and different damages are grouped, it means that
similar conditions (damage) share similar space on the figure.
The 5 methods presented allow localizing the damages, in some cases there are less
contributions when the CDC method is used.
Results vary for each actuator, obtaining better results in the piezoelectric who are
closest to the excitation signal.
1256
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported by the “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación” of Spain
through the coordinated research projects DPI2008-06564-C02-01/02. The authors
would like to thank the support from the "Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de
Recerca" of the "Generalitat de Catalunya", "Escola Universitària d'Enginyeria
Tècnica Industrial de Barcelona (EUETIB)", and "Universitat Politécnica de
Catalunya". We are also grateful to Professor Alfredo Güemes of the “Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid” for his valuable suggestions and ideas during the experimental
phase.
REFERENCES
1. Burgos, D.A.T. and Mujica, L.E. and Guemes A. and Rodellar J. Active piezoelectric system using
PCA . In European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring. 5th edition. Sorrento-Italy. 2010.
2. Mujica L.E. and Tibaduiza D.A. and Rodellar J.. Data-driven multiactuator piezoelectric system for
structural damage localization. In 5th World Conference on Structural Control and Monitoring.
Tokio-Japan., July 2010.
3. Mujica L.E. and Ruiz M. and Güemes A. and Rodellar J. Contribution plots on PCA based
indices for damage identification on structures. In Proc of the 4th. ECCOMAS thematic conference
on smart structures and materials. Porto, Portugal, 2009.
4. Jollife I. 2002. Principal Component Analysis(Springer).
5. Worden K. and Farrar C. 2007. Structural health monitoring. Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society, Series A 365(1861) 299-632
6. Li G. and Qin S.J. and Ji Y. and Zhou D. Reconstruction based fault prognosis for continuous
processes. Proceedings of the 7th IFAC Symposium on Fault Detection, Supervision and Safety of
Technical Process. Barcelona, Spain, 2009.
7. Tibaduiza D.A. and Mujica L.E. and Rodellar J. Comparison of several methods for damage
detection using indices and contributions based on PCA. In Proc of the 9th International Conference
on Damage Assessment of Structures. Oxford, UK, 2011.
8. Alcala C. and Qin S. 2009. Unified analysis of diagnosis methods for process monitoring.
Proceedings of the 7th IFAC Symposium on Fault Detection, Supervision and Safety of Technical
Process. Barcelona, Spain, 2009.
9. Alcala C. and Qin S. 2009. Reconstruction-based contribution for process monitoring. Journal
Automatica, 45, 1593-1600.
10. H. Yue, S.J. Qin. “Reconstruction-Based Fault Identification Using a Combined Index”. Ind. Eng.
Chem. Res. 2001 40,4403-4414.
11. T. Huedo, J. Sanchez, F. Marín. Assesing Heterogeneity in Meta-Analisys: Q Statistic or I2 index?.
Psychological Methods. 2006 Vol 11, No 2, 193-206.
1257
An Experimental and Numerical Investigation
of Damage Detection in a Mistuned Bladed Disc
ABSTRACT
Mistuning in repeating structures like bladed discs is caused by small variations in

the individual blade properties that, results in the splitting of degenerate vibration
modes and affects the dynamic behaviour of the system. As a result, it is complicated
to highlight a small damage in the mistuned environment. This paper is focussed on
the effect of mistuning on the dynamic characteristics of the bladed disc. An
experimental rig is setup and a bladed disc having eight blades, rigidly attached to the
base to represent a blisk, is selected for this study. The splitting of resonance
frequency peaks in an FRF obtained for the mistuned structure is analysed
experimentally and numerically. A very basic level of mistuning in any repeating
structure usually comes from the manufacturing tolerance, so the effect of
manufacturing tolerance-induced mistuning is also investigated in the paper. The
possibility of utilising the Modal Assurance Criterion (MAC) for developing a damage
detection strategy in mistuned bladed discs is also examined. Experimental and
numerical results for the splitting of FRF peaks are then compared. Outlier detection
analysis is utilised for detecting damage in the frequency domain.
INTRODUCTION
Cyclically symmetric structures are very sensitive to small changes in the

geometric as well as material properties of constituent parts (blades). These minute
perturbations, known as mistuning, are inevitable due to manufacturing tolerances.
Structural mistuning results in multiple resonance peaks and widening of the
frequency range in the forced response of turbomachinery. It is now well established
that the mistuning alone can result in much higher forced response levels for bladed
discs whereas when aerodamping is also taken into consideration, it results in
reduction of the forced response levels [1]. Different mistuning patterns have different
effects on the mechanical behavior of the system. Many researchers in the past [2-4]
focussed on the acceptable and worst mistuning patterns of the bladed discs and their
effect on the forced response levels was investigated. Alternate mistuning has more
stabilising effects in improving the flutter stability of the blades as compared to
random mistuning. In the presence of random mistuning, stabilisation of the system is
again highly dependent on the particular random mistuning pattern [5].
Rehman, A. U.1, 2, Worden, K.1 and Rongong, J. A.1
1
Dynamics Research Group, Mappin Building, University of Sheffield, S1-3JD, Sheffield, UK.
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore, Pakistan.
1258
For safe and reliable operation of turbomachinery, damage such as cracks, should
be detected during the initiation or early propagation stage, before the ultimate failure
occurs. If a crack is allowed to grow in one of the blades of the rotor system without
being detected, catastrophic failure could occur due to the high value of centrifugal
forces. The presence of damage causes local variations in the stiffness of a system and
thus affects its mechanical behavior. Many researchers in the past focussed on crack
detection in structures. Different Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) techniques were
used for detecting cracks in gas turbine blades, which include dye penetration, eddy
current inspection, radiography, ultrasonic methods, shearography and thermography
[6]. In addition to these NDT techniques, some statistical tools have also been utilised
for damage detection in different structures. One of them is 'outlier detection’. For
most practical engineering problems, the main concern regarding the structural health
of a component falls within the discipline of novelty detection i.e. whether a crack is
present or not. Outlier detection analysis compares the status of any data set against a
threshold level. This threshold level is obtained by using a Monte Carlo method. If
that data set is lying above the threshold level, this indicates a different mechanism
being responsible for generating that data set in comparison to rest of the data [7-9]
and one may be entitled to infer the presence of damage.
In this work, the effect of manufacturing tolerance-induced mistuning in a
cyclically symmetric structure on damage detection is investigated experimentally and
numerically. A bladed disc specimen is considered for this study. Mistuning
identification is accomplished by comparing the experimental and numerical mode
shapes using the Modal Assurance Criterion (MAC). A method is devised to simulate
manufacturing tolerance induced mistuning. Frequency response functions (FRF) are
obtained for different mistuning levels and varying crack depths. Outlier detection
analysis is utilised for damage detection in the frequency domain.
FINITE ELEMENT (FE) MODEL OF THE BLADED DISC SPECIMEN
The FE model of the bladed disc specimen is shown in Figure 1. It is comprised of

eight blades mounted on a thick circular base. The interface between the blade and the
circular base was modelled as a rigid single piece to represent the geometry of a blisk.
The thickness of each blade was 6mm; blade length was 60mm; the inner diameter of
the disc was 40mm and the outer diameter was 160mm.
1
2 Output
8
Input
3
7
Constraint
Location
4 6 Blades
5
Figure 1 FE model of the bladed disc specimen.
1259
The bladed disc was meshed using a 3-D 20-node structural solid element with
mid-side nodes. The total number of elements along the width of a blade was set to be
three for blades 2-8 and twelve for blade 1; thirty along the length of the blade and
four along the bladed disc thickness. The higher number of elements for blade-1 was
chosen to model the cracks of smaller depths precisely without disturbing the mesh
density. This resulted in 3356 elements for the whole bladed disc model. The material
assigned to this FE model was steel (E = 200GPa, υ = 0.3, Density = 8000Kg/m3).
CRACK MODELLING IN THE BLADED DISC
Three different techniques have been suggested for representing cracks in simple
models in [10]; these are material removal at the crack location, periodic reduction in
the modulus of elasticity ‘E’ and attaching of a lumped mass. For the FE Model of the
bladed disc specimen, the crack was modelled by two separate surfaces resting on
each other with no material removal between them. This represented a hair-line crack.
Crack depth and location parameters were defined in a similar fashion as in [10]. Five
different scenarios were considered which included bladed disc models without cracks
and with cracks having crack depth ratios (a/d) 0.04, 0.08, 0.25 and 0.5. Modal
analysis of the bladed disc specimen (without crack) was used to identify the natural
frequencies and the mode shapes. Numerical modal analysis results were then
compared with the experimental ones.
BLADED DISC SPECIMEN AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The bladed disc specimen is shown in Figure 2. The dimensions of the specimen
were nominally the same as the FE model. The material selected for the bladed disc
specimen was medium Carbon steel.
Bladed
Laser Disc
Accelerometer
Impulse
Hammer
Figure 2 Experimental setup for bladed disc.

Experimental natural frequencies and mode shapes of the bladed disc specimen
were obtained by doing a modal analysis using LMS test lab equipment. An impulse
excitation technique, using an instrumented hammer, was used to excite each blade (1-
8) at six locations (top right, top center, top left, middle right, middle center and
middle left) and the response was obtained on blade 3 at the top right location (Figure
3a). The geometry of the bladed disc specimen was modelled in LMS to visualise the
mode shapes (Figure 3b). The excitation locations on the specimen were then
correlated to the specimen model in LMS.
1260
Loc-1(Top Right)
Loc-4(Middle Right)
Loc-5(Middle Centre)
Loc-2(Top Centre)
Loc-6(Middle Left)
Loc-3(Top Left)
a- Response locations on blade. b- Bladed disc model in LMS.

Figure 3 Response locations and bladed disc model.
The first nine natural frequencies and mode shapes were obtained experimentally.
Experimental and numerical modes shapes are shown in Figure 4 and compared with
each other utilizing the MAC in Figure 5.
Experimental
Numerical
Mode-1 Mode-2 Mode-3
Experimental
Numerical
Experimental
Numerical

Figure 4 Experimental and numerical mode shaped of bladed disc.
1261
The bladed disc specimen was slightly mistuned due to the presence of small
variability in its sector components, which may be caused by manufacturing tolerances
or material degradation. This resulted in small difference in modes shapes as
compared to the perfectly tuned numerical bladed disc. This highlighted by the light
grey boxes in the MAC plot (Figure 5).
Figure 5 MAC plot for experimental and numerical mode shapes.

MANUFACTURING TOLERANCE-INDUCED MISTUNING SIMULATION
The presence of mistuning causes splitting of vibration energy and results in the
excitation of a wide range of modes. From the MAC plot, it is clear that the bladed
disc specimen is slightly mistuned and in order to identify the level of mistuning
present, the FE model results were correlated to the experimental specimen results.
The experimental FRF of the bladed disc is shown in Figure 6a. There are many
different closely spaced FRF peaks between 1250-1300Hz and these peaks are termed
as “mistuning modes”. To be precise, these mistuning modes are spread across a 20Hz
frequency range. In order to obtain an equivalent spread of mistuning modes for the
numerical bladed disc model, and to simulate the numerical mistuning, different
modulus of elasticity (‘E’) ranges were considered. Random ‘E’ values (equivalent to
the number of elements of the blades) were obtained for a given ‘E’ range and were
randomly distributed across all the elements of the blades of the FE model. Finite
element harmonic analysis of bladed disc for different ‘E’ ranges was carried out to
obtain numerical FRFs until the spread of mistuning modes was equivalent to that of
experimental FRF i.e. 20Hz. An ‘E’ range of 170-230GPa resulted in balancing of the
span of the experimental and numerical mistuning modes (Figure 6b).
a- Experimental FRF. b- Numerical FRF.

Figure 6 FRFs for experimental and numerical bladed disc.
FRFs OF TUNED AND MISTUNED BLADED DISC MODEL
In order to investigate the effect of mistuning level on damage detection in bladed
disc, following ‘E’ ranges corresponding to varying mistuning levels were considered.
i- 170-230GPa ii- 175-225GPa iii- 180-220GPa iv- 185-215GPa
v- 190-210GPa vi- 195-205GPa vii- 198-202GPa viii- 199-201GPa
ix- 199.5-200.5GPa x- 200-200GPa
1262
All of these mistuning levels were considered to obtain the FRFs for the bladed
disc model without crack and with crack (a/d = 0.04, 0.08, 0.25, 0.5). These FRFs are
shown in Figure 7. Randomly generated ‘E’ values for a given mistuning level were
assigned to the elements of the blades. A unit force was applied on blade-3 and the
response was taken on blade-1 (blade numbers are as shown in Figure 1).
i- No Crack. ii- Crack depth 0.04.
iii- Crack depth 0.08. iv- Crack depth 0.25.
v- Crack depth 0.5.

Figure 7 FRFs of bladed disc with and without crack.
It is evident for the crack of larger depth (a/d = 0.25 and 0.5) that the FRF peak
for the crack mode is well separated from the cluster of mistuning modes due to the
larger drop in the model stiffness. For a crack depth ratio 0.25 and then for 0.08, the
crack mode is shifted towards the group of mistuning modes. For a/d = 0.08, the crack
blade mode is lying very close to the mistuning modes, making it harder to easily
distinguish among them. For a very small crack depth ratio (0.04), the crack blade
mode is merged into the group of mistuning modes and cannot be separated at all. For
larger crack depths (a/d = 0.25 and 0.5), the crack blade mode itself can provide useful
information about the presence of damage in the structure by just visualising the FRF
plots. But for the smaller crack depths (a/d = 0.04 and 0.08) some additional steps are
required to highlight the damage in the mistuned environment.
FREQUENCY DOMAIN DAMAGE DETECTION
In order to detect cracks of smaller depths in the mistuned bladed disc, Outlier
detection analysis was utilised. Outlier detection analysis is used for novelty detection.
It highlights the potential outlier from a given data set, which might be thought of
being produced due to some different mechanism in comparison to the rest of the data.
The measure of outlier discordancy is then compared against a statistically calculated
threshold level and the decision regarding a particular data set to be an ‘inlier’ or
‘outlier’ is made. Outlier detection analysis can be broadly classified into two
1263
categories: univariate data analysis (data comprised of only one dimension for a given
set of observations) and multivariate data analysis (data comprised of more than one
dimension for a given set of observations). Detection of the potential outlier can be
complex in the case of multivariate data analysis due to possibility of appearance of a
outlier in one dimension and hiding in others. The discordancy test for multivariate
data analysis is given by Mahalanobis squared-distance (MSD) measure (Equation 1):
Dξ = ({xξ } − {x})T [ S ]−1 ({xξ } − {x}) (1)
where:
xξ = Potential outlier datum x = Mean of the healthy data set
S = Sample covariance matrix over healthy data set T = Transpose
For the damage detection in the bladed disc model, the feature used was the
transfer function between blade 3 (input) and blade 1 (output). At first, the bladed disc
without a crack was considered and 10 FRFs were obtained, each corresponding to
different mistuning level. These FRFs were then sampled at 20 regularly spaced points
(a 20 dimensional features) between the frequency interval of 1270-1290Hz to provide
the pattern to be used as reference/undamaged condition in the analysis. In order to
account for the effect of noise in simulated FRFs, equation 2 was used to corrupt each
of the FRF with a noise level corresponding to the coherence estimate [11].
1 − γ 2 (ω ) (2)
σ ( H (ω ) )= H (ω )
γ (ω ) 2N
where:
H(ω) = FRF magnitude, N = Number of averages, γ(ω) = Coherence function
The above equation gives the standard deviation for FRF magnitude at a given
frequency. The coherence level considered was varied from 0.9 to 0.95 within the
frequency range of interest (where all the resonance peaks of mistuning modes were
lying). Undamaged pattern of each FRF was copied 100 times and each copy was
corrupted with Gaussian noise vector obtained for a given standard deviation
corresponding to each mistuned FRF. These 100 copies for all 10 mistuning levels
were concatenated vertically to form 1000x20 feature matrix for the undamaged
bladed disc. Rows of this feature matrix were then randomly rearranged to rectify the
block effect of each mistuning level FRFs stacking on the top of each other. Two-third
of the undamaged data were classified as “healthy data” and one-third as “testing
data”. The MSD measure, D, was then calculated for each of the rows of testing data
using equation 1. After that, testing data of the undamaged case were subsequently
replaced with feature matrices (each having dimension of 1000x20) of damaged cases
i.e. the bladed disc specimen with a crack depth ratio of 0.04 and 0.08 and the MSDs
were calculated. The results are plotted as shown in Figure 8. To decide about a data
set being an inlier or outlier, a threshold value was computed using Monte Carlo
simulations according to the guidelines described in [7]. The threshold value for a
1000 observation, 20 dimensional problem was found to be 61.2 after 1000 trails. This
process was repeated ten times to obtain an averaged threshold value.
Figure 8 indicates that the undamaged data points are lying below the threshold
level and are classified as “inliers”, as expected. The bladed disc with a crack having
a/d = 0.04 is partially detectable as the threshold level is crossing approximately 25%
1264
of the MSD values. All the observations corresponding to crack depth ratio 0.08 are
diagnosed as “outlier” and are detectable. An interesting point to note is the drop in the
magnitude of MSD for a/d = 0.08. This is because of the fact that the frequency range
considered for this analysis was 1270-1290Hz and the FRF peak for the crack having
a/d = 0.08 is just lying outside this frequency range. When the displaced mode is still
within the frequency range there are two sources of discordancy: (a) the mode is not
where it should be and (b) the mode is somewhere it shouldn’t be. If the mode leaves
the frequency range of interest, only the first source of discordancy is present.
Figure 8 Mahalanobis squared distances for damaged and undamaged cases.

CONCLUSIONS
The presence of a varying level of mistuning in the bladed disc resulted in
widening the span of mistuning modes. For larger crack depths, the resonance peaks
of the crack blade modes are well separated from the cluster of mistuning modes in the
FRF plot and could be easily high light. However for smaller cracks, the crack mode
merged into the group of mistuning modes and could not be distinguished at all.
Outlier detection analysis successfully detected these smaller crack depths. In addition
to that, this method also detected the crack whose resonance peak was lying outside
the frequency range considered for the analysis.
REFERENCES
1. Petrov, E.P., 2010. Reduction in forced response levels for bladed discs by mistuning: overview of the
phenomenon, Proceedings of ASME Turbo Expo 2010.
2. Ewins, D. J., 1969, Effect of detuning upon the forced vibration of bladed disc, J. of Sound and Vibration,
Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 65-79.
3. Petrov, E.P. and Ewins, D.J., 2003, Analysis of the worst mistuning patterens in bladed disc assemblies,
Trans. of ASME: J. of Turbomachinery, Vol. 125, pp. 623-631.
4. Whitehead, D. S., 1966, Effect of mistuning on the vibration of turbomachines induced by wakes, J. of
Mechanical Engineering Science, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 15-21.
5. Campobasso, S., 2001, Analysis of effect of mistuning on turbomachinery aeroelasticity, 9th International
Symposium on Unsteady Aerodynamics, Aeroacoustics & Aeroelasticity in Turbomachines, 885-886.
6. Pitkanen, J. and Hakkarainen, T., 2001, NDT methods for revealing anomalies and defects in gas turbine
blades, Insight: Non-Destructive Testing and Condition Monitoring, 43 (9), 601-604.
7. Worden, K., Manson, G. and Fieller, N., 2000, Damage detection using outlier analysis, Journal of Sound
and Vibration, 229(3), 647-667.
8. Chetwynd, D., Rongong, J. A., Pierce, S. G. and Worden, K., 2008, Damage detection in an aluminum
plate using outlier analysis, Fatigue & Fracture of Engineering Materials & Structures, 31, 629-643.
9. Mustapha, F., Manson, G., Pierce, S. G. and Worden, K., 2005, Structural health monitoring of an annular
component, Strain 41, 117–127, 2005.
10. Rehman, A. U., Rongong, J. A. and Worden, K., 2010, Detection of damage in repeating structures,
Proceedings of ASME Turbo Expo 2010.
11. Worden, K., 1998, Confidence bounds for frequency response functions from the serious models,
Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 12(4), 559-569.
1265
Fatigue Evaluation and Prognosis for Steel
Bridges with Remote Acoustic Emission
Monitoring
J. YU and P. ZIEHL
ABSTRACT
Remote acoustic emission (AE) monitoring is desirable for fatigue damage

evaluation and life prediction for in-service steel bridges. Understanding the
mechanism of AE signals corresponding to the fracture events in the material of
interest is the basis of AE monitoring applications. Conventional fatigue tests along
with AE monitoring were performed for correlating AE signals with crack growth
behavior. Signal identification approaches based on load pattern and waveform
features were employed in data filtering and reduction procedures. AE parameters
from the filtered dataset were associated with corresponding crack growth parameters
for damage evaluation. It has been indicated that AE parameters can robustly identify
fatigue damage level. The parameters in terms of signal energy are suitable for fatigue
life prediction.
INTRODUCTION
Steel bridges are subjected to fatigue cracks due to extended service. In the case of
fracture occurring in critical connections, the fatigue damage may result in global
collapse if the cracks reach the stage of unstable propagation. Remote acoustic
emission (AE) monitoring is gaining attention to nondestructively evaluate crack
growth and predict remaining fatigue life, thus leading to more informed bridge
management. For the implementation of AE monitoring, the precise location of
cracking does not need to be known. Sensors together with appropriate algorithms are
able to detect and localize the active crack activities. Furthermore, there is no need for
long cables, and wireless sensor nodes are easily deployable in a remote sensing
system.
Challenges exist in relating acquired signals to structural damage and remaining
fatigue life of a component or system. The complexity of the acquired signals requires
specialized data interpretation, which includes signal identification and correlation of
Jianguo(Peter) Yu, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of South

Carolina, 300 Main Street, Columbia, SC 29208
Paul Ziehl, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of South Carolina,
300 Main Street, Columbia, SC 29208
1266
filtered AE data with crack growth behavior. As the crack advances, the noise
emissions mainly come from the grating between the fracture surfaces, and abrasion
(extraneous noise) in the load train. The grating emission can be minimized by
eliminating signals collected after crack closure [1]. Techniques involved with source
location, guard transducers, and time of arrival have been presented to minimize
extraneous noise, based on the presumption that crack location can be decided exactly
[2-4]. Focusing on the characteristics of acquired signals, a waveform-based approach
has been proposed in former studies [5-7]. As waveform features are utilized to
discriminate signals, this approach does not depend on crack location.
Understanding the mechanisms of AE corresponding to crack growth behavior is
of practical importance to damage evaluation and fatigue life prediction for in-service
bridges. Stress waves transmitted by fracture events can activate AE sensors to
produce signals corresponding to crack growth behavior. A model including stress
intensity range, and AE count rate has been presented [8-9]. Practical applications
consequently have employed count rate for fatigue life prediction [10-13]. AE count
and count rate strongly rely on the gain of sensing system and preset trigger level of
the sensors. Gain-independent AE parameters are desirable in modeling for prognosis.
Therefore, absolute energy rate along with stress intensity range and crack growth rate
was involved in the modeling [14]. The energy-based model holds promise for field
implementation.
In this paper, AE from fatigue cracks in steel bridge material is utilized in fatigue
damage evaluation and prognosis. Load pattern and waveform features were involved
in the discrimination and reduction of the acquired signals. AE characteristics
correlated with crack growth behavior were investigated based on the reduced dataset
associated with crack growth parameters.
12.0 in
3.25 in
R15I WDI
9.5 in
12.0 in
Figure 1. Geometry of CT specimen and arrangement of AE sensors
1267
EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES
Conventional fatigue tests along with AE monitoring were performed to detect AE

from fatigue cracks in A572G50 steel as commonly used for bridge construction.
Compact tension (CT) specimens were specially designed and fabricated for this
purpose. The plan dimensions of the CT specimens were considerably increased from
those traditionally used. This was done to provide a closer approach to the stress field
gradients and elastic energy storage and dispersal relationships found on bridge
structures. The specimen is 0.5-inch thick. Standard resonant and wideband sensors
were employed to detect signals form cracking. The geometry of the specimen and
sensor layout is displayed in Figure 1.
DATA FILTERING PROCEDURES
A tension-tension load pattern and AE sources in tension load cycles are shown in
Figure 2. AE comes from yielding and crack extension after the crack opens and then
from reversed yielding and grating (also referred to as ‘fretting’) after the crack closes.
AE corresponding to crack extension is generally of more interest than that due to
crack closure. With consideration to the loading patter, signals acquired below 80% of
maximum cyclic load were eliminated to minimize grating emission.
Waveform-based approaches may be powerful for both laboratory studies and
field implementation. Typical parameters in a burst-type waveform include rise time,
duration, peak amplitude, and counts, as shown in Figure 3-a [14]. In terms of energy
waveform features are manifested as signal strength and absolute energy [15-16].
Absolute energy reports the true energy of an AE hit [16]. Peak amplitude, signal
strength, and absolute energy are functions of voltage derived by activated sensors.
Waveforms from extraneous noise typically have long rise time, poorly-defined
peak amplitude, and long duration. Waveforms from cracking typically have shorter
rise time, higher peak amplitude, and shorter duration [17-19]. Therefore, rise time,
peak amplitude, and duration were employed to minimize extraneous noise. The signal
strength and absolute energy may also be helpful in signal identification.
Yielding
Crack extension
2 4
Pmax
Y-stress
Crack opening
80% of Pmax
load
Crack closure
Pmean
Grating
1 3 5 Pmin Reversed yielding
time
Y-strain
Figure 2. Load pattern, and AE sources in tension load cycles
1268
Counts
Voltage, U
Signal strength, �|U|dt
Peak Threshold
amplitude
Time, t
Rise time
Duration U2
Absolute energy, � dt
R
(a) [14] (b), note: R is reference resistance.
Figure 3. Typical features in a burst-type waveform
Base on the filtered dataset, AE parameters were associated with crack parameters
to interpret AE corresponding to the crack growth behavior. It has been reported that
the fracture toughness of A572G50 is 128 MPa√m [20], which is displayed in Figures
4, 5 and 6. The fatigue test started near the onset of stage Ⅱ-stable cracking. The
maximum stress intensity increases as the crack advances. If the maximum stress
intensity increases to the fracture toughness, the crack will grow into stage Ⅲ-unstable
cracking which will eventually lead to catastrophic failure. Hence, the critical fatigue
level is the transition point between stage Ⅱ and stage Ⅲ crack propagation.
The association of cumulative counts, signal strength, and absolute energy with
maximum stress intensity is shown in Figures 4-6. There are some small jumps in
AE parameters within 30,000 load cycles. The small jumps resulted from the effect
of residual tensile stress on the crack growth. The residual tensile stress came from
the pre-cracking prior to the formal fatigue test. This is demonstrated in Figure 7
wherein the crack growth rate had small jumps at the beginning as well. The values
of cumulative AE parameters then increase steadily consistent with stable crack
propagation. Finally AE parameters increase dramatically at the critical fatigue
level.
The crack growth rate, signal strength rate, and absolute energy rate were
associated with the stress intensity range as shown in Figure 7. The parameters in this
association are within stage Ⅱ crack propagation. In stage Ⅱ the logarithm of crack
growth rate has a linear relationship with logarithm of stress intensity. The crack
growth rate along with stress intensity range has been traditionally utilized in fatigue
life prediction. It can be seen in Figure 7 that the logarithms of absolute energy rate
and signal strength rate have linear relationships with stress intensity range as well. It
has been presented that absolute energy rate along with stress intensity range is
suitable for fatigue life prediction [14]. The curves in Figure 7 are the basis of
prognosis.
1269
300 25,000
Maximum stress intensity
Maximum stress intensity 250
20,000
Fracture toughness
Cumulative counts
200 Cumulative counts
15,000
150
10,000
100
5,000
50
0 0
0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000
Load cycles
Figure 4. Cumulative counts and stress intensity range versus load cycles
300 25,000,000
Maximum stress intensity Cumulative signal strength
250 Fracture toughness 20,000,000
200 Cumulative signal strength

15,000,000
150
10,000,000
100
5,000,000
50
0 0
0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000
Load cycles
Figure 5. Cumulative signal strength and stress intensity range versus load cycles
1270
300 300,000
Cumulative absolute energy

250 250,000
Fracture toughness
200 Cumulative absolute energy 200,000
150 150,000
100 100,000
50 50,000
0 0
0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000
Load cycles
Figure 6. Cumulative absolute energy and stress intensity range versus load cycles
4 crack growth rate, da/dN
absolute energy rate, dU/dN

Log(da/dN), Log(dU/dN), Log(dS/dN)
3
signal strength rate, dS/dn
2
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2 2.1
Log(∆K , Stress intensity range)
Figure 7. Crack growth rate, absolute energy rate, and signal strength rate versus stress intensity range
1271
CONCLUSIONS
The correlation between AE characteristics and crack growth behavior has been
investigated through AE-monitored fatigue testing. It has been found that AE
parameters, particularly signal strength and absolute energy, are capable of fatigue
damage evaluation and fatigue life prediction. Robust data filtering techniques are
required to achieve accurate and efficient predictions using AE parameters.
Waveform-based approaches, which involve waveform features in data filtering, are
promising for practical applications of AE monitoring.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work is performed under the support of the U.S. Department of Commerce,
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Technology Innovation Program,
Cooperative Agreement Number 70NANB9H9007. We wish to thank Dr. Adrian
Pollock of Mistras Group for many helpful contributions to the project.
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fatigue damage in metals. Symposium on Quantitative Nondestructive, 16: 451-458.
1272
12. Robert, T.M. and Talebzadeh, M., 2003. Fatigue life prediction based on crack propagation and
acoustic emission count rates. Journal of Constructional Steel Research, 59: 679-694.
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14. Yu, J., Ziehl, P., et al., 2011. Prediction of Fatigue Crack Growth in Steel Bridge Components using
Acoustic Emission. Journal of Constructional Steel Research, 67(8): 1254-1260.
15. Standard terminology for nondestructive examinations. ASTM-E1316-06a. ASTM Int’l, 2006.
16. Disp User’s Manual. Physical Acoustics Corporation, Princeton Junction, NJ, 2001.
17. Fowler, T.J., Blessing, J.A., Conlisk, P.J. and Swanson, T.L., 1989. The MONPAC system. Journal
of Acoustic Emission, 8(3): 1-8.
18. Ziehl, P.H., Eagelhardt, M.D., Fowler, T.J., Ulloa, F.V., Medlock, R.D. and Schell, E., 2009. Design
and field evaluation of hybrid FRP/Reinforced concrete superstructure system. Journal of Bridge
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19. Yu, J., Ziehl, et al., 2010. Quantification of fatigue cracking in CT specimens with passive and active
piezoelectric sensing. Proc. SPIE, 7649: 76490R1-12.
20. Stephens, R.I., Lee, S.G. and Lee, H.W. Lee, 1982. Constant and variable amplitude fatigue behavior
and fracture of A572 steel at 25°C(77°F) and -45°C(-50°F). Int’l J. of Fracture, 19: 83-98.
1273
Impact Damage Characterisation Using a
Statistical Approach
M. T. H. SULTAN, K. WORDEN and W. J. STASZEWSKI
ABSTRACT
Many of the materials utilised in current technologies, especially those used in

the aerospace industry, require an unusual combination of properties that cannot be
met by conventional metallic, ceramic or polymeric materials alone. Therefore,
aerospace structural engineers are constantly searching for alternative materials,
such as composites. Composite materials consist of two or more constituents with
varying properties, that when used together, form a new material. These can be
tailored to have low densities, high strength and stiffness, and have good corrosion
resistance. These materials improve structural efficiency, and can reduce the
structural mass without compromising structural stiffness and strength.
The ultimate objective of the research work, described in this paper, was to
conduct an experimental investigation to detect and quantify impact damage in
structures made from composite plates. Two different approaches were used to
record acceleration response signals resulting from impact excitation. The first used
a standard impulse hammer in order to acquire time data and produce spectra for a
number of non-damaging impacts. The second approach used a drop-test to perform
a number of potentially damaging impacts. The impact energies for the drop tests
ranged from 0.37 J to 41.72 J. Following a systematic series of experiments on the
induction of impact damage in composite specimens, two different techniques were
used to examine the impacted samples. X-ray radiography was used to evaluate the
damage area whilst Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was used to inspect the
topographies of the specimens at high magnifications. The motivation behind this
research work was based on the idea of using statistical or machine-learning
methods to identify and categorise impacts (damaging or non-damaging and also
types of failure modes) using only structural response data. The discussion here will
be focused on outlier analysis on higher-dimensional multivariate data, the features
are from binned spectra which leads to an 8-dimensional feature.
M.T.H. Sultan: Department of Aerospace Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University

Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.
M.T.H. Sultan, K. Worden and W.J. Staszewski: Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Sheffield, Mappin Street, Sheffield S1 3JD, UK.
1274
INTRODUCTION
Composite materials have been used widely in many structural applications.

Aircraft manufacture is not the only area in which composite materials have been
extensively used and in which significant changes will be produced in the future. It
does however demonstrate the overall industrial prospects of composites. In the
aerospace industry, many military jets and commercial aeroplanes are made of
composite materials because they are stiffer and lighter compared to those made of
the earlier materials used such as aluminium and other metals. The new Boeing 787
Dreamliner for example, has as much as 50% of its primary structure, including the
fuselage and the wings, made of composite materials, dropping its overall weight by
12%. Among composite materials, the graphite or carbon fibre variants are the best
performing; these possess the highest specific modulus of the synthetic fibre
materials [1-2]. Since this material provides higher structural efficiency in terms of
specific strength, stiffness and toughness as compared to monolithic materials, such
as steel and aluminium, composite materials are rapidly emerging for numerous
weight-critical applications in current and next-generation aircraft structures. Added
strength and lower weight allows the 787 unmatched fuel efficiency, resulting in the
use of 20% less fuel as compared to today’s similarly-sized aeroplanes [3].
Furthermore, due to its lower weight, the aeroplane will also travel at speeds up to
Mach 0.85 [4]. Presently, the technology of advanced composite materials has risen
to the point that all recent designs for military aircraft systems have some
composite components in their production. Looking at this trend, the next
generation of aircraft produced could have up to 65% of their structure made of
composites [5].
When composites were introduced into the manufacture of aircraft components
and structures, damage from unexpected impacts proved to be a problem. Such
impacts arose during flight operations from runway debris [6-8], bird strikes in
service, and from dropping of hand tools during maintenance work [7, 9]. In the
types of composite laminates that are often used, damage can appear in various
forms like: matrix cracking, fibre fracture, fibre pullout and delamination. Although
visible damage can be clearly detected and remedial action can be carried out to
maintain the structural integrity, the major concern is still the expansion of
undetected hidden damage caused by the low-velocity impacts and fatigue [10].
Considering that impact damage can cause considerable reductions in performance
of composite materials, detecting and understanding the characteristics of impact
damage appearance, and crack growth, in such materials assumes great importance
and is a major challenge to designers and end-users of these advanced composite
structures.
This current work discusses experimental results for low-velocity impacts in
structures made from woven Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) prepreg
with 11, 12 and 13 plies. The motivation behind this research work was the idea of
using statistical or machine-learning methods to identify and categorise impacts
(damaging or non-damaging and also types of failure modes) using only structural
response data. Discussion will be focused here on outlier analysis of higher-
dimensional multivariate data, the features are from binned spectra which leads to
an 8-dimensional feature. The results confirm that the potential damage indices
1275
discussed here offer a means of identifying damaging impacts from structural
response data alone.
TEST SPECIMEN FABRICATION AND EXPERIMENTAL SET UP
The composite material chosen for the research reported here is a woven Carbon
Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP). The composite plate was fabricated by a hand
lay-up method and the curing processes used a standard vacuum-bagging procedure
with the application of elevated temperature and pressure in an autoclave (cured for
30 minutes at 120°C at 5.8 bar). Details of the fabrication process can be found in
[11]. The nominal size of the test specimens was 250 mm long and 150 mm wide
with 3.8 mm average thickness depending on the number of layers. PZT sensors of
type Sonox P5 were chosen for the recording of impact responses; these were
placed at three different positions in order to sample responses along different
directions of the ply as shown in Figure 1. Note that sensor 1 was positioned nearest
to the point of impact (the geometrical centre of the plate), followed by sensor 2,
whilst sensor 3 was positioned further out from the impact location.
Figure 1. Different location of PZT’s sensors fixed on a test plate.
A standard drop-test rig was used to induce low-velocity impact damage in the
CFRP laminates. A series of impact tests (energies ranging from 0.37 J to 41.72 J)
were performed. Similar tests were performed on the different sample thicknesses
to achieve different contact force histories and responses. The impacted plate
specimens were then examined using two different approaches. The first was the
NDT technique of X-ray radiography, used in order to estimate the area of internal
damage. The second technique was Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)
fractography; this is a destructive technique which in allows investigation of the
damage extent and morphology.
LOW VELOCITY IMPACT TEST RESULTS
A simple nomenclature was defined to differentiate between the specimen plates

used in this work. The 12-layer plates, labelled A, B and C were named accordingly
(for instance, the plate A samples were labelled 12LA1 to 12LA8) whereas the 11-
layer and 13-layer plates were labelled D and E respectively. In total, 32 12-layer
samples were fabricated and a range of 22 different impact energies was covered;
this allowed 10 samples to be used to check repeatability by carrying out three
further tests at impact energies of 41.72 J and 20.86 J and two further tests at 31.29
1276
J and 10.43 J, respectively. Table I confirms that the repeatability was excellent, at
least in terms of the peak force recorded.
TABLE I. SCHEDULE OF IMPACT TESTS (12-LAYER SPECIMENS)
CFRP Impact Peak Peak contact Peak contact Peak contact
specimen energy, contact force, (N) force, (N) force, (N)
identifier (J) force, Impact 2 Impact 3 Impact 4
(N) (repeatability) (repeatability) (repeatability)
Impact
1
12LA1 41.72 3589.7 3591.3 3587.5 3590.0
12LA5 39.11 3562.2 - - -
12LA6 36.50 3555.0 - - -
12LA7 33.89 3235.0 - - -
12LA2 31.29 3059.9 3058.6 3058.3 -
12LA8 28.68 3022.9 - - -
12LB1 26.07 2848.4 - - -
12LB2 23.47 2656.3 - - -
12LA3 20.86 2470.2 2468.7 2470.1 2469.0
12LB3 18.25 2205.9 - - -
12LB4 15.64 2069.0 - - -
12LB5 13.04 1958.2 - - -
12LA4 10.43 1927.2 1927.1 1926.4 -
12LB6 7.82 1187.2 - - -
12LB7 5.21 1064.2 - - -
12LB8 2.60 810.0 - - -
12LF1 2.22 714.0 - - -
12LF2 1.85 616.0 - - -
12LF3 1.48 413.2 - - -
12LF4 1.11 290.3 - - -
12LF5 0.74 119.0 - - -
12LF6 0.37 65.0 - - -
Although the analysis in this paper will concentrate on the 12-layer plates, the
results from the full test programme showed that the measured peak contact force
showed an excellent correlation with the impact energy for all specimens, those
with 11, 12 and 13 layers; the evidence in the 12-layer case is summarised in Table
1. The correlation between impact energy and peak force was observed in previous
studies and was therefore evidence of the validity of the current data. Readers can
consult [12-13] for more background.
TEST RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Results obtained from X-ray radiography and Scanning Electron Microscopy

(SEM) will not be discussed here since they have been previously published
elsewhere; readers can consult [11, 14-16] for details. In addition, results from a
wavelet-based approach for feature extraction and a statistical approach for damage
detections have also been published elsewhere. Readers can again consult [16, 17-
1277
18] for more details. The objective of the current paper is simply to demonstrate the
use of a multivariate spectral feature which allows the impacts to be classified into
damaging or non-damaging using response data alone. It is also shown that the
feature is discriminating enough to allow distinction between impacts which cause
matrix damage and those which cause more serious fibre damage.
Frequency Response Function for 12 Layers Sensor 1 (undamaged) -8 Frequency Response Function for 12 Layers Sensor 1 (damaged)
x 10
0.06 2.5
Magnitude
Magnitude
0.04 1.5
1
0.02
0.5
0 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)
(a) (b)
Figure 2. Typical FRF for 12-layer specimen at sensor 1 for, (a) undamaging impact, and (b)
damaging impact.
OUTLIER ANALYSIS FOR MULTIVARIATE FEATURES: SEPARATION

OF UNDAMAGED AND DAMAGED DATA
To carry out this analysis, each of the time-domain signals (recorded separately
from each sensor) was converted to a frequency spectrum by performing a Fast
Fourier Transform (FFT). For reasons of space, only the results for the 12-layer
specimens will be discussed here. Figure 2 illustrates frequency spectra for both
non-damaging and damaging impacts for a 12-layer specimen. It is noticed from
Figure 2 that there are differences between the frequency ranges recorded from both
these signals, this was due to the instrumentation and test conditions. For non-
damaging impacts, the frequency range recorded was between 0 to 1280 Hz, whilst
for damaging impacts, the frequency range recorded was between 0 to 2560 Hz. As
no energy was observed at higher frequencies for the non-damaging impacts, simple
zero-padding was used in order to align all spectra on the frequency range 0 to 2560
Hz.
Once the spectra were computed, the frequency range was divided into 15 bins
of equal width. The total summed amplitude, X̂ , was defined by,
f max
Xˆ   X ( f i ) (1)
i 1
The sum over amplitudes in the jth bin was similarly defined by,
X j   X ( fi ) (2)
fi d i
Finally, to calculate the feature vector for each of the sensors (the binned
spectrum), the following equation was used,
Xj
Feature vector = y j  (3)
Xˆ
1278
where j = 1, 2, ……, 15.
Once these values were obtained from all the sensors, an 8-dimensional feature
vector was computed for each of the impacts. The first seven components of the
feature vectors were taken directly from the first seven bins whilst the remaining
bins (8 to 15) were summed to give a final component. The 8-dimensional features
were then used to perform outlier analysis and the observations made from these
analyses were used to separate the damaging and non-damaging inputs and to
evaluate and recognise the different types of failure modes induced in the test
specimen for the damaging impacts.
The binned spectra calculated from the impact responses were divided into two
sets: training data for the undamaged state and independent testing data for the
undamaged and damaged conditions. The first set consisted of 68 observations for
each of the sensors, whilst the testing data consisted of 20 observations for each of
the sensors. For the case of damaging impacts, only testing data were used and this
consisted of 22 observations that were arranged in increasing order of the impact
energy. Therefore, there were three data sets obtained here: undamaged data for
training, undamaged data for testing and damaged data for testing. As previously
discussed, the idea of performing the outlier test is to train on the undamaged data
and to show that the damaging impact features differ from those from the non-
damaging impacts.
To calculate the discordancies for the damage points, the Mahalanobis squared-
distance was used as defined by,
D  x  x S  x  x

' 1
 (4)
where x  is the observation of the potential outlier, x  is the mean vector of the
undamaged sample observations, S  is the sample covariance.
A total of 10 hits each were recorded from non-damaging impacts on each
undamaged specimen using an instrumented impact hammer. From these data,
responses from 4 hits (each specimen) were used to calculate the statistics for the
discordancy/outlier test i.e. the mean vector and the sample covariance matrix for
the undamaged training data. To calculate a threshold value for detection, a Monte
Carlo (MC) method was used [19] and the value obtained was 44. This value was
obtained using 1000 MC iterations, an 8-dimensional feature space and 68
observations. Figure 3 (a-c) shows the results for Mahalanobis squared-distance for
all the three sensors of the binned spectra. It can be seen that there is a clear
separation between the non-damaged data points and the damaged data points. All
the non-damaged data points were clustered below the threshold value and above
this threshold value, the damaged data features were accumulated. There is also a
drastic jump between both these features (non-damaged and damaged), which can
be clearly seen between points 21 and 22. Because the Mahalanobis squared-
distance appears to increase monotonically with the impact energy, which is known
to correlate with damage extent, it shows promise as a means of diagnosing damage
severity.
1279
Furthermore, if one computes the ratio of the highest damage index to the
threshold value (in this case 10 12, 10 11 and 1010 for sensors 1, 2 and 3 respectively),
the sensitivity of damage can be measured. The ratios obtained here confirm that
sensor 1 generates more sensitive measurements to damage as compared to sensors
2 and 3. This result verifies that the location of the sensor plays an important role in
determining the sensitivity to damage.
Binned Spectrum 15
Binned Spectrum
10
Mahalanobis squared
Mahalanobis squared
distance, sensor 1
distance, sensor 2
10
10 10
10
5 5
10 threshold value = 44 10 threshold value = 44
0 0
10 10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Testing set point number Testing set point number
(a) (b)
15
Binned Spectrum
10
Mahalanobis squared
distance, sensor 3
10
10
5
10 threshold value = 44
0
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Testing set point number
(c)
Figure 3. Mahalanobis squared-distances for non-damaged and damaged cases for binned spectrum
for, (a) sensor 1, (b) sensor 2, and (c) sensor 3. (–––––) Threshold value.
OUTLIER ANALYSIS FOR MULTIVARIATE FEATURES: SEPARATION

OF MATRIX FAILURES AND FIBRE FAILURES
In this section, discussion is made on the separation of the types of failure mode
using outlier analysis. A total of 32 observations were used in this analysis, which
consist of 22 observations from all the damaging impacts (ranging from 0.37 J to
41.72 J), and also 10 observations from repeating tests (3 observations each at the
impact energies of 20.86 J and 41.72 J and 2 observations each at 10.43 J and 31.29
J). From these observations, the 8-dimensional feature vectors were built for all the
sensors. These feature vectors containing binned spectra were divided into two sets
of data: training and testing data. The first set of training data contained 10 feature
vectors for the matrix failures, whilst the testing data contained 9 feature vectors
from the same failure mode. The features corresponding to fibre failure were only
used for testing data, and these comprised 13 feature vectors that were arranged in
increasing order of impact energy. To calculate a threshold value again, the MC
method was used and the value obtained was 37.
Figure 4 summarises the results of using the outlier analysis and treating matrix
failure as the baseline condition; it can be seen that there is a clear separation
between the types of failure mode - matrix failure and fibre failure. Above the
threshold line, all the fibre failure (fibre cracking and fibre breakage) data are
assembled and below the threshold line, all the matrix failure (matrix cracking and
matrix breakage) data are gathered. It is also noticed that the Mahalanobis squared-
distance increase is monotonic in behaviour with respect to the impact energy for
all the sensors. Figure 4 (a-c) confirms that the repeatability test conducted also
showed good and convincing results in terms of the squared-distance calculated. It
1280
can also be seen from these figures that data points from 11 through 13 are a result
of fibre cracking, whilst data points from 17 to 19 are an outcome of fibre breakage
(as observed from the SEM study). For the squared-distance calculated from all the
sensors, it can be seen that there is a clear increase at points 19 and 20. This sudden
increase is due to the severity of damage occurring in the zone surrounding the
impact point at the highest energy (observed from the SEM) and the largest damage
areas measured on the X-ray film.
Binned Spectrum Binned Spectrum
5,000
Mahalanobis squared
Mahalanobis squared
250
distance, sensor 2
distance, sensor 1
1,000 repeating test results

at 31.29 J
repeating test results repeating test results
at 31.29 J
at 41.72 J
repeating test results
threshold value = 37 at 41.72 J
threshold value = 37
0 5 10 15 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
Testing set point number Testing set point number
(a) (b)
Binned Spectrum
Mahalanobis squared

distance, sensor 3
80 at 31.29 J
threshold value = 37

at 41.72 J
0 5 10 15 20 25
Testing set point number
(c)
Figure 4. Mahalanobis squared-distances for matrix failures and fibre failures for binned spectrum
for, (a) sensor 1, (b) sensor 2, and (c) sensor 3. (–––––) Threshold value.
CONCLUSIONS
The work discussed in this paper is concerned with one overall goal, which is to
determine if an impact has caused damage and then to determine the extent of that
damage using only the structural responses that are acquired from low-profile
surface-mounted transducers. The work presented in this paper demonstrates that
responses recorded from these sensors can provide sufficient information to infer
impact damage. Previous work by various authors has established that it is possible
to distinguish between damaging and non-damaging impacts if the impact force
time-history is available. Therefore, it is the requirement that only response data be
used here that distinguishes this work from previous studies.
It was noted that the location of the sensor on the test specimen plays an
important role for detecting and classifying impact damage. Sensor 1 is more
sensitive than sensors 2 and 3 because of the location of the sensor. This is true
because the information about damage is carried in the high frequency component
of the response and the higher frequency components of the signals are subject to
higher attenuation with distance. When impacts cause no damage, the response is
essentially formed of the low-frequency modal response of the plates; when damage
occurs, a high-frequency component which is essentially acoustic emissions from
fracture events occurs. The techniques developed here have provided convincing
results, which can be useful to identify and characterise the damaging and non-
damaging impacts through the utilisation of only measured responses from the PZT
sensors.
1281
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Hodzic. Impact Damage Detection and Quantification in CFRP Laminates; A Precursor to
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1282
Accelerated Aging Experiments for
Prognostics of Damage Growth in
Composite Materials
A. SAXENA, K. GOEBEL, C. C. LARROSA, V. JANAPATI, S. ROY
and F.-K. CHANG
ABSTRACT
Composite structures are gaining importance for use in the aerospace industry.
Compared to metallic structures their behavior is less well understood. This lack of
understanding may pose constraints on their use. One possible way to deal with some
of the risks associated with potential failure is to perform in-situ monitoring to detect
precursors of failures. Prognostic algorithms can be used to predict impending failures.
They require large amounts of training data to build and tune damage model for
making useful predictions. One of the key aspects is to get confirmatory feedback
from data as damage progresses. These kinds of data are rarely available from actual
systems. The next possible resource to collect such data is an accelerated aging
platform. To that end this paper describes a fatigue cycling experiment with the goal to
stress carbon-carbon composite coupons with various layups. Piezoelectric disc
sensors were used to periodically interrogate the system. Analysis showed distinct
differences in the signatures of growing failures between data collected at conditions.
Periodic X-radiographs were taken to assess the damage ground truth. Results after
signal processing showed clear trends of damage growth that were correlated to
damage assessed from the X-ray images.
INTRODUCTION
Use of carbon based composite materials in aerospace structures is increasing due

to their superior properties of strength, stiffness, weight, performance, corrosion
resistance, etc. to name a few. A dramatic rise is seen in the application of advanced
composite materials for aircraft in the last two decades. Current predictions estimate
that over the period of next ten years the manufacturing of composites will quadruple
at an increasing usage rate of 7% annually [1]. However, due to lack of dependable
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques these systems are currently
overdesigned to avoid failures and hence are less cost-efficient.
Abhinav Saxena, SGT Inc., and Kai Goebel, NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field CA
Cecilia C. Larrosa, Vishnuvardhan Janapati, Surajit Roy, and Fu-Kuo Chang, Stanford
University, CA
1283
Prognostics is defined as estimating the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of a
structure based on a current state assessment, anticipated future load, and
environmental conditions. This will allow avoiding catastrophic failures through
advance warnings. Augmented with a damage progression model and condition
monitoring data, the prognostic algorithm can extrapolate damage growth trajectory
and provide an estimate of the RUL [1]. The damage growth model may be physics
based or derived from historical data, detailed understanding of the intrinsic material
properties, the structure’s geometry, loading environment, etc. For composites, some
of these factors are not as well understood as for metals. The anisotropic structure of
composites is significantly more complex than metallic structures. Any model or
theoretical development based on a particular composite material rarely generalizes to
other variants. Where there is a barrage of theoretical models for composite failure
there is really no consensus. Thus for any new material, significant model adjustments
and fresh validations are required before one could use these models with confidence.
The RUL from prognostics estimates can lead to more informed decisions for
future actions such as launch/abort decisions, near term repairs, or maintenance
scheduling. Data required for studying fault growth and subsequently developing
models for prediction algorithms are rarely available from real applications, especially
for composites in new applications areas. Therefore, the scientific community relies on
customized accelerated ageing experiments to collect detailed run-to-failure data.
From prognostics point of view such experiments address several key issues such as
(i) allowing collection of relevant failure data in reasonable timeframe, (ii) ability to
control various competing stress factors and in-situ measurements for desired
parameters, (iii) develop fault growth models and relate model parameters to identified
stress factors, and (iv) validation of prognostics and SHM methods.
The analysis presented in this paper builds on current understanding of fault modes
in composites. This paper investigates faults in laminated ply composites. Such
structures mainly suffer from two damage types: matrix micro-cracks and inter-
laminar delamination. When subject to fatigue loading matrix micro-cracks develop in
the matrix through the ply thickness direction, creating high stress concentration at the
ply interfaces. As more cracks form, an increased interfacial stress leads to initiation of
delamination, which then starts to propagate further. Delamination significantly
degrades the strength of the structure and is generally the ultimate cause of failure in
composite structures. This implies that the two damage modes co-exist, which should
be perceivable from the sensor measurements from the controlled experiments and,
therefore, motivates this effort.
Several efforts have characterized composite failures due to fatigue; however,
most approaches focused on statistically estimating S-N curves by recording the
number of cycles to fail under different loads. That is no failure progression data were
collected [2]. Many non-destructive inspection techniques are available for hidden
damage characterization but most of them require structure disassembly for inspection.
SHM, on the other hand, uses a network of sensors attached to the structure that are
able to rapidly inspect the structure. Apart from many other techniques, active PZT-
sensor networks have been shown to be promising for guided Lamb waves based
interrogation of composite structures [3, 4]. A review of existing guided Lamb waves
techniques for composite structural health monitoring indicates that the majority of the
research conducted to date has focused on damage localization [4-6]. Also these
approaches mostly refer to damage detection without isolating a particular damage
1284
type. Other approaches simulate damage by attaching mass, or drilling a through hole
into the structure. Some research papers [7, 8] have reported results on the effect of
matrix micro-cracks on Lamb wave propagation, in particular how it affects wave
velocity, however they did not quantify matrix micro-crack density or develop
diagnosis for a matrix micro-cracking. Other papers have examined methods to study
delamination effects using lamb waves [6, 9]. Overall, there appears to be little efforts
on fatigue damaging a coupon with in-situ damage state estimation or looking for
signatures of cracks and delamination separately[lO]. This paper reports on run-to-
failure experiments where intermittent ground truth and in-situ characteristics are
collected. Growth patterns are analyzed for damage types typical of laminated sheet
composites.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The fatigue cycling experiments serve several objectives- (i) ability to collect run-
to-failure data with periodic system health data using health monitoring sensors, (ii)
ability to collect ground-truth data for the damage to validate measurement data
analysis, (iii) accounting variations between samples of same internal structure
(layup), and (iv) characterizing variations between sample of different internal
structures. Three symmetric layup configurations were chosen to account for the effect
of ply orientation: Layup 1: [0 2/904 ], Layup 2: [0/902/45/-45/90], and Layup 3:
[902/45/-45h. Torayca T700G uni-directional carbon-prepreg material was used for
15.24 cm x 25.4 cm coupons with dogbone geometry and a notch (5.08mm x 19.3mm)
to induce stress concentration. Two six-PZT-sensor SMART Layer® from Acellent
Technologies, Inc (Figure l(a)). were attached to the surface of each sample. This
configuration allows six actuators and six sensors to monitor wave propagation
through the samples, Figure l(a) shows one such path from actuator 5 to sensor 8
(path 5-78) that will be used as an example throughout this paper.
Figure lea) Coupon specimen, SMART Layers location, and diagnostic path from actuator 5 to sensor 8.
(b) Development of matrix cracks and delamination leading to fatigue failure. (c) Growth in
delamination area during the course of fatigue cycling experiment.
Strains of about 0.3-0.4% were estimated at the sensor location. Off-the-shelf data
acquisition software and hardware was used to actuate and receive the corresponding
signals for the 36 actuator-sensor paths at various actuation frequencies in the range of
1285
150-450 KHz, with an average input voltage of 50 volts and a gain of 20dB. These
frequencies were selected so that the fundamental symmetric and anti-symmetric
modes can be as distinguishable as possible based on the differences in their phase
velocities. Static failure load (σs) was determined through static tests run-to-failure for
two or three samples of each layup to determine maximum fatigue load (σf) that was
set to 75-85% of σs. All tests were performed on an MTS machine with a load ratio
(R) of approximately 0.14, following ASTM Standards D3039 and D3479 [11, 12].
The fatigue tests followed a sinusoidal load profile at a frequency of 5Hz. The fatigue
cycling tests were stopped every 50,000 cycles to collect PZT sensor data for all paths
and interrogation frequencies. X-rays of the samples were taken using a dye-penetrant
to enhance X-ray absorption. The main goal of this test procedure is to be able to
acquire sensor data as a function of damage progression; Figure 1(c) shows increasing
level of damage in the X-ray images.
DATA ANALYSIS
The approach taken in this project is to understand the damage progression

characteristics through experimental run-to-failure data and seek following goals:
• Understand how faults grow in composites under fatigue environments.
• If multiple failure modes co-exist, then how does one isolate and characterize their
individual growth characteristics from the monitoring data.
• Identify relevant Condition Indicators (CIs) from the monitoring data.
• Understand the effects of material geometry, construction, and loading sequences.
• Identify and distinguish between various sources of uncertainty in the
experimental set up and incorporate them for more accurate predictions.
• Develop empirical models describing fault growths for prognostic modeling.
CIs or features were extracted from monitoring data and the trends observed thereby
were compared to those obtained from assessment of X-rays, which is regarded as
measured ground truth. This validates the CIs and also helps identify useful features of
damage (area, length, intensity, etc.) in the X-rays. Once a good set of CIs is obtained
that correlate well with the damage growth observed from the X-rays, an empirical
model can be developed for prognostics. X-ray images were processed to extract
damage quantifiers like matrix crack density and delamination area. Visible growth in
damage was observed for both fault modes (Figure 1(b)). The delamination area grows
significantly with fatigue cycling (Figure 1(c)). Delamination areas were measured
and plotted against corresponding cycle index. The number of cracks was counted on
the path between a sensor-actuator pair and normalized by the path length to obtain an
estimate of the crack density. To reduce the uncertainty in the measurements this
process was repeated multiple times.
Health monitoring data using Lamb wave propagation in pitch-catch configuration
was collected from the PZT sensors to see effects of damage growth in the propagated
signal. Separate CIs for matrix cracks and delamination were computed to track the
growth of both damage types individually. Since the coupons are relatively small and
the velocity of fundamental anti-symmetric A0 mode is low, it is hard to distinguish
the reflected A0 mode from edges; therefore this work focused only on the
fundamental symmetric S0 mode. In order to distinguish the S0 mode from the rest of
the signal, theoretically calculated group velocity estimates and the known actuator to
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sensor path lengths were used to approximate an S0 mode window as shown in Figure
2(a). Following CIs were computed from the windowed signals.
Change in Power Spectral Density - Power Spectral Density (PSD) as a function

of time for a given actuation frequency was extracted from Short Time Fourier
Transform (STFT) for the signal. The peak value within the specified S0 mode
window decreases as a function of the matrix cracks that developed (see Figure 2(b)).
Change in the PSD peak value normalized by the baseline PSD peak was computed.
This feature, referred to as the ΔPSD throughout this paper, has been shown to
correlate well to matrix micro-cracks on any given actuator sensor path [13].
o e Spect a e s ty as a u ct o o t e
1500 4.5
actuation signal baseline
sensed signal 4 PSD peak values 3 cracks/inch
1000 60 cracks/inch
3.5 133 cracks/inch
Power spectral density (V2)

500 3
Amplitude
2.5
0
2
-500 1.5
1
-1000
0.5
(a) S0 mode window (b)
-1500 0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6
sample point time (s) x 10
-5
Figure 2(a) Isolating the first S0 mode by windowing the sensed signal. (b) Change in Power
Spectral Density curves with increasing matrix crack density.
Scatter Energy - Scatter energy measures wave energy dispersed into the medium
along the path due to discontinuities and obstructions. Growth in delamination area
increases the scatter proportional to the size of delamination. It is computed as the
energy difference for the S0 mode (Figure 2(a)) between the measured signal and the
baseline signal (obtained initially in damage free condition). Normalized scatter
energy is calculated as the ratio of scatter energy to baseline signal energy.
Time of Flight (TOF) – The Time of Flight (TOF) is the time taken by an
actuation signal to reach a sensor, and is a measure of Lamb wave velocity. Physically,
delamination degrades the mechanical properties of the coupons, which in turn
reduces the Lamb wave velocity leading to increased ToF. The change in TOF is
estimated by cross correlating current signal with baseline signal.
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
In the search for increasing trends representing damage growth, several features
were computed and compared to the trends obtained from X-ray analysis with
increasing number of fatigue cycles. The X-ray analysis shows that matrix crack
density grows very quickly initially and then flattens out for both layup types (Figure 3
(a)). The cracks grow rapidly again when the loads are ramped up; for instance at
cycle 450K when load was increased from 6 to 7 kips for L3S20. The ΔPSD feature
plotted in Figure 3(b) follows the same matrix crack density growth trends. It is also
noticeable how the matrix crack growth difference between layups is captured by the
ΔPSD.
1287
(a)
(c) Matrix Crack Density (Path 5-8) (b)
(d) PSD Based Feature for Matrix Cracks
300 1
250
0.8
Matrix Crack Density
200
0.6
∆ PSD
150
0.4
100
L2 S17 L2 S17
L2 S20 0.2 L2 S20
50 L3 S18 L3 S18
L3 S20 L3 S20
0 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
Cycles x 1000 Cycles x 1000
Figure 3. (a) Growth in matrix crack density as observed from X-ray images. (b) PSD based feature to
track growth in matrix crack density.
Figure 4 shows corresponding features extracted to track delamination growth.

Figure 4(b) shows the normalized scatter energy through cycles for L2 and L3 layups.
It was observed that the normalized scatter energy for L2 Layup was relatively higher
than that for L3 layup, which is consistent with the delamination sizes shown in Figure
4(a), but the growth trend is not accurately captured. The change in ToF for L2 and L3
layups as a function of cycles is plotted in Figure 4(c). It was observed that the
increase in ToF for L3 Layup was relatively higher than that for the L2 layup. This is
due to the fact that in the case of L3 layup, stiffness degradation comes from
delamination at the 90/45 ply interfaces and matrix cracking in the outer 90° plies.
Whereas for L2 Layup, the overall stiffness degradation is not as significant due to the
presence of the 0º outer plies. Despite this mismatch, the monotonically increasing
growth trends are observed, for example, L2S17 in Figure 4(a) delamination grows
early, then flattens out and as the fatigue loading was ramped up after 600Kcycles,
delamination increases significantly. From Figure 4(c) a very similar growth trend is
seen in the change for ToF.
Even though these two parameters did not match well individually with the
delamination area growth observed from the X-rays, they are promising as signatures
of delamination growth trend. A preliminary study on combining these two features
indicates that a composite feature such as a product of normalized scatter energy and
ΔToF (shown in Figure 4(d)) has well matching trends with delamination area growth.
This composite feature shows good correlations to the trends observed in the X-rays
for both L2 samples (L2S17 & L2S20). Likewise for L3 layups (L3S18 & L3S20)
these trends look repeatable, for instance an increase in load at 600K cycles for L3S20
results in increased delamination area, which is also well reflected in the
corresponding feature. However, the magnitudes of the delamination features do not
correspond to the similar levels for the two layups, i.e. the feature shows similar
values for very different magnitudes of delamination area. These differences could be
attributed to several reasons that require further investigation: (i) difference in layup
types, (L2:[0/902/+45/-45/90]2 vs. L3:[902/+45/-45]2s) and hence effect of
delamination geometry and orientation on sensor signals, (ii) errors in the
delamination area measurement from the X-ray images, especially if the delamination
appears on different interfaces, which is not detectable from X-rays but still affects the
signal significantly. Therefore, the layup type should be an important factor in
interpreting the results and a good repeatability within a single layup type is desirable.
Further studies need to be conducted to assess the accuracy of this composite feature.
1288
(a) Total Delamination Area (b) Normalized Scatter Energy
3000 1
L2S17
L2S17
2500 L2S20
L2S20
Normalized Scatter Energy

L3S18 0.8
Delamination Area (mm2)
L3S18
L3S20
2000 L3S20
0.6
1500
0.4
1000
0.2
500
0 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
(c) Change in ToF x 10
4 (d) Composite Feature for Delamination
5 14
L2S17 L2S17
L2S20 12 L2S20
4 L3S18 L3S18
Scatter Energy x ToF

L3S20 10 L3S20
Change in ToF
3 8
6
2
4
1
2
0 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
Figure 4. (a) Delamination area as observed from X-ray (b) Normalized scatter energy. (c) Time of flight
and (c) Composite feature for delamination.
There were several limitations in the experimental setup that posed technical
challenges leading to various uncertainties in the process and are expected to have
contributed to some of the differences that were observed above. It is important to
consider these sources of uncertainty while interpreting the results from data analysis.
Therefore, we present here some such aspects that have been identified and are
currently under investigation.
X-Ray analysis – (1) The X-ray machine used in this project was analog and
resulted in non-uniform digitization leading to variance in contrasts, brightness,
scaling, and orientations leading to some uncertainty in ground truth estimation
despite calibration steps. (2) X-ray images cannot pinpoint the exact ply interface
where the delamination is present. Therefore a single delaminated layer shows same
features in the image as for multiple delaminated layers. (3) Matrix crack counting
process is a manual process and prone to errors. (4) Cracks appear in different
orientations in different layups, and manual counting results in more uncertainties.
Data Collection Setup – (1) Wiring connections, and the adhesive all degrade with
fatigue cycling limiting our ability to collect high quality fatigue data towards the end
of the tests [14, 15]. (2) Since the experiments required the samples to be taken out of
the MTS for measurements, re-loading of sample resulted in slight changes in
orientation of the coupon that may affect the fault growth as tensile axis changes with
orientation. (3) Dye penetrant when wet significantly affected the signal. (4)
Manufacturing variability between coupons of the same type also leads to different
damage trajectories. (5) Determining optimal load such that coupons break in a
1289
reasonable timeframe has been a challenge. Data on single load levels is not yet
available.
Prognostic Algorithm Development
Prognostic algorithm development can take various approaches that may be data-
driven or model based. Data-driven approaches learn current damage estimate from
condition indicators and damage growth rates from load factors, which then are used
to extrapolate the damage to a preset damage threshold to compute estimated RUL.
Model based methods make use of a damage progression model instead and extend
the current damage estimate through the use of those models. It was determined that
so far the collected data is not sufficient to train these models. But with more
experiments underway, two individual models for delamination growth and matrix
crack density growth will be developed. These models will be used to estimate growth
of both damages and then combined to produce a common end-of-life estimate
through a recursive Bayesian filtering methods like Particle Filters (PF). PFs have
been shown to represent and manage the uncertainty in the prediction process through
Importance Sampling, thereby refining the current estimates of multiple damage
growth model predictions using evidence from measurement data [16]. Furthermore, a
data-driven Gaussian Process Regression approach will also be explored. GPR is a
probabilistic technique for nonlinear regression that computes posterior degradation
estimates by constraining the prior distribution to fit the available training data [17]. It
provides variance around its mean predictions to describe associated uncertainty in the
predictions, which will be extremely useful in incorporating the effect of various
uncertainties listed above in RUL predictions.
CONCLUSIONS & FUTURE WORK
It was shown in this paper that it is possible to extract separate damage growth
indicators that will be useful for prognostic model development. Several features show
monotonically increasing trends characterizing damage growth. These indicators were
compared to the observations from X-ray images and positive correlations were shown
to be found. However, the authors would like to conduct more experiments to
establish statistical significance of these results. It is also planned to use strain gauge
rosettes at multiple locations to collect additional data in further tests. That will
provide additional information about the strain levels during the fatigue tests and help
refine data analysis and interpretation. Data analysis, model development, and
algorithm work will continue to carry out damage prognosis on composite structures.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Administration (NASA) for supporting this work under grants ARMD/AvSafe NRA-
07-IVHM1-07-0061, NRA-07-IVHM1-07-0064, the Space Act Agreement SAA2-
402292, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) MURI FA9550-09-
1-0677. We would like to thank Richard W. Ross (NASA LaRC) and Les Lee
1290
(AFOSR) as the program monitor of the grants. We are also grateful for Acellent
Technology’s assistance with the active sensing system.
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[8] Toyama, N., et al., Stiffness evaluation and damage identification in composite beam under tension
using Lamb waves. Acta Materialia, 2005. 53: p. 4389-4397.
[9] Sridharan, S., ed. Delamination behaviour of composites. 2008, Woodhead Publishing: Cambridge,
UK. 788.
[10] Larrosa, C., et al., Damage Classification in Composite Laminates; Matrix Micro-Cracking and
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MIT Press Cambridge MA.
1291
Prognostics and Diagnostics of Rotorcraft
Bearings
M. HAILE, A. GHOSHAL and D. LE
ABSTRACT1
This paper presents a diagnostic and prognostic approach for rotorcraft bearing
health monitoring using the Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT). The HHT transforms
a raw vibration data into in a two-dimensional time-frequency domain by extracting
instantaneous frequency components within the signal through an empirical mode
decomposition EMD process. EMD transforms the complex vibration signal into
simple oscillatory modes called intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Since the IMFs
are obtained based on the local characteristic time scale of the data, they can be
used to analyze the nonlinear and nonstationary bearing degradation processes. In
performing diagnostic decisions, the work presented here uses the energy ratios of
the highest two intrinsic modes and the respective marginal frequencies as
condition indicative features. The approach has been tested using experimental data
obtained from seeded spall and corrosion tests on AH-64 Apache hanger bearings.
INTRODUCTION
As a critical component in the rotorcraft system, effective health monitoring of

bearings has attracted increasing attention from the research community. Early
detection of bearing degradation allows the maintainer to plan corrective actions so
as to minimize the impact to readiness, and in many cases to minimize collateral
damage. Of the various bearing health monitoring techniques, such as oily debris
analysis, acoustic emission, etc, vibration measurement remains to a reliable and
cost effective technique [1,2].
Traditional vibration-based diagnostics rely on frequency domain analysis such
as the fast Fourier Transform (or FFT). In the frequency domain, the vibration
amplitude at the characteristic defect frequencies, also known as bearing fault
frequencies (BFFs), are used to make diagnostic inference about bearing conditions
[2,3]. A condition monitor that relies only on BFFs, however, doesn't always
perform well because: (i) in many cases, particularly at the early stage of failure, the
raw vibration signal has a very low signal to noise ratio (SNR) resulting in the fault
frequencies being buried under the noise floor, (ii) in the case of wide spread
defects such as corrosion, the fault frequency do not generally occur at a single
repeatable frequency and hence no clear BFF can be established.
Bearing condition monitoring using linear and stationary signal processing
techniques such as the ubiquitous Fourier transform or power spectrum analysis
Mulugeta A Haile and Anindya Ghoshal, Prognostic and Diagnostic Team, US Army
Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21005-5066, U.S.A
Dy Le, Chief Mechanics Division, US Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving
Ground, MD 21005-5066, U.S.A
1292
have been widely implemented [1-3]. Stationary vibration is one in which its
properties such as frequency content, energy distribution are time-invariant.
Bearing damage progression, however, is a localized and transient event in which
the frequency content of the signal evolves with time. The transient nature of the
signal makes the underlying assumption of stationarity as required by the Fourier
transform invalid. Hence nonstationary signal processing techniques are required.
The earliest nonstationary signal processing technique was the short-time
Fourier transform (STFT), which divides a time series x(t) into a series of small
overlapping windowed pieces. The Fourier transforms of these small pieces is then
assembled to obtain the time-frequency response of the signal as [4]:

1
FSTFT  t ,     x t  h t   e
 jt
dt (1)
2 
here h(t) is a window function such as Hann window or Gaussian hill, ω is angular
frequency. The STFT is most useful when the physical process is linear, so that the
superposition of sinusoidal solution is valid and time is locally stationary or when
the Fourier coefficients are varying slowly. The main limitation of the STFT is that
it uses the same window size to analyze the entire time series. A constant window
size that matches the specific frequency content of an evolving signal cannot be
known a priori [6].
Wavelet transform (WT) seeks to address the drawbacks of the STFT by
implementing a windowing technique with variable sized regions. WT decomposes
a time series into local time-dilated and time-translated wavelet components using
time-frequency atoms or wavelets ψ as [7]:

1  t b 
FWT  a, b    x  t    dt (2)
a 
a 
where ψ(·) is the basic wavelet function, a is the scale and b is the time shift.
Wavelet analysis is attractive because it has uniform temporal resolution for all
frequency scales and as such it can characterize gradual changes in frequency. The
limitation of WT, however, is that it uses the same wavelet function to analyze an
entire data which unfortunately leads to a subjective assumption on the
characteristic of the analyzed signal. As a consequence, only signal features that
correlate well with the shape of the basic wavelet function have a chance to lead to
coefficients of high value and all other features will be masked or completely
ignored.
The FFT, STFT, and WT, techniques are based on linear and stationary
assumption, linear and locally-stationary assumption, and linear and nonstationary
assumption respectively. Unfortunately vibration data from a degrading bearing can
only be accurately represented as a nonlinear and nonstationary process making
these techniques invalid.
A recently developed method, known as the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) [9]
establishes a viable signal processing approach to represent nonlinear and
nonstationary vibration signals as presented in the next section.
1293
THE HILBERT-HUANG TRANSFORM (HHT)
The HHT represents a vibration signal in time-frequency domain by combining

the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) with the Hilbert transform (HT). The
Hilbert transform (HT) is a convolution of a signal x(t) with a function h  t   1/  t
and it consists of passing a signal through a system which leaves the magnitude
unchanged, but changes the phase of all frequency components by π/2. The HT of a
signal x(t) is given by [6,9]:
1

x t 
FHT  x  t   y  t    t   dt (3)
 
The analytic signal denoted z(t) is constructed by adding the original signal x(t) to
its Hilbert transform y(t) as z  t   x  t   jy  t  and in polar coordinates
z  t   a  t  exp  j  t   . Where,
a  t   x 2  t   y 2  t 

 (4)
   t   tan x t 
  
1 y  t 
here a(t) and θ(t) are the instantaneous amplitude and the instantaneous phase
angles of the analytic signal z(t). The instantaneous frequency is given by the time
derivative of the phase angle θ(t) as [9,10]:
d  t  y  t  x  t   y  t  x  t 
 t    (5)
dt x2 t   y 2 t 
To ensure that the instantaneous frequency obtained from the derivative
operations in (5) is physically meaningful, the instantaneous phase must be single
valued function (or a mono-component signal). For multiple frequency component
signals, such as the vibration signal from bearings, EMD has to be performed on the
signal. The EMD technique iteratively decomposes a signal into a number of simple
oscillatory modes called intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). To extract the IMF's from
the vibration signal a sequential sifting process is conducted [9]. In the first step of
EMD, one identifies all the local maxima and minima of the signal and then
generates the upper and lower envelop functions. If the mean of the upper and
lower envelops is m1(t), then the first IMF h1(t) is defined by:
x  t   m1  t   h1  t  (6)
By definition h1(t) is an IMF if the following two conditions are satisfied [9]: (i)
the number of extrema and the number of zero crossings are either equal or differ
by at most one, (ii) at any point, the mean value between the envelop defined by the
local minima is zero. If h1(t) does not satisfy the above two requirements, the sifting
process is repeated sequentially for as many steps as it is needed to reduce the
signal to an IMF. In the subsequent sifting step, h1(t) is treated as the original data,
and then h1  t   m11  t   h11  t  , where m11(t) is the mean of the upper and lower
1294
envelops of h1(t). In general the sifting process is repeated up to k times.
Throughout the iteration process the difference between the signal and the mean
envelop values, h1k(t), is calculated by:
h1 k 1  t   m1k  t   h1k  t  (7)
where m1k(t) is the mean envelop value after the kth iteration, and h1(k-1)(t) is the
difference between the signal and the mean envelop values at the (k-1)th iteration.
The function h1k(t) is then defined as the first IMF component and denoted by:
c1  t   h1k  t  (8)
After separating c1(t) from the original signal x(t), the residue is obtained as:
r1  t   x  t   c1  t  (9)
Subsequently, the residue r1(t) is taken as if it were the original data and the above
iteration process is repeated to extract the rest of the IMFs inherent in the signal x(t)
as, r2  t   r1  t   c2  t  , , rn  t   rn 1  t   cn  t  . The sifting process is terminated
when the residue rn(t) becomes a monotonic function from which no further IMFs
can be extracted [9]. The original signal x(t) can be reconstructed from its IMFs as
[6]:
n
x  t    ci  t   rn  t  (10)
i 1
Having obtained the IMFs using the EMD process, the Hilbert transform is applied
to each IMF component as:
1

ci  t 
HT ci  t     d (11)
 
t 
The analytic signal is defined as, zi  t   ci  t   jHT ci  t   and in polar

coordinates zi  t   ai  t  e
ji  t 
. The instantaneous amplitude and phase angles are
calculated using equations (4) and (5) with ci(t) and H[ci(t)] replacing x(t) and y(t)
respectively. The original vibration signal can be reconstructed by assembling the
instantaneous frequencies and instantaneous amplitudes as:
 
n
x  t   Re  ai exp j  i  t  dt , (12)
i 1
The term rn(t) is not included in equation (12) as it is a monotonic function with no
contribution to the frequency content of the signal. Equation (12) is designated as
the Hilbert-Huang spectrum H(ω, t) and it allows three-dimensional visualization of
the data in which amplitude is plotted as the height in the time-frequency plane.
1295
FEATURE EXTRACTION
To perform diagnosis, one needs to select and extract features from the
vibration signal that reveal the fault signatures and trend with fault severity. In the
time domain, available features are root-mean-square (RMS), kurtosis, crest factor,
impulse factor, shape factor, and clearance factor of the vibration signal [2]. Some
of these features are good indicators for incipient localized or discrete damages
such as spalling however, they are not effective in detecting wide spread failure
such as corrosion. Even for spalling, when the defect becomes severe and spreads
across the bearing surface, the vibration signal becomes more random and the
statistical signature becomes buried again resulting in the drop to seemingly normal
level of time domain features.
In the work presented here two different features are extracted. The first feature
is the maximum amplitude frequency of the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) of the
highest and the second highest mode functions. This feature is obtained by taking
the fast Fourier transform (FFT) of the two top IMFs. The second feature is the
energy ratio of the first two highest IMFs. To obtain the second feature, the signal
energy of the IMFs is calculated and divided by the total energy of the signal. The
linear projection of these two features known as principal component (PCA) is then
used as condition indicative parameter. Experimental data from spalled and
corroded AH-64 bearings is used to validate the HHT based analysis technique and
the feature vectors extracted here.
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
In order to obtain vibration data well correlate to the damage severity levels of
the test bearings, a seeded fault test is conducted on a series of nominally identical
AH-64 hanger bearings [11]. The latter is a single row, double sealed grease packed
ball bearing lubricated with grease that conforms to MIL specification. The test was
run on a component level test rig consisting of variable speed electric motor
adapted to test similar classes of bearings. Table 1 shows specimen specifications
and the severity of the seeded fault introduced in the specimens.
TABLE 1. BEARING TEST SPECIMENS

Damage type Damage
Bearing
Trench (width x depth) Severity
001BL Baseline Healthy
001BLr* Baseline Healthy
025LT 0.011" x 0.007" trench Light
026MT 0.029" x 0.015" trench Moderate
027ST 0.045" x 0.023" trench Severe
019SC Corrosion Severe+
+
*Baseline repeat test. By visual inspection.
Vibration data is collected from accelerometer installed on the housing of the

bearing. Two different types of faults are seeded in the bearings. First, three
1296
different sizes of semi-circular trenches are cut in the inner race of three bearings.
Second, corrosion is introduced in another set of three bearing by forcing salt water
in the grease and storing the bearings until the corrosion reaches certain level
deemed severe by visual inspection. In all cases the same radial load is applied and
the test shaft-speed is maintained identical. Vibration data is collected at sampling
rate of 120 kHz for five seconds at 15min intervals. Detail experimental setup, test
procedure and photos of the test rig and test samples are given on the work of
Dykas et.al [11].
Figure 1a (top) shows plots of the raw sensor data from a bearing with a severe
trench (specimen 027ST) and a corroded bearing (specimen 021SC). The fast
Fourier transforms showing the frequency spectrum of the two test bearings are
shown in Figure 1b. Clearly, the very large seeded trench of 027ST has resulted in
large signal to noise ratio as indicated by the easily identifiable periodic pulse on
the raw time series. Moreover, the fundamental ball-pass fault frequencies are
clearly shown on the spectrum plot of the data. The raw sensor data of the corroded
bearing, however, shows a less identifiable pulse and the fault frequencies didn't
occur at repeatable frequencies. Corrosion causes vibration to have a higher energy
and there appears to be some spectral smearing in the frequency.
Severe Trench - 027ST Severe Trench - 027ST
Radial Vibration
4 0.02
Amplitude
2
0 0.01
-2
-4 0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 1 2 3 4
Time (sec) Frequency (Hz) 4
x 10
Corrosion - 021SC Corrosion - 021SC
Radial Vibration
4 0.02
Amplitude
2
0 0.01
-2
-4 0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 1 2 3 4
Time (sec) Frequency (Hz) 4
x 10
(a) (b)
Figure 1. Raw vibration signals of spalled and corroded bearings: (a) Time, and (b) Frequency
domains.
ANALYSIS RESULTS
The ability of the nonlinear and nonstationary Hilbert-Huang transform for

diagnosing bearing defects was first studied on bearings with seeded trenches
(specimens 025LT, 026MT, and 027ST). Shown in Figure 2 is a comparison of the
extracted IMF's between signals from healthy Baseline and defective bearings. The
corresponding HHT analyses are illustrated in Figure 3. For the defective bearing,
the transient vibration caused by the defects are shown throughout the spectrum
particularly in the frequency range of 1-3 kHz range. In addition these transients
have shown a repetitive pattern that corresponds to the BPFO (ball passing outer)
frequency of the bearing. The healthy bearing, in comparison showed no high
frequency components or repetitive signal patterns since no defect is present.
Figure 4 shows scatter plots of the condition indicative features for both the
spalled and corroded bearings. As can be seen, the level means of the spalled
bearing is clearly separable from each other based on the severity of the damage.
1297
The feature also separates the corroded bearings from the baselines. Though there
seems to be a higher overlap between the three corroded specimens. This is
expected as the same amount of saltwater has resulted in similar level of corrosion
in all the three bearings.
0.05 2
IMF1
0 0
-0.05 -2
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08
0.05 1
IMF2
0 0
-0.05 -1
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08
0.05 0.5
IMF3
0 0
-0.05 -0.5
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08
0.1 0.2
IMF4
0 0
-0.1 -0.2
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08
Time Time
(a) (b)
Figure 2. Intrinsic mode functions IMF1 through IMF4: (a) Healthy (b) Defective bearings.
(a) (b)
Figure 3. Hilbert-Huang Transfroms: (a) Healthy (b) Defective bearings.
Spall Damage Corrosion
1.5 1
0.8
Normalized Magnitude
1
0.6
0.4
0.5
0.2
0 0
001BL 001BLr 025LT 026MT 027ST 001BL 001BLr 019SC 020SC 021SC
(a) (b)
Figure 4. Scatter plots of condition indicative feature: (a) Spalled (b) Corroded bearings.
1298
CONCLUSIONS
This paper presented a diagnostic and prognostic approach for rotorcraft bearing
health monitoring using the Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT). The HHT represents
the raw vibration signal in a two-dimensional time-frequency domain by extracting
the instantaneous frequency components from the signal using an empirical mode
decomposition EMD process. EMD decomposes the complex vibration signal into
simple oscillatory modes called intrinsic mode functions (IMF). Since the IMFs are
obtained based on the local characteristics time scale of the data, they are applicable
for the analysis of nonlinear and nonstationary bearing degradation process.
To perform diagnostics, the authors used the energy ratios of the highest two
intrinsic modes and the maximum amplitudes of the respective marginal
frequencies as condition indicative features. Although the data set used is small and
from component-level test rig, the EMD features have shown to efficiently classify
spall and corrosion damages based on severity levels. Accordingly, these features
have a potential to reliably diagnose both discrete (spall) and wide spread
(corrosion) faults. Work is still in progress to further analyze the reliability of the
approach using additional test data.
REFERENCES
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System (HIDS) Program: Power Drive Train Crack Detection Diagnostics and Prognostics, Life
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2. Zhang B, G. Georgoulas, M. Orchard, A. Saxena, D. Brown, G. Vachtsevanos, and S. Liang,
2008. “Rolling element bearing feature extraction and anomaly detection based on vibration
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3. Randall, R. R, J. Antoni, and F. Bonnardot, 2004. “Recent Advances in Bearing Diagnostic
Techniques for Helicopter Gearboxes,” Proceedings of the 58th Mechanical Failures Prevention
Technology Meeting, Virginia Beach, VA
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5. Lee H, J. Sheldon, M. Watson, and C. Byington. 2011. “Diagnosing Bearing Corrosion using
Joint Time Frequency Vibration Analysis,” presented at the American Helicopter Society 67th
Annual Forum, Virginia Beach, May 3-5, 2011.
6. Yan R., and R Gao. 2006. “Hilbert-Huang Transform-Based Vibration Signal Analysis for
Machine Health Monitoring,” IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas. 55(6):2320:2329
7. Qiu H., J. Lee, J. Lin, G. Yu. 2005. “Wavelet filter-based weak signature detection method and
its application on rolling element bearing prognostics,” J. of Sound and Vibration
8. Lin, J. and L. Qu, 2000. “Feature Extraction Based on Morelt Wavelet and its Application for
Mechanical Faul Diagnosis”, J. Sound. Vib. 234(1):135-148
9. Huang N. E., Z. Shen, and S.R. Long. 1998 “The empirical mode decomposition and the Hilbert
spectrum for nonlinear and nonstationary time series analysis,” Proc. Royal. Soc. London, 454:
903–995.
10. Gao R. and R. Yan, 2006 “Nonstationary signal processing for bearing health monitoring,” Int.
J. Manuf. Res., 1(1):18–40.
11. Dykas B., Krantz T., Decker H., Lewicki D. 2009. “Experimental Determination of AH-64
Apache Tail shaft Hanger Bearing Vibration Characteristics with Seeded Faults,” presented at
the American Helicopter Society 65th Annual Forum, Grapvine TX, May 27-29, 2009.
1299
Bayesian Sensitivity Analysis of Numerical
Models for Structural Health Monitoring
R. J. BARTHORPE
ABSTRACT
The scarcity of damaged-state data is an abiding problem in practical applications

of structural health monitoring. Given this scarcity, it is perhaps unsurprising that
many of the techniques proposed for the SHM make use of physics-based modelling
in order to ‘fill in the blanks'. The aim of developing the model is often, but not
exclusively, to act as the basis for a model-update type SHM strategy. However, it is
possible to get more out of a developed numerical model. By probing the physical
interactions encapsulated in the model a comprehensive picture of the relationships
between inputs and outputs can be constructed. In this paper, a global sensitivity
analysis approach is demonstrated for this purpose. The techniques applied reflect
progress in the field of analysis of complex computational models, and make use of
both code emulation and Bayesian statistical methods.
INTRODUCTION
In the field of SHM, the outputs of interest from the model are those with the
potential to act as damage sensitive features. The features that may be used for
damage identification can take many forms, with common examples including those
based upon natural frequency variations and changes in frequency response spectra.
The number of candidate features available for a given structure will typically be
large. Conversely, it is a requirement of many damage identification strategies that the
feature set employed should be small in dimension. It is thus desirable to reduce the
candidate feature set to an information-rich final feature set. The primary objective for
the features in this final set will typically be that they should be damage-sensitive. By
applying global sensitivity analysis, an assessment of the sensitivity of the candidate
features to the damage states that are of interest may be made. It may also be desirable
to check the effect of modelling choices and simplifications on this relationship in
order to build confidence in model predictions.
_____________
Robert James Barthorpe
Dynamics Research Group, The University of Sheffield, Department of Mechanical
Engineering, Sir Fredrick Mappin Building, Sheffield, UK, S1 3JD.
1300
So what options are the options that are open to us? A sensible possibility to
consider is a local sensitivity analysis (LSA) approach based upon taking derivatives
about a central point. The first order derivative Sji=∂Yj/∂Xi of each model output Yj to
each input Xi about a specified linearisation point may be calculated to provide a
quantitative assessment of relative sensitivities. This local method is a comparatively
common component of approaches to structural dynamics problems. It often applied
in model updating techniques and has also found application in approaches to forward
damage identification [1]. There are, however, distinct drawbacks to such an approach.
Chief among these is that the assumption that the outputs of the system are a linear
function of its inputs within the range of interest. In general, this assumption will not
hold for larger damage extents. A further and inter-related issue is that the LSA
approach is unwarranted when this unknown linearity is combined with uncertainty in
the system inputs [2]. The fact that the systems that are encountered in SHM problems
are, in general, non-linear and contain uncertainty motivates the search for alternative
SA approaches.
HYPOTHESIS
The hypothesis of this paper is that Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) can provide
a viable alternative to LSA for assessing the sensitivity of model outputs to damage.
Many methods exist for this purpose. A basic and intuitively useful option is to apply
Monte Carlo (MC) methods and to plot and study the resulting scatterplots. Going
further, the proportion of variance in the outputs attributable to individual (or
combined) inputs may be quantitatively assessed. The drawback of such an approach
is that a very large number of model runs may be required in order to adequately
characterise the input-output relationship throughout the range of interest; something
on the order of 10000 runs per input is often states as a ‘rule of thumb’ for this
purpose. The numerical models employed for the purposes of SHM may exhibit run
times varying from seconds to a day or more for a single execution. As a result, the
computational cost of executing the large number of runs required for a basic ‘brute
force’ MC approaches will, in general, prove prohibitive.
In their estimable book on the subject [2], Saltelli and colleagues contend that
most SA measures seek to distil the information in scatterplots into a more condensed
format. The challenge is to achieve rapid, automatic ranking of the effect of the inputs
and to do so, if possible, in a small number of runs. Bayesian GSA making use of
Gaussian Process (GP) emulation [3] is one approach that is available for achieving
these objectives. Space considerations preclude a full treatment of the underling theory
here: the reader is referred to [3] and [4] for the mathematical background.
In this paper we present a demonstration of GEM-SA for assessing feature
sensitivity in SHM. The study allows the application and outcomes of the approach to
be illustrated for an exemplar structure. Qualitative comparison is made to the MC and
LSA approaches, and areas for further work (with a particular focus on robustness
analysis) are discussed
CASE STUDY: WINGBOX
The structure used for illustration in this study is an aerospace ‘wingbox’,

modelledusing the non-commercial MATFEM finite element code. The top plate was
1301
Figure 1 The ‘wingbox’ structure employed for illustration
modelled using shell elements; stiffening components (ribs and stringers) using beam
elements; and fastening components (rivets and bolts) using 2-node spring element. In
total, the model comprised 80 spring elements, 84 beam elements and 560 shell
elements. Free-free boundary conditions were specified. The undeformed structure is
illustrated in Figure 1.
The natural frequencies of the first 10 flexible modes of the structure are adopted
as the outputs of interest: they may be thought of as forming the candidate feature set.
The objective of the SA exercise is to assess the sensitivity of these features to damage
in the structure. The damage scenarios considered are the occurrence of damage at the
four locations indicated in Figure 1. The number of inputs is kept intentionally low for
this study in order to enable clarity of illustration, with the four locations chosen
representing damage to each of the four major stiffening components. The
implications of considering larger numbers of input are returned to in the discussion
section.
Damage was simulated as a reduction in the Young’s Modulus parameter of the
element at the damage location. It is readily acknowledged that stiffness reduction is in
many ways a less than ideal means of representing the forms of damage seen in
practice; one aspect in which this is so is that the relationship between element
stiffness and the parameters of true interest (e.g. crack depth and orientation) must be
separately established. However, stiffness reduction remains widely used in recent
SHM literature and serves well for illustrating the application of SA in this study.
The inputs are to the model are labelled herein as Xi (i=1…4, corresponding to
damage at locations D1-D4 in Figure 1) and the outputs as Yj (j=1…10). In order to aid
the analysis the inputs are normalised such that Xi=1 corresponds to the nominal (or
undamaged) stiffness value and Xi=0 corresponds to a complete loss of stiffness.
MC ANALYSIS
In order to provide a simple form of verification, a Monte Carlo process was

conducted against which the outputs of the sensitivity analyses could be compared. A
Design of Experiments (DOE) containing 10000 sample points was generated, with
the values of each input independently drawn from the normal distribution
Xi~N(1,0.2). This range was chosen to provide a reasonable degree of coverage of the
range X [0 2]4, centred on the undamaged state. For reference, each model execution
required around 16 seconds of computational time on a modern desktop PC.
1302
Y1
Y2
Y3
Y4
Y5
Y6
Y7
Y8
Y9
Y10
X1 X2 X3 X4
Figure 2. MC-generated scatterplots of input-output relationships
1303
The resulting MC scatterplots are presented in Figure 2. What is immediately
apparent is that any assumption of linearity in the relationship between inputs and
outputs does not hold for greater damage extents in several cases. Take, for example,
the effect of input X3 on output Y9. It is clear that as the stiffness of this element
approaches zero, the natural frequency of this mode drops markedly. Note that the
results of performing a local sensitivity analysis are superimposed on the scatterplots.
The LSA process used is described below.
LOCAL SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS
The local sensitivity approach involves linearising the relationship between a

response Yj and input Xi around a given point, such that an estimate of the response,
Ŷj, can made by Ŷj =SjiXi.. Here S is the local sensitivity matrix with elements
Sji=∂Yj/∂Xi. The approach taken to evaluating the sensitivity matrix may be either
analytical (where available) or numerical. Analytical solutions have long been
established for the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a finite element model [5], and
eigenvalues and eigenvectors have been historically represented a comparatively
common choice of feature in SHM approaches. A compelling reason for adopting
these analytical solutions is that they require only a single execution of the model. A
recent overview and tutorial on sensitivity as it pertains to model updating may be
found in [6].
In the general case, the sensitivity matrix for responses of any type may be
estimated numerically via perturbation. In the interests of generality this is the
approach illustrated for the case study. Each of the input parameters Xi is perturbed by
a small amount Xi, with the corresponding change in each response Yj allowing
construction of S. Note that the numerical approach requires each parameter to be
perturbed in turn, increasing the number of runs required. Note also that it is, in
principle, possible to consider interaction effects by altering combinations of inputs,
although this is not considered here. For this case study the adopted degree of
perturbation is Xi = 0.01 for all i. The resulting sensitivity matrix is presented in
Table 1. An alternative visualisation is provided in Figure 3.
Input
X1 X2 X3 X4
Y1 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04
Y2 0.09 0.01 0.11 0.00
Y3 0.54 0.02 0.09 0.39
Y4 0.01 0.02 0.06 0.07
Output
Y5 0.12 0.01 0.30 0.13

Y6 0.28 0.06 0.03 0.04
Y7 1.35 0.03 0.06 0.94
Y8 0.12 0.08 0.12 0.14
Y9 0.15 0.01 0.83 0.17
Y10 0.02 0.01 0.13 0.08
Table 1. Local sensitivity matrix Figure 3. Bar plot visualisation of the local
sensitivity matrix
1304
The results displayed in Figure 3 provide an informative visualisation of the
sensitivity of the outputs to individual inputs, and it would be tempting to use such a
visualisation as the basis for making decisions relating to the choice of feature set.
However, it is informative to consider the performance of the LSA results in
accurately distilling the MC data. The ‘linearised’ estimate of the relationship between
inputs and outputs is superimposed on the scatterplot results in Figure 2. Note that the
LSA estimate appears reasonable close to the central point but discrepancies increase
dramatically as the distance from this point increases. This highlights one of the major
identified drawbacks of the LSA approach- that it will be unwarranted in scenarios
where the assumption of linearity is not valid, and the inputs are uncertain.
BAYESIAN GLOBAL SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS
Bayesian global SA was applied using the GEM-SA toolbox. The emulator was
constructed using the input distributions specified in Table 2a. The range was selected
so as to comprehensively span the input space. Latin Hypercube sampling was
employed in generating the Design of Experiments (DOE).
While no definitive proofs are yet available, there is a commonly stated rule-of-thumb
that 10 model runs per input is a sensible minimum in order to adequately cover the
input space when using Latin Hypercube sampling. For this study we choose to build
the emulator using 15 runs per input to avoid issues of poor emulator fit. The
subsequent 60-point DOE was generated using a maximin Latin Hypercube sampling
algorithm. This space-filling design maximises the minimum distance between design
points in the 4-dimensional input space. An additional design point was added at the
central point Xi=1 (i=1…4) to encourage emulator accuracy near the central point,
resulting in a final DOE comprising 61 input points. The model was run at each design
point in the DOE to generate a matrix of model outputs Y.
GEM-SA allows the variance of the model output Yj to be explained for a given
input range. The input ranges used in this example are given in Table 2b,
corresponding to stiffness reductions of up to 10% at each damage location. Note that
one of the key strengths of the approach is that the analysis may be repeated for
different input ranges without requiring any further model runs. The benefit from the
SHM perspective is that different damage scenarios may be assessed without
additional computational cost, as may the effect of other (non-damaging) uncertain
inputs. The emulation and GSA process was applied to each of the outputs Yi
(i=1…10) in turn; note that at the time of writing that the GEM-SA package allows
treatment of only one input at a time. The SA implementation used provides a wealth
of analyses. One of the challenges for the analyst is to interpret the results produced in
Emulator Sensitivity Analysis

Input Input
X1 X2 X3 X4 X1 X2 X3 X4
Distribution uniform uniform uniform uniform Distribution uniform uniform uniform uniform
Min 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 Min 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9
Max 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 Max 1 1 1 1
Table 2a. Input distributions for building Table 2b. Input distributions for SA
emulator
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X1 X2 X3 X4
Figure 4. Comparison of main effects plots from GSA(top) with MC and LSA outputs
(bottom) for response Y6
light of the task at hand. We focus here on two aspects of the results: plots of main
effects, and analysis of variance accounted for by each input.
The main effects plots produced by GEM-SA are illustrated for the output Y6 in
Figure 4. For comparison, the scatter plots produced via MC analysis and the
‘linearised’ predictions made via LSA are replicated below the main effects plots. The
‘spread’ observable in the main effects plots is indicative of the degree of uncertainty
in the fit of the emulator. It may be reduced by including more points in the emulator.
What is immediately apparent is an improved understanding of the input-output
relationship available from such a visualisation. Of arguably greater interest, however,
are the analyses of the variance accounted for by each input. These have been used
here to generate a matrix of sensitivities that is broadly analogous to the outputs of the
LSA analysis, but which properly accounts for the non-linearity of the response
relationship and is applicable to scenarios with input uncertainty. These results are
presented in Table 3 and Figure 5. What is returned is a measure that accurately
Variance accounted for by each input/combination of inputs (%)

Main effects Joint effects
X1 X2 X3 X4 X1X2 X1X3 X1X4 X2X3 X2X4 X3X4 Total
Y1 30.03 19.86 25.18 24.92 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 99.99
Y2 53.43 3.41 42.26 0.81 0.01 0.03 0.00 0.04 0.01 0.02 100.00
Y3 66.17 0.18 8.23 25.39 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 99.99
Y4 1.34 6.06 35.94 56.62 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.02 99.99
Output
Y5 14.77 3.05 66.73 15.29 0.00 0.01 0.00 0.11 0.00 0.03 99.99
Y6 90.34 4.57 4.80 0.28 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 100.00
Y7 73.40 0.25 2.33 23.99 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 99.98
Y8 29.42 8.29 28.73 33.37 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.11 0.01 0.03 100.00
Y9 7.54 4.46 84.12 3.76 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.01 99.99
Y10 0.56 0.67 78.60 20.12 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.02 0.00 0.02 99.99
Table 3. Analysis of variance in outputs attributable to main and joint input effects
1306
Figure 5. Bar plot visualisation of GSA results (main effects only)
reflects the contained in the scatterplots in a condensed form and in a drastically

reduced number of runs. However, as only one output is analysed at a time the scaling
of sensitivities between outputs is lost. This is considered in greater detail below.
DISCUSSION
The case study has provided an initial insight into some of the advantages and
drawbacks of applying a Bayesian GSA approach to the assessment of feature
sensitivity, and these are briefly summarised here.
The key benefit of the GSA approach is that it is valid for non-linear input-output
relationships under uncertainty. However further benefits are also apparent. Among
these is the fact that sensitivity analysis can be repeated for different ranges of inputs
without requiring further executions of the model, or even refitting of the emulator.
This means that the effect of different damage levels, confounding factors and so forth
can be investigated in a very economical fashion once the emulator has been built.
A further point, although not one that has been examined in depth in this study, is
that the GEM-SA implementation is set up to consider interaction effects in addition to
main effects. Given the choice of damage locations in this study there was a little to no
interaction between the inputs. However, there will in general be interaction between
input parameters in SHM problems and it is useful to be able to include this higher
order behaviour so that significant interaction effects do not go unexplained.
A drawback of the approach as introduced here is that the outputs are considered
one at a time. As the results are presented as a proportion of total variance, there is no
‘normalisation’ of the sensitivity to damage parameters between outputs which makes
direct comparison of sensitivities challenging. However, this is very much a result of
the particular approach adopted. For this study the input set was restricted solely to
parameters representing damage. An area highlighted for further work is to include
further non-damage input parameters (for example, relating to material properties or
the representation of the joints) and thus to arrive at an assessment of the robustness of
the feature set. It is foreseen that extending the input set in this way should provide a
form of normalisation of the effect of damage on individual outputs.
1307
The computational cost of applying the GSA method is inevitably higher than that
of the LSA method. If the number of inputs is n, then for the n=4 inputs the
perturbation LSA approach involved n+1=5 model executions; the GSA approach
involved 15n+1=61 executions; and the MC approach involved 2500n=10000
executions. It is worth considering, however that the true cost of analysis via the
model is the sum of both the computational cost and the cost of developing the model-
typically many hours of work by a trained analyst. Having invested in the
development of a model, the cost of multiple executions may prove to be a minor
component in the overall modelling budget. Further, the information provided by a
more in-depth analysis should lead to better informed decisions on further model
development. A related concern is that it is desirable that the dimensionality of the
input set should be small. Considering the stiffness of every parameter at which
damage may occur would lead to a very large input set and is unlikely to be viable in
most cases. The definition of more parsimonious input sets is an area of ongoing work.
Finally, while the theory underpinning the Bayesian GSA approach has not been
included in full here, it should be stated that this approach is substantially more
mathematically complex than LSA. However, highly developed tools for conducting
such analyses are now available (such as the GEM-SA implementation adopted here),
and the added complexity of the analysis should be balanced against both the
increased information available from the analysis compared to LSA, and the
drastically reduced number of runs required versus MC methods. Further work is
planned to investigate the application and limitations of Bayesian GSA for assessing
damage sensitivity, and to investigate extension to the assessment of robustness of the
feature set to parametric and model-form uncertainties.
REFERENCES
1. Contursi T., Messina A. and Williams, E.J. 1998. A multiple-damage location assurance criterion
based on natural frequency changes. Journal of Vibration and Control, 4(5):619-33.
2. Saltelli, A., Ratto, M., Andres, T., Campolongo, F., Cariboni, J., Gatelli, G., Saisana, M. and
Tarantola, S. 2008. Global sensitivity analysis: The primer. John Wiley & Sons.
3. O'Hagan A.2006. Bayesian analysis of computer code outputs: A tutorial. Reliability Engineering
and System Safety. 91(10-11):1290-300.
4. Oakley J.E. and O'Hagan A. 2004. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis of complex models: a Bayesian
approach. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B, 66(3):751-69.
5. Fox, R. and Kapoor, M. 1968. Rate of change of eigenvalues and eigenvectors, AIAA Journal, 6:
2426–2429.
6. Mottershead, J.E., Link, M. and Friswell, M.I. 2010. The sensitivity method in finite element model
updating: A tutorial, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, In Press
1308
Adaptive Classification Based on
Multisensor Decision
L. AL-SHROUF, M.-S. SAADAWIA, N. SZCZEPANSKI
and D. SOEFFKER
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the use of multisensor data fusion principle to design an
object detection system based on Support Vector Machine (SVM) for monitoring
and supervision of complex production processes. The goal is to state the existence
of undesired objects in the production process. The monitoring system includes
acceleration sensors used as sensor-cluster. A Short Time Fourier Transform
(STFT) is used as prefilter in order to extract relevant features of the acceleration
signals. The extracted features of the individual sensors undergone multistage
filtration process including a preliminary SVM filter, fuzzy filters, a rule-based
filter, and double stage local SVM filters. This process aims to avoid
misclassification of system states as well as to realize a reliable decision about the
presence of undesired objects. The decisions of the individual stages are
interpreted and fused in the final decision module which is responsible for the
practical realization of the decision whether undesired objects are present.
INTRODUCTION
Supervision and monitoring of industrial processes are important and necessary

modules for the automation of industrial processes. Usually individual process
related variables are considered and thresholds are defined and used for the
distinction of regular and abnormal operation. Additionally the distinction of
abnormal conditions should be realized for fault detection or diagnostic tasks. Such
methods can not be generally applied to monitor systems with extended
complexity. Additionally, due to the complexity of the systems to be monitored, it
is very complicated and often not helpful to realize model-based monitoring
system which requires precise models of the considered mechanical system in
order to perform a reliable monitoring task [2]. Model-based methods require
usually a complex modeling of the process with detailed process parameters as
well as additional information how the system states would be changed
corresponding to considered changes.
Signal-based diagnostic methods are based on the analysis of measured
(physical) signals. Their use is useful when the measured variables contain direct
information on a possible fault behavior. Signal-based diagnostic methods are easy
_____________
1
Chair of Dynamics and Control, University of Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg, Lotharstr. 1-21,
47057 Duisburg, Germany
2
Mines Engineering Centre, RWE Power AG, Frechener Straße 12, 50226 Frechen, Germany
1309
to use and widely used to extract the relevant features of the analyzed sensory data.
Feature extraction progression is done either in time or frequency domain of the
related signal (sensory data). The extracted features should be able to represent the
normal state of the system as well as the faulty behavior. In other words the
extracted features should give indication to the change of the system states, so
signal-based methods in combination with machine learning could lead to reliable
distinctions with respect to the system states. Depending on the complexity of the
machines and processes, specific sensors have to be used and even suitable
complex characteristics have to be defined to define suitable mappings between
operations related machines states and sensor data.
This paper investigates the use of multisensor data fusion principle to design an
object detection system based on Support Vector Machine (SVM) for monitoring a
complex real industrial process. The goal is to recognize the existence of undesired
objects in the production process on real-time basis. For the specific application the
presence of undesired objects within transported material has to be detected (object
present yes/no) to avoid later on resulting disturbances and failures during the
continuously operating transportation process. The process includes several
acceleration sensors mounted in different positions along the production and
transportation process. In this case no sensor can detect the objects existence
directly, therefore indirect measurements of the objects to be detected have to be
used, be combined etc. to conclude implicitly to the existence of the undesired
objects.
SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
The considered production process is used to remove and transport overburden.

The overburden often contains unwanted objects of different sizes. The overburden
is continuously discharged onto a conveyor belt and transported to specific places.
Unwanted objects within the overburden could cause damage in the production
system (such as longitudinal cracks or punctures on the conveyer belts, damage on
the supporting roles, etc.). Each damage or fault could lead to shutdown of the
production system, leading to reductions of the capacity of the production as well
as it increases the operating costs.
In this contribution four signals (here: acceleration signals) will be considered.
An inevitable and varying time shift between the stimulation of the individual
sensors of the process exists. This is due to the non rigorous nature of the process
which makes the fusion of the process information in the level of data and features
difficult. Therefore the signal pre-processing, the feature extraction, the
classification process, and the classifier adaptation process are applied to the
individual information sources followed by a decision fusion module, which is
based on specifically trained decision criteria to combine the individual decisions
of the different classification modules. The combination leads to more reliable
information about the system state (object present yes/no). In addition to signal
pre-processing, the proposed detection system (Fig. 1) includes feature extraction
module, adaptive classification module, and decision fusion
1310
Fig.1: Detection system scheme
algorithm. The adaptation process is performed in case of dissimilar delivered

decisions from the individual classifiers about the system state. This process aims
to avoid misclassification of system states as well as to meet a reliable decision
about the presence of the undesired objects. The adaptation of the model to
reclassify the individual measurements according to the decision of the primary
classification is applied on real time basis. The developed new approach can also
be used in similar context for advanced condition monitoring systems.
FEATURE EXTRACTION AND CLASSIFICATION PROCEDURE
The classification process is established by a manually conducted pre-

processing and feature extraction algorithm. The aim of such procedure is to
eliminate redundant information and to reform the included relevant information of
the signal in a very distinct form in order to enable the automatic classification of
the system states.
Feature Extraction
Due to the complexity of classifying system states based on the acceleration
signals in time domain, the Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) is used to
extract the relevant information about system states [4]. It serves classifying the
information related to a single information path based on previously observed
phenomena of this information’s source. In Fig. 3 (raw signal) the acceleration
signals of the considered acceleration sensors during operation time of the
production process are shown. At time 12.5 s an undesired object is manually
classified. The other peaks are caused by other unknown events. Based on the raw
acceleration signals, it seems to be very difficult to classify the undesired object
from the other unknown events. On the other hand the different events are
classifiable upon to the extracted features. As shown in the Fig. 3 (spectrogram)
the undesired object causes a strongly excitation of low frequencies. On the other
hand high frequencies are more excited according to the unclassified or unknown
events.
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Classification Procedure,
The method of Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a supervised learning
method, which can be used to create classifiers. Support Vector Machine
algorithms have been used successfully for classification in numerous applications
[5,6]. The training phase of SVM is used to construct a separating hyperplane with
a maximum margin to distinguish between the different classes (system states).
The decision function D(x) generated by the classification module SVM I is
related with the distance from the separating hyperplane to classify the unknown
data. Any unknown data point x with a feature vector is classified as either Class 1
if D(x) > 0 or Class 2 if D(x) < 0, [1].
The SVM-based algorithm is used to detect the system states (here: an
undesired object is present or not). Due to the time delay between the feature
vectors, a classifier based on the SVM algorithm is developed for each individual
acceleration signal.
The monitoring system algorithm consists of multistage filtration of the data
including three SVM classification stages, one fuzzy fusion stage, and one rule-
based inference stage (Fig. 2). The first classification stage SVM I provides the
preliminary decision value functions which are further filtered through a suitable
designed rule-based filter. The rule-based filter requires the smoothed and fused
decision functions provided by the fuzzy filter stage which uses accumulated
weights of the decision points. Unclear decisions (weak single positive decision)
require further assessment which is provided by a double stage SVM filter for fine
tuning of the decision. Data with weak indications of the existence of the undesired
object is used for the training of the double stage SVM filter. The double stage
SVM filter and its local application is necessary to avoid many false alarms
accompanied by the fine SVM filter.
The Module SVM II is realized to evaluate the single weak positive decision,
which delivered through one of the preliminary classifiers during the main
classification stage. If one of the applied four preliminary classifiers delivers a
weak positive decision at a specific time point, then SVM II will be activated in
order to perform a fine analysis of the other acceleration signals at that time point.
Fig. 2: Adaptive classification process
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If any significant changes similar to the behavior of the undesired object are
detected, then the single weak decision is confirmed. On the other hand, if SVM II
does not detect any significant changes denoting the existence of undesired object,
then it delivers an uncertain decision. In this case the estimation of the acceleration
signals at that time point is taking place through SVM III. SVM III aims to
approve the non-existence of the undesired object at the considered time point. It
works principally like SVM II; however it looks for indications confirming the
non-existence of the undesired object at that certain time point instead. It performs
a fine analysis of the acceleration signals which recognized uncertain by SVM II.
The realization of SVM II and SVM III leads to confirm the existence of the
undesired objects, which is denoted through a single weak positive decision (SVM
II), negation the false alarm (SVM III), and reduce the uncertainty in the final
decision (SVM II, SVM III).
IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS
The STFT-algorithm is used as a prefilter to extract the relevant features of the

acceleration signals (Fig. 3a and Fig. 3b). The generated spectrogram demonstrate
the extracted features (frequencies from 0 - 3250 Hz) as function of time and the
related impulse intensities are represented with a suitable color map. The feature
vector contains 511 features for each acceleration signal.
In Fig. 3a (spectrogram) frequencies between 1- 200 Hz at time point 12.5 s are
strongly excited (red color) due to the impact of an undesired object. The detailed
kind of behavior depends on the structural dynamic characteristics of the plate at
which the sensor is mounted as well as the impact position. Higher frequencies at
the same time point shows relatively less energy (light blue color) compared to the
frequencies below 200 Hz.
The amplitude of the acceleration signal at the time about 13.95 s in Fig. 3a in
the time domain (raw signal) is in principle similar to the amplitude at time point
12.5 s, however the range of the excited frequencies in the STFT features is
different (2560-4200 Hz), which means that the machine structure reacts in a
different way. As a result the undesired objects and the other disturbing elements
could be classified, detected, and separated, if the resonance properties of the
structure in the area of object collision in relation to the sensor position are known
and are considered to allow a reliable distinction between relevant frequency
ranges and related impact power.
In Fig. 3b (raw signal) the recorded events by the object at the time of 12.5 s
and by the disturbing elements at the time between 15.6 s and 16 s show a similar
amplitude and behavior. It is expected that the structural dynamics at the time 12.5
s responds differently in the frequency domain from 0 to 200 Hz (Fig. 3b).
On the basis of the presented prefilter, the signal is compacted to be used for
the classification and accordingly the system decision. The decision function of
SVM I is refined by the fuzzy filter. The individual decision points are weighted
according to the accumulated weights of the distance to the decision limit (Fig. 4).
The rule-based filter applies suitable criteria for the combination of the individual
decisions delivered by the classifier SVM I using the output of the fuzzy filter. As
an example, the tendency to the decision limit and the value of the single decision
in Fig. 5 are used to evaluate whether a single decision is a true one or a false
alarm. One single decision (blue colored decision) at the measurement 6997 is
smaller than zero, which could be either an undesired object or a false alarm. In
1313
Raw signal
10
Acceleration [g]
5
-5
-10
11.5 12 12.5 13 13.5 14 14.5 15 15.5 16
Time [s]
Spectrogram
0
500
Frequeny [Hz]
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
11.5 12 12.5 13 13.5 14 14.5 15 15.5
Time [s]
Fig 3a: Acceleration signal of sensor 1
Raw signal
10
Acceleration [g]
-5
-10
11.5 12 12.5 13 13.5 14 14.5 15 15.5 16
Time [s]
Spectrogram
0
500
Frequeny [Hz]
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
11.5 12 12.5 13 13.5 14 14.5 15 15.5

Time [s]
Fig 3b: Acceleration signal of sensor 2
order to approve the correctness of the single decision, the tendency of the other
decision functions is checked. The decision function with the red color shows a
high tendency to the decision limit. Upon to that and to the experimental
experiences, it could be concluded that the single decision at the measurement
6997 (blue colored decision) is true and represents a detected undesired object.
The classifiers SVM II and SVM III are used for more accurately trained
classification applied locally in case of further assessment of unclear decisions is
required. Data with weak indications of the existence of the undesired object is
used for the training of SVM II and SVM III. As an example, three states are used
to train the two classifiers; in state 1 an object exists at time point 3.13 s, state 2 is
uncertain, and in state 3 clear indication of no object at time point 3.05 s. Classifier
SVM II uses state 1 as class 1 (undesired object exists) and states 2 and 3 as class 2
(uncertain) for the training, whereas classifier SVM III uses state 2 and state 3 as
the two classes (uncertain/undesired object does not exist) for the training. The
Libsvm algorithm [3] is used for the SVM classifiers in the system. Finally the
1314
individual decisions are fused in the final decision module to deliver the system
state of the monitoring system.
The results of the preliminary application of the system are summarized in
Table I. The best individual accuracy of detection achieved is 56.8% (classifiers 1
and 4). The lowest rate of false alarms is detected with classifier 4 although it has
the smallest number of support vectors which indicates to the comparatively low
level of noise.
The accuracy of the system based on the fused decisions is 83.7%. The
resultant accuracy is improved by combination with at least 47% of the individual
accuracies. The improvement in the resulting accuracy indicates that the individual
sensors have different views according to their mounted position as well as to the
behavior of the transported materials including the undesired objects. This means
that each individual classifier detects undesired objects possibly not detected by
other classifiers. The rate of false alarms seems to be compromised. This is indeed
not the real view because the false alarms in the individual sensors are not
necessarily identical. It is necessary to mention that increasing the accuracy of the
training of the individual classifiers will lead to improvements in the detection
accuracy; however the rate of the false alarms would also be increased
Unfiltered decisions
Decision value
Decision function1
Decision function2
Decision function3
Decision function4
2250 2300 2350 2400 2450 2500 2550 2600
Measurements
Filtered decisions
35
Fuzzy filtered decision1
30 Fuzzy filtered decision2
decision value
Fuzzy filtered

25
20
15
10
0
2250 2300 2350 2400 2450 2500 2550 2600
Measurements
Fig. 4: Unfiltered/filtered decision functions
Unfiltered decisions
Decision value
6980 6985 6990 6995 7000 7005 7010 7015 7020

Measurements
Fig. 5: Tendency in the decision functions
1315
Table I: Classification results
Classifier 1 Classifier 2 Classifier 3 Classifier 4
Sensor number 1 2 3 4
Undesired objects: training data 17 19 17 17
Support vectors 193 210 177 158
Undesired objects: test data 37
Ind. detected undesired objects 21 20 19 21
Individual accuracy [%] 56.8 54.0 51.4 56.8
Individual false alarms 18 14 7 4
Detected undesired objects 31
Resulting accuracy [%] 86%
Resulting false alarms 8
accordingly. During the development of the detection system, and according to the
requirements of the mechanical system, a compromise between accuracy and rate
of false alarms has to be achieved.
CONCLUSION
A method for feature-based multisensor fusion, based on Support Vector

Machine (SVM) and Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) is presented. The
application goal is to monitor a production process for online detection of the
change of a specific system state, which is difficult to recognize based on the
classical methods of sensor individual evaluations such as threshold values.
The STFT is used as a prefilter to extract features that undergone multistage
filtering process delivering individual decisions merged to provide the final
decision concerning the existence of an undesired object in the production process.
In addition to the signal pre-processing, the proposed detection system includes
a feature extraction module, an adaptive classification module, and a new
developed decision fusion algorithm. The adaptation process is performed in case
of dissimilar delivered decisions from the individual classifiers about the system
state.
The results of the preliminary applications of the system show a strong
improvement of the performance of the detection as well as the rate of the false
alarms.
REFERENCES
1. Abe, S.: Support vector machines for pattern classification. Springer-Verlag, London, 2005.
2. Aljoumaa, H.; Soeffker, D.: Multi-Class Approach based on Fuzzy-Filtering for Condition
Monitoring. IAENG International Journal of Computer Science, Vol. 38, Issue 1, 2011, pp. 66-
73.
3. Chang, C.C.; Lin, C.J.: LIBSVM: a library for support vector machines. Software available at
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~cjlin/libsvm, 2001.
4. Lehmann, P.: Schnelle Zeit-Frequenz-Analyse auf der Grundlage der Kurzzeit-Fourier-
Transformation. In: technisches messen 6, 1997.
5. Saunders, C.; Gammerman, A.; Brown, H.; Donald, G.: Application of support vector machines
to fault diagnosis and automated repair. Eleventh international workshop on principles of
diagnostics, 2000.
6. Waring, C.A.; Liu, X.: Face detection using spectral histograms and SVMs. IEEE Transactions
on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics, June 2005, pp. 467-476.
1316
Artificial Neural Network Based Damage
Detection from Lamb Wave Response
A. BARANWAL and M. MITRA1
ABSTRACT
Lamb waves in plate-like structures have been known for their excellent
propagation capability and sensitivity to structural damage. ANNs are well-known to
be a versatile technique of pattern recognition. Use of ANNs to detect patterns in time-
domain Lamb-wave response waveforms in metal sheets has been explored as a
damage identification method which could be highly suitable for Structural Health
Monitoring of aircraft. Experiments were conducted on Aluminium sheets having
either none, or one of three different types of damage (dent, notch, erosion), using
piezoelectric actuators and sensors to excite lamb-waves and detect responses. A
comprehensive set of data was accumulated, and, after de-noising and re-sampling,
used to train and test ANNs for the ability to detect the existence and type of damage.
Out-of-sample data were used for validation of trained and tested networks. Multiple
network-architectures and data-processing techniques were considered. Trained
networks were found to be remarkably successful in detection of damage (90-95%
detection rate), but only moderately so in identification (accurately classifying about
70-75% cases). The robustness of the ANN method is evident considering the high
variability that was observed in the experimental data used for training. Changes in
network configuration were not found to produce appreciable change in results.
INTRODUCTION
Traditionally, inspection of aerospace structures is done visually or with ultrasonic

scanning devices. In a system such as the present one, a network of sensors is mounted
on the body of the structure, continuously keeping track of the damage state of various
components. Time and money are saved because the aircraft need not be grounded for
testing, and instantaneous assessment of any mid-flight damage can provide timely
warning against disasters.
Ankur Baranwal,
Mira Mitra1,
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, 400076
1
Corresponding Author, E-mail: mira@aero.iitb.ac.in
1317
Being an emulation of a biological system, an ANN-based system shares some of
the virtues of an experienced maintenance engineer, together with the speed and
reliability of an automated testing system. Results are robust towards incomplete or
imprecise data – which is always a concern with in situ measurement. Another
remarkable feature is Generalization—ANNs can produce reasonable outputs for
inputs not encountered during training.
Lamb-waves, which are elastic stress waves propagating in solid media guided by
traction-free boundary surfaces, are widely acknowledged as a suitable tool for
damage identification. With a high susceptibility to interference on a propagation path,
Lamb waves can travel over long distances, and thus a broad area can be quickly
examined.
ANNs have been long in use for damage detection in Civil engineering structures,
virtually all of them using back-propagation learning. Wu, Ghaboussi and Garrett
(1990) [1] have studied the feasibility of ANNs for automatic monitoring methods for
damage detection, using networks trained on numerically simulated data to recognize
the frequency response of an undamaged structure as well as those in which individual
members had sustained various degrees of damage. The trained network was tested
with experimental data for the ability to detect the presence, location and extent of
damage. Elkordy, Chang and Lee (1993) [2] investigate the possibility of using
analytically generated samples to train networks—which is more practical and easy to
implement than generating data from destructive testing of actual structures. Testing
of the networks was done using experimental data, whereby ‗excellent‘ results were
obtained. Pandey and Barai (1993) [3] attempt to develop a robust damage assessment
methodology to recognize patterns in the observed response of a bridge truss with 3
damaged zones, with damage quantified using cross sectional areas, with perceptron-
based back-propagating networks using one and two hidden layers. Lu et al [4] have
performed an inverse analysis based on ANNs for identification of crack damage in
aluminum plates, using sophisticated damage-fingerprinting and database-building
techniques. Networks trained on simulation-results are also tested on experimental
cases, obtaining good accuracy in damage parameters (central position, size, and
orientation).
No work, however, has been encountered so far where the time-domain waveform
is directly used as an input to Neural network, with the objective of identifying
patterns that can be correlated with damage. This is the objective of the present work.
ANN SCHEME
A basic level of familiarity with Artificial Neural Networks and related

terminology is assumed herein. Introductory coverage of ANNs from a general
perspective can be found in [5] and [6].
ANN training and testing was implemented using MATLAB®‘s Neural Network
Toolbox. The entire waveform data, after averaging, de-noising, truncating and down-
sampling (described in the next section), was used as the input vector. Even though the
data was collected for multiple frequency values, no information about the frequency
was supplied to the network, as the attempt was to test if the network could extract
patterns in the ways in which a type of damage affects the waveform—something
which should stay the same at all frequencies. The input vector was therefore a
1318
collection of numbers indicating voltages (in mV) that together make up the time-
domain response waveform. The size of this vector depends on the level of truncation
and down-sampling. For the various attempts that were made, sizes were 190, 380 and
950.
The target data was provided in the form of a ‗damage vector‘, defined to be made
of 3 binary numbers, each indicating the presence of a specific type of damage:
[Surface Erosion Notch Dent].
So, for an undamaged plate, the output would be [0 0 0], whereas for a plate with a
surface erosion (and no other damage) it would be [1 0 0]. For the tests where only
presence of damage was tested, the vector was reduced to a single binary digit.
Back-propagated feed-forward networks were used, with scaled conjugate gradient
training method, as this is considered to be generally suited for pattern recognition.
The transfer function used was the Tan-sigmoid.
As there are no reliable ways for predetermination of network configuration,
several different architectures were tested. Networks with one, two and three hidden
layers were considered. Increasing the number of hidden layers allows a network to
train on more complex problems. It has been suggested [4] that two hidden layers are
adequate in most structural damage identification. Various numbers of neurons per
hidden layer were tried, ranging (independently) from as few as 10 to as high as 1500.
Following [4], a linear transfer function in the final hidden layer was also considered.
The training procedure takes the entire set of data (482 samples), and divides them
randomly into three groups for Training, Testing and Validation. The first set (60-70%
of the samples) is used to train the weights, and the iterative training process is
continued until the errors obtained in the second set (15-20%) with the trained network
cease to decrease. The third (validation) set (15-20%) is ‗out-of-sample‘ data which
provides an independent measure of network generalization. As the initial division of
data into the three sets is done randomly, training results vary somewhat with every
attempt. The success of a trained network is measured in terms of the percentage of
cases that are successfully classified within each of the three sets.
EXPERIMENT DESCRIPTION
Data for training, testing and validating the ANN was obtained from experiments.
The experimental setup has been shown in Figure 1. Aluminium sheets (H5052 grade,
125mm×125mm×1.6mm dimensions) are mounted with Piezoelectric transducers in
the form of wafers of Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT, material type SP-5H, sizes
ranging from 5 mm square to 7 mm square, with 0.5 mm thickness) using epoxy-based
adhesive. As actuators, PZTs have a high piezoelectric-mechanical coupling
effectiveness and high allowable electric field. As sensors, they have a very high
operating frequency (>10 kHz), and also offer a high resolution.
The basic process is the excitation of Lamb waves with an actuator at one location,
and receiving the signal at a sensor at a different location (distances of 27-31cm are
used). An 8-cycle Hanning-windowed Tone Burst is produced by a function generator
as input signal. The use of the windowing technique allows the signal to be resolved in
space, and the narrow bandwidth minimizes dispersion effects.
1319
Figure 2 Experimental Setup Figure 2 PZT Wafers in
two sizes
The generated signals are passed through an amplifier (not visible in figure) to
increase the amplitude of the vibrations, and also to improve the SNR of the input to
the actuator. The 20mV peak-to-peak signal from the function generator is amplified
by 10X, which is within the specified voltage range for the PZT-patches. The output
response is fed to a digital oscilloscope interfaced with a computer. The waveforms in
the oscilloscope are averaged over 16 samples before recording, which helps to reduce
random noise (including spikes and sags) and 'rogue' features. These averaged
waveforms are recorded on the computer for every actuator-sensor pair.
Because the same patch can act as both sensor and actuator (by swapping the
connections from the signal-generator and the oscilloscope), every damage that is
created is recorded along both directions, effectively leading to doubling of available
data.
For a given actuator-sensor pair, responses are recorded for a range of frequencies
(144 kHz to 240 kHz). Use of multiple frequencies can be considered as a proxy for
sheet thickness, as the Lamb-wave response is a function of the frequency-thickness
product. The objective was to generalize the trained ANN to be useful for a range of
thicknesses, based on the expectation that the patterns which lead to identification of
damage should be the same across different frequencies. The actual range was chosen
from practical considerations.
Lamb-waves travel great lengths without significant loss. Because of this, care
must be taken to avoid potential reflections from sheet edges and any neighbouring
damages, which would obfuscate the signal. From the velocity dispersion plots of S0
and A0 were obtained the minimum distances from reflection-producing obstacles to
prevent overlap between a reflected S0 with the direct A0. The transducers were
placed to avoid reflections as far as possible.
Since the difference in group velocity between S0 and A0 is greater at lower
frequencies, the constraint on sheet-size gives us a lower limit on the frequencies that
can be used. Low frequencies are also undesirable for the reason that they are less
sensitive to relatively small damages. The upper limit on the frequency was chosen so
as to avoid the observed effect of degeneration of wave-packets at higher frequencies.
1320
Figure 3 Three types of damage - Notch, Erosion and Dent
Three types of damage are presently considered—Dent (depressed deformations

without removal of material or change in cross sectional area), Notch (mark
penetrating the material thickness partially) and Surface Erosion (removal of material
over a small region reducing thickness). See Figure 3. Dents were created by sharp
impact from a rounded metallic object. The notch and the erosion were created by
removing material in a line and over an area respectively.
Data processing
Before feeding the recorded sensor response to an ANN, some processing was
performed on the data. Averaging the waveform over several samples was done within
the oscilloscope to make the shape regular and smooth by reducing spikes, sags and
random features. Even the averaged waveforms exhibited appreciable noise, which
appeared to be high frequency disturbances. Left unchecked, this noise could pose
difficulties in pattern-recognition. A low-pass Butterworth Filter was used to further
remove noise. The low ripple characteristic of the Butterworth filter ensures that Noise
Reduction does not distort information in the frequencies which contain useful
information. After testing for several cases, it was found that using an order of 8 gives
an adequately sharp roll-off, without too much phase difference.
1321
The waveforms imported from the oscilloscope were initially discretized using
2500 data points, which is a high resolution that allows visualization of even tiny
features in the waveforms. For the purpose of feeding as training data to a neural
network, however, a high resolution poses two problems. Firstly, when the training
data is not very large, a high resolution means that there is a high possibility for the
network to locate ‗chance‘ patterns and train on them. Secondly, a high resolution
would mean very large input vectors for training, which would make training very
slow, and probably also cause non-convergence.
Figure 4 Sample waveforms showing effect of damages—A. Dent, B. Notch and

C. Surface Erosion.
1322
The waveform was truncated to remove extraneous portions without useful wave-
packets, and then down-sampled while making sure that no potentially important
information was lost. Visually, down-sampling by a ratio of up to 5 led to almost no
changes in the waveforms, while there was some degree of distortion at the peaks
when ratios up to 10 were tried. Through truncation and down-sampling, input vectors
of sizes 190, 380 and 950 were obtained, and were independently used for training.
Observations
Figure 4 shows some of the responses obtained from the experiments, illustrating
the effects of the three types of damage. It was observed that effects more pronounced
at higher frequencies, and when damage is closer to actuator
Despite the consistency in input signal and sheet material construction, and high
quality of PZT-patches, there was found to be significant variability in the waveforms
obtained in undamaged cases. This could at least partially be due to the imperfect and
varying nature of the bonding between the sheet and the PZT-patches.
Moreover, the changes that were seen, in terms of visual interpretation, were not
consistent over different frequencies. This may be expected to pose additional
challenges to the discovery of patterns by the ANN.
No attempt was made to exclude waveforms that did not resemble ideally
expected shapes, so as to allow the network-training to be generalized to widely
varying situations--something that would necessarily be present in any experimental
process, and even more so in real-world scenarios.
A distortion in the waveforms is observed at the higher end of frequencies (starting
about 230 kHz) in the form of a progressively skewed elongation of the A0 packets,
eventually leading to emergence of a separate packet.
TRAINING RESULTS
The 482 data samples were divided into groups for Training, Testing and
Validation, and used with several different network configurations to check for
presence and classification of damage. As the results vary somewhat because of the
random distributions, each configuration was tried multiple times.
For detecting the presence of damage, a network with 10 hidden nodes in one
layer was able to achieve detection rates of around 90% with an input vector of size
380. The rates saw a slight improvement on increasing the number of nodes, but
stayed under 95% even with 500 nodes. In the misidentified cases, there was usually a
greater incidence of undamaged samples being detected as damaged—erring on the
safer side. Mean-squared error (MSE) stayed around 0.05 overall.
For identification of damage, a network with 10 hidden nodes resulted in about
70% accuracy in classification, with MSE of about 0.05. Little to slight improvement
was observed on using 20, 40 and 75 nodes, but no appreciable change was seen up to
even 1500 nodes. Confusion was found to be higher between the Erosion and the
Notch, both of which result in change in thickness of material.
In both tests, no improvement was obtained from increasing the number of
hidden layers, or re-sampling the input vector to 190 or 950. More often than not, the
success rate in the Validation (out-of-sample) set was found to be lower, but rarely by
over 5%, suggesting that good generalization was achieved.
1323
On the 2.66GHz system under use, network training was found to be almost
instantaneous for the smallest configurations, and stayed under 30 sec on average even
with 1500 nodes. Convergence was usually achieved in 30-60 iterations. Addition of
hidden layers increased training times, but even with three layers, the longest training
times were under two minutes. Given the fair success rates obtained, these low times
testify in favour of the efficiency of the training algorithm used.
CONCLUSION
There is clear evidence of the ability of ANNs to detect damage from the time-
domain Lamb-wave response in a metal sheet, despite the erratic variability observed
in the results. The minimal computational requirements and relative ease of
accumulating damage-data for network-training further make it an attractive proposal.
While changing the network configuration was not found to be increasingly helpful,
even modest networks performed well and the most complex ones were found
tractable.
Future Work
Conceivably, improvements to the experimental method or use of transforms on

the input data could be considered to ascertain whether there lies greater potential in
the use of ANN with time-domain Lamb-wave response waveforms.
A further training attempt could be made including cases with multiple damage
types present in the detection path. This would not be a great leap in practical
significance, as it may not be highly likely that multiple damages suddenly appear in
mid-flight, and even one should be enough to prompt investigation and action. But it
would be a powerful demonstration of the ability of ANN if it could ‗dissect‘ the
wave-response and identify individual component patterns. Moreover, since the same
existing damage vectors would be used, it could lead to augmentation of the data-set
effectively endowing the ANN with greater detection ability.
The most significant step forward after this would be to attempt to discover extent
of damage, in a way that can be correlated with residual life of the component under
consideration. However, this step would be greatly complicated by the conceptual and
practical difficulties associated with the damage metric.
REFERENCES
1. Wu. X, J. Ghaboussi and J. H. Garrett. 1992. ―Use of Neural Networks in Detection of Structural
Damage‖. Computers & Structrures Vol. 42, No.4, pp. 649-659.
2. Elkordy, M. F. and K. C. Chang. 1993. ―Neural Networks trained by Analytically Simulated
Damage States‖. Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering.
3. Pandey, P.C., S. V. Barai. 1993. ―Multilayer Perceptron in Damage Detection of Bridge
Structures‖. Computers & Structrures Vol. 54, No.4, pp.597-608.
4. Lu, Y., L. Ye, Z. Su, L. Zhou and L. Cheng. 2009. ―Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-based Crack
Identification in Aluminum Plates with Lamb Wave Signals,‖ J. Intell. Matls. Sys. & Struct.,
20(1):39-49.
5. Graupe, D. 2007. Principles of Artificial Neural Networks, 2nd Ed.
6. Mehrotra, K., C. K. Mohan and S. Ranka. 1996. Elements of Artificial Neural Networks.
1324
Integration of Data Mining Operations for
E. SONNLEITNER, H. KOSORUS, S. ANDERLIK, R. STUMPTNER,
B. FREUDENTHALER, H. ALLMER and J. KÜNG
ABSTRACT
Data Integration is a well elaborated scientific area and one of the most
important use cases of the Semantic Web. Techniques developed in this field
aim at providing interoperability between heterogeneous data sources. Com-
pared to typical Semantic Web use cases, data integration issues are manifold
and also affect applications through their underlying schemas. Civil engi-
neers specialized in risk and measurement analysis need a reliable Decision
Support System (DSS) that integrates various required techniques. Hence,
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications tend to adopt typical inte-
gration concepts, but not by regarding data and their semantics independent
from the application domain. Instead, such a DSS should be accessible in
an integrated manner to support the usage of methods and techniques from
different systems according to their intended operational purpose. This paper
presents some practical examples of using Data Mining operations which en-
able a better understanding of the analysed data and which can be successfully
integrated into a unified DSS for SHM.
INTRODUCTION
Standardization and Integration are two major topics in the EU funded FP7
project IRIS (Integrated European Industrial Risk Reduction System). Based
on these two main objectives, a concept for an integrative usage of different
measurement analyzing functions for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) like
Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT), Wavelet Transformation, etc. is required.
These operations are partly available within systems like BRIMOS R
(Bridge
Monitoring System) (see [1] and [2]), but not in an integrative and guided
manner. The problem of using such systems is the lack of semantic behaviors
and conditions for measurement analysis: Many operations are available, but
not everyone knows which function should be executed in which scope
Erik Sonnleitner, FAW – Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing, Johannes Kepler
University Linz, Altenberger Straße 69, 4040 Linz, Austria.
Hilda Kosorus, FAW – Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing, Johannes Kepler
University Linz, Altenberger Straße 69, 4040 Linz, Austria
Stefan Anderlik, DKE – Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik - Data & Knowledge Engineering,
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Altenberger Straße 69, 4040 Linz, Austria
Reinhard Stumptner, FAW – Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing, Johannes Kepler
Bernhard Freudenthaler, SCCH - Software Competence Center Hagenberg GmbH,
Softwarepark 21, 4232 Hagenberg, Austria
Helga Allmer, VCE Holding GmbH, Hadikgasse 60, 1140 Wien, Austria
Josef Küng, FAW – Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing, Johannes Kepler
1325
(e.g. clustering operations can be useful in addition to certain pre-existence
data discovery methods) and how (parameters, semantics, notification, etc.).
Therefore the integration approach of heterogeneous Decision Support Sys-
tems (DSS) for SHM in [3] should provide a framework for these purposes
and proposes opportunities to be guided through data analysis tasks, also in-
volved data preparation and assessment. This paper will cover the differences
and challenges to integrate Data Mining frameworks like WEKA ([4] and [5]),
RapidMiner [6] or R [7] in the sense of [3].
The integrative usage of DSS in SHM is a major challenge concerning ”Black
Box” systems like BRIMOS R
, where integration is not possible analogous to
Open Source APIs like WEKA or RapidMiner. Hence, the implementation of
a Passive Decision Support Integration System (PDSIS), as a proof of concept
for [3], started by integrating operations from RapidMiner [6].
In addition to RapidMiner, WEKA and R, which are briefly described be-
low, there are several problematic issues foreseeable for the integration ap-
proach in [3]. Therefore challenges regarding heterogeneities and differences
which concern specific notification mechanisms (Server-Client-Application, Web
Services, APIs and Libraries, etc.) have to be covered and solved in a semantic
integrated manner.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 gives an overview
of related work in the domain of integration systems in general, like Observer,
DOME or COIN (see [8]). Section 3 covers measurement assessment systems
for SHM and examines their functionalities and capabilities of overall decision
support in an integrated manner. Section 4 describes PDSIS concepts and
their advanced usage of state-of-the-art data mining frameworks like Rapid-
Miner or WEKA. Section 5 presents some illustrative examples and compares
the results obtained before and after applying additional data mining meth-
ods to the transformed output data of BRIMOS R
. Finally, in section 6,
we summarize the paper and discuss future issues and outstanding scientific
questions.
RELATED RESEARCH
This section will give a short overview of appropriate related work of inte-
gration systems in general. Approaches like OBSERVER, DOME or COIN
are introduced. [9] and [10] compare and describe different approaches of in-
formation integration systems in detail and focus on the use of ontologies for
integration purposes. In the following we will analyse whether these systems
are suitable for the integration of heterogeneous decision support systems in
a well-defined workflow [3], [9], [10]:
• SIMS (Search In Multiple Sources): “SIMS appeared in 1993 as an

information mediator. The system essentially provides access and in-
tegration to multiple sources of information [10].”
• OBSERVER (Ontology Based System Enhanced with Relationship for
Vocabulary hEterogeneity Resolution): “OBSERVER is an approach
that proposes managing multiple information sources through ontolo-
gies [10].”
• DOME (Domain Ontology Management Environment): DOME is fo-
cused on ontology development by using software reverse engineering
1326
techniques [10].
• KRAFT (Knowledge Reuse And Fusion/Transformation): “KRAFT
was primarily conceived to support configuration design of applications
among multiple organizations with heterogeneous knowledge and data
models. It uses the concept of “Knowledge fusion” to denote the com-
bination of knowledge from different sources in a dynamic way [10].”
• Carnot: “The Carnot Project was initiated in 1990 with the goal of
addressing the problem of logically unifying physically distributed, het-
erogeneous information [10].”
• InfoSleuth: “The InfoSleuth project is an extension of Carnot to make
legacy database systems easily accessible via Web [10].”
• COIN (Context Interchange): “The COIN Project was initiated in 1991
with the goal of achieving semantics interoperability among heteroge-
neous information sources [10].”
Having a brief introduction of these integration approaches and after study-

ing them in detail [10] one can see that these approaches are mainly used
to integrate information and data in ontologies or to combine different infor-
mation sources. The difference to our integration approach is that besides
combining data sources, we also considered the enhancement of collaborative
usage of heterogeneous decision support systems based on a predefined general
workflow [3]. For more detailed information about the integration approach
of heterogeneous decision support systems for Structural Health Monitoring
see [3].
MEASUREMENT ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS FOR STRUC-

TURAL HEALTH MONITORING
Recent research in SHM has been focusing on the development of robust
and cost-effective structural health monitoring systems by integrating and
extending technologies from various engineering and information technology
disciplines.
The BRIMOS R
(Bridge Monitoring System) [2] technology is based on
Ambient Vibration Monitoring and has been used for many years in the field
of Structural Health Monitoring. Ambient Vibration Monitoring can be de-
fined as a method for system identification and damage detection in bridge
structures due to its dynamic response to ambient excitation such as wind,
traffic and micro seismic activity.
BRIMOS R
offers a well-defined rating system for investigated structures.
This classification allows a fast identification on the structure’s integrity as
well as the corresponding risk level based on modal parameters, visual inspec-
tion reference data.
The rating is a classification based on several research projects, where more
than 1000 structures have been assessed and the learned experience has been
integrated into the assessment procedure. This classification allows a fast
identification of the structure’s integrity and the risk level according to the
measured dynamic parameters.
SHMTools 1 is a Matlab package that enables the construction of structural
1
http://institute.lanl.gov/ei/software-and-data/SHMTools/
1327
health monitoring (SHM) processes. It provides a set of functions which are
organized into modules according to the three primary stages of Structural
Health Monitoring: data acquisition, feature extraction and feature classifi-
cation. It has a modular function design and uses standardized parameter
formats which make it easy to create and test various customized SHM pro-
cesses.
Another SHM system for assessing the health of large structures is intro-
duced in [11]. It uses a networked sensor system and the Matlab Web Server.
The system includes an automatic sensor system that transfers the data from
the sensor through the Internet and it provides standard evaluation tools to
locate and quantify the damage.
PASSIVE DECISION SUPPORT INTEGRATION SYS-

TEMS
For the purpose of identifying, localizing and assessing damages on struc-
tures or structural elements, various different and highly heterogeneous DSS
are subject to assist in this process, which includes multiple diverging pro-
cess steps, each having different syntactical and semantical requirements and
communication interfaces to deal with. In order to enforce the integration
of multiple heterogeneous DSS, the main concern is the establishment of an
integrative system, which aims to implement an additional high-level layer
being abstract enough to offer the possibility of covering all conceivable kinds
of different DSS in terms of SHM.
Resulting from intensive research within the frame of the European Union
IRIS project2 , an integration system PDSIS (Passive Decision Support Inte-
gration System) has been developed which tends to cover all of the previously
mentioned requirements by heavily utilizing ontologies.
Since the participating partners of the IRIS project originate from a broad
range of industry sectors, the knowledge and expertise of each sector is con-
stituted in a particular domain ontology. These domain ontologies are very
specific and strongly related to the individual industry segments. In order
to create an associational and semantical mapping between these, each do-
main ontology also provides a specific integration ontology which, in turn,
uses one central abstract ontology (which we call IRIS ontology) for referring
to relevant background information and therefore providing a rather holistic
integration approach based on semantic technologies.
The PDSIS architecture consists of a single central user-friendly frontend,
which interferes with a mediator component which mainly cares about rea-
soning the ontologies and extracting the computed individuals and their class
assertions [3]. Therefore, for each process step in question, the mediator com-
ponent is able to suggest suitable systems for a specific task.
Aside from the already mentioned BRIMOS R
system, numerous data min-
ing frameworks are used for decision support and have been integrated within
PDSIS. Among others, these frameworks are:
2
Integrated European Industrial Risk Reduction System (IRIS), Funded under 7th
FWP (Seventh Framework Programme), Research area: NMP-2007-3.1-3. See http:
//www.vce.at/iris/
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RapidMiner A data mining toolkit, well-suited for processing very large
data pools and performing various analytical tasks. Being open source, it
offers a programming interface and is primarily intended for data mining [6]
operations which makes it a considerable utility for decision support. At the
time of this writing, the mediator service fully implements the RapidMiner
Fast Fourier Transformation and Principal Component Analysis functionali-
ties.
WEKA: Originating from the University of Waikato, WEKA (Waikato En-

vironment for Knowledge Analysis) [5] aims to be a versatile framework for
machine learning and predictive modeling including but not limited to pre-
processing, text-learning and clustering. Currently, the corresponding IRIS
mediator implements Wavelet transformation using the standard WEKA Java
API. Wavelet Transformation. The specific notification workflow can be in-
terpreted as analogous to RapidMiner.
R (GNU S): As opposed to the two frameworks outlined above, R [7] is a

non-graphical programming language for statistical computations and became
a de facto standard for statistical software development. R implements the S
programming language and originates from the University of Auckland. Since
R is not developed in Java, it does not offer an integrated programming in-
terfaces like RapidMiner and WEKA, although certain third-party expression
evaluator interfaces exist [12]. Currently, R has not yet been implemented as
mediator service within PDSIS, but approaches towards including R through
either web-services or socket communication are in progress. Furthermore,
R also supports graphical plotting which, at this time, is not intended to be
utilized by PDSIS.
CASE STUDY
In the following sections we will provide and analyze an example of applying
different operations from the already described Data Mining and Machine
Learning Frameworks to the measurement analysis process. It shall be pointed
out explicitly that the below operations, which were applied to the analysis
process, are just examples of how to integrate these operations with tools and
applications from the SHM domain. Definitely, the intention of this article it is
not to show which operations add the best value to measurement assessment,
but to prove that by applying Machine Learning techniques it can increase the
runtime performance of calculations, increase precision or understandability
of results or offer the possibility to gain completely new knowledge about a
measurement.
The S101 is a concrete bridge which was built in the 1960ies. Because
it required maintenance and was too small for the location, it was decided
to be replaced. This offered a great opportunity to perform a damage test
to demonstrate the impact of scientific insight and findings with regard to
reduced uncertainties. The results are meant to support the decision process
of infrastructure owners in the course of cost planning for maintenance and
possible rehabilitation measures in general.
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Calculation of Eigenfrequencies with BRIMOS R
BRIMOS is a sophisticated tool for measurement analysis, which was

R
developed and is operated by the Vienna Consulting Engineers3 . The following

Figure 1 shows the Eigenfrequencies, which were calculated from a particular
measurement (taken from the bridge “S101”).
The below measurement consisting of 48 channels (16 sensors measuring ac-
celeration in 3 dimensions each) further on was Input for Rapidminer’s Prin-
cipal Components Analysis (PCA), which was re-analyzed using BRIMOS R
.
Figure 1: Eigenfrequencies from Original Measurement Data (165000 Mea-

sure Points, 48 Channels)
Figure 2 shows the results from measurements of full length, but with a
reduced number of dimensions (principal components).
Comparing Figure 2 with Figure 1, one can see that mainly the heterodyne
or redundant components of the signal were abstracted.
The signal still contains the main information. This visual assessment is
underlined by the results shown in table I.
For the calculation of Eigenfrequencies a reduction of measurement chan-
nels using PCA is a reasonable operation (see table I), but, there are some
performance indicators, which depend on sensor positions or acceleration di-
rections (e.g. mode shapes). These Figures cannot be calculated (at least not
directly) from a measurement which was reduced by PCA.
Figure 2: Eigenfrequencies after Calculation of Principal Components

(165000 random Measure Points, 6 Channels)
3
http://www.vce.at
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TABLE I: QUANTITATIVE RESULTS
Eigen- Original, full 14 Channels, 6 Channels, 21 Channels,
frequency length full length full length reduced length
EF1 4.032 4.032 4.021 4.059
EF2 6.294 6.294 6.294 6.287
EF3 9.701 9.701 9.716 9.705
EF4 13.294 13.294 13.893 13.275
EF5 15.766 15.766 15.793 15.747
Applying filters from R
Figure 3: Decomposing the eigenfrequencies time series into trend, seasonal

and random components
The above plot was obtained by filtering the time series of Eigenfrequencies
using the decompose (additive) function from R. Thus, we obtained a decom-
position of the Eigenfrequencies into trend, seasonal and random or residual
components. In general, time series decompostion allows us to distinguish
differences in the data due to the actual trend, seasonal variation and error
components. It will also allow us to predict future values based on the trend
and seasonal effects.
Comparison
The above examples show how various data mining methods can be used at
different stages of the data analysis process in the frame of the SHM domain.
While using only BRIMOS R
we can obtain only a transformation of the raw
data, by applying PCA after this transformation we can reduce significantly
the dataset. This way we keep the relevant information while enabling a faster
and easier further analysis using a smaller dataset. Also, by applying several
other filters from R (e.g. decomposition, linear filters) we can get a bet
CONCLUSION AND FURTHER WORK

This paper describes general procedures and concrete implementations of
Data Mining operations from RapidMiner and WEKA to be used by tech-
nicians via PDSIS. Therefore a mediator component uses the semantic de-
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scriptions of the integrated operators and the semantic requirements of the
different process step types (both topics in [3]) to provide lists of available
and executable functions. The current version of PDSIS, as a web application
for end user interactions, and IRISServices, as service pool and/or provider of
different web services. Several prospective improvements have to be covered:
• Integration of operators for assessment tasks and combination with

data preparation part
• First draft for complete workflow execution
• Validation of operators
• Comparison of different operator results
• Changes of operator parameters should be sent to mediator and used
for further execution
• Workflow planning tool, tob be included in PDSIS web application and
provide functionalities to create a user-defined execution plan.
Acknowledgements
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union FP74
Program under the grant agreement no. 213968 (IRIS).
REFERENCES
1. Wenzel, H., Pichler, D.: Ambient Vibration Monitoring. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.,
Chichester, 2005
2. Wenzel, H.: Health Monitoring of Bridges. John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Chichester, 2008
3. Anderlik, S., Stumptner, R., Freudenthaler, B., Fritz, M.: A Proposal for Ontology-
based Integration of Heterogeneous Decision Support Systems for Structural Health
Monitoring. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Information
Integration and Web-based Applications and Services, pp. 166–173, Paris, 2010
4. Graczyk, M., Lasota, T., Trawinski, B.: Comparative Analysis of Premises Valuation
Models Using KEEL, RapidMiner, and WEKA. In Proceedings of 1st International
Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence - Semantic Web, Social Net-
works & Multiagent Systems, pp. 800–812, Berlin/Heidelberg, 2009
5. Holmes, G., Donkin, A., Witten, I.H.: WEKA: a machine learning workbench. In Pro-
ceedings of the 1994 Second Australian and New Zealand Conference on Intelligent
Information Systems, pp. 357–361, Brisbane, Qld., 1994
6. Rapid-I: RapidMiner 5.0 Manual. http://rapid-i.com/content/view/26/84/, 2010
7. Jones, O., Maillardet, R., Robinson, A.: Introduction to Scientific Programming and
Simulation Using R. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2009
8. Wache, H., Voegele, T., Visser, U., Stuckenschmidt, H., Schuster, G., Neumann, H. and
Huebner, S.: Ontology-Based Integration of Information - A Survey of Existing Ap-
proaches. In Proceedings of the IJCAI-01 Workshop on Ontologies and Information
Sharing (Seattle, USA, August 4 - 5, 2001), IJCA’01, pp. 108–117, IEEE, 2001
9. Buccella, A., Cechich, A. and Brisaboa, N.R. 2005. Ontology-Based Data Integration
Methods: A Framework for Comparison. Paper Proposal. University of Com-
ahue.sources. Journal of Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems 2, 2,
127-158.
10. Wache, H., Voegele, T., Visser, U., Stuckenschmidt, H., Schuster, G., Neumann, H.
and Huebner, S. (2001). Ontology-Based Integration of Information - A Survey of
Existing Approaches. In Proceedings of the IJCAI-01 Workshop on Ontologies and
Information Sharing, IEEE, pp. 108–117
11. Mita, A., Inamura, T., Yoshikawa, S.: Structural Health Monitoring for Buildings with
Automatic Data Management System. In Proceedings of the 4th International
Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Taiwan, 2006.
12. Ripley B. D.: The R and Omegahat projects in statistical computing. Department of
Statistics, University of Oxford, 2001
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Cognitive Architectures for Real-Time ISHM
J. A. CROWDER
ABSTRACT
In the real-time battlefield arena, situational awareness becomes critical to making the right decisions and achieving the
overall goals for the system. The key to Situational Awareness is not simply collecting and disseminating data, but it is
actually getting the right information to the right users at the right time. In ground processing systems, various sensors,
spacecraft, and other data sources gather and generate data different relevant contexts. What is required is an Integrated
System Health Management (ISHM) processing architecture that allows users to turn the data into meaningful information,
and to reason about that information in a context relative to the user at that time, and to update the information real-time as
the situation changes. In short, it is imperative that the information processing environment be efficient, timely, and accurate.
Described will be an Intelligent Information Agent processing environment which allows data to be processed into relevant,
actionable knowledge. Based on the technologies described above, situational management is one of the most innovative
components of this processing system. Utilizing the Artificial Cognitive Neural Framework (ACNF) (Crowder, 2005), it can
provide real-time processing and display of dynamic, situational awareness information.
INTRODUCTION
Even in Service Oriented Architectures, true ISHM situational awareness is difficult because the enterprise has to
become more aware, more flexible, and more agile than ever before. Information gathering, processing, and analyzing must
be done continually to keep track of current trends in the context of the current situations, both local and overall, and provide
timely and accurate knowledge to allow the users to anticipate and respond to what is happening in a changing environment.
To achieve the combination of awareness, flexibility, and agility means supporting dynamic and flexible processes that adapt
as situations change. This is possible with learning, evolving, Intelligent Information Agents, like those described here.
The Data Steward Agents will support growing volumes of data and allow Reasoner Agents to produce accurate and
relevant metrics about past, current, and future situations (prognostics). Through inter-agent communication, they provide
control and visibility into the entire ground processing enterprise. This is made possible by integrating the processing
environment into the flexible, distributed, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that enables secure collaboration, advanced
information management, dynamic system updates, and customer, rule-based processes (Advisor Agents).
The inter-agent communication allows shared awareness which, in turn, enables faster operations and more effective
information analysis and transfer, providing users with an enhanced visualization of overall constellation and situational
awareness across the ground processing system’s Enterprise Infrastructure. This Intelligent Agent-based system can deal
with massive amounts of information to levels of accuracy, timeliness, and quality never before possible.
Even applications that deal with object-oriented technologies fail to achieve the goals of awareness, flexibility, and
agility because their processes are hard coded into the applications. The flexible, learning, adapting Intelligent Software
Agents of the ACNF processing framework can adapt, collaborate, and provide the increased flexibility required in a
growing, changing signal/source environment (Crowder, 2006).
INTEGRATED SYSTEM HEALTH MANAGEMENT

Following the evolution of diagnostic systems, prognostic initiatives started to be introduced in order to try to take
advantage of the maintenance planning and logistics benefits. However, the early prognostic initiatives often were driven by
in-field failures that resulted in critical safety or high-cost failures, and thus retrofitted technology was hard to implement and
costly to develop. Hence diagnostic and prognostic system developers found the need to analyze and describe the benefits
1333
associated with reducing in-field failures and their positive impact on safety, reliability, and overall lifecycle-cost reduction.
This has led to many cost-benefit analyses and ensuing discussions and presentations to engineering management about why
the diagnostic and prognostic technologies need to be included in the design process of the system and not simply an
afterthought once field failures occur. This had lead us to the point where many complex vehicle/system designs, like DD(X),
GPS OCX, and various weapon systems are now developing ‘‘designed in’’ health management technologies that can be
implemented within the Integrated Maintenance & Logistics and supports the system throughout its life time. This ‘‘designed
in’’ approach to health management is performed with the hardware/software design itself and also acts as the process for
system validation and managing inevitable changes from in-field experiences and evaluating system design tradeoffs, as
shown in Figure 1 (Crowder, 2007).
Design Stage Production/Prototype
System Design Concepts System Design
Health Monitoring
System
FMECAs, Modeling,
Cost/Benefit Analysis
Maintenance Management
System
ISHM Design Concepts
Continuous Feedback of Experience
Continuous Design Improvement and Support
Figure 1 – The “Design-In” Approach to System Health Management
Realizing such an approach will involve synergistic deployments of component health monitoring technologies, as well
as integrated reasoning capabilities for the interpretation of fault-detect outputs. Further, it will involve the introduction of
learning technologies to support the continuous improvement of the knowledge enabling these reasoning capabilities. Finally,
it will involve organizing these elements into a maintenance and logistics architecture that governs integration and
interoperation within the system, between its on-board elements and their ground-based support functions, and between the
health management system and external maintenance and operations functions. Here we present and discuss the required
prognostic functions of an Integrated Health Management System that, if applied correctly, can directly affect the operations
and maintenance of the equipment and positively affect the lifecycle costs.
A comprehensive health management system philosophy integrates the results from the monitoring sensors all the way
through to the reasoning software that provides decision support for optimal use of maintenance resources. A core component
of this strategy is based on the ability to (1) accurately predict the onset of impending faults/ failures or remaining useful life
of critical components and (2) quickly and efficiently isolate the root cause of failures once failure effects have been
observed. In this sense, if fault/ failure predictions can be made, the allocation of replacement parts or refurbishment actions
can be scheduled in an optimal fashion to reduce the overall operational and maintenance logistic footprints. From the fault
isolation perspective, maximizing system availability and minimizing downtime through more efficient troubleshooting
efforts is the primary objective.
In addition, the diagnostic and prognostic technologies require an integrated maturation environment for assessing and
validating prognostics and health management (PHM) system accuracy at all levels in the system hierarchy. Developing and
maintaining such an environment will allow for inaccuracies to be quantified at every level in the system hierarchy and then
be assessed automatically up through the health management system architecture. The final results reported from the system-
level reasoners and decision support is a direct result of the individual results reported from these various levels when
propagated through. Hence an approach for assessing the overall PHM system accuracy is to quantify the associated
uncertainties at each of the individual levels, as illustrated in Figure 2, and build up the accumulated inaccuracies as
information is passed up the system architecture. This type of hierarchical verification and validation (V&V) and maturation
process will be able to provide the capability to assess diagnostic and prognostic technologies in terms of their ability to
1334
detect subsystem faults, diagnose the root cause of the faults, predict the remaining useful life of the faulty component, and
assess the decision-support reasoner algorithms. Specific metrics include accuracy, false-alarm rates, reliability, sensitivity,
stability, economic cost/benefit, and robustness, just to name a few. Cost-effective implementation of a diagnostic or
prognostic system will vary depending on the design maturity and operational/ logistics environment of the monitored
equipment. However, one common element to successful implementation is feedback. As components or LRUs are removed
from service, disassembly inspections must be performed to assess the accuracy of the diagnostic and prognostic system
decisions (Crowder, 2006). Based on this feedback, system software and warning/alarm limits should be optimized until
desired system accuracy and warning intervals are achieved. In addition, selected examples of degraded component parts
should be retained for testing that can better define failure progression intervals.
A systems-oriented approach to prognostics requires that the failure detection and inspection-based methods be
augmented with forecasting of parts degradation, mission criticality and decision support. Such prognostics must deal not
only with the condition of individual components, but also the impact of this condition on the mission-readiness and the
ability to take appropriate actions (Crowder, 2003). However, such a continuous health management system must be
carefully engineered at every stage of a system design, operation and maintenance. Figure 2, above, illustrates the overall
ISHM process which includes modeling, sensing, diagnosis, inference and prediction (prognostics), learning, and updating.
The two most important steps in this process are 1) fault detection and diagnosis and 2) prognostic reasoning (prediction):
ADVISOR AGENTS
DATA Automated Trouble
STEWARD AGENTS Ticket System
Human- System
Interface
Condition Health
Monitor Assessment
Data
Acquisition - Thresholds - Component specific feature
System
- Fuzzy Logic extraction

- Anomaly & Diagnostic Reasoners
Sensors
GPS- S1
Data
OCX S2 Manipulation Prognostics Automatic Decision
. Reasoning
. - Pre-processing - Feature-based Prognostics - Data Fusion
. - Feature Extraction - Model-Based Prognostics - Classifiers
Sn - Signal Characterization - Artificial Intelligence Prog. - Response Generator
Physical Models
Mission Plans
REASONER AGENTS ANALYST AGENTS
Figure 2 – Functional Layers in an ISHM System
FAULT DETECTION AND DIAGNOSTIC REASONING

This determines if a component/subsystem/system has moved away (degraded) from nominal operating parameters,
along a known path, to a point where component performance may be compromised. Novelty detection determines if the
component has moved away from what is considered acceptable nominal operations and away from all known fault health
(diagnostics as defined above) propagation paths (Crowder, 2006).
PROGNOSTIC REASONERS
The purpose of reasoners is the assessment of the component’s current health and a prediction of the component’s future
health, or Useful Remaining Life (URL). There are two variations of the prediction problem. The first prediction type may
have just a short horizon time—is the component good to fly the next mission? The second type is to predict how much time
we have before a particular fault will occur and, by extension, how much time we have before we should replace it. Or it may
be longer term—tell me when to schedule removal of an engine for overhaul.
Accurate prognosis is a requirement for implementing Integrated System Health Management (ISHM). The creation of a
prognostic algorithm is a challenging problem. There are several areas that must be addressed in order to develop a
prognostic reasoner that achieves a given level of performance. Figure 3 illustrates the prognostic process utilizing
Intelligent Information Agents.
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ADVISOR AGENTS
Feedback to operations to
Improve System Operations
ANALYST AGENTS:
Advice based on past Identify similarities, patters,
cases and relations. Suggest actions
based on past cases and
Human experience analysis algorithms
captured in cases
Case 123321 Feedback to maintenance
Case 123324
123324
Measurements:
Case to improve System
Case 123327
Measurements:
Test Results:
Measurements:
Case 123327
Case 123344
Measurements: Measure, identify and
Action
Test Taken:
Case 123344
Results:
Measurements:
Measurements:
Test Results: Predict problems
Measurements:
Action
Test Taken:
Results: ADVISOR AGENTS
Action Taken:
Test Taken:
Action Results:
Action Taken:
REASONER AGENTS
Maintenance
Case Library with past
cases Measurements
DATA
STEWARD AGENTS
Figure 3 – Prognostic Process Utilizing I2A
THE PROGNOSTICS PROCESS

The prognostics component (utilizing Analyst Agents) provides specific information to the Advisor Agents about the
system’s state of health, status, RUL, confidence and recommendations. A graphical representation of the inputs and outputs
to the Prognostics Analyst Agent is illustrated in Figure 4. The description of the inputs and outputs are given below in
Figure 5.
Figure 4 – Prognostic Analyst Agent Processing
Prognostic Analyst Agent
Figure 5 – Prognostic Analysis Agent Inputs and Outputs
AUTOMATED DECISION MAKING

The Automated Decision Making component utilized Advisor agents that acquire data primarily from Diagnostic and
Prognostic Analyst Agents. The primary function of the Automated Decision Advisor Agents is to provide recommended
actions and alternatives and the implications of each recommended action. Recommendations may include maintenance
action schedules, modifying the operational configuration of assets and equipment in order to accomplish mission objectives,
or modifying mission profiles to allow mission completion. The Automated Decision Making Advisor Agents take into
1336
account operational history (including usage and maintenance), current and future mission profiles, high-level unit objectives,
and resource constraints. This is always a Human-in-the-Loop to assess the correctness of major decisions and adjust the
decision process. Figure 6 illustrates the Decision Making Process.
DATA
STEWARD AGENTS
Sensor Data
ANALYST AGENTS
Similar Cases
Matching
REASONER AGENTS DATA

STEWARD AGENTS
Case-Library
Cases containing:
Sensor Readings
Diagnosis
Action taken
Retain Outcome
Revised solution,
ADVISOR AGENTS
Diagnosis,
Decision taken, and Solution Recommendations,
Outcome Analyst Revising Diagnosis, and Prognosis
Solution
Figure 6 – ISHM Decision Making Process
PROGNOSTIC TECHNOLOGIES: INTELLIGENT INFORMATION AGENTS (I2A)

The I2A architecture is a framework for constructing a hybrid system of Intelligent Information Software Agents. This
provides a productivity toolkit for adding intelligent software agent functions to applications and modern architectural
frameworks. This provides the constructs for building multi-agent intelligent autonomic systems. This includes the
framework for providing business rules and policies for run-time systems, including an autonomic computing core
technology within a multi-agent infrastructure. Figure 7 illustrates the Intelligent Information Agents for the I2A framework.
ADVISOR
DATA
STEWARD
ONTOLOGY
REASONER
LEXICON
ANALYST
PATTERNS
INFORMATION & DATA
• Intelligence Network: finding experts and information to answer questions

• Answer Extraction: finding information that provide answers
• Situation Analysis: finding situations that require active investigation
Figure 7 – Intelligent Information Agents
THE I2A FRAMEWORK

The I2A hybrid computing architecture uses genetic, neural-network and fuzzy logic that are used to integrate diverse
sources of information, associate events in the data and make observations (Crowder, 2002). When combined with a dialectic
search, the application of hybrid computing promises to revolutionize information processing. The dialectic search seeks
answers to questions that require interplay between doubt and belief, where our knowledge is understood to be fallible. This
‘playfulness’ is key to hunting in information and is explained in more detail in the section that address the Dialectic
Argument Structure. Figures 8, 9, and 10 further explain this. The dialectic search avoids the problems associated with
analytic methods and word searches. In its place, information is used to develop and assess hypotheses seeded by a domain
expert. This is achieved using I2As that augments human reason by learning from the expert how to argue and develop a
hypothesis. Using Franklin and Graesser’s definition for a software agent, we would define the I2A as: an autonomous agent
situated in and part of the information ecosystem, comprehending its environment and acting upon it over time, in pursuit of
its own agenda, so as to effect what it comprehends in the future. The I2As have certain abilities that distinguish it from
software objects and programs and provide it with the intelligence it needs to mimic human reasoning (Crowder, 2002).
1337
ADVISOR
DATA
STEWARD
ONTOLOGY
Generates & maintains Generates & maintainsLEXICON

the meta-data to find and topic maps required to
extract data-information find relevant data and
from heterogeneous experts.
systems.
INFORMATION & DATA
Figure 8 – The Data Steward and Advisor Agents

ADVISOR
Analyze questions and
relevant source DATA
STEWARD
fragments to provide
answers and develop
ontological rules. REASONER ONTOLOGY
LEXICON
INFORMATION & DATA
Figure 9 – The Reasoner Agent
ADVISOR
Patterns of thinking are used to
direct Q&A generation and
DATA creation of situational analyses
STEWARD with integrated explanations.
ONTOLOGY
REASONER
LEXICON
ANALYST
PATTERNS
INFORMATION & DATA
• Expanded questions & answers are used to learn from collected information
• Evolve Pattern Languages that best explain the situational being analyzed
• Interactive sharing of knowledge between agents and end-users
Figure 10 – The Analyst Agent
This process includes Search Information Agents that mine through multiple sources to provide data/information to other
Intelligent Information Agents throughout the ISHM processing environment. This is called the Federated Search, shown in
Figure 11 (Crowder, 2006).
PRESENTATION Data Steward End User
Knowledge Natural Language Query
Meta Data Meta Data

DATA
ADVISOR
STEWARD
- Technical - Ontology
- Logical Model - Lexicon
AGENT - Meta-Model - User Profile
- Quality
- Infrastructure Wrapper Wrapper
Structured Semi & Unstructured

Databases Data
Data Warehouse
SOURCE Subject
Matter
Expert
Legacy Systems Hidden Web Page
Figure 11 – Federated Search within ISHM

Notice that this process includes utilizing Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to provide initial information to ISHM. The
system cannot just spontaneously generate initial knowledge, it must be fed information to learn from (not just train as in
traditional neural network systems, but learn the information). This includes a learning based question and answer
processing architecture that allows the ISHM processing environment to ask questions, based on contextual understanding of
the information it is processing, and extract answers, either from its own inference engines, its own memories, other
1338
information contained in its storage systems, or outside information from other information sources, or SMEs. This process
is illustrated in Figure 12 (Crowder, 2004).
This allows the modern ISHM architecture to comprise a host of functional capabilities:
1. Sensing and data acquisition

2. Signal processing, conditioning and health assessment Diagnostics and prognostics
3. Decision reasoning
In addition, an intelligent Human System Interface (HSI) is required to provide the user with relevant, context-sensitive
information about system condition. Utilizing the Intelligent Information Agent Architecture described here, an ISHM could
provide a complete range of functionality from data collection through recommendations for specific actions. The key
functions that an I2A ISHM system could facilitate include:
1. Sensing and data acquisition (Data Steward Agents)

2. Signal Processing and feature extraction (Reasoner Agents)
3. Production of alarms or alerts (Advisor Agents)
4. Failure or fault diagnosis and health assessment (Analyst Agents)
5. Prognostics: projection of health profiles to future health or estimation of RUL (remaining useful life) (Analyst and
Advisor Agents)
6. Decision reasoning: recommendations or evaluation of asset readiness for a particular operational scenario (Advisor
Agents)
7. Management and control of data flows and/or test sequences (Data Steward Agents)
8. Management of historical data storage and historical data access (Data Steward Agents)
9. System configuration management (Data Steward Agents)
10. Human System Interface (Interface Agents – Advisor Agents)
The use of Intelligent Information Agents allows both granular approaches (individual agents implementing individual
functions) and integrated approaches (individual agents collaborating together to integrate a number of functions). The
ISHM architecture would take into account data flow requirements to control flexibility and performance across the ISHM
system. This allows the I2A ISHM system to support the full range of data flow requirements through both real-time and
event-based data reporting and processing. Time-based reporting is further categorized as periodic or aperiodic. The event-
based reporting and processing is based upon the occurrence of events (e.g., exceeding limits, state changes, etc.).
QUESTION
Rules
QUESTION
Semantically parse the question to determine the
type of answer and the type of information
ANALYSIS required. Correct ambiguities, vagueness,
Keywords/phrases … spelling and externally validate if appropriate.
INFORMATION Extract information using a focused search of

structured, semi-structured and unstructured
EXTRACTION sources.
Data & Information
SEMANTIC Parse the source information, tag entities (topics)
ANALYSIS and extract the answer (associations)
Candidate Solutions
ANSWER Fuse information fragments to form an answer
PROOFS and test the information fit.
ANSWER
Figure 12 – Question and Answer Architecture for ISHM
THE DIALECTIC ARGUMENT SEARCH

The Dialectic Search uses the Toulmin Argument Structure to find and relate information that develops a larger
argument, or intelligence lead. The Dialectic Search Argument (DSA), illustrated in Figure 13, serves two distinct purposes.
First, it provides an effective basis for mimicking human reason. Second, it provides a means to glean relevant information
from the Topic Map and transform it into actionable intelligence (practical knowledge.) These two purposes work together to
provide an intelligent system that captures the capability of the ISHM operator to sort through diverse information and find
clues (Crowder, 2003).
Figure 15 illustrates a possible Intelligent Software Agent Architecture that could be used to implement the DAS: three
different agents, the Coordinator, the DAS and the Search, work together, each having its own learning objectives.
1339
Figure 13 – The Dialectic Argument Structure
Figure 14 – The Intelligent DAS Software Agency
CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

The inter-agent communication allows shared awareness, which in turn, enables faster operations and more effective
information analysis and transfer, providing users with an enhanced visualization of overall constellation and situational
awareness across an ISHM infrastructure. The Intelligent Agent-based ISHM can deal with massive amounts of information
to levels of accuracy, timeliness, and quality never before possible. The Data Steward Agents will support growing volumes
of data and allow applications that deal with object-oriented technologies to achieve the goals of awareness, flexibility, and
agility. The flexible, learning, adapting Intelligent Software Agents of the ISHM system can adapt, collaborate, and provide
the increased flexibility required in a growing, changing environment.
REFERENCES
1. Crowder, J. A. “Intelligent Information Agents for Autonomous Condition Based System Health Management.” AFRL
Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM) Conference, August 2006.
2. Crowder, J. A. “Intelligent Information Architectures for Integrated System Health Management.” Raytheon GPS OCX
PRDA Tech Report_CDRL (2007)
3. Crowder, J. A., “Cognitive Systems for Data Fusion.” Presented at the 2005 PSTN Processing Technology Conference,
Ft. Wayne, Indiana (October, 2005).
4. Crowder, J. A., “Derivation of Fuzzy Classification Rules from Multidimensional Data,” NSA Technical Paper- CON-
SP-0014-2002-07 (May, 2002).
5. Crowder, J. A., “Intelligence Fusion Techniques Applied to Data Integration.” NSA Technical Paper – CON-SP-0014-
2003-07 (August, 2003).
6. Crowder, J. A., “Intelligent Agents for Integrated System Health Management: Modern Diagnostic and Prognostic
Techniques.” Air Force 3rd Annual Integrated Health Management Systems Conference, Cincinnati, OH (August, 2006).
7. Crowder, J. A., “Machine Learning: Intuition (Concept Learning) in Hybrid Neural Systems,” NSA Technical Paper-
CON-SP-0014-2002-06 (March, 2002).
8. Crowder, J. A., “Modern Architectures for Integrated System Health Management: Intelligent Agent Architectures for
Sensor-to-Prognostics Information Integration.” Air Force 3rd Annual Integrated Health Management Systems
Conference, Cincinnati, OH (August, 2006).
9. Crowder, J. A., “Multi-Sensor Fusion Utilizing Dynamic Entropy and Fuzzy Systems.” Presented at the 2004 PSTN
Processing Technology Conference, Tucson, Arizona (Sept. 2004).
10. Crowder, J. A., “Temporal Difference Learning with Fuzzy Cognitive Maps.” NSA Technical Paper – CON-SP-0014-
2003-04 (March, 2003).
1340
Integration of Structural Health Monitoring
and Fatigue Damage Prognosis
Y. LING and S. MAHADEVAN
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a probabilistic methodology for model-based fatigue

damage prognosis, which also incorporates information from structural health
monitoring. This method adopts fracture mechanics-based fatigue crack growth
modeling in the predictive prognosis, along with quantification of various sources
of uncertainty, such as natural variability, data uncertainty, and model errors. Real-
time monitoring data of external variable amplitude loading history is used to
construct an adaptive autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model to
predict future loading. A continuous Bayesian updating approach is used to adjust
the ARIMA model in accordance with the real-time data. The on-ground crack
inspection data on single component or fleet of components is used to quantify the
uncertainty in the initial and current size of an existing crack. Bayes’ theorem is
applied to infer the probability distribution of initial crack size using the inspection
results on fleet of components. The cycle-by-cycle simulation of fatigue crack
growth is expedited via the use of a surrogate modeling technique (Gaussian
process model) to replace computationally expensive finite element analysis. A
numerical example, surface cracking in cylindrical components under service
loading, is carried out to illustrate the proposed method.
1 INTRODUCTION
The emerging techniques in both the areas of structural health monitoring (SHM)
and fatigue damage prognosis (FDP) provide a promising future for accurately
estimating the remaining useful life (RUL) of aging aerospace mechanical
components. A robust FDP relies on knowledge of the current status of components
and service environment monitored by SHM system, and hence integration of the
technologies in FDP and SHM is desired [1].
The sensor-monitored data of external loading applied on mechanical
components can be used to characterize and predict loading for fatigue damage
prognosis. The authors of this paper have developed an ARMA modeling method to
account for various uncertainty sources in service loading and developed a
Bayesian approach to update ARMA model with real-time monitoring data [2]. On-
ground inspection for aerospace mechanical components uses NDI techniques
_____________
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Vanderbilt University, TN 37235
Telephone: (615)322-3040. Email: sankaran.mahadevan@vanderbilt.edu
1341
includes crack detection and size measurement. Different techniques using crack
size measurement (CSM) data to infer the probability distribution of equivalent
initial flaw size (EIFS), have been developed in [3,4,5]. The authors have developed
a Bayesian approach to estimate the EIFS based on different types of inspection
results under multiple sources of uncertainty [6].
In the area of FDP, due to the stochastic nature of fatigue crack growth, a
probabilistic prognosis method is desired. Studies have been conducted on
probabilistic damage prognosis accounting for physical variability [1,7,8]. In a
recent paper, we have developed a detailed uncertainty quantification approach for
fatigue crack growth modeling that includes physical variability, data uncertainty
and model uncertainty [9].
The purpose of this paper is to develop a probabilistic methodology to integrate
SHM results into a fracture mechanics-based fatigue damage prognosis (FDP) for
aerospace mechanical components in a fleet, accounting for various sources of
uncertainty and errors. Two types of SHM data - real-time load monitoring data and
on-ground crack inspection data - are considered, and the uncertainty due to the
monitoring techniques is investigated in Section 2. In Section 3, crack growth
prognosis for mechanical components with realistic geometry and subjected to
multi-axial variable amplitude loading is presented, with a focus on uncertainty
quantification, including physical variability in loading and material properties, data
uncertainty due to the use of measurement data, and the model uncertainty and
errors due to the use of various models in prognosis. Section 4 proposes a
framework to integrate SHM data with FDP, and is applied to both individual
components and a fleet of components. Strategies of FDP for components with
different monitoring status are proposed. A numerical example is presented in
Section 5.
2 STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING UNDER UNCERTAINTY
2.1 Real-time Load Monitoring
The external loading applied on aerospace components is an important input to

fatigue damage prognosis. Operational Loads Monitoring (OLM), which is part of a
Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS), is implemented using two types of
techniques, namely flight parameters-based loads monitoring and strain gauge-
based loads monitoring [10]. Variations and errors are introduced since both
techniques involve measurement activity and the projection from raw data to a well-
defined loading history. Hence, the use of the loading sequence data from OLM in
fatigue damage prognosis becomes a source of uncertainty, which is classified as
data uncertainty in Section 3.2.
2.2 On-ground Crack Inspection
On-ground damage inspection is a critical aspect of mechanical components

maintenance, and non-destructive inspection (NDI) techniques have been developed
and applied to mechanical systems. Several probabilistic metrics have been
developed to evaluate the performance of NDI, including probability of detection
1342
(POD), flaw size measurement accuracy, and false call probability (FCP) [11]. In
the context of fatigue crack growth prognosis, FCP is not considered in this paper
since it is assumed that cracks exist in all the components inspected.
3 FATIGUE DAMAGE PROGNOSIS UNDER UNCERTAINTY
3.1 Fatigue Crack Growth Simulation under Multi-axial Variable Amplitude

Loading
A modified Paris’ law [12] is used in this paper only for the purpose of
illustration, and a Wheeler’s retardation model [13] is incorporated to account for
the crack growth retardation effect due to the existence of overloads in a variable
amplitude loading history
(1)
where is the crack growth rate; is the retardation parameter; is the

stress intensity factor (SIF), and is the threshold SIF.
The concept of an equivalent initial flaw size (EIFS) was proposed to bypass
short crack growth analysis and make direct use of a long crack growth law for
fatigue life prediction [14]. Liu and Mahadevan [15] related EIFS a0 to material
properties and component geometry, and derived the relationship
(2)
where is the fatigue limit; is the geometry correction factor.

In the case of multi-axial loading, a characteristic plane method [16] is adopted
to combine the mode-I mode-II and mode-III SIFs into a single equivalent SIF. To
reduce the computation cost and render the uncertainty quantification analysis
possible, an efficient surrogate modeling technique, namely GP interpolation, is
used to replace FEA in the cyclic crack growth simulation. GP interpolation is
favored because of its non-parametric feature and the ability to quantify the
uncertainty associated with its prediction [17]. The procedure of constructing a GP
model for the calculation of the SIF has been summarized in [5].
3.2 Uncertainty Quantification in Fatigue Crack Growth Simulation
The sources of uncertainty can be classified into three different types - physical
variability, data uncertainty and model uncertainty - as discussed below.
Physical or natural variability The external loading applied on aircraft
mechanical components in service condition is inherently stochastic. To represent
this randomness, ARIMA models with a Gaussian random noise term is used.
Fatigue limit and threshold stress intensity factor, two material parameters that are
1343
used to derive the prior estimation of EIFS, are treated as random variables to
account for the natural variability in material properties.
Data uncertainty The uncertainty associated with loading data includes the
measurement noise and the error due to projecting raw data to a full loading
sequence in OLM. To account for this uncertainty, the coefficients of ARIMA
models estimated from this data are assumed as random variables. The uncertainty
in crack inspection data includes crack detection and measurement uncertainty due
to the use of NDI techniques.
Model uncertainty and errors Model uncertainty comes from two sources:
model form, and solution approximations. Model form uncertainty due to the use of
the modified Paris law can be represented through random parameters, and a
multiplicative lognormal random error term with unit mean. The model form
uncertainty due to the use of ARIMA models is addressed using a probabilistic
model averaging method. Finite element discretization error is quantified using the
Richardson extrapolation (RE) method [18]. In this paper, the role of FEA is to
provide training data for the GP surrogate model. The uncertainty due to the use of
a GP model is reflected in the variance term.
4 INTEGRATION OF STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING AND

PROGNOSIS
4.1 Characterization and Prediction of Loading using Real-time Monitoring

Data
An ARIMA model with order (p, d, q) is defined by summing (or ”integrating”)

an ARMA(p, q) process d times [19]. ARMA model expresses the current state Yt
as a linear combination of the states at the past time instants. To account for the
natural variability in loading and the uncertainty due to the use of sensor data, the
coefficients of the ARMA model are assumed as random variables. To address the
uncertainty due to the selection of ARIMA models, a probabilistic weighting
average method [20] can be used to combine several competing models. The
probability density function of the joint model output at time t is
.
A Bayesian method has been proposed to estimate the probability distributions
of the coefficients and weights of ARIMA model using existing data, and to update
the current estimations while new data is available [2]. The Bayesian updating can
be conducted repetitively with real-time load monitoring data. The updated model
can then represent the pattern of the latest data without losing information contained
in the previous data sets.
4.2 Inference of EIFS using Crack Inspection Data
Eq. 2 gives an estimation of EIFS considering two material properties (the

threshold SIF and the fatigue limit) and the geometry of component. However, the
accuracy of Eq. 2 for components with variable amplitude loading and realistic
geometry is not clear so far. Thus, we consider the probability distribution of EIFS
estimated from Eq. 2 as a prior and then update this distribution using Bayes’
1344
theorem and crack inspection data. Three possible outcomes of crack inspection are
considered: (1) no crack is detected; (2) crack is detected but the size is not
measured; (3) crack is detected and the size is measured.
4.3 Strategy of Prognosis for Components in a Fleet
For a fleet of aerospace mechanical components in service, an ideal case will be

to conduct structural health monitoring for each component, followed by individual
prognosis. However, due to budget or technical limitations, load monitoring data
and crack inspection data may or may not be available for every component in the
fleet. Four scenarios of prognosis can be classified based on the availability of
monitoring data as shown below.
Scenario 1: Prognosis for components with OLM and CSM
This is the best situation where prognosis is tied to the individual component.
The future loading can be predicted using the Bayesian ARIMA model presented in
Section 4.1, and the initial values of the ARIMA model are the latest recorded
loading amplitudes. Before crack inspection, the prognosis starts from the EIFS
with the prior probability distribution derived from Eq. 2. After the crack inspection,
the prognosis of future crack growth starts from the current crack size, which can be
estimated based on the measured crack size and the size measurement uncertainty.
Scenario 2: Prognosis for components without OLM but with CSM
For components without loading monitored, future loading predictions are
generated with random initial values using the ARIMA model estimated in Scenario
1. The extra uncertainty due to the random initial value will require more Monte
Carlo simulations for prognosis than in Scenario 1. The use of the prior EIFS
distribution before inspection and the estimation of the current crack size based on
measured crack size is the same as in Scenario 1.
Scenario 3: Prognosis for components with OLM but without CSM
In this case, the prediction for future loading is the same as in Scenario 1. The
use of the prior EIFS distribution before inspections is the same as in Scenario 1.
However, after inspections, since the crack size is not measured, crack growth
simulation based on updated EIFS is used to infer the probability distribution of
current crack size. Note that this procedure also applies to (i) components without
any crack inspection and (ii) components with crack detection but without size
measurement. The updated probability distribution of EIFS is obtained using crack
inspection data via the Bayesian approach as presented in Section 4.2.
Scenario 4: Prognosis for components with no OLM or CSM
This is the worst case, where no load monitoring data or inspection data are
available for an individual component. In such a situation, the prognosis for such a
component has to be based on data obtained on other components. In this case, the
prediction for future loading is the same as in Scenario 2. The use of the prior EIFS
distribution before inspections is the same as in Scenario 1, and the estimation of
the current crack sizes is the same as in Scenario 3.
5 NUMERICAL EXAMPLE
1345
A twtwoo-rraaddiiuuss ho
holllo ow cy cyllinnd
ndrriccaall cocommpoonneenntt su
mp subbjececteed d ttoo be
bennddiinngg an andd totorrssioon iiss
connsiiddeerreedd.. Assuume
co me th thaatt th thee crcraacckk ininssppeeccttioonn iss fo forr a po possiibbllee el elliipptticcal su surrffaaccee
craacckk in
cr in thhehe fiilleett ra
rad diuuus re reggiioonn. N Noom m naallllyy idde
min denntiiccaall sp
speeccim meennsn of th thee cy cyllinnd
ndrriccaall
com
co mp
mpoonne nennt ma mayy be us u ed inn a fl fleeeett. Ou
Ourr inntteerreesst is is in cr c ack gr groow
wtthh pr prooggn no
nossiss fo forr
inddiivvidu
in duaal co com mpoone
mp nenntts uunnde der th thee four u scsceennaarriiooss dis
d sccuussseedd inin sectiioonn 4. 4 3,3 by by mamakkiinngg
usee ooff thhe
us he lo loaadd momon niittoorrinng an andd cr c ac
a k iinnssppeeccttioon ddaattaa. IIt iss asssuum medd thha
me hat 20 20
com
co mp
mpoonne nennts in in ththee flfleeeet aree mo monnitn toorreed
d. R Reeaall--tiim
me lo
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som
so me
me of of th thee cocom m
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nenntts, an andd cr c ack in n ppeecctiioonns arree con
ns ondduucctteedd fo forr sosom me of
me of th thee
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10,,000000 cycycclleess of ooppeerraattioonn.n
Fouurr di
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me forr thehe 20 20 in inssppeecctteedd
com
co mp
mpoonne nennts an andd ootthheerr ccoom mpoonneennttss inn th
mp thee ffleeeett wi
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as didissccuusssseedd
in Se
in Seccttiioonn 4.
4.33. C Coom mpoonne
mp nennt nu num mbeerrs 10,
mb 0 14 an andd 12 ar are seleecctteedd as as ex exaammp
mplleess of of
Sceen
Sc nariiooss 1,
na 1, 2 annndd 3, 3 re ressppeeccttivve
velyy. Th The pr prooggngnoossis in in SScceen naarriioo 4 is fo forr ccoom mp
mpoonneennttss
w th
wit hoouut
u an anyy crcraacckk ininssppeeccttioonn or o loloaadd momonniitori o inngg, anandd hehen nccee is is no
nott asssoocciiaatteedd witthh
anyy of tthhee 20
an 20 in inssppeecctteedd cocom mpoonne
mp n nntss.. PrProoggnnoosttiicc re r suuulttss fo
for al alll fo
fouurr scceennanariiooss ar aree
shoow
sh wn in
wn in FiF gs
g . 1(1(aa))-(d d)).. Itt ca
cann be be oobbsseerrvveedd fr froomm ththee rreessuultss th thaat th
thee ununcceerrttaainntyy in in
thee pr
th prooggnnoossiiss of
of tthhee fofouurr sscceenna
nariiooss de deccrreeaasseess siggnniifficaanntllyy afafterr ininssppeeccttioonn.
n Am Amoon ongg
thee fo
th fouurr scsceennari
a iooss, ununcceerrtaaiinnttyy inn ththee prprooggnnoosiiss of of ScSceennaarrio 1 is is thhe smsma
mallleestt wh whil
h lee
thee pr
th prooggnnoossiiss of
of Scen enaarrioo 4 ha hass th thee laarrggeesstt scatt
a teerr, as
as exexp peecctteedd. ThThiis in inddiiccaatteess tthhaatt
thee looaad m
th moonnittoorrinng
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nd onn for an an in inddiivviddu
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he pr
prooggno nossis foforr tthhiiss co
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mp
(a)
(a ((bb)
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Figguuree 1: Re
Fi Ressuultts ffoor thhee foouurr sc
sceennaariiooss ooff pr
pro
oggnnoosiss
1346
6 CONCLUSION
This paper developed a probabilistic framework to integrate fatigue damage

prognosis (FDP) of mechanical components with structural health monitoring
(SHM) data, accounting for various sources of uncertainty and error. Efficient crack
growth analysis for components with realistic geometry and multi-axial variable
amplitude loading is presented using a GP surrogate model. The concept of EIFS is
used to bypass micro-crack growth analysis. The uncertainty and errors related to
the prognosis are classified into three categories: physical variability, data
uncertainty and model uncertainty/errors.
The real-time load monitoring data are used to characterize and predict loading
sequence using the ARIMA modeling method and a Bayesian approach. The crack
inspection data is used to update the distribution of EIFS used in crack growth
calculation. According to the availability of the real-time load monitoring data and
on-ground crack inspection data, four different scenarios of prognosis are
considered for a fleet of components, and appropriate strategies are developed for
each scenario.
The overall methodology facilitates a more informative and robust estimation of
remaining useful life for mechanical components. Two features - the use of a
surrogate model to significantly reduce the computational effort, and the
quantification of uncertainty and confidence in prognosis - make it possible to
explore online health assessment and decision making under uncertainty during a
mission, regarding flight maneuvers based on the current state of health of the
aircraft. The proposed framework was illustrated with linear elastic fracture
mechanics-based crack growth prognosis, assuming planar crack growth. Future
efforts may incorporate advanced material models and crack growth models that
consider plastic deformation, and more realistic 3-D non-planar crack growth.
Future efforts may also investigate risk management decision-making based on the
integration of diagnosis and prognosis.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research reported in this paper is supported in part by the NASA

ARMD/AvSP IVHM project under NRA Award NNX09AY54A (Project Monitor:
Dr. K. Goebel, NASA AMES Research Center) through subcontract to Clarkson
University (No. 375-32531, Principal Investigator: Dr. Y. Liu), and by the Federal
Aviation Administration William J. Hughes Technical Center through RCDT
Project No. DTFACT-06-R-BAAVAN1 (Project Monitors: Dr. John Bakuckas, Ms.
Traci Stadtmueller). The support is gratefully acknowledged. The authors also
thank Shankar Sankararaman and Christopher Shantz at Vanderbilt University,
respectively for valuable discussions and finite element modeling.
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1347
2. Y. Ling, C. Shantz, S. Mahadevan, S. Sankararaman, Stochastic prediction of fatigue
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1348
Wavelet-Based SVM System for Evaluation
of Wear States and Remaining Life Time
M.-S. SAADAWIA, G. LI and D. SÖFFKER
ABSTRACT
An approach for developing a fault diagnosis and prognosis system to support

condition-based maintenance of wear parts is presented. The system is used as a
prewarning module to detect the necessity for replacing wear parts of production
machines and to evaluate the remaining life time of the supervised part. The
system is based on a support vector machine as a signal-based classification
technique and as a feature fusion tool. Relevant features are extracted using
wavelet transform techniques with the aid of wavelet energy and entropy
measures. A new approach for feature-based resampling is presented based on a
multi-level wavelet decomposition. Measurements were processed to select the
most reliable combination of characteristics to depend on. A related change index
is proposed based on the decision value of the SVM to evaluate the remaining life
time.
INTRODUCTION
In practice machines and mechanical systems do not break down or fail

without any kind of warning, which is indicated by system or process specific
features, for example, by an increased vibration level, increased hydraulic pressure,
decreased displacement, or combinations of all these phenomena. On the other
hand, the complexity and the high dimensionality of measured signals require
reliable, efficient, fast, and less demanding methods, which can be easily validated,
to detect and to distinguish faults by measured symptoms. The use of signal-based
approaches in machine learning has been providing comparatively good
performance without the need for complex modeling task necessary for model-
based approaches.
In this work, production machine parameters are investigated to design a fault
detection and prediction system based on Support Vector Machine techniques
(SVM) [1] and Wavelets [2] to detect and predict failures usually leading to full
loss of functionality. Wear parts failure should be detected before scuffing or
seizing lead to serious failure of the machine. The proposed system uses SVM for
classification and feature fusion. Wavelet transformation techniques are used for
__________
Chair of Dynamics and Control, University of Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg, Lotharstr. 1-21,
47057 Duisburg, Germany.
1349
feature extraction. A new method for feature based resampling is presented. The
parameters of the machine operation are investigated to find the most reliable
features for the detection system. Alternative combinations of fusing sensors are
taken into consideration to define a complementary sensor array for better
accuracy. An indication of the remaining life of the material is also required.
DESCRIPTION OF INPUT DATA
Vibration measurements are widely used in monitoring to support machinery

maintenance decisions. The velocity of vibration is a crucial parameter to measure
medium frequencies (until about 1 kHz), where the failure mode is fatigue and
wear out of surfaces. On the other hand, acceleration signals are more relevant in
extracting transient, process-related, or impulse-like incidents, where the localized
high frequencies are dominating for short times. The time series data provided by
the machine sensors (Figure 1) includes vibration velocity (V) and vibration
acceleration (A) signals in addition to the system hydraulic pressure (P) and the
displacement of the piston of the monitored parts (D). Combining system hydraulic
pressure and piston displacement provides implicit information about the friction
and hence the tribological condition of the parts surfaces. The time series vectors
of the sensory data comprise the process cycles. A complete cycle of the machine
(Figure 2) comprises the process which is represented by actions of moving
cylinders with different characteristics and a periodic nature of the signals.
WAVELET-BASED FEATURE EXTRACTION
In wavelet analysis, signals are decomposed into wavelets of varying durations.

These wavelets represent, as an example, localized vibrations of a sound signal or
localized variations of image details. Wavelets are used in a wide variety of signal
processing tasks such as compression, removing noise, or enhancing recorded
sound or image in various ways. Wavelets-based approaches are widely used in
classification and recognition tasks as feature extraction tools. The performance of
the wavelets is proved to be more flexible than other usual approaches such as
STFT transform, where the size of the analysis window is restricted for all
frequencies [3].
Figure 1. Raw data sample. Figure 2. Machine operation cycle.
1350
S
A A1 D1
Lowpass
Signal
Filters
A2 D2
D
Highpass
A3 D3
S1 S2 S3 S4
Figure 3a: Discrete wavelet Figure 3b: Wavelet Figure 3c: Wavelet packet transform.
transform. decomposition tree.
Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT)

Wavelet analysis is characterized with scales as function of frequencies and
positions as function of time. It is also often characterized with approximations and
details. Approximations (A in Figure 3a) are the high-scale, low-frequency
components of the signal, whereas details (D in Figure 3a) are the low-scale, high-
frequency ones. Basically, the original signal is transformed into two sub-signals
by two complementary filters (Figure 3a). This process is iterated in the discrete
wavelet analysis for successive approximations to form the wavelet decomposition
tree (Figure 3b). In the reconstruction process the original signal is rebuilt by using
the sub-signals (selectively in case of denoising) without loss of information.
Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT) / Entropy and Energy measures
In the wavelet packet analysis (Figure 3c) the approximations as well as the
details of the signal are successively decomposed into sub-signals. This leads to
more possible decompositions and accordingly more possible representations of
the original signal; however the amount of information and the component
selection process for reconstruction require more efficient techniques than those
used for discrete wavelet transform. Entropy and energy approaches are used in
combination with WPT. Energy can be used as a measure of the strength of a
signal and equals to the sum of square of the signal magnitude, whereas entropy of
the signal is a measure of randomness and uncertainty and used to describe the
complexity of the system.
LEARNING USING SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE
Since early applications in fault diagnosis, SVM has been showing better
results compared to other capable techniques such as neural networks and model-
based reasoning. The method is introduced by Cortes and Vapnik [4] based on
statistical learning theory and considered as one of the best techniques used in the
field of pattern recognition.
Mathematical Description
The learning problem setting of SVM [1] is to find the unknown nonlinear
dependency mapping between some high dimensional input vector x and scalar
output y. The solution of SVM problems comprises minimizing the cost function:
l
1
J = W TW + C∑ξi ,
2 i =1
1351
with respect to y i (W T Φ ( xi ) + b) ≥ 1 − ξ i ,
and ξi ≥ 0 ,
where W represents the coefficient vector of the separating hyperplane, C

represents a penalty parameter, ξi denotes a slack variable associated with xi ,
where the number of the data points is l , b represents the bias term of the
separating hyperplane, and Φ denotes a mapping function. Kernel functions of
SVM are used to map the input data from the input space into a higher dimensional
feature space (Figure 4b), where the maximum margin separating hyperplane is
constructed. A decision function D(x) is used to classify the unknown data points
according to the position and distance from the separating hyperplane. The
decision function value is coinciding with the distance from the separating
hyperplane and used as follows: The unknown data point x is classified into
Class 1 if D( x) > 0 ; and into Class 2 if D( x) < 0 . The region x 1 > D( x) > −1 ,
is the generalization region of the classifier.
Advantages of SVM
The concept of the maximum margin in the process of selecting the separating
hyperplane in SVM is the reason for better generalization abilities of the
classification models. The Support Vector Machine is trained to maximize the
margin, thus the generalization ability is better under conditions such as scarce
training data. Additionally, the feature space of SVM is considered as a tool to
realize a complimentary sensor array [5] for feature fusion, where a combination of
signals provides better information of the problem and therefore better accuracy
than individual signals.
IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS
In order to apply a successful classification process, the data must be prepared

by careful transformation to extract the classification indicators [6]. Unimportant
and redundant information should be excluded to avoid deterioration of the
accuracy. Accordingly, the classification indicators containing the useful
information should be presented in a recognizable structure suitable for
classification, which is referred to features. The essential task of the fault detection
and quantification is to classify features into a number of classes.
Extraction of Cycles and direct application
The time series vectors of the sensory data (Figure 1) do not comply with the
cyclic nature of the considered machine. After cleaning off the redundant signals,
the signals should be structured so that transformed observations are as indicative
as possible of the system states in the classification. Extraction of the operation
cycles of the machine is a preliminary step for further extraction of features.
Furthermore, it is important for the purpose of study to divide this process into data
segments. The data segments comprise actions of moving cylinders, and these
actions have different importance, different shape, and accordingly, different
characteristics. Additionally, these actions can be treated independently. The
machine cycle is divided into 16 data segments (Figure 2), each data segment has
1352
similar characteristics in all cycles. All these data segments of the machine process
would give information about the behavior of the machine; however, some data
segments are more informative and have more classification indicators than others.
To recognize the segments which have more classification indicators, the training
data is used as time series sensor data to build a feature space where the points
with high separability of the training data are detected and recognized in the sensor
time series data, where the best candidate segments are specified. The data
segments 12-14 are found to be the best candidates to be considered.
Wavelet Packet Entropy and Wavelet Packet Energy
The extracted cycle segments representing a cycle (signal S in Figure 3c) are
decomposed by WPT into different frequency bands using 6 depth Daubechies db4
wavelet. A group of sub-signals (AAA3 to DDD3 in Figure 3c) is generated
ranging from the low frequency to the high frequency bands. The different
combinations of A and D indicates the position of nodes. Each node represents a
certain degree of signal characteristics. The Shannon entropy and the total energy
of each band signal are calculated (Figure 5).
Changing the state of a machine has usually an influence on the signals on
some frequency bands which is indicated by the measurable changed complexity
and energy of the frequency bands. The wavelet packet entropy or energy values
on different frequency bands construct the feature vector, which reflects the
information distribution of signals in frequency bands and used as the input vector
to the SVM.
Since one sub-signal corresponds to one entropy value or energy value, the
advantage of combining WPT and entropy or energy measures is to have the
length of the feature vector decoupled from the length of the original cycle. This
means that different lengths of input cycles give constant structure of the feature
vector. On the other hand, since one sub-signal corresponds to one entropy or
energy value, the feature vector contains only the information on frequency bands,
i.e. these two methods only focus on describing the change in frequency domain.
For example, it could happen that two signals do not have the same form but the
same entropy or energy values. In order to solve this problem, a method named
"feature-based resampling" is proposed.
Signal
Input data of SVM

[S1....S8] Energy or
WPT [E1.....E8] or
shannon entropy
[H1.....H8]
Figure 4: Support vector machine Figure 5: The WPT energy and entropy.
(Feature space).
1353
Figure 6: Signal reconstruction in DWT.
300
200
Features
100
Value Position
0
matrix matrix
Vib. Acc
-100
-200
-300
-400
Time
Figure 7: Cycles with different lengths. Figure 8: Signal resampling.
Feature-based Resampling Method

As in case of WPT, the length of the decomposed signals of the discrete
wavelet transform (DWT) is related to the length of the original signal. In Figure 7
an example of the measured data set of vibration acceleration is presented. It shows
a general condition that the real measured signals are usually in different lengths.
This means different lengths of feature vectors leading to difficulties in
constructing the input matrix of the SVM algorithm. In the direct application of
extracted segments and the WPT, this problem is solved by the zero padding and
the entropy and energy measures, which leads to either deterioration of the
generalization and robustness of the solution or loss of system information
required for the classification.
In order to normalize the lengths of the cycle segments, a feature-based
resampling is proposed, which requires detection of the reliable features in the
signal. It can be seen from Figure 7 that the signals with different lengths have
similar characteristics and type features. Because of the noise and disturbances, it
is sometimes difficult to detect the features in the original signal. As the noise and
disturbance are random, selective reconstruction of sub-signals in DWT can be
applied to denoise the signal and detect the reliable features for resampling.
Another possibility is to detect these features in the reconstructed signal from the
selected components (Figure 6) and divide them into segments (6 segments in
Figure 6 and Figure 8) and considered as the keys for the process of resampling
(Figure 8). On the other hand, resampling changes the time domain of the signal,
i.e. the information of time domain is disturbed. To solve this problem, the original
positions of the discrete points in the reconstructed signal are stored in a matrix
added to the input matrix of the SVM. Three level Daubechies db4 wavelet is used
in the DWT decomposition.
1354
TABLE I. CLASSIFICATION RESULTS
Signal Direct application WPT-Entropy WPT-Energy Feature-based Res.
A 94.54 % 94.42 % 95.75 % 94.35 %
P 91.56 % 83.89 % 89.05 % 97.50 %
V 96.96 % 94.67 % 94.65 % 96.79 %
D 93.66 % 88.78 % 92.89 % 95.17 %
A-P 95.53 % 92.68 % 93.64 % 94.67 %
A-V 97.36 % 93.17 % 90.15 % 96.42 %
A-D 96.06 % 92.26 % 94.48 % 94.85 %
P-V 97.14 % 93.23 % 93.32 % 96.80 %
P-D 95.41 % 89.51 % 91.68 % 98.56 %
V-D 97.34 % 92.78 % 95.17 % 97.11 %
A-P-V 97.44 % 93.44 % 90.15 % 96.87 %
A-P-D 96.23 % 92.18 % 92.96 % 94.95 %
A-V-D 97.67 % 93.02 % 94.29 % 97.00 %
P-V-D 97.44 % 92.82 % 95.24 % 97.02 %
A-P-V-D 97.76 % 94.53 % 95.48 % 97.32 %
Classification and Results

Two classes are defined to train the SVM classifier; the first one is the state
before material change (old part), and the second is the state after material change
(new part). A training data of 200 cycles, 100 cycles each class, were taken
randomly from 4 places of the data. A linear kernel is considered because of the
high number of attributes. The test set has a size 15874 cycles. The algorithm of
Libsvm [7] is used for training and classification.
The classification results of the possible combinations of the DWT sub-signals
for the machine parameters are presented in Table II. The results are with and
without consideration of the positions after resampling. The accuracy of
classification is improved by considering the position information. It can also be
seen that the optimal level for classification is different from machine parameter to
another.
The classification results of the four approaches discussed above are presented
in Table I. The results of the direct application are put only for comparison because
of the lack in the solution flexibility which results from the zero padding. In
general, it can be seen that results of the feature-based resampling are better than
those of entropy and energy WPT. Additionally, the highest combination accuracy
(PD: 98.56%) is achieved by using the feature-based resampling approach.
An example of the decision value function of the SVM for the sensor
combinations (APVD, direct application) is shown in Figure 9. It is an indication
of how much a cycle’s information contributes to a class. Indeed it is a measure of
Figure 9: Decision value function. Figure 10: Extended decision value and smoothing.
1355
TABLE II. CLASSIFICATION RESULTS OF DWT COMPONENTS
Signal Combination Without With Signal Combination Without With
position position position position
A A3 83.77% 83.85% V A3 94.00% 94.01%
A3+D3 87.63% 87.75% A3+D3 94.25% 94.27%
A3+D3+D2 90.31% 90.39% A3+D3+D2 94.37% 94.38%
A3+D3+D2 90.67% 90.70% A3+D3+D2 94.39% 94.48%
+D1 +D1
P A3 92.33% 93.15% D A3 93.97% 95.17%
A3+D3 94.10% 94.21% A3+D3 92.72% 93.03%
A3+D3+D2 93.48% 93.81% A3+D2 91.57% 91.78%
A3+D3+D1 92.93% 93.31% A3+D1 91.95% 92.20%
how far a point (cycle) from the separating hyperplane. The running-in period of
the new material is recognizable. A longer test set data of 241034 cycles is
considered in Figure 10, here the smoothed function is presented. Smoothing of the
function shows the increasing tendency for the average signal over time. Briefly
described, the two classes become closer over time. This gives an indication about
the remaining life time of the part at any time point of operation. Accordingly, a
related change index is proposed based on the decision value of the SVM to
evaluate the remaining life time.
CONCLUSION
An approach for developing a fault diagnosis and prognosis system to support

condition-based maintenance of wear parts is presented. The system is used as a
prewarning module to detect the necessity for replacing wear parts of production
machines and to evaluate the remaining life time of the supervised part. The
proposed system uses SVM classification as a signal-based diagnosis technique
and as a feature fusion tool. Alternative combinations of fusing sensors are taken
into consideration to define a complementary sensor array for better accuracy.
Relevant features are extracted using wavelet packet decomposition in
combination with energy and entropy measures and using discrete wavelet
transform as a base for a new method for feature-based resampling. Measurements
were processed to select the most reliable combination of characteristics to depend
on. By applying the proposed method of feature-based resampling a considerable
improvement in the accuracy and robustness of the solution is achieved.
REFERENCES
1. Abe, S.: Support vector machines for pattern classification. Springer Verlag, London, 2005.
2. Walker, J.: A primer on wavelets and their scientific applications. Chapman and Hall/CRC,
2008.
3. Canal, M.: Comparison of Wavelet and Short Time Fourier Transform Methods in the Analysis
of EMG Signals. J. of Med. Systems, 2010, 34:91–94.
4. C. Cortes and V. Vapnik, Support Vector Networks, AT & T Labs Research, 1995.
5. Guohua, G., Yongzhong, Z., Yu, Z., and Guanghuang, D.: Data fusion and multi-fault
classification based on support vector machines. The 9th Joint Conference on Information
Sciences, 2006.
6. Saadawia, M.; Söffker, D.: Application of Support Vector Machine for Evaluation of Wear
State and Remaining Life Time. Proc. 7th. EUROSIM Congress on Modelling and
Simulation, Prague, Czech Republic, 2010.
7. C.C. Chang and C.J. Lin, LIBSVM: a library for support vector machines, Software available at
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/cjlin/libsvm
1356
AUTHOR INDEX
Index Terms Links
Abedi, A. 2107
Achuthan, A. 2647
Adams, D. E. 1639
Adriaenssens, S. 1847
Afghah, F. 2107
Agianniotis, N. 1417
Aguilar, R. 2181
Akkerman, R. 1053
Aktan, E. A. 1045
Aldrin, J. C. 2452 2460
Alicea-Rodríguez, Á. J. 354
Aljoumaa, H. 290
Allen, C. 2231 2260 2276
Allin, J. 767
Allmer, H. 1325 1879
Al-Shrouf, L. 127 1309
Alves, M. 2181
Ambrozinski, L. 1119 2437
Amditis, A. 2165
Anagnostopoulos, P. 1417
Anaya, M. 1250
Anderlik, S. 1325
Anguiano, D. 2647
Antunes, P. J. 257
Argenna, G. 386
Arsenault, T. 2647
Aubert, H. 1519
Augustin, M. J. 479
Austin, E. 601
Avendaño-Valencia, L. D. 2611
Avitabile, P. 2637
Ayers, J. 997
Azarbayejani, M. 888
This page has been reformatted by Knovel to provide easier navigation.

Index Terms Links
Baccar, D. 1037
Bach, M. 1384
Bafleur, M. 471
Baines, A. G. 1907
Balter, J. 479
Banerjee, S. 167 421 733 1907
1915 1923 1969 2417
2468
Banks, C. 413 1863
Banshoya, H. 539
Bao, J. 509
Baptista, F. G. 1612
Baptista, M. A. 257
Baranwal, A. 1317
Barsoum, F. F. 856
Barszcz, T. 2603
Barthorpe, R. J. 1300
Beard, S. 421 733 1907 2468
Beardsley, R. 2223
Beck, J. L. 103
Beluch, T. 1519
Benassi, L. 3
Bennecer, A. 1504
Berg, J. 439
Berilla, J. 1732 2203
Bermak, A. 2268
Bernal, D. 880
Berthe, A. 955
Bertrand, R. 1384
Bertsch, N. 2165
Betti, R. 1855
Bimpas, M. 2165
Biswas, G. 1225
Blairon, S. 2671
Bockenheimer, C. 447
Boldyrev, G. G. 378
Boller, C. 1131 2359
Boonen, R. 971
Bordick, N. 266 1907

Index Terms Links
Botsev, Y. 479
Boukabache, H. 555
Boyle, C. 677
Brownjohn, J. M. W. 63
Budelmann, H. 1472
Buderath, M. 3
Butcher, E. A. 923
Butler, S. L. 266
Buynak, C. F. 2444 2452 2460
Caicedo, J. 661
Campo, M. 2075
Camps, F. 955
Cardenas, D. 2647
Carlomagno, G. M. 216
Carter, J. N. 783
Casciati, F. 2082
Casciati, S. 1535
Catbas, F. N. 831
Cawley, P. 767
Cegla, F. 767
Celaya, J. 1225
Çelebí, M. 516
Cerracchio, P. 578
Cesnik, C. E. S. 2529
Chakraborty, N. 249
Chang, C.-C. 2268
Chang, F.-K. 191 343 1139 1196
1283 1717 2417 2512
Chang, G. 733
Chang, K.-C. 1772
Chang, M. 2141
Charlot, S. 1519
Chen, B. 1756
Chen, C. 274
Chen, Q. 864
Chen, S.-E. 677
Chen, X. 1150
Chen, Z. 1535

Index Terms Links
Cheng, L. 79 95 2099
Cheng, M. H. 1165
Cheung, C. 1969
Chia, C. C. 651
Chiu, W. K. 493
Cho, C. 759
Cho, S. 2367
Chou, T.-W. 1969
Christenson, R. 807 1831
Christophe, D. 618
Christophe, P. 618
Chudzikiewicz, A. 1103
Chulick, P. 2115
Chung, H. 405 421 733 1907
Chung, T. T. 2367
Clement, A. 183
Clements, R. 1855
Coatney, M. 405
Coleman, K. 872
Comanici, M. I. 684
Conlon, S. C. 224
Cooper, J. 759
Coppotelli, G. 2647
Corder, A. 1855
Corréa De Faria, M. T. 742
Costiner, S. 266
Cranley, N. 2090
Cross, E. J. 63 87
Crowder, J. A. 1333
Croxford, A. J. 2067
Cuevas, E. 2485
Culshaw, B. 1504
Cycon, J. P. 11
da Silva, A. B. 593
da Silva, F. S. 593
da Silva, P. A. 432
Da Silva, S. 1196
Dan, D.-H. 1886

Index Terms Links
Dantele, A. 447
Daraio, C. 1424
Darr, D. 1855
Das, S. 343 1969
Davidson, J. 1543
Davies, J. 767
Davies, M. J. 1986
De Boer, A. 1053
De Miguel-Giraldo, C. 525
DeBrunner, V. 208
Del Grosso, A. 1871
Deraemaeker, A. 1070
Derriso, M. M. 1986 2429
DeSimio, M. P. 1899 1986
Dettmann, K.-U. 1037
Devore, C. 807
DeWolf, J. 1831
Di Scalea, F. L. 2521
Di Sciuva, M. 578 981
Dias, G. R. 257
Dilhac, J.-M. 471
Dixit, A. 899
Djinovic, Z. 447
Döhler, M. 748
Dollevoet, R. 815
Donadon, L. V. 742
Dong, L. 626
Dorvash, S. 2173
dos Santos, L. G. 19
Dotta, F. 593
Dragan, K. 2619
Dragomirescu, D. 955 1519
Druffner, C. 1587
Dugnani, R. 143
Dunn, C. T. 200 1807
Dürager, C. 2028
Dutton, M. G. 2195
Dvorak, M. 1595

Index Terms Links
Eckstein, B. 1384
Edge, H. 405
Ehrström, J. C. 586
Elizalde, H. 2647
Elkoun, S. 151
El-Osery, A. 601
Emami-Naeini, A. 963
Enomoto, K. 455
Escriba, C. 471 487 555
Fabbrocino, G. 135
Fallon, T. 1233
Faravelli, L. 1535
Farinholt, K. M. 2655
Farmer, J. 661 1631
Farrar, C. R. 501 725 1013 1683
2655
Fasl, J. 701
Fassois, S. D. 2611
Feng, M. Q. 2012
Ferdinand, P. 1449
Fernández, A. 1620
Fernandez-Lopez, A. 586
Ferreira, N. J. 257
Figueiredo, E. 725
Filho, J. V. 1612
Finda, J. 643
Finzi Neto, R. M. 2035
Firla, M. 2663
Fischer, D. 2629
Fletcher, D. 547
Flockhart, G. M. H. 1504
Flynn, E. B. 200 1839
Foote, P. 1391
Foucher, B. 1417
Fourniols, J.-Y. 471 487 555
Frank, K. 701

Index Terms Links
Frankenstein, B. 1948 2629

Fratta, D. O. 1580
Freudenthaler, B. 1325
Fritzen, C.-P. 1062 1188 1496 1656
2374 2576
Fujii, T. 799
Fujimoto, K. 2020
Fujino, Y. 1368
Fujiwara, T. 2012
Fustos, R. 661
Gagar, D. 1391
Gage, J. R. 1580
Galea, S. 1978
Gali, S. 479
Gallina, A. 2437
Gallo, C. A. 2035
Gallo, G. J. 1969
Gandra, P. 2181
Gangone, M. V. 692
Gao, D. 233
Gao, L. 1969
García, C. E. 1620
Garcia-Gonzalez, C. E. 525
Garetsos, A. 2165
Gargab, L. 2553
Garrett, J. H., Jr. 1214
Gaul, L. 2693
Ge, Y. 1550
Geetha, G. K. 249
Gharibnezhad, F. 2300
Gherlone, M. 578 981
Ghoshal, A. 266 405 997 1292
2485
Gifford, D. K. 394
Gilbert, A. C. 1675
Girard, S. 183
Giurgiutiu, V. 509 661 939 2537
Glisic, B. 1409 1847 2125

Index Terms Links
Gnadinger, A. 509
Godínez, V. 661
Goebel, K. 1225 1283
Goldfeld, Y. 1376
Gomes, R. 2181
Gonsalez, C. G. 1196
Gonzalez, M. 661
Gonzalez-Requena, I. 525
Gopalakrishnan, S. 249
Gorbatov, N. 479
Gostautas, R. 661
Graf, F. 447
Graves, S. 1241
Gresil, M. 2537
Grimmelsman, K. A. 823
Grisso, B. L. 1683 1691
Gu, C. 1788
Gu, M. 2311 2382
Guedj, P. 479
Güemes, A. 525 586
Güemes, J. A. 1620
Guimaraes, R. J. 257
Gul, M. 831
Gunasekaran, A. 2115
Guo, J. 1764
Guo, S. 1442
Guo, Y. 1724
Guo, Z. 1717
Gupta, N. 479
Gürdal, Z. 2495
Gurvich, M. R. 266
Gutterman, A. 386
Guzman de Villoria, R. 1807
Haake, G. 2149
Haase, K.-H. 2157
Habel, W. R. 1457
Häckell, M. W. 2149
Had, J. 1595

Index Terms Links
Hafiychuk, V. 413
Hagiwara, H. 111
Haile, M. 1292
Hajrya, R. 241
Hajzargarbashi, T. 562
Hanagud, S. 899
Hanc, A. 2619
Handleman, A. 479
Harley, J. B. 1206 1214
Hartmann, D. 2595
Hatada, T. 111
Hauser, E. 677
Haynes, C. 1815
Hayward, G. 1504
He, J. 175
Heaney, A. D. 394
Heaton, T. H. 2504
Heaton, T. 1165
Heckman, V. M. 2504
Heckman, V. 1165
Hedl, R. 643
Heinzelmann, A. 2028
Helwig, T. 701
Hennings, B. 931
Hernandez, E. M. 1087
Hess, G. 1543
Heuer, R. 669
Hew, Y. 1512
Hill, E. V. K. 856
Hille, F. 748
Hillger, W. 2545
Hinckley, S. 2050
Holst, A. 1472
Horwath, L. M. 2173
Hoult, N. A. 2195
Huang, H. 635 1512 1748
Huang, Y. 103
Hurley, D. 547
Hurson, A. R. 2115
Hush, D. 1013

Index Terms Links
Hussain, S. 439
Huston, D. 547
Hwang, S.-H. 1558
Igawa, H. 370 1180 1963

Ihn J.-B. 333 1899 1932
Inclan, V. 386
Inman, D. J. 661 907 1612 1631
Irizarry, A. 880
Irving, P. 1391
Ito, Y. 2020
Jablonski, A. 2603
Jacob, V. 963
Jacobs, L. J. 531
Jacobs, W. 971
Jacquel, N. 1384
Jahanshahi, M. R. 2252
Jalalpour, M. 601
Jamal-Ahmad, M. 783
Jamalipour, A. 1831
Janapati, V. 1139 1283 2417
Jang, S. 2043
Janoyan, K. D. 692
Jatlaoui, M. M. 1519
Jenal, R. 1359
Jennions, I. 1391
Jiang, S. B. 1788
Jimenez, A. 2075
John, R. 570
Johnson, E. A. 807
Jones, M. K. 1527
Joyce, B. 1631
Jun, L. 2342
Jung, H. 2576

Index Terms Links
Kabban, C. M. S. 2429
Kageyama, K. 370 1963
Kanekawa, K. 111
Kaplan, A. M. 394
Kassapoglou, C. 362 2495
Katamura, R. 111
Kawai, N. 463
Kawasaki, H. 463
Kaya, Y. 2350
Kent, A. J. 2223
Kessler, S. S. 200 1807 1839
Kim, J.-Y. 531
Kim, K. 1717
Kim, N.-S. 2292
Kim, S.-W. 1558 2292
Kinlen, P. J. 1603
Kiremidjian, A. S. 27 55
Kiureghian, A. D. 1799
Klar, A. 1376
Klepka, A. 1359
Klinkov, M. 1188
Klug, R. R. 1699
Klute, S. M. 394
Knopp, J. S. 2452 2460
Knops, M. 2157
Knorr, R. C. 2173
Ko, J.-M. 2406
Kode, K. 1196
Kohler, M. D. 2504
König, M. 1996
Koo, K.-Y. 63
Köppe, E. 1457
Korcak, A. 856
Korla, S. 1691
Koshioka, Y. 1173
Kosorus, H. 1325
Kraemer, P. 1656 2374
Kressel, I. 479
Krimotat, A. 963

Index Terms Links
Ksouri, S. 555
Kuang, K. S. C. 1550
Kudela, P. 915
Kuhr, S. 1587
Kulkarni, C. 1225
Kundu, T. 167 562
Küng, J. 1325
Kung, P. 684
Kurz, J. H. 2359
Kusaka, T. 799
Kusche, N. 1457
Kwan, Y. 856
Lamb, D. 439
Lammering, R. 931
Lanata, F. 1871
Lantz, G. 759
Lanzara, G. 1717
Larcher, F. 2165
Larrosa, C. C. 191 1283
Laskowski, B. C. 1855
Lastapis, M. 471 487
Laurens, S. 183
Law, K. H. 1996 2595
Le Cam, V. 1780
Le Maulf, R. 1780
Le Pen, M. 1780
Le, D. D. 2485
Le, D. 405 1292
Lecointre, A. 955
Lee, H. 1233 1956
Lee, J.-R. 651
Lee, K.-M. 1764
Lee, S. J. 1150
Leibowitz, M. 1948
Lemarchand, L. 1780
Leon, R. T. 759
Leonard, M. S. 1899
Levy, M. J. 831

Index Terms Links
Li, C. 1788
Li, F. 282 733
Li, G. 1349
Li, H. N. 2311 2382
Li, H. 103
Li, I. 421
Li, R. 1095 1788
Li, S. 1940
Li, Y. 274
Li, Z. 815 1434
Lieske, U. 1131 1948
Lim, H. J. 1932
Lin, B. 939
Lin, C.-S. 1772
Lin, T.-K. 1772
Lin, W. 2406
Lin, Y. 333
Lindenberg, R. 701
Lindgren, E. A. 2444 2452 2460
Ling, Y. 1341
Lissenden, C. J. 1940
Little, J. E., II 1986
Liu, C. 2327
Liu, M. 233 2133
Liu, W. 1756
Liu, X. 2189
Liu, Y. 322
Liu, Y.-C. 791 2398
Lo, C. 2133
Loendersloot, R. 1053
Loh, C.-H. 791 2398
Loh, K. J. 1740
Lonkar, K. 191 1139 2417 2512
Lopes, V., Jr. 1196 1612
Lossec, M. 1780
Lourenço, P. B. 2181
Lu, M. 79 282
Lu, X. 79 282
Luchinsky, D. G. 413
Luczak, M. 2663

Index Terms Links
Lundstrom, T. 2637
Lynch, J. P. 963 1675 1709 2004
2133
Mabry, N. 1863
MacLaughlin, M. M. 1580
Macpherson, W. 570
Maestri, R. 823
Mahadevan, S. 1341 1399
Mahapatra, D. R. 249
Mal, A. K. 1915 1923
Malagó, M. 971
Malinowski, P. 2237
Man, S. H. 2268
Manka, M. 1488
Manzato, S. 2663
Mao, Z. 1823
Marin, J. 1368
Martin, W. 1780
Martins, L. G. A. 2035
Martowicz, A. 314 1488
Mary, B. 405
Marzocca, P. 2647
Mascarenas, D. 1013
Mascareñus, D. L. 501
Masri, S. F. 2252
Masson, P. 151 947 1111
Matmat, M. 555
Matsuya, I. 111
Matt, H. 1815
Mattone, M. 578 981
Maurin, L. 1449
McFeat, J. 1391
McGill, W. L. 1940
McGugan, M. 2619
McGuire, M. 1504
McNeill, D. K. 1029
Mechbal, N. 241 322
Medda, A. 208

Index Terms Links
Medeiros, E. B. 742
Medina, E. A. 2452 2460
Mei, L. 2319
Meng, G. 79
Meola, C. 216
Mevel, L. 748
Meyer, T. 439
Michaels, J. E. 1150 2215
Michaels, T. E. 1150 2215
Micheau, P. 1111
Miller, J. 413
Minakuchi, S. 539 2020
Ming, Z. 2342
Mita, A. 1095 2319
Mitra, M. 1317
Mizutani, T. 2020
Moens, D. 971
Mohamed, R. 947
Mohammad, I. 1748
Molodova, M. 815
Momeni, S. 661
Monaco, E. 1915 1923
Moneda, P. 2035
Monthéard, R. 471
Moon, F. L. 1045
Moore, E. Z. 1021
Moreau, G. 2671
Morse, J. 1855
Mosavi, A. A. 963
Mota, M. M. 362
Moura, J. M. F. 1206 1214
Mrad, N. 1111
Mueller, I. 343 2417
Muhammad, H. 2268
Mujica, L. E. 159 1250 2300
Murayama, H. 370 1180 1963
Murmann, B. 1724
Murphy, K. D. 1021
Murugan, M. 405
Myung, H. 2367

Index Terms Links
Na, J. K. 1587
Nadella, K. S. 2529
Nagai, K. 455
Nakajima, T. 463
Nakamura, T. 1180
Nakata, N. 872
Nakatani, H. 562
Nanni, A. 661
Napolitano, K. 1815
Narayanan, V. 421
Nasser, H. 1079
Natschläger, T. 447
Neidigk, S. 39
Newlin, B. 661
Ng, C. Z. 2268
Ni, X. 2568
Ni, Y.-Q. 2390 2398 2406
Nichols, J. M. 1021
Niezrecki, C. 2637
Nishio, M. 1368
Nishitani, A. 111
Nitta, Y. 111
Niu, Y. 1188 2374
Noh, H. Y. 55
Nomura, Y. 799
Nucera, C. 2521
O’Connor, S. M. 1675
O’Donoughue, N. 1214
Oberste-Ufer, K. 2125
Ogisu, T. 1005 1173
Okabe, Y. 1005 1173
Oki, N. 1612
Olariu, V. 509
Olson, S. E. 1899
Omichi, K. 370
Ong, W. H. 493

Index Terms Links
Ono, D. 1442
Ooi, T. K. 1855
Ooijevaar, T. H. 1053
Oppenheim, I. J. 1214
Orteu, J.-J. 1449
Ostachowicz, W. 915 2237 2245 2560
Ostiguy, P.-C. 151
Owens, C. T. 2231 2260 2276
Owens, W. 547
Ozevin, D. 1434
Packo, P. 2437
Pado, L. 1899
Pahlavan, L. 362 2495
Pakzad, S. N. 2099 2141 2173
Palladino, A. 439
Palmer, C. 386 1233
Palomino, L. V. 2035
Papadas, C. 1417
Pappakostas, M. 405 733 1907
Park, B. 2284
Park, C.-Y. 651
Park, G. 725 923 1683 2655
Park, Y.-B. 1558
Parker, D. L. 1527
Parthasarathy, G. 643
Peckens, C. A. 1709
Peeters, B. 2663
Peldszus, A. 447
Perget, F. 955
Peumans, P. 1717
Pfeiffer, H. 1572
Pieczonka, L. 298
Pierce, S. G. 1504
Pillai, A. 479
Pines, D. J. 71
Pistone, E. 1158
Pitts, B. W. 1603
Plana, R. 955 1519

Index Terms Links
Plude, S. 1831
Plum, R. 775
Pollock, A. 661
Pons, P. 1519
Posvar, Z. 1595
Potter, D. 701
Pouget, G. 586
Pozo, F. 159
Pozzi, M. 1799
Prasad, M. H. 479
Priya, S. 661
Probst, O. 2647
Prunet, J.-M. 471
Putikis, O. 2067
Qing, P. X. 1907
Qu, J. 531
Quaegebeur, N. 151 1111
Queiroz, F. R. 742
Quek, S. T. 1550
Rade, D. A. 2035
Radu, L. 725
Radzienski, M. 915 2245
Raghavan, S. 1564
Rainieri, C. 135
Rajagopal, R. 55
Rajic, N. 493 1978
Ramos, L. F. 2181
Rams, J. 2075
Rathod, V. T. 249
Razi, A. 2107
Read, I. 570 1391
Reda Taha, M. 601 888
Rehm, K. 677
Rehman, A. U. 848 1258
Reiterer, M. 447 669
Rens, K. 1241

Index Terms Links
Restuccia, F. 1424
Ricci, F. 216 1915 1923
Riederer, D. 2028
Rieske, R. 2629
Riveros, G. 354
Rizzo, P. 1158 2568 2584
Roach, D. P. 39 2480
Robert, L. 1449
Rodellar, J. 159 1250 2300
Roeder, B. W. 1699
Rolfes, R. 2149 2157
Rongong, J. A. 848 1258
Rosalie, C. 1978
Rosalie, S. C. 493
Rosiek, M. 314 1488
Rouet, V. 1417
Roy, S. 1139 1196 1283 2417
Rubenstein, D. 2004
Rücker, W. 748
Ruiz, M. 159
Rulli, R. P. 432
Rutz, F. 1241
Ruzicka, M. 1595
Ruzzene, M. 997 2215
Ryu, D. 1740
Saadawia, M.-S. 1309 1349

Safak, E. 2350
Saillen, N. 2165
Saito, N. 455
Sakamoto, T. 799
Salowitz, N. 1717
Salvino, L. W. 1683 1691
Samaras, V. 701
Sanchez, M. 2075
Sanders, T. 1543
Sankararaman, S. 1399
Santana, J. 2165
Santiago, J. 2460

Index Terms Links
Sarlashkar, A. 439
Sas, P. 971
Sathya, S. 479
Sato, A. 463
Sato, E. 463
Sauter, T. 447
Saxena, A. 1283
Schanck, C. 2141
Scheerer, M. 447
Schilder, C. 1457
Schmidt, D. 2545
Schubert, L. 1948 2629
Schukar, V. G. 1457
Schulte, R. T. 2576
Schulze, E. 2629
Schwerz, R. 1948
Sébastien, G. 618
Sedarat, H. 963
Sedigh, S. 2115
Semperlotti, F. 224
Severino, R. 2181
Shankar, S. 191
Sheldon, J. 1233
Shen, B. 1969
Shen, M.-Y. 1772
Shen, S. 2058
Shen, Y. 839 2537
Sheng, S. 1664
Shi, B. 2327
Shi, J. 1214
Shimazaki, M. 1005
Shin, H.-J. 651
Shin, Y.-J. 839
Silva, J. M. 257
Sim, S.-H. 2043
Sinapius, M. 2545
Singh, A. K. 1603
Singh, G. 1691
Smarsly, K. 1996 2595
Smelyanskiy, V. N. 413

Index Terms Links
Smith, E. C. 224
Soeffker, D. 127 290 1037 1309
Soejima, H. 1005 1173
Söffker, D. 1349
Sohn, H. 1932 1956 2284 2367
Soibelman, L. 1214
Soiferman, M. 1029
Song, S. 2058
Sonnleitner, E. 1325
Sowinski, B. 1103
Spangler, J. L. 981
Spencer, B. F., Jr. 2043
Spiridonakos, M. D. 2611
Sprenger, H. 2693
Staszewski, W. J. 1274 1359 2437
Steffen, V., Jr. 2035
Stephan, P. 2671
Stepinski, T. 1119 1488
Sterken, T. 2165
Stewart, G. 1504
Stolz, C. 1384
Stoppel, M. 2359
Stössel, R. 447
Stratakos, Y. 2165
Stull, C. J. 501
Stumptner, R. 1325
Su, Z. 79 95 282
Suarez, L. 880
Subbanna, M. B. 1564
Sultan, M. T. H. 1274
Sun, Y. 2203
Sun, Z. 864
Sundaram, R. 479
Sunor, F. 1196
Swenson, E. D. 997 2231 2260 2276
Swindell, P. 2480
Szczepanski, N. 1309
Szewieczek, A. 2545
Szwedo, M. 298

Index Terms Links
Tachibana, K. 1180
Taffe, A. 2359
Takahashi, K. 1173
Takahashi, M. 111
Take, W. A. 2195
Takeda, N. 539 562 1173 2020
Tanaka, H. 1879
Tancredi, S. 1923
Tansel, I. N. 1691
Tao, J. 1732
Taya, M. 333
Taylor, S. G. 501 2655
Tentzeris, M. M. 759
Terrell, T. 831
Tessler, A. 578 981
Thain, A. 955
Theiler, J. 1013
Thomas, S. 618
Thostenson, E. T. 1969
Thursby, G. 1504
Tian, Y. 1480
Tibaduiza, D. A. 1250
Tibbits, P. 405
Todd, M. D. 200 923 1815 1823
1839
Tondreau, G. 1070
Torfs, T. 2165
Torkamani, S. 923
Torres-Arredondo, M. A. 1062
Toutanji, H. 1863
Tovar, E. 2181
Trapani, D. 2165
Tregre, G. J. 1603
Tsai, C.-A. 1772
Tsuda, H. 463 1466
Tur, M. 479
Turner, A. 1580
Turra, A. E. 1612
Tyson, R. 413

Index Terms Links
Uhl, T. 298 314 1119 1359

1488 2437 2619
Ulieru, D. 2165
Ulusoy, H. S. 2012
Ummenhofer, T. 775
Urban, M. R. 266
Ureña, A. 2075
Uzawa, K. 1963
Vehorn, K. A. 1986
Veit-Egerer, R. 717
Vepa, R. 609
Vergé, M. 241 322
Verma, N. 1409
Viana, J. C. 257
Vonnieda, K. 343
Vospernig, M. 669
Wada, D. 370 1963

Wan, C. 2058
Wandowski, T. 2237
Wang, H. F. 1580
Wang, J. 839
Wang, L. 684
Wang, M. 119
Wang, Q. 2189
Wang, X. 1480
Wang, Y. 759 1764
Wang, Z. 233 2099
Wank, T. 823
Wardle, B. L. 1807
Warnet, L. L. 1053
Watanabe, N. 1005
Watson, M. 1233
Wei, X. 989
Weihnacht, B. 2629

Index Terms Links
Welsh, G. S. 266
Wenzel, H. 717 1879
Wenzhong, Q. 907
Werlink, R. J. 2680
Wevers, M. 1572
Whelan, M. J. 692 709
White, J. R. 1648
Wichmann, H.-J. 1472
Wicks, S. S. 1807
Widmann, M. 717
Wilcox, P. D. 2067
Wild, G. 2050
Wilmot, S. 2090
Wilson, H. 1907
Winston, H. A. 266
Wood, S. 701
Worden, K. 63 87 848 1258
1274
Wren, J. 501
Wu, F.-M. 791
Wu, L. 2082
Wu, N. 1480
Wu, S. 103
Wu, T. 759
Wu, Z. 233 635 864 2058
Xia, Y. 2406
Xie, Z. 989
Xing, Z. 2319
Xu, B. 175
Xu, C.-N. 1442
Xu, H. 95
Yadav, S. K. 167
Yan, G. 306
Yan, X. 1886
Yang, C. 635 1062 1496 2058
Yang, H. 1603

Index Terms Links
Yang, J. 1424
Yang, T. 1886
Yang, X. 1788
Yao, Y. 2125
Yari, T. 455
Ye, L. 79 282
Ye, S.-Q. 2390
Yeum, C. M. 1932
Yi, T. H. 2311 2382
Yi, X. 759
Ying, Y. 1214
Yokokawa, J. 1180
Yoo, B. 71
Yu, A. 1512
Yu, J. 1266
Yu, L. 661 839
Yu, X. 1732 2203
Yuan, F.-G. 274
Yuan, S.-F. 626
Yun, C.-B. 2367
Yutzy, J. 1639
Zak, A. 2560
Zarate, B. 661
Zerbst, S. 2157
Zhang, D. C. 421
Zhang, D. 2327
Zhang, J. 1045
Zhang, R. R. 2553
Zhang, W. 864
Zhang, Y. 856 989
Zhao, Y. 1886
Zheng, G. 119
Zheng, X. B. 421
Zhivaev, A. A. 378
Zhou, L. 79 282 306
Zhou, W. 1079
Zhu, D. 1764
Zhu, H.-H. 2327

Index Terms Links
Zhu, X. 2584
Ziehl, P. 661 1266
Zimmerman, A. 2004
Zonta, D. 1847 2165
Zou, X. 1480
Zussman, G. 2004
Zyuzin, A. 386

Condition Based Maintenance and Intelligent Structures

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VOLUME 1

Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Structural

DEStech Publications, Inc.

DEStech Publications, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 by DEStech Publications, Inc.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

Printed in the United States of America

Main entry under title:

A DEStech Publications book

ISBN No. 978-1-60595-053-2

HOW TO ORDER THIS BOOK

DEStech Publications, Inc.

Bio-inspired Sensing and Actuation Technology J. Lynch, K. Loh

S. Mahmood, Naval Surface Warfare Center, USA, (shah.mahmood@navy.mil)

Fu-Kuo Chang Alfredo Güemes

September 13, 2011

ADVANCED DIAGNOSTICS FOR DAMAGE ASSESSMENT

Piezoceramic-Based 2-D Spiral Phased Array for Damage Detection

Effective Damage Sensitive Feature Extraction Methods for Crack

Optimal Sensor Fusion for Structural Health Monitoring of Aircraft

ADVANCED MONITORING FOR LOAD/ENVIRONMENTS

Application of Polarization-Maintaining Fiber Bragg Grating to

AEROSPACE STRUCTURES: FIELD EVALUATION

Development and Testing of an Ultrasonic Phased Array System

AEROSPACE STRUCTURES: LABORATORY DEMONSTRATION

Application of Unscented Kalman Filters, Wavelet Packet

CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURES: FIELD EVALUATION

Development of Reliable and Low-Power Wireless Health

CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURES: LAB DEMONSTRATION

Integrate On-Line RSSA and RSSI-COV Algorithms for Operational

NOVEL SIGNAL PROCESSING TECHNIQUES

Comparison of Damage Localization Based on Modal Filters

OPERATIONAL EFFECTS CONSIDERATION IN SHM

Influence of Environment Condition on the Group Velocity

PROGNOSTICS AND DATA MINING FOR HEALTH MANAGEMENT

An Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Damage

insatiable appetite for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) in

• Focus also on civil

• Wide range of mission

• Air Traffic Management

• Focus on Mission Payload

Range (Km) equivalent to Flying Hours

Figure 2: UAV Flight Service Value Chain [1]

• Implementation of Condition based Cost per

Maintenance Action Action

Maintenance Activity/Action Maintenance Activity/Action

• Mission and Availability Management

Figure 3: Value Proposition Chain

DESIGN FOR SERVICE

Business Needs Create & Design Capability Evaluation Capability Application

Figure 4: Design for Service [DfS] Framework

For CBM certification [2] the following elements have to be address:

SHM CERTIFICATION ASPECTS

Certification involves processes to obtain the approval of the Regulatory

High Level System

Figure 5: "V" lifecycle phases of an SHM system

The following SHM sub-systems can be implemented in order to provide

At Cassidian, a Design for Service approach has been developed to provide

HUMS DATA COLLECTION AND VEWING

The value of HUMS data analysis in support of Fleet Management can be

DIRECT SUPPORT OF TROUBLESHOOTING

EARLY DETECTION OF DEGRADED COMPONENTS

Left Accessory GBX Bearings