Identification of local damages in coupled beam systems from measured dynamic responses

Abstract: This paper deals with local damages identification for strongly and weakly coupled beam systems with close and repeated natural frequencies based on the measured dynamic responses of the systems under external moving forces. The dynamic responses of the coupled beam systems are calculated from Newmark integration method and they are used for structural damage detection. The mode localization phenomenon due to local damage(s) in the weakly coupled beam system is studied. In the inverse analysis, a dynamic response sensitivity-based finite element model updating method is employed for the detection of local damage(s) in the coupled beam systems. Numerical simulation shows that the proposed method is effective in identifying the damages in the coupled beam systems with good accuracy from several measurements. It is found the proposed method is insensitive to artificial measurement noise and has the potential for practical applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]