Development of scanning damage index for the damage detection of plate structures using modal strain energy method

This work presents a novel approach of nondestructive detection of damage in plate structures by using experimental modal analysis (EMA) and modal strain energy method (MSEM). An aluminum alloy 6061 thin plate with a surface crack is investigated in this study. EMA is conducted on the plate to obtain the mode shapes before and after damage. The modal displacements of each mode shape are then used to compute the modal strain energy. For all measured mode shapes, a damage index is defined by using the ratio of modal strain energies of the plate before and after damage. In fact, small damage causes very little change in system response, but it is an essential early warning of structure damage. As the second-order derivatives, modal strain energy is much more sensitive to the small change of structural response than frequencies and mode shapes. It is therefore feasible to approach the small damage by using a damage index defined by fractional MSE of the structure before and after damage. In this study, a scanning damage index (SDI) is developed by moving damage indices obtained from the local area throughout the structure as if a scanning sensor is used to inspect the structure. The damage indices in overlap areas are added up and the summation may intensify the signals of damage in the plate. Limited by the numbers of measured point, a differential quadrature method is employed to calculate the partial differential terms in strain energy formula. Experimental results show that SDI well identifies a surface crack location by using only few measured mode shapes of the aluminum plate. This novel approach provides a flexible, cost-effective, and nondestructive damage evaluation in either local or global structure. Its applicability to different types of structures and different sizes of damage is to be experimentally validated in the future work.