Self-diagnosis of smart structures based on dynamical properties

When we talk about “smart structures” we can think about different properties and capabilities which make a structure “intelligent” in a certain sense. Originally, the expression “smart” was used in the context that a structure can react and adapt to certain environmental conditions, such as change of shape, compensation of deformations, active vibration damping, etc. Over the last year, the expression “smart” has been extended to the field of structural health monitoring (SHM), where sensor networks, actuators and computational capabilities are used to enable a structure to perform a self-diagnosis with the goal that this structure can release early warnings about a critical health state, locate and classify damage or even to forecast the remaining life-time. This paper intends to give an overview and point out recent developments of vibration-based methods for SHM. All these methods have in common that a structural change due to a damage results in a more or less significant change of the dynamic behavior. For the diagnosis an inverse problem has to be solved. We discuss the use of modal information as well as the direct use of forced and ambient vibrations in the time and frequency domain. Examples from civil and aerospace engineering as well as off-shore wind energy plants show the applicability of these methods.