Comparison of Vibration-Based Damage Assessment Techniques

Three different vibration-based damage assessment techniques have been compared. One of the techniques uses the ratios between changes in experimentally and theoretically estimated natural frequencies, respectively, to locate a damage. The second technique relies on updating of a finite element method based on experimentally estimated natural frequencies where the stiffness matrix is given as a function of damage size and location. The last technique is based on neural networks trained with the relative changes in natural frequencies. lt has been found that all techniques seem to be useful. The neural networks based technique seems to be very promising.