A Forced Vibration Response-Based Damage Identification Method for Cylindrical Shells

This paper presents a feasibility study on a structural damage identification method (SDIM) developed herein for cylindrical shells. The SDIM is derived directly from the governing differential equations of motion of damaged cylindrical shells. A damage distribution function is used to represent the distribution and magnitudes of local damages within a cylindrical shell. In contrast with most of existing modal parameters-based SDIMs, which requires only model parameters measured in both intact and damaged states, the present SDIM utilizes the FRF-data in the damaged state instead of the modal parameters in the damaged state. By virtue of utilizing FRF-data, a sufficient number of equations can be derived by choosing as many sets of excitation frequency and FRF measurement point as needed. The feasibility of the present SDIM is numerically tested through some illustrative examples, taking into account the random noises in FRF-data.