A comparison of scaling subtraction and pulse compression methods for the analysis of elastic nonlinearity

ABSTRACT The identification and the analysis of the non-linear behavior of a structure under proper excitation is a powerful tool to obtain information on its mechanical properties and for early-detecting possible internal damages. Among the techniques proposed for this purpose, Pulse-Compression-based techniques and the Scaling Subtraction Method seem to be among the most efficient ones for both damage detection and classification. In this work, the two methods have been compared under the same experimental conditions to highlight their respective advantages and/or complementarity. A laboratory test experiment has been performed on mortar samples, to analyze the efficiency of the two approaches in detecting early damage in samples which already exhibit a nonlinear response in their intact state.