Damage observability, localization and assessment based on eigenfrequencies and eigenvectors curvatures

A technique for damage localization and assessment based on measurements of both eigenvectors curvatures and eigenfrequencies is proposed. The procedure is based on two successive steps: a model independent localization, based on changes of modal curvatures, and the solution of a one-dimensional minimization problem to evaluate damage intensity. The observability properties of damage parameters is discussed and, accordingly, a suitable change of coordinates is introduced. The proposed technique is illustrated with reference to a cantilever Euler beam endowed with a set of piezoelectric transducers. To assess the robustness of the algorithm, a parametric study of the identification errors with respect to the number of transducers and to the number of considered modal quantities is carried out with both clean and noise-corrupted data.