Finite Element Model Updating Approach for Structural Health Monitoring of Lightweight Structures Using Response Surface Optimization

Abstract

Abstract Mechanical defects in the structure changes it’s vibration response. There is a wide variety of methods that examine changes in measured vibration response to detect, locate, and characterize damage in structural and mechanical systems. One method to evaluate the structural changes and to analyse their causes is the Finite Element Model Updating (FEMU). The objective of this research is to investigate the FEMU procedure for mechanical damage identification and to propose an experimental-computational SHM method for lightweight structures. The structural dynamic response to impact excitation of a structure with and without defects are collected from transient and modal analysis using Ansys FE software. Afterwards, FEMU algorithm using Ansys Surface Response Optimization is investigated for its applicability to damage identification. Obtained results revealed the possibility to use this algorithm with having minimum discrepancy between parameters obtained from experiments and finite element modelling.