Guided wave propagation based damage detection in welded rectangular tubular structures

Guided wave based methods have shown great potential to practical use and have been the object of many researches for structural health monitoring (SHM). In this paper, a welded steel structure with rectangular section, which is almost 1:1 scale model for a bogie frame segment of train, is investigated by using both finite element method (FEM) and experimental analysis for the purpose of damage detection. Finite element models are established to simulate the propagation behavior of guided waves in the structure. An active actuator/sensor network is employed to generate guided waves propagating in the structures and collect response signals. Excitations at selected frequency are used to minimize the effect of the intrinsic multi-mode phenomenon of guided waves on the consequent signal interpretation. Modern signal processing approaches, such as continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and Hilbert transform (HT), are applied to all collected signals. An algorithm based on the concept of damage presence probability (DPP) is proposed for estimation of damage location. The results indicate that the recommended guided wave propagation based approach is reasonable for damage detection in such kind of structures.

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