Author(s)

D.S. Necsulescu, R.F. De Abreu & F. Bakhtiari-Nejad

Abstract

Structural integrity monitoring is a critical process in ensuring safe operation of structures. Damage that is not detected continuously and corrected immediately can cause additional damage and eventually catastrophic failures. In ensuring safe operation, real time damage detection is necessary and is realisable through the use of smart structures. In this paper, a new non-destructive testing method to detect damage in structural connections using piezoelectric actuating/sensing devices is proposed. A thin beam with one end fixed and the other subjected to a variety of boundary conditions is used to investigate the feasibility of this method. The method involves first flexurally exciting the beam and measuring its resulting transient response using a piezoelectric device, and

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