Damage identification research on beam structures by integrating multiple modal parameters

A new damage identification method with a fusion index to locate the damage position and identify the damage extent of beam structures is presented by integrating the modal strain energy and natural frequency sensitivity. The modal strain energy, which is with the limitation on obtaining the damage extent, is adopted to locate the damage position with avoiding the interference of structure itself. The natural frequency sensitivity, which is with false detection and interference happening when solely used, is adopted for identifying the damage extent. In order to further improve the precision of the damage quantification, additional masses are added on the beam structure to obtain more information about the natural frequency sensitivity. Then, the fusion index for damage identification is established through combining the modal strain energy and the natural frequency sensitivity before and after adding masses on beam structures. The results obtained by finite element analysis and experimental tests show that the presented method can locate and quantify damages on beam structures in an accurate and convenient way.