The identification of structural modal parameters, as an alternative in-vivo diagnosis for osteoporosis

Includes bibliographies.An alternative non-invasive diagnostic technique was sought for the diagnosis of osteoporosis in human subjects. The tibia vibration technique was proposed after reviewing the literature on detection techniques for osteoporosis. The basis of diagnosis of the tibia vibration technique is the measured resonant frequency of the patient's tibia. The patient's tibia is excited, generally by means of an impact hammer, while the response is captured and resonant frequencies extracted. This dissertation does not attempt to measure the resonant frequencies of a human tibia, but rather develop and validate the required experimental protocol and system identification procedures, on a simple test structure. A theoretical finite element model of the test structure was developed to ensure that both the experimental protocol and system identification procedures provided accurate results. The impulse response technique was adopted to excite the test structure