On Damage Detection in Beams based on Dynamic Tests and Transitory Analysis

This study is covered by Structural Health Monitoring Concept - SHMC, and deals with some basic problems regarding the diagnosis of the current health status during exploitation. The detection of a potential area of structural damage supposes a great volume of bulky investigations performed on each structure element. Dynamic tests can provide a relative simple method to obtain some relevant information regarding both qualitative and quantitative levels of structural capability in order to maintain the initial performances during its regular working regime. In this paper is shown the influences of a certain crack which is developed in a simple beam upon the dynamic characteristic. The essential information about the linkage between the crack parameters and the dynamic evolution is also presented. A main concluding remark reveals a good correlation of the damage characteristics with the dynamic capability performances, supplying an appropriate way to estimate the structural health level based on a regular set of dynamic instrumental investigations