About the Effectiveness of Several Dissimilarity Estimators used in Damage Assessment

This paper introduces a robust method for vibration-based damage assessment, which is based on a mathematical relation contrived by the authors that involves the frequency shifts, the damage size and position. Databases containing damage indicators for all possible damage scenarios, for three types of beams, were developed by involving this mathematical relation. The proposed damage indicator is expressed using the relative frequency shifts. The damage location and severity can be assessed if the relative frequency shifts are derived from measurements at the initial state and periodically afterwards. The paper investigates the effectiveness of several dissimilarity estimators, to find damage involving frequencies measured without and in the presence of noise