3rd AUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster (RCND2015)

25 - 26 September 2015, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines

STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING OF METAL

STRUCTURES USING ELECTRO-MECHANICAL
IMPEDANCE RESPONSES
MINH-QUOC LE1, THANH-CAO LE2 and DUC-DUY HO3
1,2,3
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology,
268 Ly Thuong Kiet Street, District 10, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
E-mail: hoducduy@hcmut.edu.vn

1. Introduction
Structural health monitoring (SHM) becomes an important technology and plays a significant
role in the safety and service life of civil structures. If the damages are not detected timely, they
will cause catastrophic incidents for not only self-structures but also the humans (Farrar 2001).
Recently, electro-mechanical (E/M) impedance-based damage identification technique, a non-
destructive testing technique, has been widely used for SHM applications (Liang et al. 1994,
Park et al. 2003, Giurgiutiu and Zagrai 2005, Ho 2012). In this study, numerical simulation for
E/M impedance-based damage identification of metal structures is presented. First, E/M
impedance responses and impedance-based SHM method are briefly outlined. Then, numerical
verifications, which are (i) aluminum round plate; and (ii) bolted connection in steel column, are
performed to evaluate the applicability of the proposed SHM method.

2. Impedance-based Damage Identification Method

The E/M impedance response is based on the coupling of mechanical and electrical
characteristics (Liang et al. 1994). As shown in Fig. 1, the interaction between the PZT patch
and the host structure is conceptually explained as an idealized 1-D electro-mechanical relation.
The host structure is described as the effects of mass, stiffness, damping, and boundary
condition. The PZT (Lead Zirconate Titanate) patch is modeled as a short circuit powered by a
harmonic voltage or current. The mechanical impedance of the host structure is a function of
mass, stiffness and damping. Therefore, any changes in dynamic characteristics of the structure
could be represented in the change in E/M impedance.
k

~ PZT m c

Figure 1. E/M interaction between PZT patch and host structure

The basic concept of the impedance-based damage identification is to monitor the variations in
structural mechanical impedance caused by the presence of damage. In this study, root mean
square deviation (RMSD) of impedance signatures is used to quantify the change in impedance
signatures due to structural damage.
N N
   Z    Z    Z  
2
RMSD Z , Z *  * 2 (1)
i i i
i 1 i 1

where Z i  and Z *  i  are the impedance signatures measured before and after damage for the
i th frequency, respectively; and N denotes the number of frequency points in the sweep. The
RMSD is larger than 0 if damage, and vice versa.
3. Numerical Verifications
In order to demonstrate the applicability of the impedance-based damage identification method,
numerical simulations were carried out. COMSOL Multiphysics 4.0 software which is efficient
for E/M impedance simulation was employed to estimate models. An aluminum round plate
were simulated to compare to experiments (Giurgiutiu and Zagrai 2005) and to diagnosis
occurrence of cracks (Fig. 2). A bolted connection in steel column was model to monitor bolt-
loosening (Fig. 3). In the finite element (FE) models, solid element was used for host structure,
and piezoelectric element was used for PZT patch.
100000 80
FE
Exp
10000 60

Re Z (Ohms)
50

RMSD (%)
PZT active sensor 42
1000 40
29
24
100 20

10 0
Aluminum plate 0 10 20 30 40 40 25 10 3
Frequency (kHz) Crack distance (mm)
(a) FE model (b) Impedance: Simulation vs experiment (c) RMSD
Figure 2. Aluminum round plate

H-330x220x8x10 5000 200

0%
4000 10% 151
ReZ (Ohms)

220x100x8 25%

RMSD (%)
3000 50%
220x70x8 2000 100

1000
17 24
Bolt M18 0 15 9 9 9
470x220x10 5
PZT 3 4 5 6 7 0
Frequency (kHz) PZT1 PZT2 PZT3 PZT4 PZT5 PZT6 PZT7 PZT8

(a) FE model (b) Impedance vs bolt-loosening (c) RMSD

Figure 3. Bolt connection in steel column

4. Conclusions
Numerical verifications were successfully performed for impedance-based damage identification
of metal structures such as aluminum round plate, and bolted connection in steel column.
Numerical simulations of E/M impedance responses were well estimated. The impedance
responses were good agreement between numerical results and experimental ones. The damages
in metal structures were accurately diagnosed by using impedance-based SHM method.
Keywords: SHM, E/M impedance, damage identification, metal structures, bolted connection.
Acknowledgement
This research is funded by Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM) under grant
number C2015-20-15.
References
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Using Statistical Pattern Recognition, Los Alamos Dynamics, Los Alamos, NM, 2001.
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Mechanical Impedance Method, Structural Health Monitoring, Vol. 4, No. 2: 0099–20, 2005.
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bridge, Ph.D. Dissertation, Pukyong National University, Korea, 2012.
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