ARTICLE IN PRESS

Mechanical Systems
and
Signal Processing
Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 21 (2007) 298–306
www.elsevier.com/locate/jnlabr/ymssp

Structural damage detection using the combination

method of EMD and wavelet analysis
Helong Lia,, Xiaoyan Dengb,, Hongliang Daic
a
School of Electronic Business, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, PR China
b
College of Basic Sciences, Huazhong Agriculture University, Wuhan 430070, PR China
c
Department of Mathematics and Computational Science, Guangdong University of Business Studies, Guangzhou, 510320, PR China
Received 10 January 2005; received in revised form 26 April 2006; accepted 5 May 2006
Available online 21 June 2006

Abstract

The use of the combination method of empirical mode decomposition(EMD) and wavelet analysis is explored for the
detection of changes in the structural response data. Firstly, we adopt the EMD technique to decompose the response
signal of structure vibration into several mono-component signals which become analytic signal by means of Hilbert
transform. Then each mono-component signal is analysed via wavelet transform to detect the exact location and severity of
damage. The results demonstrate that the combination method of EMD and continuous wavelet transform can be used to
identify the time more sharply and effectively at which structural damage occurs than by using the wavelet transform
method alone. The numerical simulation and the analysis of the response signal data from the shear building show that this
method is effective.
r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Empirical mode decomposition; Wavelet transform; Damage detection

1. Introduction

Structural damage is considered as a weakening of the structure that negatively affects its performance.
Damage may also be defined as any deviation in the structure’s original geometric or material properties that
may cause undesirable stresses, displacements, or vibrations on the structure. Research on vibration-based
damage identification has been expanding rapidly over the last decade. Visual inspection has been and still is
the most common method used in detecting damage on a structure. Health monitoring techniques may be
classified as local or global. Local methods focus NDE tools on specific structural components. Structural
damage identification through changes in dynamic characteristics provides ‘‘global’’ way to evaluate the
structural state [1]. Much of the focus of this research has been placed on damage detection based on the
changes of the system properties before and after the damage under the premise that the system can be treated
as linear in both states. Through searching for damaged elements, the structural damage can be fully located.

Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: likanye@163.com (H.L. Li), dxygh@mail.hzau.edu.cn (X. Deng).

0888-3270/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ymssp.2006.05.001
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H.L. Li et al. / Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 21 (2007) 298–306 299

An alternative for damage detection associated with response to extreme events is to use signals measured
during the event. However, detection and localisation of damage by the examination of signals recorded
during a damaging event require consideration of nonlinear behaviour, which restricts the number of available
analysis techniques severely. In order to enhance the performance of a structural health monitoring system
Vincent [2] applied the empirical mode decomposition method and wavelet approach, respectively, for damage
identification based on structural response data. In [3] Dionisio Bernal represented an initial effort to examine
the potential merits of instantaneous frequency as a damage indicator. But the damage character extracted by
the above method is not clear. In this article, a damage identification technique based on the combination of
empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method and wavelet transform is proposed to predict the damage
location and severity. First, the EMD method is utilised to decompose the structure response signal into a set
of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Then the IMF signal is processed through the relative energy ratio.
Finally, an image of the damage location is obtained from the wavelet transform coefficients of the extracted
IMF. The magnitude of the wavelet coefficients at the damage location shows a closer correlation to the
severity of damage.

2. Data analysis methods

2.1. EMD method

The signal-processing method based on Hilbert–Huang transform is considered a great breakthrough of

linear and stationary spectrum analysis based on Fourier transform. The EMD method is a local and adaptive
method in time–frequency analysis, therefore, it could analyse stationary and non-stationary signal. For
instantaneous frequency method owning physics sense is not applicable to arbitrary signal except mono-
component signal, whereas the signals such as nature and engineering field obtained commonly do not satisfy
the mono-component signal requirement. So we need apply EMD to decompose the signal f ðtÞ into a series of
mono-component contributions designated as IMF, namely:
X
n
f ðtÞ ¼ cj ðtÞ þ rn , (1)
j¼1

where rn is the residue after the n IMFs have been extracted. In general, the first IMF c1 contains the finest
scale or the shortest period component of the signal and rn can be either the mean trend or a constant. Each
characteristic oscillatory mode extracted, named IMF, satisfies the following properties: the IMFs are
characterised by having the number of extrema and the number of zero crossings equal or differing at most by
one, and the mean value between the upper and lower envelope equal to zero at any point [4]. In other words,
an IMF is symmetric. It has a unique local frequency, and different IMFs do not exhibit the same frequency at
the same time. The IMF satisfied above condition namely is a mono-component signal. The character of IMF
also is convergence standard of EMD decomposition end.
The EMD decomposition is developed from the simple assumption that any complicated signal f ðtÞ consists
of different simple intrinsic modes of oscillation. Having obtained the IMF components, one will have no
difficulty in applying the Hilbert transform to each of these IMF components and computing the
instantaneous frequency to get Hilbert spectrum. Given:
xj ðtÞ ¼ cj ðtÞ. (2)
For xj ðtÞ, the Hilbert transform reads
Z 1
1 xj ðtÞ
yj ðtÞ ¼ P:V : dt, (3)
p t

1
t

with P:V : meaning the Cauchy principal value of this integral. xj ðtÞ and yj ðtÞ form a complex conjugate pair,
which defines an analytic signal zj ðtÞ:
zj ðtÞ ¼ xj ðtÞ þ iyj ðtÞ ¼ aj ðtÞeiyj ðtÞ , (4)
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with amplitude aj ðtÞ and phase yj ðtÞ defined by the expressions:


yj ðtÞ
aj ðtÞ ¼ ½x2j ðtÞ þ y2j ðtÞ1=2 ; yj ðtÞ ¼ arctan . (5)
xj ðtÞ
aj ðtÞ is named as the instantaneous envelopment. According to (4) the instantaneous frequency of xj ðtÞ is
defined
dyj ðtÞ
oj ðtÞ ¼ . (6)
dt
Thus, the original data can be expressed in the following form:
X n
Z 
f ðtÞ ¼ RP aj ðtÞ exp i oj ðtÞ dt , (7)
j¼1

where we have left out the residue rn , because it is either a monotonic function(data trend), or a constant. This
frequency time distribution of the amplitude is designated as the Hilbert–Huang spectrum Hðw; tÞ. So energy
spectrum reflects frequency component in a certain time locality contribution to signal.

2.2. Wavelet transforms

Wavelet transforms have recently become well known as a useful tool for various signal-processing
applications. The wavelet transform of a signal f ðtÞ can be defined as
Z þ1

t
b
WTða; b; x; cÞ ¼ jaj
1=2 f ðtÞc dt, (8)

1 a
where a and b are the scale and the translation parameters, respectively. cðtÞ is the transforming
function(mother wavelet), and the bar over c indicates its complex conjugate. WT is the calculated wavelet
coefficients. The equation shows that wavelet analysis is a measure of similarity between the transforming
function and the signal. In practice, the signals to be processed are in discrete world. So we will give wavelet
transform formula in the discrete domain and calculate the corresponding wavelet coefficient. Letting a ¼
2j ðj 2 Z; Z is the integral set), then the WT is called dyadic WT. The dyadic WT can be rewritten as follows:
X
S2j f ðnÞ ¼ hk S2j
1 f ðn
2j
1 kÞ,
k2Z
X
W 2j f ðnÞ ¼ gk S 2j
1 f ðn
2j
1 kÞ, (9)
k2Z

where S 2j is a smoothing operator, and W 2j is the WT of digital signal f ðnÞ. On the other hand, hk and gk are
the coefficients of the corresponding low-pass and high-pass filters.
We know from [6] that the sharp variation point of signal is equivalent to finding the local maximum of a
wavelet transform modulus. So we may make use of wavelet transform to analyse IMFs which are
decomposed by EMD method.

3. The algorithm and experiments of identification of damage time instants and locations

To implement the proposed method to identify the damage time instants and locations of building structure,
in this section, an algorithm will be provided followed by several experiments.

3.1. Algorithm

The algorithm based on the EMD and wavelet transform method to extract the damage time instants and
locations of building structure in an image is designed as follows:
Alogirthm 1. Let f ðtÞ be a response signal data containing damage information,
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H.L. Li et al. / Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 21 (2007) 298–306 301

Step 1: Decompose f ðtÞ by means of the EMD to obtain the finite IMF components.
Step 2: Compute the Hilbert transform of f ðtÞ and each IMF according to the formula (3).
Step 3: Compute the instantaneous envelopment of f ðtÞ and each IMF according to the formula (4) and (5), the
instantaneous envelopment is denoted by EðtÞ.
Step 4: Define the RECRðtÞ as the relative energy character rate, such as
maxfEðtÞg
minfEðtÞg
RECRðtÞ ¼ qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
R1 2 , (10)

1 E ðtÞ dt

where max; min are the maximum and minimum of the instantaneous envelopment EðtÞ.
Step 5: Compute the RECR(t)’s ratio of each IMF to f ðtÞ, denoted by Rf ðtÞ. Then take threshold Th according
to the amount of noise and background in the original signal and proceed with threshold on the IMFs to extract
the IMF, denoted as RIMF, which satisfies the following formula:
(
IMF if Rf ðtÞXTh;
RIMF ¼ (11)
discarded if Rf ðtÞoTh:

Step 6: Compute the coefficient sum of RIMF’s wavelet transform in scale a ¼ 2j ðj 2 NÞ, denoted as SCðtÞ.
Step 7: Calculate the maximum and second maximum of SCðtÞ, the corresponding time point tk of the
maximum and second maximum are considered as the damage time instants and damage locations.
Obviously, the implementation of the above algorithm is easy, simple and fast due to the following reasons:
it is well-known that extracting the RIMF for a signal is easy as long as the EMD algorithm is given. Second,
only the RIMF is considered in Steps 5–7. Hence, it is expected to be fast. Finally, the RIMF produced from
the proposed algorithm is not sensitive to noise and damage variations. However, the selection of the proper

5
f(t)

2
imf1

1
imf2

1
imf3

0.5
imf4

0
5
0.5
imf5

0
5
0.1
imf6

0
1
0.1
imf7

0
1
0.1
imf8

0
1
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000

Fig. 1. The original signal f ðtÞ and its IMFs, the broken lines denote the envelopment line of each IMF.
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Th and wavelets according to the response signal is tough and depends on the experience, in practice. It is
emphasised that the properties of the wavelet transform coefficient still hold to locate the damage locations.
Therefore, we can perform the above algorithm to obtain the good effects.

3.2. Experiments

In this section, we focus on the verification of the effectiveness of the damage time instants and damage
locations based on the EMD method and wavelet analysis by experiments. Some examples will be presented
below.

3.2.1. Example #1
We consider the simulation data
f ðtÞ ¼ sinð3000tÞ  ½sinð200tÞ þ yðtÞ þ vðtÞ, (12)
where yðtÞ is the triangle impulse whose centre lies in the value 350 and whose amplitude and width is 3.5 and
1, respectively. vðtÞ is the zero average value Gauss white noise. With application of the sifting, we will obtain
eight IMF components as shown in Fig.1, in which the broken lines denote the instantaneous envelopment
according to the Hilbert transform of each IMF. The foregoing three IMFs possess prolific characteristic
information, but we could not observe the precise location of triangle impulse from the foregoing three IMFs.
The Hilbert–Huang spectrum plots for the data are also depicted in Fig. 2 where we also could not see the
specific location character of the triangle impulse. By carrying out the algorithm of this paper, we get the ratio
of the relative energy character rate of each IMF and the simulation data, respectively:
0:54581; 1:8823; 1:3581; 0:8703; 0:95529; 0:70738; 0:52647; 0:54852. Let threshold Th ¼ 1, so the damage
detection information focuses on the IMF2 and the IMF3. In order to compare, on application of the

Hilbert-Huang spectrum
0.5 0

0.45 −0.2

0.4 −0.4

0.35 −0.6

0.3 −0.8
frequency

0.25 −1

0.2 −1.2

0.15 −1.4

0.1 −1.8

0.05 −1.8

−2
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
time

Fig. 2. The Hilbert spectrum for simulation data.

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IMF1’s WT IMF2’s WT

64 120 64 120

32 100 32 100

16 80 16 80

scales a
scales a

8 8
60 60
4 4
40 40
2 2
20 20
1 1
200 400 600 800 1000 200 400 600 800 1000

IMF3’s WT f(t)’s WT

64 120 64 120

32 100 32 100

16 80 16 80
scales a

scales a

8 8
60 60
4 4
40 40
2 2
20 20
1 1
200 400 600 800 1000 200 400 600 800 1000

Fig. 3. The wavelet transforms of the first, second, third IMF and simulation data.

wavelet transformation method to the first three IMFs and original signal, the damage is clearly visible as seen
in Fig. 3. Obviously, the wavelet coefficients of IMF1 could not well react the damage detection information,
and IMF2 as well as IMF3 depict the damage better, which is consistent with the ratio of the relative energy
character rate. Compared with the direct wavelet transform coefficients of simulation data, the combination
method extracts the local damage character information better, which could be observed from the
corresponding time point of the maximum and second maximum of wavelet coefficient sum SCðtÞ, under
different scales. Namely, the corresponding time of the maximum and second maximum of the wavelet
coefficient sum of IMF2 and f ðtÞ under the scales 1; 2; 4; 8; 16; 32; 64 is, respectively, ð351; 350Þ; ð352; 351Þ,
which is in accordance with the respected results.

3.2.2. Example #2
From the first example, we see that the combination method of EMD and wavelet analysis may be applied
to estimate the damage. Now, turn to another example, we consider the 4-storey shear building model
described in [3]. The mass, the initial stiffness corresponding to each floor and the system frequencies prior to
any damage are shown in Fig. 4. The structure has 5% damping in all modes. We assume the system is
subjected to E1 Centro (1940) ground motion and at t ¼ 10 s the first floor stiffness suffers a sudden 80% loss.
The system frequencies after the damage are 5:47; 21:70; 38:83 and 48:83 Hz. We record the response of the
roof acceleration as the output from the experiment start. The acceleration at the roof contains relatively more
energy in high frequencies. One cannot detect the damage occurring at time t ¼ 10 s by direct visual inspection
of the acceleration signal. We first adopt EMD to obtain the IMF components in Fig. 5. The broken lines of
each IMF denote the instantaneous envelopment. In the same way, we adopt the algorithm of this paper to
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m4 accleration
response Mode f (Hz)
k 1 9.67
m3
2 26.37
k 3 39.81
m2
4 49.03
k
m1 k=7.5×107N/m
m1=3600 kg, m2=m3=2850 kg
k m4=1800 kg
Input
excitation

Fig. 4. Structural model for numerical study.

0.2
signal

0
2
0.2
imf1

0
2
0.1
imf2

0
1
0.1
imf3

0
1
0.02
imf4

0.02
imf5

0.01
imf6

x 10−3
5
imf7

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Fig. 5. The response curve signal and its IMFs.

obtain the ratio of the relative energy character rate of each IMF and the response data,
respectively:1:5125; 0:88; 0:57884; 0:89423; 0:6271; 0:63182; 0:97528. The corresponding component of the ratio
above the threshold Th ¼ 1 is IMF1, but we cannot easily see the damage and small amplitude changes of the
first IMF and the Hilbert–Huang spectrum at the correct time t ¼ 10 s. So then the first IMF is further
analysed by the wavelet transform. Compared with the wavelet transform of direct response data, the damage
occurring at time t ¼ 10 s is more clearly visible as seen in Fig. 6. The corresponding time of the maximum and
second maximum of the wavelet coefficient sum of IMF1 and original response signal is, respectively,
ð9:975; 10Þ; ð9:65; 10:025Þ. So we can easily see the indication of damage as the magnitude of the wavelet
transform coefficient.
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IMF1’s WT Original response signal’s WT

64 120 64 120

32 100 32 100

16 16
80 80
scales a

scales a
8 8
60 60

4 4
40 40

2 2

20 20

1 1

5 10 15 20 5 10 15 20

Fig. 6. The wavelet transforms of the first IMF and the response signal. From the damage occurring at time t ¼ 10 we can see clearly that
the IMF 1’s WT graph is more visible compared to original response signal’s WT graph.

4. Conclusion

This paper has investigated the feasibility of detecting the time of damage to a 4-storey shear structure
building to harmonic excitation using both EMD and wavelet transform combined method. In the case of a
sudden severe damage, the technique is capable of identifying the time and extent of the damage more
precisely through the magnitude of the wavelet coefficient of the dominant IMF than individual wavelet
transform to original response signal. The proposed method was shown through simulation to be very
sensitive to stiffness changes. The experimental verification confirmed the ability of the combined approach to
correctly detect the occurrence of a structural change in a 4-storey shear structure building.
Due to the non-stationary nature of the response signal data, we have applied the combination of the EMD
and wavelet analysis methods to the structure response signal data. We have obtained that the original
response signal can be decomposed into seven intrinsic modes. Because the structure of the original is more
complex than its IMF components, we have checked this fact by the application of the wavelet transform to
the extracted IMF other than the original response signal. Wavelet transform has powerful ability for signal
detection, which helps it to be used for damage diagnosis. Very good results are obtained from Fig. 6 using the
method.
This method could be extended for analysis of other mechanical and civil engineering structures. Further
research is recommended to quantify the correlation between the magnitude of the wavelet coefficient and the
location of the damage. How to choose the mother wavelet is also important to explore.

References

[1] W.X. Ren, G.D. Roeck, Structural damage identification using modal data I: simulation verification, Journal of Structural
Engineering ASCE 128 (1) (2002) 87–95.
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[2] H.T. Vincent, S.-L.J. Hu, Z. Hou, Damage detection using empirical mode decomposition method and a comparison with wavelet
analysis, Structural Health Monitoring: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, 2000, pp.
891–900.
[3] D. Bernal, B. Gunes, An examination of instantaneous frequency as a damage detection tool, Proceedings of 14th Engineering
Mechanics Conference, Austin, TX, 2000, pp. 398–405.
[4] N.E. Huang, Z. Shen, S.R. Long, et al., The empirical mode decomposition and the Hilbert spectrum for nonlinear and non-stationary
time series analysis, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A (454) (1998) 903–995.
[6] Shyh-Jier Huang, Chen-Wen Lu, Enhancement of digital equivalent voltage flicker measurement via continuous wavelet transform,
IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery 19 (2) (2004) 663–670.

Further reading

[5] A. Chukwujekwu Okafor, A. Dutta, Structural damage detection in beams by wavelet transforms, Smart Materials and Structure,
Printed in the UK 9 (2000) 906-917.
[7] L. Eren, J.D. Michael, Motor bearing damage detection via wavelet analysis of the starting current transient, IEEE Instrumentation
and Measurement Technology Conference Budapest, Hungary, 2001, pp. 1797–1800.
[8] L. Eren, J.D. Michael, Bearing damage detection via wavelet packet decomposition of the stator current, IEEE Transaction on
Instrumentation and Measurement 53 (2) (2004) 431–436.
[9] J.N. Yang, Y. Lei, S. LIn, N. Huang, Hilbert–Huang based approach for structural damage detection, Journal of Engineering
Mechanics 130 (1) (2004) 85–95.