Crack diagnosis of metallic profiles based on structural damage indicators

Abstract

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) faces several challenges before large-scale industrial application. First of all damage diagnosis has to be reliable. Therefore, common SHM approaches use highly advanced sensor techniques to monitor the whole structure on all possible failures. This results in an enormous amount of data gathered during service. The general effort can be drastically reduced, if the knowledge achieved during the sizing process is used. During sizing, potential failure modes and critical locations, so called hot spots, are already evaluated. A very sensitive SHM system can be developed, when the monitoring effort shifts from the damage to its impact on the structural behaviour and the so called damage indicators. These are the two main components of the SmartSHM approach, which reduces the monitoring effort significantly. Not only the amount of data is minimized, but also reliability and robustness are ensured by the SmartSHM approach.

This contribution demonstrates the SmartSHM approach by a cracked four point bending beam. To show general applicability a parametric study considering different profiles (bar, box, I, C, T, L, Z), crack positions and lengths has been performed. Questions of sensitivity and minimum size of the sensor network are discussed based on the results of the parametric study.