A novel transmissibility concept based on wavelet transform for structural damage detection

A novel concept of transmissibility based on a wavelet transform for structural damage detection is presented in this paper. The main objective of the research was the development of a method for detecting slight damage at the incipient stage. As a vibration-based approach, the concept of transmissibility has attracted considerable interest because of its advantages and effectiveness in damage detection. However, like other vibration-based methods, transmissibility-based approaches suffer from insensitivity to slight local damage because of the regularity of the traditional Fourier transform. Therefore, the powerful signal processing techniques must be found to solve this problem. Wavelet transform that is able to capture subtle information in measured signals has received extensive attention in the field of damage detection in recent decades. In this paper, we first propose a novel transmissibility concept based on the wavelet transform. Outlier analysis was adopted to construct a damage detection algorithm with wavelet-based transmissibility. The feasibility of the proposed method was numerically investigated with a typical six-degrees-of-freedom spring-mass system, and comparative investigations were performed with a conventional transmissibility approach. The results demonstrate that the proposed transmissibility is more sensitive than conventional transmissibility, and the former is a promising tool for structural damage detection at the incipient stage.