Structural health monitoring of frame structures using piezo transducer

Monitoring of civil structures is crucial for their proper functioning. Any crack in a structure changes its static and dynamic behaviours. To detect the damage/crack at the initiating time itself is challenging task in modem time. This paper describes an experimental study to extract the dynamic characteristics of a frame structure using piezo-electric ceramic (PZT) transducers. Tests are conducted on steel frame to extract the natural frequencies and the experimental mode shapes. Free vibration response is first acquired in the time domain and then transformed into frequency domain using Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) analyser. Only single PZT patch is sufficient to extract the first nine modes shape of the steel frame By using numerical model, mode shapes are extracted corresponding to each identified natural frequency. After determining natural frequencies and experimental mode shape, damages can be located by method of Naidu and Soh (2004). This approach can be used for damage/crack detection at very earlier stage.