Structural safety alarming based on signal energy by using wavelet packet transform

The structural safety alarming based on signal energy is carried out in this study with the aiding of wavelet packet transform (WPT). The structural dynamic responses are computed by using Newmark-beta algorithm and then decomposed to obtain the signal energy distribution at different levels. A damage detection approach based on signal energy by using wavelet packet transform is developed in this study to detect the damage event of a simply-supported beam. A WPT component energy (WPCE) index is proposed to construct the damage vectors for damage identification. A beam structure is taken as an example to examine the feasibility and validity of the proposed approach. The results from this study demonstrate that the detection approach proposed can accurately identify the damage event in the structure.