Papers by Author: Irina Trendafilova

Abstract: The main aspect of the paper is to give an answer to the question of what specific kind of defect has actually occurred in a structure and how to distinguish between different kinds of discontinuities. For this purpose composite rods and beams with fatigue cracks, step changes in cross-sectional area and small changes in material properties have been investigated. The objective of the work has been to propose a signal processing methodology based on wavelet transformation for identification of specific discontinuity. The identification of a fatigue crack from other discontinuities has been demonstrated. It has been also found that the proposed methodology might be useful for precise indication of the size of the identified fatigue damage.

Abstract: This study investigates a possibility for representing, interpreting and visualising the vibration response of aircraft panels using time domain measurements. The aircraft panels are modelled as thin orthotropic plates and their vibration response is simulated using FE modelling. The vibration response of a thin aluminium panel is simulated using FE modelling. The first ten resonant frequencies are estimated for the FE model and for the dynamically tested panel. They were found to show somewhat low sensitivity to damage. Then the simulated vibration response of the panel is transformed and expanded in a new phase space. This presents an alternative way to study and analyse the dynamics of a structure. A two dimensional phase space is used in this investigation. Thus instead of studying the single dimension measured vibration characteristics one is faced with expanded two dimensional variables which can be visualised and this facilitates the comparison between the damaged and the non-damage states.

Abstract: A method for damage localisation has been developed, which is based on the phased array idea. Four arrays of transducers, instead of only one, are used to perform a beam-forming procedure. Each array consists of nine transducers placed along a line, which are able to excite and register elastic waves. The arrays are placed in such a way that the angular difference between them is 45º and the rotation point is the middle transducer, which is common for all the arrays. The idea has been tested on a square aluminium plate modelled by the Spectral Finite Element Method. Two types of damage were considered, namely distributed damage, which was modelled as stiffness reduction, and cracks, modelled as separation of nodes in selected finite elements. The plate is excited by a wave packet (5-cycle sine modulated by the Hanning window). The whole array system is placed in the middle of the plate. Each phase array in the system acts independently and produces maps of a scanned field based on the beam-forming procedure. These maps are made of signals that represent the difference between the damaged plate signals and those from the intact plate. An algorithm was developed to join all four maps. This procedure eliminates the necessity to analyse each map individually and also gives the possibility to extract common features only. It allows to remove ambiguity and helps to localise damage more precisely than in the case of a single map. The problem for damage localisation was investigated and exemplary maps confirming the effectiveness of the system proposed were obtained. The investigation is based exclusively on numerical data.

Abstract: When carrying out a vibration modal analysis of a structure it is usually assumed that the structure is in vacuo. However as structures become increasingly light and thin walled due to the development of high grade corrosion resistant alloys, this fundamental assumption is becoming increasingly strained. In this paper we will highlight the analysis and the implications of structural/fluid interaction on modal analysis for the purpose of prediction of dynamic response and for vibration health monitoring.

Abstract: Recent NATO funded research on methods for detection and interpretation methodologies for damage detection in aircraft panel structures has motivated work on low-order nonlinear analytical modelling of vibrations in cracked isotropic plates, typically in the form of aluminium aircraft panels. The work applies fundamental aspects of fracture mechanics to define an elliptical crack, and the local stress field and loading conditions, arbitrarily located at some point in the plate, and then derives an analytical expression for this that can be incorporated into the PDE for an edge loaded plate with various possible boundary conditions. The plate PDE is converted into a nonlinear Duffing-type ODE in the time domain by means of a Galerkin procedure and then an arbitrarily small perturbation parameter is introduced into the equation in order to apply an appropriate solution method, in this case the method of multiple scales. This is used to solve the equation for the vibration in the cracked plate for the chosen boundary conditions, which, in turn, leads to an approximate analytical solution. The solution is discussed in terms of the perturbation approximations that have been applied and highlights the phenomenology inherent within the problem via the specific structures of the analytical solution.

Abstract: This work was motivated by the recent NATO funded research on preventing disasters from collapse and improving the safety of aircraft structures. It considers the problem for vibrationbased damage detection in aircraft panels modelled as isotropic plates. The explored method does not use any assumptions of model or linearity, it is simply based on pure signal analysis of the vibration response of plates. FE modelling is used to model the plate’s dynamic response in its intact and in its damaged state. The signals obtained are analysed using multivariate analysis applied in the measured frequency domain. This reduces the data dimensionality and is expected to have a clustering effect. At this stage the measured data is transformed into features – new variables- which have smaller dimension than the initial ones and make the categories more distinguishable. Then a very simple pattern recognition (PR) method is applied to discriminate between the two categories of data -data coming from the undamaged plate and data coming from the damaged plate. This is the second stage when the obtained features are used for the actual recognition between the defined categories. The paper suggests the use of the Karhunen-Loeve transform in order to extract features from the measured frequency response functions of the plate. When the data dimensionality is brought down to two the response of the plate can be visualised. The clustering effect on the features coming from undamaged plate and those from the damaged is obvious.

Abstract: This study investigates the possibilities for damage detection and location using the vibration response of an aircraft wing. A simplified finite element model of an aircraft wing is used to model its vibration response. The model is subjected to modal analysis- its natural frequencies are estimated and the mode shapes are determined. Two types of damage are considered - localised and distributed. The wing model is divided into a number of volumes. The goal of the study is to investigate the possibility to use the vibration response of an aircraft wing and especially its modal characteristics for the purposes of damage detection. So we’ll be trying to find suitable features, which can be used to detect damage and restrict it to one of the introduced volumes. The sensitivity of the modal frequencies of the model to damage in different locations is studied. Some general trends in the behaviour of these frequencies with change of the damage location are investigated. The utilization of the modal frequencies for detecting damage in a certain part of the wing is discussed

Abstract: This work investigates the use of two different vibration-based methods for health monitoring of aircraft wings. A finite element model of a simplified wing is used to model and predict the vibration response of an aircraft wing in an intact condition and in the presence of different types and levels of damage. Two main types of damage are considered- cracks and distributed damage. This study first explores the sensitivity of the lower modal frequencies to different damage levels of the studied types. Then the employment of the frequency response functions subjected to principal components analysis is discussed. This is an early model-based study which is intended to establish if the considered procedures can be used as damage detection tools.

Abstract: This research considers the problem for vibration based damage diagnosis in reinforced concrete slabs. It suggests the analysis of the time domain measured accelerations for the purposes of fault detection and quantification. The measured accelerations from different damage states of the slab are first subjected to initial transforms to bring them to vectors with reasonable component number. These vectors are further transformed using principal components analysis (PCA), which brings their coordinates down to two. In addition to reducing the number of measured acceleration points, PCA clusters the new vectors making distinguishable the different damage states. The results from the application of the suggested method convincingly demonstrate that the method can be applied for fault detection as well as for estimating the damage extent.