Acoustic-based damage detection method

Most of the structural health monitoring (SHM) methods is either based on vibration-based and contact acoustic emission (AE) techniques. Both vibration-based and acoustic emission techniques require attaching transducers to structure. In many applications, such as those involving hot structural materials for thermal protection purposes or in rotating machines, noncontact measurements would be preferred because the operating environment is prohibitive leading to potential damage in contact sensors or their attachments. In this paper, a new noncontact, acoustic-based damage detection method is proposed and tested with an objective that the proposed method is able to detect the location and extend of damage accurately. The proposed acoustic-based damage detection method is a direct method. In this proposed method, changes in vibro-acoustics flexibility matrices of the damage and health structure are used to predict the location and extend of damage in the structure. A case study involving actual measured date for the case of a fixed-fixed plate structure is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results have shown that the proposed acoustic-based damage detection method can be used to detect the location and extend of the damage accurately.