Impedance-based damage detection under noise and vibration effects

The electro-mechanical impedance technique has been extensively studied in recent decades as a non-destructive method for detecting structural damage in structural health monitoring applications using low-cost piezoelectric transducers. Although many studies have reported the effectiveness of this detection method, numerous practical problems, such as the effects of noise and vibration, need to be addressed to enable this method's effective use in real applications. Therefore, this article presents an experimental analysis of noise and vibration effects on structural damage detection in impedance-based structural health monitoring systems. The experiments were performed on an aluminum bar using two piezoelectric diaphragms, where one diaphragm was used to measure the electrical impedance signatures and the other diaphragm was used as an actuator to generate noise and controlled vibration. The effects of noise and vibration on impedance signatures were evaluated by computing the coherence function and basic damage indices. The results indicate that vibration and noise significantly affect the threshold of the lowest detectable damage, which can be compensated by increasing the excitation signal of the piezoelectric transducer.