EU

Funded by the European Union

WP 1 Structural Health Monitoring

Development of practical techniques for increasing the sensitivity of structural response to damages
  • by adding properly placed virtual masses
  • by extracting local-only information from global response (virtual supports and virtual isolation of substructures)
Development of damage identification techniques for skeletal structures (e.g. a railway bridge), including a technique for modeling of semi-rigid joints in frame structures and identification of their defects. In practice, joint defects are the most often occurring defects in bridge-like structures.

Nonparametric monitoring of structures: development of techniques for nonparametric monitoring of structures (directly based on experimentally measured data instead of a FE model).

Access to Adaptronica's railway bridge monitoring system in Nieporęt allowed the IPPT team to get acquainted with the practical in-field requirements for their SHM methods.

Defect monitoring in piping systems
  • Development of an SHM technique based on guided torsional waves for piping systems
  • Development and numerical verification of a technique for virtual isolation of half pipes through identification of reaction forces of virtual supports. The technique allows for selective automatic focusing the monitoring systems on half pipes by sorting out the echos from the other part of the pipe. Tests of the applicability of existing transducers for the purpose of virtual isolation.
Modeling and monitoring of prestressed fibre composites: Development and numerical verification of a prestress model for fibre composites. Preparations for experimental verification (including mastering a technique for introducing prestress, fabrication of a prestressed composite, performing static loading experimental tests, and ongoing development of techniques for monitoring of relaxation process) are underway. This has set the scene for the following steps: studying the relaxation process in the validated numerical model, studying the damage mechanisms on prestressed composites, and characterization of their damages using acoustical techniques through simulation. The ultimate goal is the development of an acoustical technique for monitoring of prestress relaxation.

Investigations into structural health monitoring of large CFRP composite plates using Lamb waves excited by piezoelectric patches (PWAS). In this phase, analytical and numerical studies on Lamb waves for both isotropic and anisotropic materials have been made and as result initial phase numerical FEM model has been developed for generation and reception of Lamb waves using COMSOL- multiphysics. The study focused on problems due to dispersion, attenuation and anisotropy when Lamb waves interact with defects in the composite materials. The next phase is to validate the developed mathematical model by conducting experiment on the composite plate by embedding PWAS patches. Finally, the acquired data from the experiment will be useful to perform image reconstruction.

Studies in long-range structural health monitoring using surface and structural waves via the wave finite element method (WFEM) and inhomogenous wave correlation method (IWC). A numerical study of damage detection in a stiffened panel using guided waves and IWC at low and medium frequencies.