An effective damage identification approach in thick steel beams based on guided ultrasonic waves for structural health monitoring applications

An inverse analysis using artificial intelligence based on the guided ultrasonic waves is proposed for effective identification of damage in thick steel beams for the purpose of structural health monitoring applications. Parameterized modeling for finite element analysis is applied to constitute the damage parameter database cost-effectively. For signal processing and feature extraction, wavelet transform is employed. A novel feature extraction technique, damage characteristic points, is applied to constitute the database for pattern recognition procedures. Using the extracted metrics, a multilayer feedforward artificial neural network under supervision of an error-backpropagation algorithm is developed and trained. The generalization performance of the artificial neural network has been examined experimentally. Results illustrate that the proposed metrics together with artificial neural network technique are powerful tools for effective identification of damage in the case of thick structures.