Relative baseline features for impedance-based structural health monitoring

Various experimental studies have demonstrated that an impedance-based method is an effective means of structural damage detection. Using the self-sensing and active-sensing capabilities of piezoelectric materials, the electromechanical impedance response can be monitored to provide a qualitative indication of the overall health of a structure. In this article, two new signal processing tools for the impedance method are described in order to improve the damage detection capability and to reduce the amount of data to process for structural health assessment. The first approach is to instantaneously correlate the impedance data between different sensor sets, as opposed to be correlated to pre-stored baseline data. Another approach is to use the pre-defined parameter of impedance data to establish a generalized baseline for bolted joint monitoring. These approaches could reduce the number of data sets and could be efficiently used for low-power impedance devices. The proposed signal processing techniques are applied to several experimental structures, and the efficiency in damage detection is demonstrated.