A hybrid learning strategy for structural damage detection

Over the past decades, several methods for structural health monitoring have been developed and employed in various practical applications. Some of these techniques aimed to use raw dynamic measurements to detect damage or structural changes. Desirably, structural health monitoring systems should rely on computational tools capable of evaluating the information acquired from the structure continuously, in real time. However, most damage detection techniques fail to identify novelties automatically (e.g. damage, abnormal behaviors, and among others), rendering human decisions necessary. Recent studies have shown that the use of statistical parameters extracted directly from raw time domain data, such as acceleration measurements, could provide more sensitive responses to damage with less computational effort. In addition, machine learning techniques have never been more in trend than nowadays. In this context, this article proposes an original approach based on the combination of statistical indicators—to characterize acceleration measurements in the time domain—and computational intelligence techniques to detect damage. The methodology consists in the combined use of supervised (artificial neural networks) and unsupervised (k-means clustering) learning classification methods for the construction of a hybrid classifier. The objective is to detect not only structural states already known but also dynamic behaviors that have not been identified yet, that is, novelties. The main purpose is to allow a real-time structural integrity monitoring, providing responses in an automatic and continuous way while the structure is under operation. The robustness of the proposed approach is evaluated using data obtained from numerical simulations and experimental tests performed in laboratory and in situ. Results achieved so far attest a promising performance of the hybrid classifier.