A new technique that couples modal analysis and wavelet transforms for detection of multiple damage in structures is introduced. Structural damage may cause local changes in one or more of the following parameters; stiffness, mass and damping that affect the dynamic behavior of the structure. For example, a crack reduces the stiffness of the structure in a localized sense, and thus reducing its natural frequency, and causes changes in both modal damping and mode shapes.; In this research, two different structures have been analyzed: beams and plates. First, uniform beams with a single damage (notch) of different sizes at different locations were considered. Then, a beam with multiple damages was analyzed. Secondly, a uniform plate with a single square damage was considered. For all structures considered, the responses were obtained experimentally (using experimental modal analysis) and numerically (using finite element analysis), then wavelet transform was used to detect and characterize these defects.; Most vibration-based methods require knowledge of the undamaged state of the structure, which is unavailable in most cases. However, using wavelet transformation has the advantage of not requiring knowledge of the undamaged state. In addition, wavelet transform has the characteristics that make the visualization of the signal discontinuities clear. Here, it has been found that some wavelets were able to detect the damage location for all cases. Also, it was observed that the magnitude of the wavelet coefficient increased linearly with the increase in the amount of damage.
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