A vibration-based approach to detect crack damage in a cantilever composite wingbox is
studied using the improved Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT). The improved HHT is composed of
HHT with Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT) and a simple but effective method for intrinsic mode
function (IMF) selection. For different damage status, in order to obtain structural dynamic responses,
which imply plentiful damage information, the composite wing boxes were excited by a contrived
square wave signal. Then, the dynamic responses of intact wingbox and damaged wingbox are
disposed using improved HHT. Finally, a feature index vector of structural damage, i.e. the ariation
quantity of instantaneous energy, is constructed. The obtained results show that the proposed damage
feature index vector is more sensitive to small damage than those in traditional signal processing.