Detection of Contact-Type Damages by Utilizing Nonlinear Piezoelectric Impedance Modulation of Self-Excited Structures

This paper presents an improvement of a nonlinear piezoelectric impedance modulation (NPIM)-based damage detection method, a damage-sensitive, baseline-free structural health monitoring technique proposed by the authors, by introducing self-excited oscillation. The NPIM-based damage detection utilizes the modulation of high-frequency wave field of structures caused by the contact acoustic nonlinearity at the damaged part. In this study, the high-frequency wave field is induced as a self-excited oscillation of the structure by positively feed-backing the strain signal measured by a surface-bonded piezoelectric sensor, followed by a phase-shift in 90 degrees and a nonlinear element consisting of a saturation element and a negative linear gain. The induced self-excitation can have multiple stable limit cycles at certain eigenmode frequencies, and one can switch among them by inputting an auxiliary excitation signal into the feedback loop. The current flowing through the piezoelectric sensor is measured to detect its modulation due to the stiffness fluctuation due to the existence of the contact-type damage. Experiments using a specimen with a simulated damage are conducted to examine the performance of the self-excitation circuit and its applicability to the NPIM-based damage detection method.