A worldwide round robin study is sponsored by the Society of Experimental Mechanics to detect damage in a composite plate with a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV). The aim of this round robin study is to explore the potential of a SLDV for detection of damage in composite plates. In this work, a curvature-based damage detection method with use of a continuously SLDV (CSLDV) is proposed. A CSLDV can be regarded as a real-time moving sensor, since the laser spot from the CSLDV continuously moves on a structure surface and measures velocity response. An operating deflection shape (ODS) of the damaged composite plate can be obtained from velocity response by the demodulation method. The ODS of the associated undamaged composite plate is obtained by using polynomials to fit the ODS of the damaged plate. A curvature damage index (CDI) using differences between curvatures of ODSs (CODSs) associated with the ODSs from the demodulation method and the polynomial fit is proposed to detect damage. With the proposed curvature-based damage detection method, locations of two possible damage are detected in areas with consistently high CDI values at two excitation frequencies, which are in good agreement with prescribed damage locations.
