Feasibility study on an angular velocity-based damage detection method using gyroscopes

Abstract

This paper proposes an angular velocity-based damage detection method using gyroscopes and investigates its feasibility. This study basically intends to enhance the performance of the existing modal flexibility-based methods by replacing accelerations measured from accelerometers with angular velocities measured from gyroscopes. In order to verify the superiority of a gyroscope in damage detection, numerical studies were performed by changing optional parameters such as damage location, severity, and measurement noise. From parametric studies, it was shown that the damage detection results using gyroscopes are more sensitive to damage and more robust to noise generated from the curvature estimation than those using accelerometers. Experimental validations were also carried out to investigate the feasibility of a gyroscope in damage detection. From the results, it was shown that the gyroscope-based damage detection method can successfully identify damage location. In conclusion, it was numerically and experimentally verified that a new damage detection approach using gyroscopes could improve damage detection ability significantly. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd.