Influence of environmental conditions on structural vibrations and vibration-based health monitoring

Project Description:

Structural vibration-based health monitoring is a widespread monitoring technique which uses the structural vibrations to assess the damage state/health of a structure.  The vibration response of structures is extremely sensitive to a number of changes including the temperature, the environmental and the operational conditions. Accordingly on a number of occasions it is difficult or rather impossible to understand if a certain change is caused by damage or by some other changes. Currently extensive research is done in order to distinguish between the two types of changes and to develop damage assessment and prognosis methods that are insensitive to changes in the environmental conditions.

This project aims to look at the changes in the structural vibration response and especially its natural frequencies caused by temperature changes.

Key Objectives:

The key objectives are

1) The development of an experimental programme to assess the influence of temperature changes on the structural vibration response

2) To measure the vibration response of a simple structure at STP and after changes in the temperature

3) Analyse the changes in the vibration response caused by temperature changes

4) To experimentally assess the influence of the temperature changes on the structural natural frequencies

More information about advanced master project:

The project will be to design and test a simple structure dynamically to determine its natural frequencies at normal temperature and when the temperature is changed.  I’d preferably look at a composite beam.