DAMAGE LOCALIZATION FOR BEAM STRUCTURES BASED ON EQUIVALENT ELEMENT CONCEPT

This paper discusses how to locate damage in beam structures.Damage is related with changes of local stiffness or local mass.Based on the equivalent element concept, this paper proposes newmethods of damage localization for continuous beam and simply supportedbeams, respectively, by using support reaction and mid-span displacement as damageindicators. The damage location results are expressed in smallregions intervals. The feasibility and effectiveness of the methods aredemonstrated by numerical simulations and model experiments.