Damage detection in ship hull by structural parameters estimation based on wavelet transform data

This paper develops a structural model updating method in the time-scale domain based on the wavelet transform of the correlation function and seeks its implementation for damage detection of the ship hull. The quasi-exact sensitivity equation based on the wavelet transform coefficients are used to identify the damage as well as to overcome the drawbacks of incomplete data measurement. Different types of mother wavelets have been studied to select the best wavelet to identify structural damages. The abilities of the method is numerically examined through several damage cases. The robustness of the method against mass measurement and modeling errors is evaluated numerically using Monte Carlo analysis and error-contaminated data. This method proves to be strong against both types of errors for detecting of the damage in shell structures.