The Accuracy of the F Statistic for Structural Health Monitoring

Understanding the reliability of engineering methods is crucial for its adoption and deployment. This research focuses on the reliability of the Power Spectral Density (PSD) method via the use of the F statistic for damage detection. To the author best knowledge, the method is rather classic but its realibility has not been discussed in the context of a large data size. Priory, the research anticipates that the accuracy is a function of the damage level. In this study, we evaluate 3500 cases with five levels of structural integrity, namely, healthy condition and damaged conditions with 1%, 5%, 10%, and 20% damage levels. The dataset is established via a numerical analysis of a seven degree-of-freedom system loaded with a concentrated dynamic force with random magnitude. A spring on the system is reduced in its stiffness to simulate damages. Our significant findings are the following: it is challenging for the PSD-based method to differentiate the healthy condition from the damaged conditions when the damage level is small. However, the reliability is high at 95% probability when the structural integrity has dropped by five percent.