Study on damage detection of bridge based on wavelet multi-scale analysis

The damage detection method based on wavelet multi-scale analysis is presented in the paper. The damage location can be identified by analyzing the multi-scale wavelet transform coefficients of curvatures of mode shapes. The extreme value of wavelet transform coefficients indicates the damage location. But it is difficult to detect the location of defect if the defect is near to the equilibrium position of vibration. In order to solve this problem, we put forward a method which is to add the wavelet transform coefficients of multi modals together. The method can effectively overcome the above problem. Three damage situations of simply supported beam bridge are discussed in the paper. The results show that the peaks of wavelet transform coefficients indicate the damage location of structural. It is possible to pinpoint the damage location based on wavelet multi-scale analysis on curvatures of mode shapes.