Formulation of an acceleration residual generator for monitoring of stiffness degradation

This paper presents the formulation of a time-domain acceleration based residual generator for the detection of stiffness degradation in a structural system. Furthermore, an explicit damage indicator for individual elements is incorporated in association with the acceleration residual generators. The general idea of the residual generator method is to transform the state space description of a dynamic system with structural stiffness changes in different components into multi-failure events. Consequently, the damage detection becomes effectively a disturbances decoupling problem (DDP), and therefore the geometric concept can be employed to design residual generators for individual components of the structure. A simple example is provided to illustrate the implementation and the general result. The framework of the method has the potential for real life applications; however, further work is needed to enhance the robustness of the procedure.