Enrique Sevillano

Damage Detection Based on Power Dissipation Measured with PZT Sensors through the Combination of Electro-Mechanical Impedances and Guided Waves.

The use of piezoelectric ceramic transducers (such as Lead-Zirconate-Titanate—PZT) has become more and more widespread for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications. Among all the techniques that are based on this smart sensing solution, guided waves and electro-mechanical impedance techniques have found wider acceptance, and so more studies and experimental works can be found containing these applications. However, even though these two techniques can be considered as complementary to each other, little work can be found focused on the combination of them in order to define a new and integrated damage detection procedure. In this work, this combination of techniques has been studied by proposing a new integrated damage indicator based on Electro-Mechanical Power Dissipation (EMPD). The applicability of this proposed technique has been tested through different experimental tests, with both lab-scale and real-scale structures.

Parameter Identification of Composite Materials Based on Spectral Model by Using Model Updating Method

A model updating approach based on a spectral element model and solved with a particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is proposed to identify the vibration-damping properties of composite materials. In comparison with conventional finite element model updating, a composite beam is modeled in a unified way by using a spectral approach whose computational cost is significantly reduced due to its simplicity. In this way, the dynamic response can be captured accurately by using a very limited number of elements. To identify the material properties, experimental tests are carried out to get the initial parameters that are introduced to initialize the spectral model; then, a model updating process solved with a PSO algorithm is implemented to obtain the real material parameters. It has been demonstrated that the proposed spectral model is a potential tool for model updating and parameter identification.