Periodic Assembly of Steel Truss Systems for Efficient Analyses and Early Detection of Localized Damage Using Impulse Response Method

In this paper, the design of truss systems configured with a periodic pattern is proposed for obtaining the frequency response of truss units by the recursive finite-element method and monitoring their variations with localized damage using the impulse response method. The periodic assembly of a truss allows modeling with the unit cell approach in order to obtain local vibration modes independent from boundary conditions and applying recursive finite-element models that significantly reduce the required degrees of freedoms for dynamic analyses. Once the local vibration modes are obtained using dispersion curves, the impulse response method is used for tracking the damage location on the truss geometry. The approach is numerically demonstrated using three different periodic topologies and experimentally verified using a selected truss topology. The integration of the structural design and damage detection method at their earliest stage provides a forward solution for structural design and diagnosis.