Damage assessment for a awning beam by changes in the static displacement

Using the static displacement data, this paper presented a damage assessment method for a awning beam. This method is based on the estimation of changes in the static displacement of the structure. The most significant advantage of the method is that it does not require development of an analytical model of the structure being tested. All predictions are made directly from the measurements taken on the structure. The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated using simulated data with measurement noise of a awning beam. The results showed that the point from which the displacement difference starts increasing linearly is the location of damage for the awning beam. Regardless of damages being small or large, the proposed method can identify locations of structural damages accurately only using the displacement changes under the applied static load. The proposed procedure is economical for computation and simple to implement. The presented scheme may be useful for damage identification of the awning beam.