Damage identification in beam-like pipeline based on modal information

Damage detection based on measured vibration data has received intensive studies recently. Frequently, the damage to a structure may be reflected by a change of some system parameters, such as a degradation of the stiffness. In this paper, we apply a method to nondestructively locate and estimate the severity of damage in corrosion pipeline for which a few natural frequencies or mode shapes are available. The method is based on the strain modal sensitivity ratio (SMSR) and the orthogonality conditions sensitivities (OCS) applied to vibration features identified during the monitoring of the pipeline. The advantage of these methods is that it only requires measuring few modal parameters. The SMSR-based and OCS-based damage detection methods are illustrated using computer-simulated and laboratory testing data. The results show that the current method provides a precise indication of both the location and the extent of corrosion pipeline.