Influence of stiffness and mass changes on eigen frequencies of beam with piezo electric patch

The ability to monitor a structure and detect small damage is of great interest for engineering community. In structural health monitoring, Smart structures with smart elements can continuously monitor their structural integrity use bonded or embedded sensors and actuators. This paper presents a method for damage detection in structure using experimental vibration data that may result from use of such sensors/actuators the structure consists of a cantilever beam and a piezoelectric patch and accelerometer as actuator and sensor respectively. The actuator is used to excite the structure with in given frequency bandwidth and the sensor measures the received signal and influence of damage induced can be analyzed to identify and quantify damage. In this paper damage as different depths of cuts are induced on the beam and here effects are analyzed by observing the changes in power spectral magnitude of vibration response. The variation of power spectrum magnitude of beam due to attached masses at distinct locations also studied.