On the separation of internal and boundary damage in slender bars using longitudinal vibration frequencies and equivalent linearization of damaged bolted joint response

The problem of detecting localized large-scale internal damage in structures with imperfect bolted joints is considered. The proposed damage detection strategy utilizes the structural damping and an equivalent linearization of the bolted lap joint response to separate the combined boundary damage from localized large-scale internal damage. The frequencies are found approximately using asymptotic analysis and a perturbation technique. The proposed approach is illustrated on an example of longitudinal vibrations in a slender elastic bar with both ends clamped by bolted lap joints with different levels of damage. It is found that while the proposed method allows for the estimation of internal damage severity once the crack location is known, it gives multiple possible crack locations so that other methods (e.g., mode shapes) are required to obtain a unique crack location.