On the Robustness of the Average Power Ratios in Damping Estimation: Application in the Structural Health Monitoring of Composites Beams

In composites structures, cracking, delamination will cause changes in the measured dynamic response of structure and so on experimentally modal parameters. Estimation of damping in structural control often poses a difficult problem especially using broadband experiments. If these estimations are faulty, it is difficult to propose a robust Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) algorithm. Recently H.P. Yin introduced the optimal power ratios damping estimator. A new theoretical basis of the bandwidth method for the damping estimation from frequency response functions (in case of a single degree of freedom system) has been proposed. The main goal of this paper is to study the robustness of this enhanced damping estimator on simulated signal (sampling frequency, Signal to Noise Ratio and damping level/density), and also compare its performance with industrial improved estimator like “Polymax” on experimental Frequency Response Functions (FRFs). The pole shifts would be studied as a change in the frequency-damping plane function of level and density of damage