Localizing small damages often requires sensors be mounted in the proximity of damage to obtain high Signal-to-Noise Ratio in system frequency response to input excitation. The proximity requirement limits the applicability of existing schemes for low-severity damage detection as an estimate of damage location may not be known  a priori. In this work it is shown that spatial locality is not a fundamental impediment; multiple small damages can still be detected with high accuracy provided that the frequency range beyond the first five natural frequencies is utilized in the Frequency response functions (FRF) curvature method. The proposed method presented in this paper applies sensitivity analysis to systematically unearth frequency ranges capable of elevating damage index peak at correct damage locations. It is a baseline-free method that employs a smoothing polynomial to emulate reference curvatures for the undamaged structure. Numerical simulation of steel-beam shows that small multiple damages of severity as low as 5% can be reliably detected by including frequency range covering 5–10th natural frequencies. The efficacy of the scheme is also experimentally validated for the same beam. It is also found that a simple noise filtration scheme such as a Gaussian moving average filter can adequately remove false peaks from the damage index profile.

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Low-severity multiple damage detection relies on sensing minute deviations in the vibrational or dynamical characteristics of the structure. The problem becomes complicated when the reference vibrational profile of the healthy structure and corresponding input excitation, is unavailable as frequently experienced in real-life scenarios. Detection methods that require neither undamaged vibrational profile (baseline-free) nor excitation information (output-only) constitute state-of-art in structural health monitoring. Unfortunately, their efficacy is ultimately limited by non-ideal input excitation masking crucial attributes of system response such as resonant frequency peaks beyond first (few) natural frequency(ies) which can better resolve the issue of multiple damage detection. This study presents an improved frequency response function curvature method which is both baseline-free and output-only. It employs the cepstrum technique to eliminate [Formula: see text] decay of higher resonance peaks caused by the temporal spread of real impulse excitation. Long-pass liftering screens out the bulk of low-frequency sensor noise along with the excitation. With more visible resonant peaks, the cepstrum purified frequency response functions (regenerated frequency response functions) register finer deviation from an estimated baseline frequency response function and yield an accurate damage index profile. The simulation and experimental results on the beam show that the proposed method can successfully locate multiple damages of severity as low as 5%.

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