In this paper, a self-sensing, sensitive and baseline-free structural health monitoring methodology is developed, which aims to detect and characterize local structural failures of contact type, i.e. failures which arise along with the generation, growth and/or changes of imperfect solid-solid interfaces. The nonlinear piezoelectric impedance modulation (NPIM) method presented is based on the ideas of two existing damage detection principles; a piezoelectric impedance-based methodology and a nonlinear wave modulation spectroscopy. It uses a single piezoelectric active sensor bonded on the structural surface, which is driven by a high-frequency harmonic voltage source. When the structure including a contact-type failure is subjected to a low-frequency dynamic load, the induced structural vibration causes a fluctuation of the scattering conditions for the high-frequency elastic waves at the failure because of the contact acoustic nonlinearity (CAN). This nonlinear effect of vibro-acoustic interaction yields a significant fluctuation in the driving-point impedance in the high-frequency range, which may lead to a modulation of the coupled electromechanical impedance (or admittance) of the piezoelectric active sensor. Therefore, if the sensor is driven by a fixed amplitude high-frequency harmonic voltage source, modulation of the coupled admittance can be observed as the amplitude modulation and phase modulation of the current flowing through the sensor. A simplified modeling study leads to the definition of a damage evaluation index that assesses the intensity of the stiffness fluctuation caused by the CAN. Experiments using cracked beam specimens are conducted to show how the NPIM can be observed and to examine the performance of the proposed method.

In this paper, a nondestructive, in-service structural integrity monitoring methodology that can detect and characterize local structural damages of contact-type, i.e. damages and failures which come along with generation, growth and/or changes of contacting surfaces, such as cracks, debonding, preload-loss in bolted joints, etc., is presented. The presented monitoring system consists of piezoelectric elements bonded on the structural surface, a high-frequency harmonic voltage source, and a current detector. When the structure is subjected to a vibrational load such as operational load at low-frequencies, the scattering conditions for the high-frequency elastic waves in the vicinity of the contact-type damages will change in synchronization with the structural vibration because of the fluctuation of the contact conditions. This nonlinear effects of vibro-acoustic interaction between the low-frequency vibration and the high-frequency wave field causes the change in the driving-point impedance of the structure at the high frequency range, which leads to the significant modulation of the coupled electro-mechanical impedance (or admittance) of the piezoelectric elements. Therefore, if the piezoelectric elements are driven by a fixed amplitude high-frequency harmonic voltage source, the nonlinear fluctuation of the coupled admittance can be observed as the amplitude and phase modulation of the current flowing through the piezoelectric element. A modeling and analytical study of the nonlinear piezoelectric impedance modulation is presented for a beam structure including a crack, utilizing a linear time-varying system theory. A damage evaluation measure is presented based on the dimensionless modal stiffness fluctuation estimated from the instantaneous admittance reconstructed from the demodulated current responses. Furthermore, fundamental strategies and future directions for damage localization based on the nonlinear piezoelectric impedance modulation are briefly discussed.

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