Numerical Analysis of Steel Frame Using Electro-Mechanical Impedance Technique

Nowadays, piezoelectric materials are most widely used in structural health monitoring (SHM) system for nondestructive evaluation. In this paper the damage study using electro-mechanical impedance (EMI) technique, which is nondestructive method of SHM. This paper presents a numerical analysis of four-story steel frame and multiple damages were induced in the steel frame by utilizing smart material like Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT). A PZT-4 piezoelectric material was embedded in the beam of the frame. The type of damping used in steel frame model was Rayleigh damping. The numerical analysis was done in COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS 6.2 and frequency domain analysis was done, from that admittance values were find out for 30-300KHz frequency range. The real part of the admittance gives conductance values. Then, conductance verses frequency graph was created that will indicate the structural health and performance. Moreover, root mean square deviation (RMSD) index was found out for each case that provides a quantitative measure of deviation.