an effective approach to structural damage localization in flexural members based on generalized s-transform

This paper presents a method for structural damage localization based on signal processing using generalized s-transform (sgs). the s-transform is the combinations of the properties of the short-time fourier transform (stft) and wavelet transform (wt) that has been developed over the last few years in an attempt to overcome inherent limitations of the wavelet and short time fourier transform in time-frequency representation of non-stationary signals. the generalized type of this transform is the sgs-transform that has adjustable gaussian window width in the time-frequency representation of signals. in this research, the sgs-transform has been employed due to its favorable performance in detection of the structural damages. the performance of the proposed method has been verified by means of three numerical examples and also the experimental data obtained from the vibration test of 8-dofs mass–stiffness system. by way of the comparison between damage location obtained from the proposed method and simulation model, it was concluded that the method is sensitive to the damage existence and clearly demonstrates the damage location.