A reconstruction method for damage identification in
vibrating beams is proposed in this paper. It is shown that
natural frequency and antiresonant frequency shifts induced by a
damage contain information on generalized Fourier coefficients of
the stiffness variation caused by the damage. A numerical
procedure based on this property is suggested to solve the inverse
problem. Applications on steel beams with localized damages,
either under axial or bending vibration, are discussed. Numerical
results are in good agreement with the theory, provided that
average frequency and antiresonant frequency shifts are bigger
than modeling/measurement errors.
