Possibilistic Approach for Damage Detection in Structural Health Monitoring

This article suggests the process of structural health monitoring (SHM) in the context of a nonstatistical damage detection paradigm. We particularly focus on applying the theory of possibility to the damage detection problem. The basic idea behind the proposed approach is that the application of possibility theory does not require probabilistic knowledge or assumptions on the damage feature and thus encompasses aleatoric and epistemic types of uncertainties. The approach is not damage feature dependent and thus is generic for use in many SHM systems. Additionally, two new damage metrics are introduced. These metrics extract information concerning damage evidence from observations performed at unknown health states of structures. Damage detection with the aid of the proposed approach is demonstrated by means of a case study.