Application of multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis for structural health monitoring

This paper presents an application of multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) for structural health monitoring (SHM). To demonstrate the performance of proposed SHM algorithm for detecting and locating the damage, structure response of seven-story scale-down benchmark measured from ambient vibration was evaluated. It was found that damage condition due to stiffness change was effectively detected by using multifractal spectrum peak value of a single sensor under different damage categories. Moreover, the damage location was discovered after analyzing the signals of the entire floors under the same damage categories by using MF-DFA analysis. The multifractal spectrums of damage cases were subsequently compared with the healthy structure to distinctly assess the damage location. The result revealed that the damage location was correctly predicted as the shifted spectrum trend of the proposed SHM-based system. As it offers an alternative choice of the traditional SHM system with a set of initial reference, and only ambient vibration signal is required, the proposed SHM system is a promising tool in the practical implementation.