Experimental Study on Impact Force Identification on a Multi-Storey Tower Structure Using Different Transducers

Abstract

This paper presents the identification of both location and magnitude of impact forces applied on different positions of a multi-storey tower structure using different types of transducers, i.e., an accelerometer, a laser Doppler vibrometer, and a triangulation displacement sensor. Herein, a model-based inverse method is exploited to reconstruct unknown impact forces based on various recorded dynamic signals. Furthermore, the superposition approach is employed to identify the impact location. Therein, it is assumed that several impact forces are applied simultaneously on potential locations of the multi-storey tower structure, while only one impact has non-zero magnitude. The purpose is then to detect the location of that non-zero impact. The influence of using different hammer tip materials for establishing the transfer function is investigated, where it is concluded that the hammer with a harder tip leads to a more accurate transfer function. An accuracy error function is proposed to evaluate the reconstruction precision. Moreover, the effect of sensor type and location on the accuracy of the reconstruction is studied, where it is shown that the proximity between the impact and sensor locations is a dominant factor in impact force reconstruction. In addition, the efficacy of using different transducers is studied for the impact localization, where it is demonstrated that reducing the degree of under-determinacy by using a combination of system responses of the same type can improve the localization accuracy.