Guided wave based wire breakage detection of multi-wire cables

Abstract

Health monitoring of cables in civil engineering structures is a big challenge. A damage localization and severity assessment method is proposed using the guided wave. The wave energy transmission coefficient at the damage location is used as a measure of the damage severity. The semi-analytical finite element method is used to analyze the wave dispersion characteristics of an example cable with 37 parallel wires, from which the excitation frequency is selected and the corresponding wave group velocity is determined. A numerical study is carried out for the wire breakage detection by a pitch-catch method. The time-of-flight information of the wave packet reflected from the damage is used for the damage localization, and the wavelet coefficients are used to analyze the wave energy transmission and reflection. It has been found that the proposed method can accurately determine the wire breakage location and severity.