Influence of the Environmental Conditions on the Vibrations of Structures Made of Composites

The main objective of this project is to evaluate the influence of the environmental conditions and especially temperature on the vibration and damage assessment of structures made of composites. The project will focus on applications of data analysis methods.

It is known that environmental conditions and especially temperature can have significant influence on the structural vibrations in terms of their level, structural natural frequencies and mode shapes. Experimentally it has been established that only a 20 temperature change in large civil engineering structures can change the structural resonances with up to 20%. With composite materials replacing traditional ones for most applications as a result of their superior properties including lightweight and higher stiffness, this project intends to look at the influence of the temperature on the vibration response of structures made of composites including their resonant frequencies, mode shapes and damping. This will be done theoretically through finite element modelling and validated and verified experimentally through a properly designed experimental campaign. The project will focus on the application of principal component analysis (PCA) , which is a data analysis technique, to analyse and reconstruct the structural vibration response in the presence of temperature changes. The development of environmentally insensitive vibration-based damage assessment features and a damage diagnosis method based on PCA is envisaged. The student will be based at the MAE Department in Strathclyde University and will have access to the experimental and the computational facilities there. The project is partially sponsored by the University of Strathclyde and the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Please send letter of motivation, CV and references to Dr I Trendafilova