Review of piezoelectric impedance based structural health monitoring: Physics-based and data-driven methods

Vibration based structural health monitoring methods are usually dependent on the first several orders of modal information, such as natural frequencies, mode shapes and the related derived features. These information are usually in a low frequency range. These global vibration characteristics may not be sufficiently sensitive to minor structural damage. The alternative non-destructive testing method using piezoelectric transducers, called as electromechanical impedance (EMI) technique, has been developed for more than two decades. Numerous studies on the EMI based structural health monitoring have been carried out based on representing impedance signatures in frequency domain by statistical indicators, which can be used for damage detection. On the other hand, damage quantification and localization remain a great challenge for EMI based methods. Physics-based EMI methods have been developed for quantifying the structural damage, by using the impedance responses and an accurate numerical model. This article provides a comprehensive review of the exciting researches and sorts out these approaches into two categories: data-driven based and physics-based EMI techniques. The merits and limitations of these methods are discussed. In addition, practical issues and research gaps for EMI based structural health monitoring methods are summarized.