A method to detect the damaged area within the structure by dynamic characteristics measurements was tested with shell structure. The method to locate fault by comparing the measured dynamic signal is not new. Already error matrix and weighted error matrix method was suggested and tested with beam and plate structures.
In this thesis the weighted error matrix method was expanded to shell structures. Usually shell structures, different from other beam and plate type structures, have large d.o.f. model and characterized with repeated eigen-properties and make it very difficult to apply the conventional weighted error matrix.
In this work, an dummy mass was placed in the model shell structure to split the repeated eigenvalues.
Then the weighted error matrix was assembled with measured dynamic characteristics. It was found the weighted error matrix can be expanded to shell structure even though it needs a large computations.