Composite materials are highly sensitive to the presence of manufacturing and service-related defects that can reach a critical size during service condition and thereby can affect the safety of the structure. In order to avoid such safety issues, early identification of damage is necessary. In the present study, a numerical procedure is presented to detect and quantify damage in a composite beam like structure from changes natural frequencies using unified particle swarm optimization technique. The efficacy of the proposed methodology is demonstrated using some numerically simulated composite beam structures containing single and single and multiple damages.

Keywords: Damage assessment, Composite structures, Inverse problem, Anisotropic damage, Natural frequency, Unified particle swarm optimization, Finite element formulation.