The structure can be deformed depending on the operating environment. Fatigue failure can be occurred when the structure subjected to stress, especially a repeated series of stresses or when the structure subjected to stress exceeded the elastic limit of its material. If an essential part in the structure deformed or destructed, the operation performance of the structure can be reduced. And physical or human life damage can be caused. Therefore, a method on maintenance the structure, or estimation of the structural deformation is important.
Recently, the structure applied with composite material is increasing, for reason of weight lightening, high stiffness and strength, etc. The composite structure is prone to delamination failure by external deformation and impact. Hence, this study introduces a method to estimate the deformation of the single materials and composite structures using relationship between displacement and strain.
In this study, a deformation estimation method is applied to a structure made of a single material and a composite material. Strain gauge sensors were used to measure the strain of the composite structure. The optimum location of the strain gauge sensors was determined by condition number, which was optimized by a genetic algorithm. By attaching three strain gauge sensors to the composite structure, the strain is measured at three different points. The measured strain was applied to the displacement ? strain transformation (DST) algorithm to estimate the deformation shape of the composite structure. It is also possible to predict the deformation of the structure by applying the measured strain to the strain and stress relationship.
When the algorithm used in this study is applied to the single materials and composite structure, real time monitoring of the displacement, strain, and stress of the whole structure is possible with small discrete strain sensors.