Percussion-based Detection of Bolt Looseness Using Speech Recognition Technology and Least Square Support Vector Machine

In this paper, to detect bolt looseness of a subsea flange, we develop a new percussion method using speech recognition technology and least square support vector machine. Especially, to extract features from percussion-induced sound signals, we employ the mel frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC). Finally, an experiment is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared to current detection methods for bolt loosening, the proposed method can avoid constant contact between sensors and structures, which significantly improves practicability and provides guidance for structural health monitoring based on the cyber-physics systems.