Localization of impact on box mechanical structure by the method of modal parameters extraction combined with K-means clustering

In structural health monitoring, the localization of impact is one of the most basic and challenging problems. However, existing technologies are only suitable for obtaining the impact position of plate structures, which hinder their engineering applications. Here, we propose a new method to study the impact position of complex box structures. The proposed method is based on modal parameters and k-means clustering. The modal parameters under different excitation are extracted by applying repeated impact to different positions of the structure, and then the modal constants are clustered to form the cluster centrrs. When the impact occurs at a certain location, the extracted modal constants can be compared with the clustering centres to determine the impact location. The effectiveness of this method is verified by the impact experiment of the gearbox.