A Sensitivity-Enhancing Control Approach for Structural Model Updating

Model updating plays an important role in structural design and dynamic analysis. The process of model updating aims to produce an improved mathematical model by correlating the initial model with the experimentally measured data. There are a variety of techniques available for model updating using dynamic and static measurements of the structure’s behavior. This paper focuses on the model updating methods using the measured natural frequencies of the structure. The practice of model updating using only the natural frequencies encounters two well-known limitations: deficiency of frequency measurement data, and low sensitivity of measured natural frequencies with respect to the physical parameters that need to be updated. To overcome these limitations, a novel model updating method is presented in this paper. First, closed-loop control is applied to the structure to enhance the sensitivity of natural frequencies to the updating parameters. Second, by including the natural frequencies based on a series of sensitivity-enhanced closed-loop systems, we can significantly enrich the frequency measurement data available for model updating. Using the natural frequencies of these sensitivity-enhanced closed-loop systems, an iterative process is utilized to update the physical parameters in the initial model. To demonstrate and verify the proposed method, case studies are carried out using a cantilevered beam structure. The natural frequencies of a series of sensitivity-enhanced closed-loop systems are utilized to update the mass and stiffness parameters in the initial FE model. Results show that the modeling errors in the mass and stiffness parameters can be accurately identified by using the proposed model updating method.