A Two-Step Structural Damage Detection Approach With Limited Instrumentation

This paper describes a two-step damage detection and health monitoring approach that was developed for large and complex structures with a limited number of measurements. The first step identifies a general area of structural damage using the optimal model update method and a hybrid model reduction/eigenvector expansion technique. The second step locates a specific damaged structural component using a design sensitivity technique based on a priori information from the first damage detection step. Performance of the proposed damage detection approach was demonstrated with testing and analysis of a ten-bay hexagonal truss structure. Procedures developed for the damage detection are also directly applicable to test/dynamic math model correlation when the number of measurements is limited.