Structural damage identification based on residual force vector

Structural damage identification methods based on the residual force vector are studied in this paper. Using the residual force vector, the node residual force vector is defined to locate the suspected damaged elements preliminarily. Then three damage quantification techniques are studied to identify damages more precisely. The first is the algebraic solution of the residual force equation, the second is the MREU technique and the third is the natural frequency sensitivity method. A mode shape expansion technique based on the best achievable eigenvector concept is presented to solve the incomplete measurement problem. These damage detection methods are demonstrated on a numerical example and the measurement noises are discussed.