A Differential Quadrature based procedure for parameter identification

In this paper, a numerical scheme for a parameter identification problem is presented. The problem here considered is the identification of the stiffness of structural elements and a new procedure to solve it is proposed. This procedure involves not only the usual Newton-like iterative algorithm for nonlinear least squares problems, but it also provides a unitary framework to calculate the solution of the equation of motion (forward problem) and the Jacobian matrix (required by minimization) by means of Differential Quadrature (DQ) rules simultaneously applied in space and time. DQ based methods are promising numerical schemes and a novel application is here proposed. Two practical example applications are discussed. The proposed method is very simple in its principle and has great potential for future applications, provided that a suitable model is adopted.