Differentiating damage effects in a structural component from the time response

This paper proposes an approach to differentiate the effect of local anomalies on the different load-resisting capacities of a structural component made of elastic isotropic material. The sensitivities of structural dynamic response with respect to different damage indices are derived. They are then used in a time-domain sensitivity-based algorithm for model updating using a gradient-based approach. A planar frame structure is studied in the numerical simulation. Results show that the proposed method can effectively locate and quantify the different types of damage effects, and the proposed method is insensitive to measurement noise. Laboratory verification was performed with a three-dimensional truss structure with the identified results clearly showing how much a local physical damage can change the different physical parameters that lead to the load-resisting capacities of a structural component.