Nonparametric identification of structural modifications in Laplace domain

This paper proposes and experimentally verifies a Laplace-domain method for identification of structural modifications, which (1) unlike time-domain formulations, allows the identification to be focused on these parts of the frequency spectrum that have a high signal-to-noise ratio, and (2) unlike frequency-domain formulations, decreases the influence of numerical artifacts related to the particular choice of the FFT exponential window decay. In comparison to the time-domain approach proposed earlier, advantages of the proposed method are smaller computational cost and higher accuracy, which leads to reliable performance in more difficult identification cases. Analytical formulas for the first- and second-order sensitivity analysis are derived. The approach is based on a reduced nonparametric model, which has the form of a set of selected structural impulse responses. Such a model can be collected purely experimentally, which obviates the need for design and laborious updating of a parametric model, such as a finite element model. The approach is verified experimentally using a 26-node lab 3D truss structure and 30 identification cases of a single mass modification or two concurrent mass modifications.