A Bayesian Probabilistic Approach for Structure Damage Detection

Abstract

A Bayesian probabilistic approach is presented for the, damage detection of multistorey frame structures. In this paper, a Bayesian probabilistic approach is applied to identify multiple damage locations using estimated modal parameters when (1) the measurement data are potentially corrupted with noise, (2) only a small number of degrees of freedom are measured, and (3) a few fundamental modes are estimated. To reduce the potentially intensive computational cost of the proposed method, a branch-and-bound search scheme is proposed and a simplified approach for the modelling of multistorey frame structures is employed. A six-storey shear frame example and two multistorey frame examples, with multiple damage locations, are presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.