Diagnosing structural damage in frames by means of EO

Detecting structural defects in existing structures is an efficient way to guarantee that a structure works effectively in its service life. While several successful publications have been presented so far in this respect, the topic still requires further investigation. This paper suggests a model updating-based damage identification technique for frames that employs dynamic characteristics of the structure to define a damage-sensitive objective function. The inverse problem is then solved via an optimization algorithm, as a result of which damaged elements and their associated damage severities are successfully detected. The method is then validated using a number of numerically-modeled frames, whose results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.