Detection of Sparse Damages in Plates

Structural damage is often a spatially sparse phenomenon, i.e. it occurs only in a small part of the structure. This property of damage has not been utilized in the field of structural damage identification until quite recently, when the sparsity-based regularization developed in compressed sensing problems found its application in this field. In this paper we consider classical sensitivity-based finite element model updating combined with a regularization technique appropriate for the expected type of sparse damage. The validity of the proposed methods is demonstrated using simulations on a bridge. The pros and cons of these methods are discussed.