Structural Damage Diagnosis by Kalman Model Based on Stochastic Subspace Identification

This paper presents an application of statistical process control techniques for damage diagnosis using vibration measurements. A Kalman model is constructed by performing a stochastic subspace identification to fit the measured response histories of the undamaged (reference) structure. It will not be able to reproduce the newly measured responses when damage occurs. The residual error of the prediction by the identified model with respect to the actual measurement of signals is defined as a damage-sensitive feature. The outlier statistics provides a quantitative indicator of damage. The advantage of the method is that model extraction is performed by using only the reference data and that no further modal identification is needed. On-line health monitoring of structures is therefore easily realized. When the structure consists of the assembly of several sub-structures, for which the dynamic interaction is weak, the damage may be located as the errors attain the maximum at the sensors instrumented in the damaged sub-structures.