Sensitivity Enhancement for Structural Condition Assessment with Noisy Excitation or with Only Output

Abstract

Revisited herein is the response sensitivity method for structural condition assessment. The performance of a sensitivity enhancement technique for structural damage identification is discussed with reference to cases with noisy excitation or with only output. An extended study on the structural condition assessment is conducted based on a newly developed force identification technique and the response sensitivity enhancement method. Numerical simulations with a planar truss structure show that the adverse effect of noise in excitation cannot be ignored in damage detection. A two-step method including the sensitivity enhancement technique for damage detection could improve the identification accuracy with less influence from the identified excitations. The improved structural condition assessment with sensitivity enhancement technique out-performs the conventional sensitivity approach with more accurate results from the truss structure studied even with a 10% noise in the measured responses.