Substructure damages and excitations identification using measured response

This paper proposes a methodology on simultaneous identification of substructure excitation and damage. Structural damages are simulated by virtual distortions which are computed together with unknown excitations using the measured responses through the intact isolated substructure model; the damage extent and type is then recovered by a comparison of the virtual and actual distortions. Unknown factors are reduced greatly which allows the method to be applied on practical complex structure. The computational cost is cutoff sharply. A damaged nonlinearity aluminum beam is used in the experimental verification. Both load and damage are successfully identified.