Experimental determination of local structural stiffness by disassembly of measured flexibility matrices

A new method is presented for identifying the local stiffness of a structure from vibration test data. The method is based on a projection of the experimentally measured flexibility matrix onto the strain energy distribution in local elements or regional superelements. Using both a presumed connectivity and a presumed strain energy distribution pattern, the method forms a well-determined linear least squares problem for elemental stiffness matrix eigenvalues. These eigenvalues are directly proportional to the stiffnesses of individual elements or superelements, including the cross-sectional bending stiffnesses of beams, plates, and shells, for example, An important part of the methodology is the formulation of nodal degrees of freedom as functions of the measured sensor degrees of freedom to account for the location offsets which are present in physical sensor measurements. Numerical and experimental results are presented which show the application of the approach to example problems.