Damage detection and assessment of structures from static response

A damage detection and assessment algorithm is developed based on a parameter estimation with an adaptive parameter grouping scheme. Damage is characterized by a reduction in a constitutive property of a parameterized finite-element model between two time-separated inferences. We assume that the baseline parameter values are known. An adaptive parameter grouping scheme is proposed to localize damage in a structural system for which the measured data are sparse. A data perturbation scheme is proposed both for the baseline structure, to establish the damage threshold above which damage can be confidently discerned from noise, and for the damaged structure, to compute the damage indices. To examine and illustrate the damage assessment algorithm, a numerical simulation study on a planar bowstring truss structure is performed.