Structural damage assessment of building structures using dynamic experimental data

Detection of damage to structures has recently received considerable attention from the viewpoint of maintenance and safety assessment. In this respect, the vibration characteristics of buildings have been applied consistently to obtain a damage index of the whole building, but it has not been established as a practical method until now. It is reasoned that this is perhaps due to restrictions on the experiment, use of improper method, and lack of inspection opportunity for the structures. In addition, in the case of large-scale structures such as buildings, many variables to be considered for the analysis contribute to a large number of degrees of freedom, and this can also be a considerable problem for the analysis. A practical method for the detection of structural damage using the first natural frequency and mode shape of building is proposed in this paper. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by numerical analysis and experimental tests. From the results, it is observed that the severity and location of the damage can be estimated with a relatively small error by using modal properties of building. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.