Estimation of structural parameters in time domain: A substructure approach

A substructure approach is used to estimate the stiffness and damping coefficients of structures from measurement of dynamic responses. The structures are decomposed into smaller subsystems for which state and observation equations are formulated and solved by the method of extended Kalman filter with a weighted global iteration algorithm. Substructural identification methods with and without overlapping members are proposed. In both methods, the convergence of the structural parameters to the optimal values is improved significantly with less computation time as compared to a complete structural approach. Numerical simulation studies are performed for three types of structures, namely a shear building, a plane frame building and a plane truss bridge. The effects of measurement noise and response observations required for identification of system parameters are also investigated.