Improved Damage Quantification from Elemental Modal Strain Energy Change

An improved structural damage quantification algorithm is presented based on the elemental modal strain energy change before and after the occurrence of damage in a structure. The algorithm includes the analytical stiffness and mass matrices of the system in the damage quantification. It reduces significantly the modal truncation error and the finite-element modeling error from higher analytical modes in the computation, and it improves the convergence properties of the existing algorithm by Shi et al. (2000). “Structural damage detection from elemental modal strain energy change.” J. Eng. Mech., 126(12), 1216–1223]. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated via a numerical example and experimental results from a two-storey steel portal frame, and it is demonstrated to be an efficient and robust method for damage quantification.