An efficient indicator for structural damage localization using the change of strain energy based on static noisy data

An efficient method is proposed to find multiple damage locations in structural systems. The change of static strain energy (SSE) due to damage is used to establish an indicator for determining the damage location. The SSE is determined using the static analysis information extracted from a finite element modeling. In order to assess the performance of the proposed method for structural damage detection, some benchmark structures having a number of damage scenarios are considered. Numerical results demonstrate that the method can accurately locate the structural damage when considering the measurement noise. The efficiency of the proposed indicator for finding the damage site is also compared with a modal strain energy based index (MSEBI) provided in the literature. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.