A three-stage damage detection method for large-scale space structures using forward substructuring approach and enhanced bat optimization algorithm

In this study, an efficient three-stage method is proposed for damage detection of large-scale space structures by employing forward substructuring approach, modal strain energy and enhanced bat algorithm (EBA) optimization. EBA is a modified version of BA that is proposed in this paper and used a passive congregation operator to improve the performance of standard BA. In the first stage, the global structure is divided into manageable substructures. The stiffness matrices of independent substructures are obtained based on Kron’s substructuring method. Then a modal strain energy-based index is employed to precisely locate the eventual damages of the structure. In the third stage, damage severities are estimated via EBA using the second-stage results. To demonstrate the ability of the proposed method for detection of multiple structural damages, large-scale space structures with different types of damage scenarios are considered. The results show that the proposed method can detect the exact locations and severity of damages highly accurate in space structures.