Monitoring and Response Surface Methodology to Detect and Locate Structural Damage

A mathematical model is established which, at each time instant, expresses the dependency of one of the sensor time history measurement on the measurements collected at all the remaining available sensors. This paper applies such a modified statistical approach to the data collected during a test on a three-story steel frame mounted at the ELSA laboratory of the European Union Joint Research Centre in Ispra. The frame is tested with and without a bracing reinforcement. The excitation is produced by a shaker on the top of the frame. Accelerometer signals are simultaneously collected by a 16 channels data acquisition system. The statistical damage detection approach emphasizes the different response and allows one to localize the position of the structural modifications.