Damage Identification of Civil Engineering Structures Using Hilbert-Huang Transform

摘要

When measured data contain damage events of the structure, it is important to extract the information of damage as much as possible from the data. In this paper, two methods are proposed to achieve such a purpose. The first method, based on the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), is intended to extract damage spikes due to a sudden change of structural stiffness from the measured data thereby detecting damage time instants and damage locations. A second method, based on EMD and Hilbert-Huang transform, is proposed, which is capable of: (ⅰ) detecting the damage time instants, and (ⅱ) determining the natural frequencies and damping ratios of the structure before and after damage. Such a method requires measured data at only one location. The two proposed methods are applied to the benchmark problem established by the ASCE Committee on Health Monitoring and Damage Detection. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methods provide additional viable and effective tools for damage detection and evaluation of structures.