Estimation of forces acting on structures under operational conditions is the topic of this work. A new technique is developed that allows for the estimation of forces from a larger class of structural systems than have previously been amenable to force estimation—extending practical force estimation to non-collocated structures. The inverse structural system is defined and developed. The inverse structural system is investigated and yields insights into existence and stability of causal and non-casual inverse structural systems. Results are used to develop a novel technique for the time domain estimation of input forces. The method, known as the inverse structural filter, is demonstrated to be superior to existing methods of force estimation used by the structural dynamics community. The inverse structural filter is a moving average approximation to the inverse structural system that requires only as many sensors as there are force input locations and can be used to estimate forces acting on multi-input/multi-output collocated and non-collocated structural systems. Examples are presented including the estimation of docking loads between the Space Shuttle and the Russian MIR space station using measured data taken from accelerometers on the MIR during the STS-81, STS-89 and STS-91 NASA missions.
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