International Journal of Solids and Structures 185–186 (2020) 212–221

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International Journal of Solids and Structures

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijsolstr

Experimental investigation on use of regularization techniques and

pre-post measurement changes for structural damage identification
Jia Guo a, Li Wang b,∗, Izuru Takewaki a
a
Department of architecture and architectural engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto, 615-8540, Japan
b
Department of applied mechanics and engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Practical damage identification often suffers from the ill-posedness and the unavoidable model errors. On
Received 5 June 2019 the one hand, the regularization techniques including the Tikhonov regularization and the sparse regular-
Revised 30 July 2019
ization have been well recognized as effective tools to circumvent the ill-posedness. On the other hand,
Accepted 20 August 2019
the model errors render the established baseline/analytical model inconsistent with the real structural
Available online 27 August 2019
and thereof, would introduce unexpected errors into damage identification. To deal with the model errors,
Keywords: the two-step strategy is often adopted for damage identification in practice: firstly update the baseline
Damage identification model so as to minimize the inconsistence and secondly, identify the damage upon the updated base-
Experimental investigation line model; Another empirical and not-yet-widely-recognized way is to use the measurement changes
Ill-posedness and motivated by this, a new MC (Measurement Changes) strategy that simply revises the measured data
Model errors with measurement changes is developed in this paper for sensitivity-based damage identification. This
Measurement changes
work aims to present experimental investigations and comparative studies on the possible remedies for
the difficulties in damage identification: the Tikhonov or sparse regularization for the ill-posedness and
the two-step or MC strategy for the model errors. Final results show that the MC strategy is rather effec-
tive and efficient for damage identification and synthesis of the sparse regularization and the MC strategy
is found as the appreciated way to practical damage identification.
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction lution of the objective function (Mottershead et al., 2011; Friswell

Structural damage identification has been widely recognized as
an important content in health monitoring of practical infrastruc-
tural and architectural structures (Ko and Ni, 2005; Ge and Lui,
2005; Farrar and Jauregui, 1998). Changes in structural dynamic
properties introducing changes in natural frequencies was the pri-
mary investigation for the development of damage identification
techniques (Doebling et al., 1996). After that, numerous types of
different identification methods emerge, empirically or theoreti-
cally (Sohn et al., 2003). Among them, the model-based methods
that require establishing the baseline finite element model of the
structure are often invoked when both locations and extents of the
damage are to be identified. In general, such methods treat dam-
age identification as a constrained nonlinear optimization problem,
of which the objective function is usually set up by measuring the
discrepancy between the numerical model and the dynamic test
results. The sensitivity approaches can then be used to get the so-
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wangli75@mail.sysu.edu.cn (L. Wang).
and Mottershead, 2013; Lu and Wang, 2017).
Due to the convenience in the acquisition of the modal data
(natural frequencies and/or mode shapes), a great number of dam-
age identification methods using the modal data have been devel-
oped over the years. Advantages of using the modal data for dam-
age identification are: (a) the modal data is easily accessible, e.g.,
through operational modal analysis (Reynders et al., 2012; Wang
et al., 2019), even without the knowledge of working loads for
practical structures; (b) the modal data is also independent from
the external excitations and the small structural damping. A com-
prehensive review on this point can be found in the recent publi-
cation (Yuen, 2012). Despite all of these admiring aspects, difficul-
ties still arise from the applications of model-based identification
methods for real engineering structures:
• Ill-posedness. It is often required to identify the structural
or damage parameters based on the incomplete modal data
(Yuen et al., 2006) due to the limited amount of measurement
transducers. This essentially renders damage identification be-
come an ill-posed inverse problem, implying that the identifi-
cation would be rather sensitive to the measurement noise.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsolstr.2019.08.026
0020-7683/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 J. Guo, L. Wang and I. Takewaki / International Journal of Solids and Structures 185–186 (2020) 212–221
• Model errors. When a practical structure is analyzed by a
baseline finite-element/mathematical model, the model errors
would arise inevitably. The model errors would definitely have
nagative effects on damage identification (Lu et al., 2019). In
total, the model errors consist of the model-parameter errors
and the model-structure errors. For instance, uncertainties of-
ten exist in the material properties of the structure and this
would lead to the model-parameter errors; while when a prac-
tical tall building is simplified into a shear model, the model-
structure errors are introduced. An exhaustive list of the model
errors arising in model updating or damage identification can
be found in Ref. Mottershead et al. (2011).
Various researches have been carried out to overcome the diffi-
culties and they are briefly summarized in the following,
• To circumvent the ill-posedness, the effect of the measure-
ment noise is to be minimized. Two stages are often invoked
in reducing the effect of the measurement noise: a) selec-
tion of a proper weight matrix (Silva et al., 2016; Govers and
Link, 2010) and b) use of regularization techniques (Titurus and
Friswell, 2008). On the first stage, it is well known that the
weight matrix constitutes a key ingredient of the objective
function. An optimal weight matrix shall render the expecta-
tion of the identification errors minimized and such a choice
has been proved in Ref. Lu et al. (2019) to be proportional to
the reciprocal of the covariance of the measurement noise. The
improvement brought up by the optimal selection of the weight
matrix shall be substantial especially when different types of
the measurement data, e.g., both mode shapes and natural fre-
quencies, are used. On the second stage, the ill-posedness is
mainly caused by the possibly insufficient structural informa-
tion behind the measurement data and therefore, additional
consideration of the a priori knowledge on the damage pa-
rameters can help to improve the well-posedness of damage
identification; this leads to the so-called regularization tech-
niques (Benning and Burger, 2018). In principle, different a pri-
ori knowledge on the damage parameters corresponds to dif-
ferent regularization techniques. For instance, the continuity or
bounding property of the parameters is well implicated in the
Tikhonov regularization (Tikhonov, 1963; Titurus and Friswell,
2008), while the sparsity constraint on the damage locations
can be simply enforced by the sparse (or 1 -norm) regulariza-
tion (Guo et al., 2018; 2019; Hernandez, 2014; Hou et al., 2018).
• In contrast, the publications on dealing with the model
errors are rather limited. In most engineering and experi-
mental tests (Jang et al., 2002), the model errors are often
reduced in the first step by adjusting certain model parame-
ters so that the discrepancy between the calculated data from
the baseline model and the measured data of the undamaged
structure is minimized; this is also known as model updat-
ing (Mottershead et al., 2011). Damage identification shall be
conducted in the second step after model updating of the un-
damaged structure. The above two steps constitute the two-
step strategy for damage identification with the model errors.
Primarily, the two-step strategy would work well if the struc-
tural model is fine enough so that the model-structure errors
become negligible and the model parameters of the baseline
model are well updated in the first step. However, when the
model-structure errors become non-negligible or when the se-
lected correction parameters are not consistent with the real
source and the location of the errors (Mottershead et al., 2011),
the updated baseline model in the first step would become
inconsistent with the real undamaged structure and this may
introduce unexpected errors into damage identification. In ad-
dition to the two-step strategy, use of measurement changes
has been empirically shown to be effective for damage iden-
213
tification. The main idea behind is that measurement changes
caused by the same damage on the baseline model and on the
real structure are quite approaching to each other even if the
model errors exist. For evidences on the effectiveness on using
measurement changes, refer to (Doebling et al., 1996; Hao and
Xia, 2002; Salawu, 1997). In this paper, motivated by the idea
using measurement changes, the MC (Measurement Changes)
strategy by simply revising the measured data with measure-
ment changes is developed within the sensitivity-based damage
identification framework. As is noteworthy, there is no need to
update the baseline model when using the MC strategy in dam-
age identification and hence, the MC strategy turns out to be
more efficient than the two-step strategy.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance
of the above remedies for the difficulties in damage identification
over an experimental structure. In proceeding so, the regularization
techniques—including the Tikhonov regularization and the sparse
regularization— along with the optimal weight matrix are used
to circumvent the ill-posedness, while the MC strategy that uses
measurement changes to correct the measured data is applied to
circumvent the model errors with comparison to the conventional
two-step strategy. Consequently, the present work is a comprehen-
sive synthesis of the existing techniques and the revised strate-
gies, and then, to find an effective and efficient way to practical
damage identification. It is noteworthy that the MC strategy is re-
stricted to the deterministic approach in this paper where dam-
age identification is directly formulated by minimizing the misfit
between the measured and calculated data. Nevertheless, there is
no constraint to extend the MC strategy to the probabilistic ap-
proach (Vanik et al., 20 0 0) and the reason is given as follows. The
MC strategy turns out to merely correct the measured data and
then, the statistical information (e.g., the covariance) of the cor-
rected data can be easily derived from that of the measured data.
In this way, the MC strategy for the probabilistic approach is sim-
ply posed to correct the measured data and the corresponding sta-
tistical information.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In
Section 2, the sensitivity-based framework for damage identifica-
tion with the modal data is briefly revisited and the difficulties
arising in this framework as the ill-posedness and the model er-
rors are then introduced. Section 3 is devoted to furnishing cer-
tified as well as empirical remedies for the difficulties. The well
certified (Tikhonov and sparse) regularization techniques are used
to circumvent the ill-posedness, while the empirical and revised
MC strategy is developed to deal with the model errors along with
comparison to the two-step strategy. Section 4 presents an elab-
orate experimental investigation on the performance of the reme-
dies and final conclusions are drawn in Section 5.
2. Sensitivity-based damage identification using the modal data
Consider a baseline structural model with the mass matrix M
and the stiffness matrix K, that can be obtained from finite ele-
ment analysis of the practical structure. Usually, the damage would
always cause a degradation of the stiffness. To represent the dam-
age, the damage parameters are introduced as denoted by θ =
[θ1 ; θ2 ; . . . ; θm ] and then, the stiffness matrix under the damage
parameters θ is designated as K(θ ). Moreover, in case of the in-
tact or undamaged structure, the damage parameters are set to θ0 .
In this way, the damage information including the locations and
extents is totally implicated in the change of damage parameters
θ = θ − θ 0 .
For damage identification using the modal data, the following
governing equation should be invoked,
K(θ )φ i = ωi2 Mφ i (1)
214 J. Guo, L. Wang and I. Takewaki / International Journal of Solids and Structures 185–186 (2020) 212–221
where ωi , φ i are the corresponding natural frequencies and mode
shapes. Now, assume that the first l modes are measured for dam-
age identification at the possibly incomplete DOF set S and are col-
lected in a column vector Rˆ , i.e.,
S damage parameters θ 0 and the model function R( · ) and there-
Rˆ = [{ω
ˆ i2 }li=1 ; {φˆ i }li=1 ]
where ω ˆ i , φˆ i are the measured natural frequency and correspond-
ing mode shape of the ith mode, and the superscript S means re-
striction onto the index subset S. In correspondence to the mea-
sured data in (2), the calculated data from the model (1) is also
expressed in the column vector form as
R(θ ) = [{ωi2 (θ )}li=1 ; {φ Si (θ )}li=1 ]
where ωi (θ ), φ i (θ ) are the ith calculated modal data under the pre-
scribed parameters θ . Then, along the general lines of inverse prob-
lems, damage identification can be formulated as a nonlinear op-
timization problem, whose objective function is just the weighted
least-squares of the discrepancy between the measured data Rˆ and
the calculated data R(θ ), that is,
θ ∗ = arg min{||Rˆ − R(θ 0 + θ )||2W } (4)
θ
 The regularization techniques have been well recognized as ef-
where ||(· )||W := (· )T W(· ) and W is the positive definite weight
matrix. As is noteworthy, the optimal weight matrix has been
shown proportional to the reciprocal of the covariance of the mea-
surement noise (Lu et al., 2019) and this will guide the selection
of the weight matrix in the later of this paper. The sensitivity ap-
proaches (Mottershead et al., 2011; Lu and Wang, 2017; Khoda-
parast et al., 2008; Esfandiari et al., 2009) are often called to get
the solution of the problem (4). The key of such kind of approaches
lies in the linear expansion of the nonlinear term Rˆ − R(θ 0 + θ )
so that an approximate linear least-squares problem can be ob-
tained and easily solved Lu and Wang (2017). In doing so, the sen-
sitivity matrix
⎛ ⎞
.. .. .. ..
. . . .
⎜ ⎟
⎜ ∂ωi2 (θ ) ∂ωi2 (θ ) ∂ωi2 (θ ) ⎟
⎜ ∂θ1 ··· ∂θm ⎟
⎜ ∂θ2
⎜ ⎟
S(θ ) = ∇ R(θ ) := ⎜ ... ..
.
..
.
..
. ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜ ∂ φSi (θ ) ∂ φ Si (θ ) ∂ φ i (θ ) ⎟
⎜ ∂θ
S
···
⎝ 1 ∂θ2 ∂θm ⎠
.. .. .. ..
. . . .
should be obtained and details on the computation of the sensitiv-
∂ωi2 (θ ) ∂ φ Si (θ )
ity on natural frequencies ∂θ j and mode shapes ∂θ j can refer
to (Nelson, 1976; Friswell and Mottershead, 2013).
Once the sensitivity approaches have solved the optimization
problem (4), the damage θ ∗ shall have been identified. How-
ever, difficulties would appear so that damage identification by
purely solving problem (4) is often not-so-satisfactory and they are
mainly two-fold:
• Ill-posedness. Analogous to general inverse problems, damage
identification with the limited modal data is often an ill-posed
problem which is inherent in the ill-conditioning (or large con-
dition number) of the matrix ST (θ )WS(θ ) for admissible dam-
age parameters θ . As a result, the identification is not robust at
all, being very sensitive to the measurement noise.
• Model errors. The baseline model with the mass and stiffness
matrices M, K is often established through finite element analy-
sis and this model is parameterized to involve all possible dam-
ages. However, such a baseline model is often an approximation
of the real structure, meaning that the model errors always ex-
ist. For instance, the damage parameters θ 0 of the intact struc-
ture may be inexact due to the existence of possible imperfec-
tions in the intact structure, the mass of the structure may be
inaccurate, the rigid connection in the baseline model may be
inconsistent with the practice and the finite element mesh may
also be not fine enough so that the discretization error exists.
The model errors indicate inaccurate estimations of the intact
(2) fore, would definitely give rise to unexpected errors into the
identification problem (4). As is noteworthy, in case when the
model errors exist in θ 0 , the intact structure may admit im-
perfections or damage, however, the damage θ = θ − θ 0 to be
identified in this paper only captures the (stiffness) changes
and does not contain the damage in the intact structure.
(3) In what follows, some certified and empirical remedies in the
literature — the regularization techniques to circumvent the ill-
posedness and the strategy using measurement changes (the MC
strategy) to deal with the model errors — are revisited and syn-
thesized to cope with the difficulties.
3. Synthesis of regularization techniques and measurement
changes
fective tools to circumvent the ill-posedness of ill-posed problems,
including damage identification (Benning and Burger, 2018; Titu-
rus and Friswell, 2008). In principle, regularization techniques are
used to introduce a priori knowledge and allow a robust approxi-
mation of ill-posed (pseudo-)inverses (Ko and Ni, 2005). Different
a priori knowledge on the parameters θ would lead to different
regularization techniques. Mathematically, the regularization tech-
niques usually involve addition of the  p −norm term
m
||θ || pp = | θ i | p (6)
i=1
as a penalty term (or called regularization term) to the objective
function, leading to the regularized formulation for damage identi-
fication,
⎟ θ ∗ = arg min{||Rˆ − R(θ 0 + θ )||2W + λ||θ || pp } (7)
θ
(5)
where λ ≥ 0 is the regularization parameter. A proper regular-
⎟
ization parameter λ can be determined by the L-curve method
(Hansen, 1992; Hou et al., 2018). It has been well certified in the
literature (see Zhang and Xu (2016) for instance) that different
choices of p in (7) correspond to different a priori knowledge on
the damage parameters θ :
• p = 2 corresponds to the Tikhonov (or 2 -norm) regularization.
This regularization is equivalent to considering the constraint
||θ||22 ≤ c for some positive number (Lu and Wang, 2017) and
in this way, the 2 -bounding property of the damage parame-
ters θ is implicitly enforced. The Tikhonov regularization has
been well applied to model updating (Mottershead et al., 2011;
Friswell and Mottershead, 2013).
• 0 ≤ p ≤ 1 leads to the sparse regularization. Likewise, such a reg-
ularization is equivalent to enforcing the constraint ||θ || p ≤
p
η, 0 ≤ p ≤ 1 for some positive number η. In case of p = 0, the
constraint ||θ ||00 ≤ η strictly restricts the number of non-zeros
in θ to be no more than η and in this way, such a con-
straint is also termed the sparsity constraint. Nevertheless, p =
0 makes the problem be a discrete optimization problem and
difficult to be solved. Luckily, it is found that 0 < p ≤ 1 can still
pose the effect of the sparsity constraint (Candes et al., 2008).
In particular, p = 1 would make the regularization term ||θ || p
p
convex and then, many methods including the interior point
method and the quadratic programming method can be used to
get the solution. Thus, p = 1 is often fixed in the sparse regular-
ization and in this way, the sparse regularization is also called
 J. Guo, L. Wang and I. Takewaki / International Journal of Solids and Structures 185–186 (2020) 212–221 215

the 1 -norm regularization. The performance of the sparse reg- Table 1

Natural frequencies (Hz): experimental data vs calculated data
ularization in damage identification has been well verified in
from baseline models.
a number of publications, e.g., see Refs. Guo et al. (2018),
Hernandez (2014), Hou et al. (2018), Zhang and Xu (2016) to Mode order 1st 2nd 3rd 4th
cite a few. Experimental UF 2.796 8.015 27.027 55.541
BM-A 2.881 8.246 34.893 61.130
Before discussing the model errors, it is assumed that the
BM-B 2.795 8.000 27.001 55.544
modal data is measured not only on the damaged structure, but Experimental DF 2.654 8.023 26.533 53.302
also on the intact (or before damage) structure. To go further,
the measured modal data before damage is denoted by Rˆ 0 =
S
[{ω
ˆ 2 }l ; {φˆ 0i }l ], while the modal data after damage has been
0i i=1 i=1
collected in Rˆ (see equation (2)). For the baseline model, the infor-
mation —the intact damage parameters θ 0 and the model function where all the mode shapes φˆ i , φˆ 0i , φ i (θ ) are normalized in the same
R( · ) is prescribed in modelling the structure, though being possi- way. Consequently, by referring the match in (11), the MC strategy
bly inexact, and due to the existence of the model errors, the cal- suggests the following damage identification procedure,
culated data R(θ 0 ) shall be different from the measured data Rˆ 0 . θ ∗ = arg min{||Rˆ MC − R(θ 0 + θ )||2W + λ||θ || pp };
In most experimental and engineering tests, the two-step strategy θ

is often called to tackle the model errors in damage identification, ω2 ( θ0 ) 2
that is, Rˆ MC = {ωi2 (θ 0 ) + i 2 (ω ˆi −ω ˆ 02i )}li=1 ;
ωˆ 0i
• Step 1: model updating. Update the baseline model based on  S S
l 
the modal data Rˆ 0 measured from the intact structure. Such φ Si (θ 0 ) + (φˆ i − φˆ 0i ) . (12)
a procedure is often similar to that in (7), i=1

θˆ 0 = arg min{||Rˆ − R(θ )||2W + λ||θ − θ 0 || pp }
θ
where p = 2 is often fixed for model updating. Herein, θ
may include other damage-independent parameters, e.g., the
mass.
• Step 2: damage identification. The damage is then identified
based on the updated baseline model, i.e.,
θ∗ = arg min{||Rˆ − R( θˆ 0 + θ )||2W + λ||θ|| pp }.
θ
The two-step strategy would be effective if the errors in the
model function R( · ) (or called the model-structure errors) are neg-
ligible and the model parameters θˆ 0 are well updated in the first
step. However, in the updating step, efforts have to be made
to determine which parameters should be updated or modified
Weng et al. (2009) and improper/missing update of some param-
eters would lead to undesired results. Moreover, even when a
proper set of parameters is selected in model updating, the com-
putational cost by the two-step strategy (8)–(9) seems to be almost
twice of that by the original formulation (7).
In this paper, an empirical and revised MC strategy that uses
measurement changes to correct the measured data to tackle the
model errors is additionally elaborated within the sensitivity-based
damage identification framework. The main idea behind the MC
strategy Hao and Xia (2002) is that
• though the model errors exist between the baseline model and the
real structure, the changes in the modal data caused by the same
damage —called (damage-induced) measurement changes— on the
baseline model and on the real structure are quite approaching to
each other.
This motivates a new identification strategy (termed the MC
strategy) that it is better to match measurement changes Rˆ − Rˆ 0
with R( θ0 + θ ) − R( θ0 ), rather than to simply match the mea-
sured data Rˆ with R(θ 0 + θ ). More specifically, for the modal
data, the MC strategy tries to do the match Hao and Xia (2002);
Doebling et al. (1996) as follows: for i = 1, 2, . . . , l
(8) In Eq. (12), Rˆ MC is termed the measurement-changes-corrected
data and it is easily available once the possibly inexact baseline
model is established and the modal data before and after the dam-
age is measured. Obviously, by the MC strategy, the identification
procedure (12) is quite similar to that in the original formulation
(7), except that the measurement-changes-corrected data Rˆ MC is
used rather than Rˆ . Thus, the MC strategy (12) would introduce lit-
(9) tle computational cost with respect to the original formulation (7),
and would be less demanding and computationally cheaper than
the two-step strategy (8) and (9).
In the next section, a shaking table test is conducted to testify
the performance after synthesis of the regularization techniques—
including the Tikhonov regularization and sparse regularization—
with the MC strategy or the two-step strategy.
4. Shaking table test and damage identification
4.1. Shaking table test
Two frame structures— one is the undamaged frame (UF) and
another is the respective damaged frame (DF) as shown in Fig. 1
were selected as the prototype structure to testify the performance
of damage identification using different regularization techniques
and different strategies. A substructure shaking table test was used
to produce dynamic loading in the structure laboratory of Kyoto
University. As shown in Fig. 1(a), the test structure was a steel
frame of one bay and two stories with the total height 0.475m and
the width 0.2m. To control the natural frequency of the frame so
as to deliver a more practical case, cube mass blocks were attached
to the beam-column connections. The frames were bolted on the
shaking table. Stainless L-angle connection was used for the beam-
column connection and column-base connection. Detailed configu-
ration of the connections is shown in Fig. 1(b).
Eight accelerometers were installed to measure the horizontal
accelerations of the frame (four at the middle of the columns and

ωi2 (θ 0 +θ )−ωi2 (θ 0 ) ωˆ 2 −ωˆ 2 four at the beam-column connections), from which the first four
ωi2 (θ 0 )
= i ωˆ 2 0i
0i (10) natural frequencies and mode shapes could be obtained by the
S S
φ Si (θ 0 + θ ) − φ Si (θ 0 ) = φˆ i − φˆ 0i subspace method Reynders et al. (2012). Details on the measured
frequencies and mode shapes can be found in Table 1 and Fig. 2.
or equivalently,

The positions and weights of the mass blocks and accelerom-

ωi2 (θ 0 )
ωi2 (θ 0 + θ ) = ωi2 (θ 0 ) + ωˆ 02i
(ωˆ i2 − ωˆ 02i ) eters during the experiment are given in Fig. 1(c). The sampling
S S
(11) frequency is set to 200Hz and the measurement duration is about
φ Si (θ 0 + θ ) = φ Si (θ 0 ) + (φˆ i − φˆ 0i )
30s. White noise excitation was selected as the shaking table input.
216 J. Guo, L. Wang and I. Takewaki / International Journal of Solids and Structures 185–186 (2020) 212–221

0.20m Mass (kg)

m2-1 1.208
mass block A4 m2-1 m2-2 A5
m2-2 1.210
0.25m a2-1 0.035
L-angle A3 a2-1 a2-2 A6 a2-2 0.035
connection m1-1 1.178
(b)
m1-2 1.179
150mm a1-1 0.021

40mm
A2 m1-1 m1-2 A7 a1-2 0.021
0.225m

Undamaged (UF) mass block

Accelerometer

20mm
A1 a1-1 a1-2 A8
(+cable)
L-angle
Damaged (DF) connection

(a) (d) (c)

Fig. 1. Overview of the test model: (a) the test structure; (b) mass block and L-angle connection; (c) placement of accelerometers; (d) undamaged and damaged beams.

Mode 1 Mode 2 Mode 3 Mode 4

(a) (b)

Fig. 2. Finite element models and mode shapes: (a) finite element model; (b) experimental mode shapes vs. numerical mode shapes.

Compared to the undamaged frame, the damage in the dam-
aged frame is introduced by cutting a half of the width at the left
1/2 part of the beam on the first story and for a schematic view,
see Fig. 1(d). As a result, the stiffness reduction or the damage ex-
tent for the damaged area is estimated to be 0.5.
4.2. Finite element baseline models
The finite element method is used to model the frame struc-
ture. To do so, the frame is divided into 20 elements as displayed
in Fig. 2(a) and for each element, the two-node Euler-Bernoulli
beam element is adopted and then, each node has three degrees-
of-freedom (DOFs): two translational displacements and one rota-
tional angle.
Specific parameters of the model are given as follows: the
height of the first story is H1 = 0.225m and of the second story
is H2 = 0.25m, the width of the span is B = 0.2m, all columns
and beams are of rectangular sections for which the columns and
beams of the first story are of size b1 × h1 = 40mm × 1mm and
those of the second story are of size b2 × h2 = 30mm × 1mm. Ma-
terial properties are: the Young’s modulus E = 200GPa and the
mass density ρ = 7700kg/m3 . The mass and rotational inertia of
the mass blocks and/or accelerometers are considered in establish-
ing the model. Two different finite element baseline models for the
undamaged frame (UF), being respectively rough and fine, are es-
tablished:
• Baseline model A (BM-A): a rough model. In this model, the
stiffness and mass matrices are obtained by finite element anal-
ysis based on the prescribed model information in the above,
along with which the stiffness of the L-angle connections is
simply seen as the stiffness of a beam but with more height
in the beam section.
• Baseline model B (BM-B): a fine model. To get this model, the
mass and rotational inertia of the block masses and accelerom-
eters are additionally considered and modified at first. Then, fi-
nite element model updating (8) is called to update the stiff-
ness of the L-angle connections, and the beam and column el-
ements, based on the measured data of the UF.
Establishing the rough model BM-A is relatively simple, while
to get the fine model BM-B, more analysis and computation cost
is involved for model updating. The comparison of the modal data
from the baseline models with the measured data is presented in
Table 1 as well as graphically shown in Fig. 2. Obviously, the dis-
crepancy between the measured data and the calculated data of
the rough model BM-A is to some extent large, while the mea-
sured data fits well with the calculated data of the fine model BM-
B. Thus, it is deduced that the fine model BM-B is to some extent
consistent with the real structure UF, while the gap between the
 J. Guo, L. Wang and I. Takewaki / International Journal of Solids and Structures 185–186 (2020) 212–221 217

rough model BM-A and the real structure is non-negligible. Next, Table 2
Objective functions for damage identification using dif-
damage identification will be carried out upon the two baseline
ferent regularization techniques and with/without the
models BM-A and BM-B, respectively. MC strategy. The expressions of g(θ ) and gMC (θ ) are
given respectively in equations (14) and (15).
4.3. Damage identification procedures
Scenario Objective function

For damage identification, the choice of the weight matrix is 2 g(θ ) + λ||θ||22 ,
discussed at first. Note that the measurement noise in different 2 +MC gMC (θ ) + λ||θ ||22 ,
frequencies and mode shapes is reasonably assumed to be inde- 1 g(θ ) + λ||θ ||11 ,
1 +MC gMC (θ ) + λ||θ ||11 .
pendent and recall that the optimal weight matrix shall be pro-
portional to the reciprocal of the covariance of the measurement
noise. Under this circumstance, the objective function in the origi- Table 3
nal formulation (4) under the optimal weight Lu et al. (2019) shall Identification errors d (θ id , θ ex ) on different baseline models.
become
Baseline model 2 2 + MC 1 1 + MC
g(θ ) = ||Rˆ − R(θ 0 + θ )||2W BM-A 11.7674 0.3943 2.6566 0.0915

 2 S
 BM-B 0.3844 0.3726 0.2344 0.0574

l
ωˆ i2 − ωi2 (θ 0 + θ ) φˆ i − φ Si (θ 0 + θ )
=c + || ||22
i=1
σωˆ i2 σφˆ i
(13)
Table 4
Time comparison (in second) for different damage identification proce-
dures.
where c > 0 is a constant, σωˆ 2 , σφˆ are the respective standard devi-
i i
ations of the measurement noise in frequencies and mode shapes. Model 2 2 + MC 1 1 + MC

Empirically, many operational modal analysis methods would ad-
mit the following identification accuracy for frequencies and mode
shapes by referring to the results in Wang et al. (2019): the relative
errors in identified frequencies are around rf ∈ [0.05%, 0.5%], while
the MAC values between the identified and exact mode shapes
shall approximately verify MAC ∈ [0.997, 0.9999]. Usually, the mode
shapes are normalized in the sense of 2 -norm and under this
circumstance, the relative error between the identified and exact
mode shapes, denoted respectively by φ id and φ , shall be approxi-
mately obtained as
 
||φ id − φ ||2
rφ = = 2 − 2φ Tid φ = 2 − 2MAC ∈ [1.41%, 7.75%].
||φ ||2
Above all, it is approximately obtained that σωˆ 2 ≈ 2r f ω
ˆ i2 , σφˆ ≈ rφ .
Now turn to the objective function (13) with the optimal weight,
set c = (2r f )2 and μ = (2r f /rφ )2 , and then, the objective function
(13) is simplify to
 2
l
ωˆ i2 − ωi2 (θ 0 + θ )
g(θ ) = + μ|| φˆ i
i=1
ωˆ i2
and by referring to the aforementioned analysis, it is reasonable to
fix μ = 0.01 for optimal weight in this paper. For the MC strategy
(12), the optimal weight matrix is selected likewise so that the ob-
jective function (without regularization yet) becomes
 2
l
ωˆ i2 − ωˆ 02i ωi2 (θ 0 + θ ) − ωi2 (θ 0 )
gMC (θ ) = − identification errors, that is,
i=1
ωˆ 02i ωi2 (θ 0 )
S S
+ μ||( φˆ i − φˆ 0i ) − (φ Si (θ 0 + θ ) − φ Si (θ 0 ))||22 .
Consequently, the specific objective functions for damage identi-
fication herein using the Tikhonov (2 -norm) or sparse (1 -norm)
regularization with or without the MC strategy are summarized in
Table 2, where 2 , 1 indicate the respective Tikhonov and sparse
regularization, and ’+MC’ means use of the MC strategy. It is note-
worthy that the fine model BM-B along with 2 , 1 just correspond
to the two-step strategy (8)-(9) with different regularization tech-
niques. Then, damage identification is independently proceeded for
the four objective functions in Table 2 on the rough model BM-A
and on the fine model BM-B.
BM-A - 0.72 - 0.89
BM-B (1.03+)0.92 (1.03+)0.69 (1.03+)0.58 (1.03+)0.74
4.4. Identification results and discussions
When damage identification is fulfilled using the four ob-
jective functions in Table 2, proper regularization parameters λ
should be selected. Herein, the L-curve method Hansen (1992);
Hou et al. (2018) is adopted to determine the regularization pa-
rameters and detailed L-curve plots by the four objective functions
are given in Fig. 3 for the rough model BM-A and in Fig. 4 for the
i i fine model BM-B. Once proper regularization parameters are ob-
tained, the sensitivity approaches Mottershead et al. (2011); Lu and
Wang (2017) can be applied to get the solution of the objective
functions and thereof, to identify the damage in the structure. To
 have an impression on how the identification procedures converge,
S
− φ Si (θ 0 + θ )|| 2 the evolution of the damage extent of element 3 is shown in Fig. 5
2
where the scenarios 2 , 1 under BM-A are not presented because
they do not give convergent and satisfactory results. Clearly, the
(14)
convergence is all reached in no more than seven iterations.
Detailed identification results corresponding to the four objec-
tive functions in Table 2 are shown in Fig. 6 for the rough model
BM-A and Fig. 7 for the fine model BM-B. To further quantify the
identification accuracy, the distance between the identified dam-
age θ id and the exact damage θ ex is measured to represent the
 d (θ id , θ ex ) = ||θ id − θ ex ||2 . (16)
and detailed results on such identification error indicator (16) are
(15)
listed in Table 3. To quantify the computation cost, the computa-
tion times are counted as given in Table 4 where ’-’ means acquire-
ment of the undesired solution and the number in the brackets
indicates the time to get the updated model BM-B. It is easily ob-
served from the results in the figures and the tables that
• Under the rough model BM-A, 2 and 1 are almost unable
to reproduce the actual damage in the structure because even
damage locations are wrongly detected as in Fig. 6(a) and (c)
and the corresponding identification errors in Table 3 are large,
while under the fine model BM-B, the damage at element 3 is
reasonably identified by the four objective functions (see Fig. 7).
218 J. Guo, L. Wang and I. Takewaki / International Journal of Solids and Structures 185–186 (2020) 212–221

(a) (b)
Fig. 3. L-curve plots for damage identification upon BM-A by: (a) 2 +MC and (b) 1 +MC.

Fig. 4. L-curve plots for damage identification upon BM-B by: (a) 2 ; (b) 2 +MC; (c) 1 and (d) 1 +MC.

The reason why 2 and 1 perform bad under the rough model
BM-A is that non-negligible model errors exist between the
baseline model BM-A and the real structure.
• Under the rough model BM-A, 2 +MC and 1 +MC have found
to give satisfactory identification of the damage in Fig. 6(b) and
(d): the damage location at element 3 is well detected and the
identified extents are also acceptable with respect to the refer-
ence extent 0.5. The MC strategy has been found to work well
under the non-negligible model errors. Even for the final model
BM-B, the MC strategy can also give rise to better identification
of the damage because the identification errors in Table 3 are
clearly less for 2 +MC and 1 +MC than respectively for 2 and
1 . This indicates that when model updating is used to get a
fine baseline model (e.g., BM-A), the model errors though being
small and often negligible still exist and using the MC strategy
can again give rise to better identification results.
• Using 2 and 1 under the fine model BM-B (refer to Fig. 7(a)
and (c)) just corresponds the usual two-step strategy: firstly up-
dating and then identifying. While using 2 +MC and 1 +MC un-
der the rough model BM-A (refer to Fig. 6(b) and (d)) reflects
the primary MC strategy. Comparing the results of the two-step
strategy with those of the (primary) MC strategy, both shall
 J. Guo, L. Wang and I. Takewaki / International Journal of Solids and Structures 185–186 (2020) 212–221 219

0.7 • Note from Table 4 that the computation time to get the fine
model BM-B is at the same level with that to conduct damage
0.6 identification and as a result, the computation cost by the MC
stiffness reduction
strategy is almost half of that by the two-step strategy; the MC
0.5
strategy is more efficient.
0.4 • The sparse regularization has been found to perform bet-
ter in damage identification than the Tikhonov regularization
0.3 and the same conclusion has been well drawn in many ref-
erences, e.g., Refs. Guo et al. (2019), Zhang and Xu (2016),
0.2 BM-A l2+MC BM-B l1 Hernandez (2014) to cite a few.
BM-A l1+MC BM-B l2+MC • When both the sparse regularization and the MC strategy (or
0.1 1 +MC) are used as in Fig. 6(d) and Fig. 7(d), the identification
BM-B l2 BM-B l1+MC
error under the rough model BM-A is at the same level with
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 that under the fine model BM-B. This means that when 1 +MC
iteration is used for damage identification, there is no need to conduct
the cumbersome model updating for a fine model, rather, a
Fig. 5. The convergence history of the damage extent at element 3 for different rough model is often enough.
damage identification procedures.

To conclude, when dealing with the model errors, the MC strat-

be acceptable and under the Tikhonov (2 -norm) regularization,
the identification is also of the same accuracy by referring to
the corresponding results in Table 3. While under the sparse
(1 -norm) regularization, the MC strategy gives much better
identification results than the two-step strategy by which fic-
tious damage location at element 13 with the extent approach-
ing 0.2 is also detected. In total, even under the rough model,
the MC strategy along with the sparse regularization can give
rise to better damage identification than the two-step strategy,
let alone for the MC strategy under the fine model.
egy rather than the two-step strategy is often preferred no matter
whether a fine model is obtained or not; while as regards the ill-
posedness, the sparse regularization often performs superior to the
Tikhonov regularization for damage identification. Though the MC
strategy is empirical, its sound performance for damage identifica-
tion has been well verified in this test and the mechanism behind
the MC strategy shall be exploited in the future work. Eventually, a
practical way by using the MC strategy along with the sparse reg-
ularization is advised for practical damage identification from this
experimental investigation.

Approximated reduction for

element 3

Element 3
Element 3
Approximated reduction for
element 3

(a) (b)

Approximated reduction for

element 3

Element 3
Approximated reduction for
element 3
Element 3

(c) (d)
Fig. 6. Identification results upon BM-A by: (a) 2 ; (b) 2 +MC; (c) 1 and (d) 1 +MC.
220 J. Guo, L. Wang and I. Takewaki / International Journal of Solids and Structures 185–186 (2020) 212–221
Approximated reduction for
element 3
Element 3
(a)
Approximated reduction for
element 3
Element 3
(c)
Fig. 7. Identification results upon BM-B by: (a) 2 ; (b) 2 +MC; (c) 1 and (d) 1 +MC.
5. Conclusions
An experimental investigation on how to deal with the ill-
posedness and the model errors in damage identification of prac-
tical structures has been presented in this paper. In proceeding so,
the well certified regularization techniques including the Tikhonov
regularization and the sparse regularization are used to circum-
vent the ill-posedness, while the default two-step strategy—firstly
updating and then identifying and the empirical, not-yet-widely-
recognized and revised MC strategy— simply using measurement
changes to correct the measured data are recalled to cope with
the model errors. Consequently, synthesis of the regularization
techniques and the MC (as well as two-step) strategy within the
conventional sensitivity-based framework is developed for damage
identification and the experimental results show that
• The empirical MC strategy is found more effective and ef-
ficient than the conventional two-step strategy. This is be-
cause the MC strategy can works well under the rough base-
line model, and even under the fine model, the MC strategy
can also give rise to better identification results.
• Both the sparse regularization and the Tikhonov regulariza-
tion can be well synthesized with the MC strategy, but for
damage identification, the sparse regularization is often pre-
ferred.
Thus, due to its no need for exhaustively updating the baseline
model and its highlighted performance in detecting the damage,
synthesis of the MC strategy and the sparse regularization is found
as the appreciated way to practical damage identification.
Approximated reduction for
element 3
Element 3
(b)
Approximated reduction for
element 3
Element 3
(d)
Acknowledgement
The present research was performed under the support of
National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11702336) and
the MEXT scholarship of Japan.
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