ABSTRACT.
The present work considers the structural damage identification problem built on the natural frequencies of vibration. In the formulation of the damage identificationproblem, a Response Surface Model (RSM) was used in place of a Finite Element Model (FEM) of the structure. The damage identification in a simply supported Euler-Bernoulli beam is studied, wherein the inverse problem is defined as a minimization one, whose goal is to minimize an objective function defined from the experimental natural frequencies and the corresponding natural frequencies prescribed by a RSM of the structure. The use of the Differential Evolution (DE) method in the inverse problem of damage identification is considered. Considering the numerical results obtained, the strategy adopted proved to be able to locate and quantify the damage with high accuracy, showing the capability of the proposed damage identification strategy.
Keywords:
identification of structural damage; natural frequencies; response surface model
