Damage identification of frame structures with joint damage under earthquake excitation

Previous damage detection of frame structures mainly focuses on the detection of beam and column element damage. It has been shown that beam-column joints in frame structures are more susceptible to damage than the other members in the structure. Joint damage may be represented by the reduction of beam-column connection rigidity. Therefore, damage detection of a frame structure with joint damage includes the identification of joint connection stiffness in additional to those of beam and column stiffness, which involves the difficulty of identifying a large number of unknown structural parameters. In this paper, an algorithm based on a two-step Kalman filter approach is presented for the damage detection of frame structures with joint damage under earthquake excitation using partial measurements of structural acceleration responses. Recursive solutions for unknown structural parameters and structural state vector are derived by a two-step Kalman filter, respectively. Therefore, the number of unknown variab...