L.D. Chiwiacowsky, H.F. de Campos Velho, P. Gasbarri (2003): The Damage Identification Problem: A Hybrid Approach, 2nd Thematic Congress on Dynamics and Control (DINCON 2003), 18-22 August, Sao Jose dos Campos (SP), BRAZIL.

Abstract: he present investigation is focused on the solution of a dynamic inverse problem which is concerned with the assessment of damage in structures by means of measured vibration data. This inverse problem have been presented as an optimization problem, and it has been solved through the use of the iterative regularization method, i.e., the conjugate gradient (CG) method. Good results have been obtained for a structure with few degrees-of-freedom (DOF). However, when a structure with higher DOF is considered, the simple application of the iterative regularization method is anymore satisfactory, being necessary the application of an additional methodology. For overcoming this difficulty, a new approach is proposed. A genetic algorithm (GA) method is used to generate a primary solution, which is employed as the initial guess for the conjugate gradient method. With the application of this new approach good results can be achieved for structures with higher DOF. The damage estimation has been evaluated using noiseless synthetic experimental data, and the reported results are concerned with a lumped-parameter system.