Structural damage detection using empirical-mode decomposition and vector autoregressive moving average model

A method based on empirical-mode decomposition (EMD) and vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) model is proposed for structural damage detection. The basic idea of the method is that the structural damages can be identified as the abrupt changes in energy distribution of structural responses at high frequencies. Using the time-varying VARMA model to represent the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) obtained from the EMD of vibration signal, we define a damage index according to the VARMA coefficients. In the two examples given, the Imperial County Services Building and the Van Nuys hotel are used as the benchmark structures to verify the effectiveness and sensitivity of the damage index in real environments with the presence of actual noise. The analysis results show that the damage index can indicate the occurrence and relative severity of structural damages at multiple locations in an efficient manner. The damage index can also be potentially used for structural health monitoring, since it is based on the time-varying VARMA coefficients. Finally, some recommendations for future research are provided.