Structural Health Monitoring and Damage Detection of Steel Bridge Based on Modal Data via Colonial Competitive Algorithm

This study is intended to present a method for the localization and evaluation of damage in structures based on changes in natural frequencies and mode shapes of the damaged structures using an optimization approach. The proposed method localizes and evaluates the damage (or damages) of structures using optimization of a objectivefunction (damage function) by colonial competitive algorithm. The performance of the proposed method has been verified using a numerical example, namely a two span steel bridge with and without noise in the modal data and containing one or several damages. The obtained results clearly reveal that the proposed method can be viewed as a powerful and robust method for structural damage detection in structures.