Recent advances on moving force identification in structural dynamics

Knowledge on the dynamic loads acting on a structure is very important for the design, control, diagnosis and life management of a structure. Recently, the determination of moving loads over structures has attracted interest of many researchers. The moving load identification is not only an inverse problem but is also ill-posed, since the responses are typically continuous vector functions of the spatial coordinates, and they are defined at a few points only. Solutions are frequently unstable in the sense that small perturbations in the responses would result in large changes in the calculated load magnitudes. A variety of methods has been developed to identify moving loads from the measured responses of the structure. These methods can be broadly classified into modal superposition based approaches and finite element model based approaches. This paper presents a review of the past and recent developments in moving load identification. Some popular approaches have been illustrated using numerical and experimental applications to highlight their advantages and limitations, and to identify future directions in this research area