Identification of Wind Loads on Structures Based on Modal Kalman Filter with Unknown Inputs

Wind loads on structures are difficult to directly measure, so it is practical to identify structural wind loads based on the measurements of structural responses. However, this inversed problem is challenging compared with conventional load identification as wind loads are time-space coupled and spatially distributed dynamic loads on structures. An improved method is proposed for identifying wind loads on structures using only partial measurements of structural acceleration responses in this paper. First, the wind loads on a structure are decomposed by proper orthogonal decomposition as a series of time-space decoupled sub-distributed dynamic loads with independent basic spatial distribution functions and time history functions. Herein, structural modes are adopted as the basic spatial distribution functions and structural modes of discretized and continuous structural systems are investigated. Then, a history function of the decomposed wind load is identified in the modal domain based on modal Kalman filter with unknown inputs, which is proposed by the authors. Finally, the distributed wind loads are reconstructed for discrete or continuous structural systems. The feasibility of the proposed algorithm is verified by two numerical examples of identification of wind loads on a discrete shear frame and a wind turbine tower, respectively