A Comparative Study on Sensitivity-Based Damage Detection Methods in Bridges

This paper provides a comparative study on four different sensitivity-based damage detection methods for bridges. The methods investigated in this study are approximation approach, semianalytical discrete approach, and analytical discrete approach, which includes direct differential and adjoint variable methods. These sensitivity-based methods utilize finite element model updating procedure and allow a wide choice of physically meaningful parameters leading to vast range of applications in damage detection. The most important difficulty in these methods is calculation of sensitivity matrix. Calculation of this massive matrix is repeated in each iteration and has a significant effect on the efficiency of method. In this study, the acceleration measurements are simulated from the solution to the forward problem using finite element method under moving load with various speeds, along with the addition of artificially produced measurement noise. Various damaged structures with different damage patterns including single, multiple, and random damage are considered and efficiency of four sensitivity methods is compared. Moreover, various possible sources of error such as the effects of measurement noise as well as initial assumption error in stability of the methods are also discussed