Instantaneous modal identification under varying structural characteristics: A decentralized algorithm

Abstract One of the latest trends in structural health monitoring involves the use of wireless decentralized sensing systems, developed to reduce costs and speed up the whole monitoring process. The main purpose of this paper is to present a novel decentralized procedure for the instantaneous modal identification of time-varying structures, also suitable in the presence of environmental variations and non-stationary ambient excitation. In particular, a modal assurance criterion (MAC)-based clustered filter bank (CFB) is obtained, capable of decomposing structural responses into modal components for the evaluation of time-varying natural frequencies and modal shapes through a nonlinear energy operator. The proposed algorithm is relatively simple and usable with low-cost smart sensing systems, as it requires low computational effort and works with few data at a time. To prove the effectiveness of the presented method, a simulated near-real-time modal identification procedure has been performed on a full-scale bridge under progressive damage scenarios. The estimated modal parameters have then been used for damage diagnosis. The results reveal a good correspondence between identified modal parameters and reference values, showing also promising outcomes for both damage detection and localization.