Stochastic Subspace Identification methods have been extensively used for the modal analysis of mechanical, civil or aeronautical structures for the last ten years. So-called stabilization diagrams are used, where modal parameters are estimated at successive model orders, leading to a graphical procedure where the physical modes of the system are extracted and separated from spurious modes. Recently an uncertainty computation scheme has been derived allowing the computation of uncertainty bounds for modal parameters at some given model order. In this paper, two problems are addressed. Firstly, a fast computation scheme is proposed reducing the computational burden of the uncertainty computation scheme by an order of magnitude in the model order compared to a direct implementation. Secondly, a new algorithm is proposed to derive efficiently the uncertainty bounds for the estimated modes at all model orders in the stabilization diagram. It is shown that this new algorithm is both computationally and memory efficient, reducing the computational burden by two orders of magnitude in the model order.

In the last ten years, monitoring the integrity of the civil infrastructure has been an active research topic, including in connected areas as automatic control. It is common practice to perform damage detection by detecting changes in the modal parameters between a reference state and the current (possibly damaged) state from measured vibration data. Subspace methods enjoy some popularity in structural engineering, where large model orders have to be considered. In the context of detecting changes in the structural properties and the modal parameters linked to them, a subspacebased fault detection residual has been recently proposed and applied successfully, where the estimation of the modal parameters in the possibly damaged state is avoided. However, most works assume that the unmeasured ambient excitation properties during measurements of the structure in the reference and possibly damaged condition stay constant, which is hardly satisfied by any application. This paper addresses the problem of robustness of such fault detection methods. It is explained why current algorithms from literature fail when the excitation covariance changes and how they can be modified. Then, an efficient and fast subspace-based damage detection test is derived that is robust to changes in the excitation covariance but also to numerical instabilities that can arise easily in the computations. Three numerical applications show the efficiency of the new approach to better detect and separate different levels of damage even using a relatively low sample length.

An important step in the operational modal analysis of a structure is to infer on its dynamic behavior through its modal parameters. They can be estimated by various modal identification algorithms that fit a theoretical model to measured data. When output-only data is available, i.e. measured responses of the structure, frequencies, damping ratios and mode shapes can be identified assuming that ambient sources like wind or traffic excite the system sufficiently. When also input data is available, i.e. signals used to excite the structure, input/output identification algorithms are used. The use of input information usually provides better modal estimates in a desired frequency range. While the identification of the modal mass is not considered in this paper, we focus on the estimation of the frequencies, damping ratios and mode shapes, relevant for example for modal analysis during in-flight monitoring of aircrafts. When identifying the modal parameters from noisy measurement data, the information on their uncertainty is most relevant. In this paper, new variance computation schemes for modal parameters are developed for four subspace algorithms, including output-only and input/output methods, as well as data-driven and covariance-driven methods. For the input/output methods, the known inputs are considered as realizations of a stochastic process. Based on Monte Carlo validations, the quality of identification, accuracy of variance estimations and sensor noise robustness are discussed. Finally these algorithms are applied on real measured data obtained during vibrations tests of an aircraft.

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Subspace methods have proven to be efficient for the identification of linear time-invariant systems, especially applied to mechanical, civil or aeronautical structures in operation conditions. Therein, system identification results are needed at multiple (over-specified) model orders in order to distinguish the true structural modes from spurious modes using the so-called stabilization diagrams. In this paper, new efficient algorithms are derived for this multi-order system identification with subspace-based identification algorithms and the closely related Eigensystem Realization Algorithm. It is shown that the new algorithms are significantly faster than the conventional algorithms in use. They are demonstrated on the system identification of a large-scale civil structure.

Summary The stochastic dynamic damage locating vector approach is a vibration‐based damage localization method based on a finite element model of a structure and output‐only measurements in both reference and damaged states. A stress field is computed for loads in the null space of a surrogate of the change in the transfer matrix at the sensor positions for some values in the Laplace domain. Then, the damage location is related to positions where the stress is close to zero. Robustness of the localization information can be achieved by aggregating results at different values in the Laplace domain. So far, this approach, and in particular the aggregation, is deterministic and does not take the uncertainty in the stress estimates into account. In this paper, the damage localization method is extended with a statistical framework. The uncertainty in the output‐only measurements is propagated to the stress estimates at different values of the Laplace variable, and these estimates are aggregated based on statistical principles. The performance of the new statistical approach is demonstrated both in a numerical application and a lab experiment, showing a significant improvement of the robustness of the method due to the statistical evaluation of the localization information. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

a b s t r a c tIn operational modal analysis, the modal parameters (natural frequencies, damping ratios and mode shapes), obtained with stochastic subspace identification from ambient vibration measurements of structures, are subject to statistical uncertainty. It is hence necessary to evaluate the uncertainty bounds of the obtained results, which can be done by a first-order perturbation analysis. To obtain vibration measurements at many coordinates of a structure with only a few sensors, it is common practice to use multiple sensor setups for the measurements. Recently, a multi-setup subspace identification algorithm has been proposed that merges the data from different setups prior to the identification step to obtain one set of global modal parameters, taking the possibly different ambient excitation characteristics between the measurements into account. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed that efficiently estimates the covariances on modal parameters obtained from this multi-setup subspace identification. The new algorithm is validated on multi-setup ambient vibration data of the Z24 Bridge, benchmark of the COST F3 European network.