Structural damage detection using a multi-stage improved differential evolution algorithm (Numerical and experimental)

An efficient method utilizing the multi-stage improved differential evolution algorithm (MSIDEA) as an optimization solver is presented here to detect the multiple-damage of structural systems. Natural frequency changes of a structure are considered as a criterion for damage occurrence. The structural damage detection problem is first transmuted into a standard optimization problem dealing with continuous variables, and then the MSIDEA is utilized to solve the optimization problem for finding the site and severity of structural damage. In order to assess the performance of the proposed method for damage identification, an experimental study and two numerical examples with considering measurement noise are considered. All the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for accurately determining the site and severity of multiple-damage. Also, the performance of the MSIDEA for damage detection compared to the standard differential evolution algorithm (DEA) is confirmed by test examples.