A Rapid Post-earthquake Structural Damage Identification Method Based on Mode Shape Ratio Using Pattern Matching

Abstract

This paper proposes a rapid identification method for post-earthquake structural damage based on mode shape ratio using pattern matching. In the first stage, the characteristic vector of mode shape ratio is calculated by modal analysis from the modal information of various damage scenarios to establish a pattern database. A small number of dynamic signals are collected for extracting the modal information to obtain the characteristic vector which is treated as the test pattern. Then the similarity between the test pattern and the pattern in the database is calculated using the Euclidean distance (ED). The damage location and severity of the measured structure are treated the same as the pattern corresponding to the minimum value of ED so that the damage is identified. Numerical simulations verify that the proposed method can well identify the damage. In addition, the matching results based on different sensor combinations demonstrate that the method can quickly identify the damage even using a limited number of sensors. The proposed method can provide support for the government to make a rapid post-earthquake emergency decision