Elimination of outlier measurements for damage detection of structures under changing environmental conditions

Abstract

Damage detection methods developed in the literature are affected by the presence of outlier measurements. These measurements can prevent small levels of damage to be detected. Therefore, a method to eliminate the effects of outlier measurements is proposed in this article. The method uses the difference in fits to examine how deleting an observation affects the predicted value of a model. This allows the observations that have a large influence on the model created, to be identified. These observations are the outlier measurements and they are eliminated from the database before the application of damage detection methods. Eliminating the outliers before the application of damage detection methods allows the normal procedures to detect damage, to be implemented. A multiple-regression-based damage detection method, which uses the natural frequencies as both the independent and dependent variables, is also developed in this article. A beam structure model and an experimental wooden bridge structure are analysed using the multiple-regression-based damage detection method with and without the application of the method proposed to eliminate the effects of outliers. The results obtained demonstrate that smaller levels of damage can be detected when the effects of outlier measurements are eliminated using the method proposed in this article.