Recent developments of a distributed mass damper (DMD) system integrate structural and environmental control systems to improve building safety and energy efficiency. Such a system can also enhance Structural health monitoring (SHM) by using its multiple active mass dampers to excite the structure and analyze the resulting responses. SHM reliability depends on accurate estimations of structural characteristics from structural response measurements. However, some structural characteristics, such as structural modes, may not be well represented or identifiable depending on how structures are excited, thereby compromising the effectiveness of SHM. Utilizing combinations of the DMD's multiple active dampers to target structural modes of interest, the authors showed that damage detection in structures was significantly improved. In this paper, algorithms are derived for modal parameter estimations using the DMD system to excite the structure. Stiffness estimations and damage detections are then computed from the estimated model parameters. Harmonic excitations are used with the DMD system to target specific structural modes/frequencies and to amplify structural responses. Different configurations of excitations are then compared on the basis of the accuracy of stiffness estimations. A 20-story model structure is simulated with four damage patterns to demonstrate accurate damage detection. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.