Damage detection of reinforced concrete structures based on the Wiener filter

This paper presents a novel decentralised structural damage detection method based on the Wiener fi lter. The Wiener fi lter is customarily used for fi ltering out the noise that has corrupted a signal, and it is also used for system identifi cation by matching the output of the fi lter with that of the unknown system. In this study, a damage index based on the mean square error of the Wiener fi lter is proposed to indicate the damage in structures. The current measurement is the input of the fi lter and the response of the undamaged structure is the design signal. Another index calculated from the cross correlation responses of neighbouring sensors is used to determine the damage location. An experimental study has been carried out on a reinforced concrete structure. The results show that this method is effective and reliable for structural damage detection and localisation.