Application of Hilbert marginal spectrum in damage detection of a frame structure

A new damage detection method based on Hilbert marginal spectrum was proposed. With this method, the acceleration response of measured points were decomposed by using the empirical mode decomposition method at first Hilbert transformation was performed for the intrinsic mode functions of the response to obtain Hilbert marginal spectrum, then the characteristic amplitude was defined, and the relative change of the characteristic amplitude at the same response point between the intact structure and the damaged one was used to calculate the damage index. The proposed method was verified using damage detection numerical simulations and model tests for a shear frame structure. The results showed that the proposed method can detect and locate the damage with a good accuracy.