System identification, damage assessment, and reliability evaluation of structures

Available literature on the methods of structural identification, damage assessment, and reliability evaluation are reviewed and summarized. The possibility of combining those techniques into a rational procedure for practical implementation is discussed. System identification is a process for constructing a mathematical description or model of a physical system when both the input to the system and the corresponding output are known. For most of the current applications, the input is usually a forcing function and the output is the displacement or other motions of the structure subjected to the forces. The mathematical model obtained from the identification process should produce a response that in some sense matches closely the system's output, when it is subjected to the same input.