On the identification of a harmonic force on a viscoelastic plate from response data

The problem of determining the force acting on a structure from measurements of the response of the structure to the force is an inverse problem. Presented is a method for determining the location, magnitude, and phase of a harmonic point force acting on a simply-supported classical viscoelastic rectangular plate from a number of displacement readings at discrete points on the plate. Presented also is a demonstration of the robustness of the solution technique to the effects of measurement noise as well as a means by which problems involving more general structural and loading configurations may be solved.