ABSTRACT
In this chapter we present a simple method for the identification of stiffness matrices of structural and mechanical systems from information about some of their natural frequencies and corresponding mode shapes of vibration. The method is computationally efficient and is shown to perform well in the presence of measurement errors in the mode shapes of vibration. The method is applied to the identification of the stiffness distribution along the height of a simple vibrating structure. An example illustrating the method’s efficacy in structural damage detection is also given. The efficiency and accuracy with which the method yields estimates of the system’s stiffness make it worthy of further exploration for damage detection.
